I push the biggest black button on the side of the box like Valoria showed me, and quietly as I can manage, I shove it against the bottom of the door and put my fingers in my ears. I can’t stand the thought of hearing her tell someone else—the idea of someone else—that she loves them again. Especially not when I was about to speak those same words to her at the aviary.
Precious time slips away as the babble of voices from Meredy’s room continues. My leg cramps up, forcing me to stand and stretch instead of kneeling beside the box. A guard passes by on some urgent errand, boots tapping against the floor.
At last, the voices stop. I pound on the door, and at first, no one answers.
Then Meredy clears her throat and says brightly, “Come in, Odessa!”
As I open the door and step inside, followed by Nipper, I ask, “How’d you know—?”
“I recognized your knock, of course,” Meredy grins at me from the bed where she sits, the crystal tucked away somewhere out of sight. “What happened in the Deadlands?” she asks, patting the space beside her in invitation, as if she hadn’t just told someone else she loved them. When I don’t say anything or make a move to join her, she points to the recorder in my hands and gives me a questioninglook. “Did you find that box in the spirit world? It looks like something of Valoria’s.”
“It is,” I say, hating the way my mouth goes dry and sudden tears prick my eyes. I have a bad feeling about what’s going to happen when I turn the recorder on, but I have to do it. Nothing matters more than Meredy’s sanity. I take a deep breath and release it shakily. “You’re going to hate me, but you need to hear this.”
My stomach writhes as I set the box on the table and fiddle with one of the knobs, hoping I’m doing exactly what Valoria showed me.
As Meredy’s voice crackles from the box, thick with static, the real Meredy asks quietly, “You’ve been spying on me? Eavesdropping with this—thisthing?” She rubs her temples, looking as ill as I feel. No, not ill—furious, angrier than I’ve ever seen her. “I’m not a child. I don’t need you looking over my shoulder. I make my own choices and mistakes—and clearly, trusting you was one of them.”
The venom in her words sinks into me, making me sicker, but I have to keep fighting the crystal’s influence if there’s any chance of bringing her back to her senses.
“Death be damned, Meredy, would you justlisten? Firiel isn’t in some rock! She’s in the Deadlands. I saw her there the time I came to rescue you from those Shade-baiters—those rogue necromancers. And I saw her again last night, with Jax and Simeon. She doesn’t even remember her own name.” I can barely bring myself to look at her as tears splash my cheeks.
“You’re jealous, and a liar.” Eyes flashing, Meredy leaps off our bed and grabs a bag, hastily filling it with her things. Lysander, sensing her agitation, shakes himself fully awake and crosses the small room to nuzzle her flushed cheek.
“You know whose voice I hear in that recorder?” I force myself to ask over the sounds of Meredy imitating Firiel as the conversationcontinues to replay. “Yours, and no one else’s. It’s all in your head, Meredy. And when Evander was in my head, remember what you did? You tied me down, and you let me curse at you and be completely horrible until I could see clearly again.”
“Shut up.” Meredy’s voice is quiet but still somehow harsh. “Just shut up. I don’t trust you anymore, not after this, and since you clearly don’t trust me”—she pauses, gesturing angrily at the recorder—“we clearly have nothing left to say to each other. It’s over, Odessa.We’reover.”
It’s hard to speak around the lump in my throat, hard to do anything at all when she’s in the midst of walking out. This is exactly what I was afraid of, but if there’s any chance that hearing this recording could save her, even if she hates me as a result, having Meredy back to herself will have been worth the pain.
She starts toward the door, her overstuffed bag in hand, followed by Lysander. For the first time in a long time—if ever—the grizzly growls at me, his eyes glowing an ethereal green. I know he’s only sharing her quiet fury, but it makes my chest tighten all the same.
“Meredy—”
“No!” she growls, her face suddenly draining of color as the recorder keeps blaring out the conversation she thought she had with Firiel. “Don’t talk to me. I’m going to be sick.”
“Please, don’t go,” I beg as she reaches for the doorknob. I know I can’t stop her. But part of me refuses to give up hope for us. “I want to help you get better. I’d do anything for—”
I’m stunned into silence as the door slams, rattling in its frame.
A soft sob echoes from the hallway, then footsteps fade into silence.
I turn off the recorder and collapse on the bed, curling up in the still-warm spot where Meredy was waiting for me when I came in.
I want a calming potion more than I have in a long time. My fingertips itch to curl around a vial of vivid blue. I don’t want to feel anything. I don’t want to hurt again. I don’t want to lose the person I love again. But it seems I have no choice, all because of the same sort of illusion that nearly broke me once. I know I hurt plenty of people, her included, while I was under the sway of those potions. I don’t think I realized how much until now.
I’d hoped Meredy could learn from my mistakes, but then, she’s not me. She has to learn for herself. Hopefully what she just heard through the recorder will begin to help soon.
Wishing I could sink through the bed and disappear, I call Nipper’s name, and the dragon climbs up beside me. She starts shaking—or maybe that’s me—as I cling to her back and try to shut out the world.
“I love her,” I mumble to Nipper, who gently chirps. “I don’t know what to do. I still want to be with—”
From somewhere down the hall, Meredy screams. And even though she just broke up with me, even though she destroyed my heart in the span of a few moments, I do what I always have and always will when Meredy is in trouble—I run to her.
XXV
Even though it’s still morning, the palace hallways are darker than usual as I race through them, heart beating out of control, in the direction of that awful scream.
I find Meredy sprawled at the bottom of a staircase just past the kitchens, looking stunned but otherwise unhurt. Gasping for breath, she struggles to sit up. She must have had the wind knocked out of her by a fall.
