If that’s true, then I’m destined to destroyLogan.
The ground tilts beneath me. Because I can’t be both the girl who loves him and the weapon that’s supposed to end him. They can’t coexist. One of them has to die, and I don’t know which one, and the not knowing is tearing me apart from the inside.
Denial continues its sickening swirl through my stomach as the Seer of Consequence drifts forward, his silver eyes fixed on Logan, studying him longer than anyone else.
“Your fate-thread is tangled with the storm touched’s.” The Seer pauses, his ethereal form flickering. “The threads wrap around each other so completely that separating them would destroy them both.”
Tangled together. Impossible to separate.
My fate is wrapped around Logan’s. My thread is always wrong, becauseLoganis wrong, because he shouldn’t exist, because he’s what I’m meant to destroy, because?—
The thoughts are chaos in my head, as tangled as the threads themselves, and I can’t make sense of a single one of them. All I can do is stand here feeling like my heart’s been ripped out of my chest, because I don’t know what’s true anymore and what’s a lie.
But the Seer doesn’t care about my—or anyone’s—pain. All he cares about is the truth.
“You will become either the storm bringer’s greatest weapon, or her complete destruction,” he says, his silver eyes swirling faster. “The thread refuses to show which.”
My hands are shaking. The whole boat might be shaking. I can’t tell what’s real and what’s the electricity shorting out my nervous system.
The Seer pulls back, and Logan turns to face me, his eyes finding mine across the deck.
And he’s just... waiting.
I open my mouth, but no words come out. Because what do you say to the person you love when you learn they’re what you’re destined to destroy?
You’re the only person who makes me feel alive.
But he’s not alive.
He hasn’t been alive since…
Since when? When did this happen? When did he become thisthing?Was it before we met? After? Was any of it real, or was I just another mission, another manipulation, another?—
Stop.
I force my lungs to work. Air in. Air out.
Logan’s still watching me. His face is blank in the way it gets when he’s trying to hide everything he’s feeling, but his eyes...
His eyes are terrified.
Not of the Geryon. Not of Kieran, or Evie, or Callie.
Ofme.
The sound of steel snaps me back to focus as Kieran’s blade clears the sheath, and then he’s moving, putting himself in front of Evie, blade angled low, his body a wall between her and Logan. His green eyes are empty of everything except the bloodthirsty, burning focus I’ve only seen during combat.
“Kieran,” Logan says, careful and measured. “Don’t.”
Kieran’s blade doesn’t waver. He just watches Logan with searing intensity, and I reach for the storm inside myself, ready to strike him down if he dares to get that steel anywhere close to Logan.
Evie’s hands come up behind him, and the air around her shimmers as she creates a heat shield around her and Kieran, as if protecting Kieran Cross is an instinct carved so deep in her bloodstream that it bypasses thought.
That’s when my brain catches up to my body.
Because Kieran Cross doesn’t draw his blade unless he means to use it. Evie doesn’t create a shield unless she believes she’s in danger.
They believe it.
