“Yes, I’m sure you’re completely broken up about it,” Kai deadpanned.
Clover’s mouth thinned at the sarcasm. “I told you I feared I would falter in the end if I opened myself up to grief. That’s why I have to close myself off to it. To all this pain I have caused and will cause still. I hate it as much as you do, believe me. But it’s the only way to make it right. The only way to make all this hurt and loss count.”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself.”
A shove. A push. That’s all it would take.
Clover stepped in front of him, hand alighting on Kai’s chest. Kai sucked in a breath as a wave of healing washed through him, mending whatever had broken at his earlier fall. Clover wiped blood off the corner of Kai’s mouth.
“I tell myself what I need to hold the nightmares at bay,” Clover said. “Surely you of all people must understand.”
Kai frowned at Clover’s hand still on his chest. Then looked him in the eye. So very human—that’s how Clover appeared in this moment. A boy trying to hold on to his humanity. Pleading with the only people who might understand.
But there was no understanding this. No sympathizing with such monstrous acts.
Tentatively, Kai tested the agency of his own limbs. It seemed Clover’s compulsion didn’t go beyond a command to follow him, and so Kai was able to wrap his fingers around Clover’s wrist, ever so gently. Kai scrunched up his brows as he leaned closer to Clover, making it appear as if he were finally changing his mind, finally accepting that this darkness between the two of them was the same.
It wasn’t. Would never be.
“The thing about keeping nightmares at bay,” Kai said, “is that eventually, they always catch up.”
With all his might, Kai twisted them around so that Clover toppled at the edge of the path. And then heshoved.
Swirling shadows joined the momentum of his push, swallowing Clover whole. The umbrae called here by Kai’s presence.
And just when he thought he’d done it—that he’d gotten rid of Clover, sent him to the void beyond the stars—the shadows withdrew, umbrae screeching in pain and fear as glaring light cast them back. Kai shielded his eyes. When the light dissipated, whenthe screams of the umbrae faded, Clover was still standing on the path of stars, light rippling off him, tendrils and vines keeping him rooted in place. His face was stony and cold. He didn’t look surprised at Kai’s attempt at ending him; had likely seen his intent before Kai shoved him.
But now he waspissed.
A maelstrom of vines and dirt and leaves, of knotted tendrils of light and dark, shot from Clover’s hands to wrap around Kai like a vise. Somewhere, Luce was shouting. Then she was similarly bound. Clover’s eyes shone bright turquoise, his hair fluttering on an inexistent breeze. Power crackled around him. He looked like a vengeful demon, like a spectral god. The magic squeezed around Kai, making him gasp for breath.
Kai was going to die here, he was sure of it.
“Go on, kill us, then,” he said on a breathy laugh, which only seemed to piss Clover off even more. Good. He wanted Clover to be driven to a rage, if only to prove to them both what kind of monster he was. To prove tohimselfthat he wasn’t the only one defined by anger.
If Kai could never know peace, then he would make damn sure Clover was denied it too.
“DO IT!”he screamed with all the air left in his lungs.
Darkness pressed in at the edges of his vision. Perhaps this was always how it was meant to be: that he should die here in the dark among the stars, still clutching that anger he’d been carrying all his life, the same anger he’d always used as armor and weapon both. He wasn’t afraid of death. There was no peace for him either way.
Fear Eater, Nightmare Weaver.
The familiar voice slithered along Kai’s bones. It came from all the umbrae lingering around him, all the dark places they hid in, speaking through all of them so that it was layered and many. But it was a singular voice in a guttural tongue that Kai understoodintuitively. Judging from the unchanged look on Clover’s face, he didn’t hear it. Only Kai did.
The voice of the crowned umbra.
But it was different from when he’d heard it before, when his nightmares had often been haunted by the crowned umbra in the wake of Emory slipping through the Hourglass. It was strained and croaking now, as if it hadn’t been used in a millennium. As if speaking through the umbrae took every single ounce of his power.
I will help you,the voice said,if you promise to free me.
The words jostled a memory. A long-forgotten dream that Kai remembered with sudden clarity. He knew it was a dream—a nightmare, back at the printing press he’d visited so often in sleep—but it felt too real, too vivid in his mind. How Baz had kissed him as if they’d never see each other again. The weighted look in his eyes, like he was trying to tell Kai something beyond the words that spilled from his mouth.
Whatever happens, promise me you’ll remember that… that I love you.
Kai choked on a sob as all the air was squeezed from his lungs.
Promise me, and live,the crowned umbra’s voice said.
