I know I’ll never love anyone like I love Baz. I know he’s the love of my life. Of all my lives. The Mage believed in reincarnation. Of a thousand lives stacked on top of each other.“Some lives we squander,”he said.“And some we seize.”
This was my life to find love. The truest love. The biggest.
But it isn’t my life to have it.
I’m too . . . broken. I don’t know how to be close to people. I don’t know how to be quiet. When Baz gets like this with me . . . When he hands me his heart, I don’t know how to hold it. I want to scream. I want to run. Maybe it’s part of what the Mage did to me. He said he got me wrong, that I was a cracked vessel. I can’t hold on to anything good.
“Baz . . .” I’m still whispering. “I can’t be with you.”
“Because of magic?” His voice breaks on the last word.
“Because of me. I was never going to make this work.”
“Fuck.” He shudders. “You’re killing me, Snow.”
I’m killing me, too. There won’t be anything left of me after they take off the wings. “I’m sorry.”
BAZ
“I’m sorry,” Snow says. Like that’s athing. . . Like that’s a thing that matters.
I push him away with my wand, then pull it back, out of his hand. He lets go.
His cheeks are red, and his chest is flushed and blotchy. The arrow end of his tail is lying on the ground. His wings have fallen.
There’s nothing left for me to say. How can I convince him that we’re a good thing if he doesn’t believe in good things?
It makes me so angry. I’m. So.Angry.I’ve never hated him more. I want to break my knuckles on his chin, I want to cast off his tongue, I want to shove him down a thousand flights of stairs—and then I want to catch him.
“I love you,” I say. (And I know it’s a not a thing. I know it doesn’t matter.)
I turn away from him then, and tuck my wand in my pocket. It’s only anger making my legs move. I can’t believe he’s doing this, I can’t believe I’m leaving. I can’t believe this is it—thatthisis how we’re ending.
It wasn’t the Mage. It wasn’t the War. It wasn’t the Humdrum.
I stop at the door. I look back at Simon one more time. “I never thoughtI’dbe the first thing you ever gave up on.”
14
AGATHA
For the first few days I was home, my parents let me hole up in my room without bothering me.
I didn’t tell them what happened with Braden and the NowNext. I’m not telling anyone. Penelope can fill out the proper paperwork if she wants; her mother is practically running the World of Mages these days.
I keep expecting a summons. Or for someone to show up and take my official testimony about the incident. The American Incident. I don’tthinkI’ll be arrested. I didn’t intentionally break any rule—it’s legal to kill vampires—and Penelope’s the one who counterfeited our plane tickets. If anyone deserves to be arrested, it’s her. As per usual.
My parentsarestarting to worry about me now . . . My father keeps stopping by my room to talk about his day or to see if I’d like to come down for dinner. My mother keeps asking if I’d like to go shopping.
I would not.
I’m doing exactly what I’d like to do: I’m lying in bed, watching cat videos and ignoring Ginger’s text messages, while I twirl my wand first in one hand and then the other.
I dug it out of my top drawer as soon as I got home, and I haven’t set it down since. It’s teak with a red Bakelite handle. It belonged to my grandfather, my mother’s father. He died before I was born, which is why his wand was available. He wasn’t much of a magician. Neither am I.
That’s all right. I don’t need to be. I just need to keep this wand on me, and I need one spell at the tip of my tongue.
I’m not letting it happen again.
