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Kip looked between me and Hael before bolting out of the cage and running down the hall.

I inhaled, forcing myself to breathe, but it was too shaky. This was opening so many wounds. It felt like I was rubbing black sand into every new cut, like I was carving a path down my flesh that led to my heart until I was filled with it.

I did so many terrible, Suns-awful things I could never take back.

There was one more cell to open, one more wound I had to face. I was saving them for last.

Breathe. One. Two. Three. Four. Exhale.

“Come on,” I said, after I did my cycle of breaths. “I want to finish this.”

The triplets stood when I silently unlocked their cage.

“You can go back to Viven,” I said. “There’s a sabberneath just up the stairs. It can take you back if you’d like.”

“Why would we believe anything you say?” one of them sneered.

I flinched. I couldn’t even look at the one whose eye I ripped out. Nuna—her name rang through me, sinking into my bones.

“You don’t have any reason to,” I admitted, “but either way you are free. Dahes is dead, so you can go back home, or you can stay in Moriann if you want?—”

I stopped talking as their breaths hitched. Finally getting the courage to look up at them, they didn’t look surprised.

“You knew I was going to kill him?” I asked, realizing it was true as soon as I said it.

“Why are you suddenly helping us?” one of the sisters said, pointedly ignoring my question.

“Because it’s the right thing to do.”

I felt myself shift under her assessment as she studied my face. Suns, I ruined their lives. Exiles weren’t supposed to be a one-way ticket into the dungeons. I drugged them, dragged them all to Dahes, deformed one of them…

The triplets moved past us and out into the hall. They didn’t say anything else as they ran away. I meant to tell Nuna I was sorry, to beg her for forgiveness, but they were already gone.

I knew there would be things I couldn’t fix, too much damage done that I couldn’t take back.

I sucked in a breath, because the last thing I needed to do, the second reason I wanted to come to Moriann, would be even harder.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

The Dead River

MAGNOLIA

Iwas shaking profusely, whole-body tremors I couldn’t control.

But I couldn’t push this off any longer. Today was my first time back in Moriann, my first time stepping into Dahes’ castle since everything happened, and it was harder than I thought it would be.

I’d been avoiding it.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about Dahes’ words, how I left my brother to die, how to him, his last memory of me was me abandoning him.

I tried not to think about it, but I couldn’t help it. My mind compulsively kept drifting to him, and it fucking hurt.

I hated that it was all for nothing, that my years of being Dahes’ slave didn’t save my little brother, but was the reason he died.

I should have done more.

I should have realized it was a trick.