How do you grieve someone who’s still alive? How do you mourn a person whose heart is beating and whose voice sounds the same, when everything underneath is gone?
I don’t know how she survives it. I hope I never find out.
“I’m sorry you lost him like that,” I hear myself say.
“I’m not looking for pity.” She takes another swig from the flask. “I’m giving you a warning. You have his attention right now, but one day, you won’t, and then you’ll understand why I can’t let go. Because letting go means admitting the person I love is gone forever, and I refuse to grieve someone who’s still breathing.”
I search for a response, but nothing comes. What are you supposed to say to the girl who loved your boyfriend first, who held him while he fell apart, who watched him rebuild himself into someone she doesn’t recognize?
There’s nothing I can say to make it better. If I tried, it would come off as ingenuine, and Callie would see straight through it. So, we sit there in silence as the boat rocks, the strange stars glitter overhead, and the dark water stretches endlessly in every direction.
“Can I ask you something?” she eventually asks.
“Sure,” I say, bracing myself for anything.
She turns the flask over in her hands, studying it like it holds answers, her promise ring glinting in the moonlight. “Does Logan ever scare you? Do you ever look at him and see what’s underneath? How dark and dangerous he really is?”
The night air is suddenly colder.
Because yes.
He told methere’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you safewith a dark, final certainty that left no room for metaphor. He described exactly how he wanted to tear Oliver apart for dancing with me at the Halloween Ball, and he told me about going back over and over again to torture the assassin who killed his parents. He moves through the world like a predator pretending to be tame, every gesture calculated, every reaction controlled, and despite all of it, I’ve never felt safer with anyone else.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I lie, and it’s the worst lie I’ve ever told. My voice shakes, my electricity sparks across my palms, and Callie looks at me with exhausted, knowing eyes.
“He takes from people,” she says, her gaze sharp when she looks at me. “He’ll take your energy, and your focus, and he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.” She stands and brushes off her pants, that cool, untouchable expression settling over her features like a shield. “I thought our history would be enough tokeep him, but it wasn’t. Remember that the next time he tells you something that doesn’t quite add up.”
Then she walks to the hatch, disappears below deck, and I’m alone.
I pull my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around them, gazing out at the endless sea. Electricity hums under my skin, tendrils of current reaching for the hatch where Logan sleeps below deck, as if my magic can’t accept that I’m choosing to sit up here alone instead of pressed against his chest.
My brain heard Callie’s warning, but my magic didn’t.
So, I don’t let it spark. I just sit on the deck of a boat sailing through impossible waters, trying to figure out why Callie Bennett’s words are burrowing under my skin like splinters I can’t reach.
He takes from people. Your energy, and your focus.
Is that true? My entire nervous system rewires itself whenever Logan walks into a room. I can’t think when he’s near me, can’t breathe when he touches me, and I can’t focus on anyone else when we’re in the same space.
I thought that was love. Callie’s calling it consumption.
And the worst part is, I can’t tell the difference.
13
JADE
The sun’ssetting across the horizon, and the five of us have been having the same argument for over an hour.
Well, not an argument. Arguments go somewhere. What we’re doing is chewing on the same piece of jerky pretending it’s going to turn into steak.
I’m sitting on the bench near what’s left of the front mast—thanks, Scylla, really appreciate you ripping it in half—and my hands are under my thighs because if I touch my bracelet right now, I’ll fidget a hole through my wrist.
Evie’s cross-legged on the deck with her star charts fanned out around her.
“The Pillars should be three days west of Aeaea,” she says, tracing lines on the paper. “We’ve been sailing west for four days, which should mean?—”
“It should mean we’re there.” Callie’s at the railing, her arms folded, watching the sunset. “Except we’re not. So either west doesn’t mean what it used to, or the charts are wrong.”
