Logan’s hand comes up to the rings on his chest, his expression shifting from shattered to acceptance.
The black flames die down another inch.
“You don’t love me anymore,” he says, each word sounding like it’s being pulled from the most vulnerable part of his soul. “You’re the only person who made any of this bearable, and I’ve lost you.”
You haven’t lost me.I’m standing right in front of you.
But that’s not true either, is it? Because the Jade who loved Logan without knowing what he was is gone. She died about fifteen minutes ago, somewhere between “the dead one” and “Revenant.”
And the part that makes my hands shake and my magic surge is that even now, standing inside a circle of dying black flames with the wordRevenantringing in my ears, my body’s screaming at me to close the three feet between us and press my face into his chest the way I did last night, when the only thing wrong with the world was a storm I couldn’t control.
I hate that I want that. I hate that my body hasn’t caught up with the betrayal, that my hands are reaching for someone who lied to me for months while I gave him every piece of my heart.
“You don’t get to decide that,” I say, and it comes out sharper than I intended. “You don’t get to stand there and tell me what I feel.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t love me.” He closes his eyes as if I hadn’t spoken, and when he opens them again, there’s just raw, bleeding grief. “Because someday, there might not be anything left to love.”
The black flames sputter, and they’re almost gone now.
“Logan.” His name scrapes out of my throat. “Whatever happens out there…”
“Stay behind me,” he says so flatly that he sounds like the proctor who welcomes first-years to Blaze Academy, not the man who kissed me like I was oxygen and he was drowning. “Kieran wants blood, and I won’t let him get to you.”
“Stop protecting me.”
“I can’t.” His hand comes up like he’s going to touch my face, then drops back to his side. “Even if you never forgive me, even if you spend the rest of your life looking at me the way you’re looking at me right now, protecting you is all I know how to do anymore.”
Anymore.
That single word hits me harder than everything else combined. Because “anymore” means there used to be other things. A boy who played chess and read philosophy. A son who wore his parents’ rings against his heart. A student who was supposed to lead covens, not sell his soul to one.
All of those versions are gone. What’s left is a man who’s stripped himself down to a single function: keep Jade alive.
I want to hate him for that. I want the anger to be simple and righteous. But my traitorous hand twitches at my side, muscle memory reaching for his fingers the way it has every day for the past two months, and I have to curl it into a fist to stop myself.
But the part that makes me want to scream the most is that I believe him. He could have rewound time. He could have erased the Geryon, rehearsed the perfect confession, and handed me a version of this moment that didn’t feel like surgery without anesthesia.
Instead, he let it be real and mine, because I asked him to. That’s worse than the lies and secrets, because now I can’t pretend he doesn’t love me, and loving someone you can’t trust is its own kind of drowning.
The heat around us is fading, the black fire losing its grip on the air between us, and I have a sinking feeling that when these flames go out, whatever fragile awful honesty exists inside this bubble goes with them.
I take one last breath of air that belongs only to us.
The black flames flicker one last time.
And then, they die.
28
JADE
Sound crashes backin like a wave.
Kieran’s yelling, but his words keep breaking apart in the wind before they reach me. Ropes snap and crack overhead. Thunder splits the air so close that my skull vibrates with it, and somewhere underneath all that noise, someone’s screaming, and I think it might be me.
Move. You need to move.
But my legs aren’t working. My brain isn’t working. Everything’s too loud and bright, and Logan’s standing three feet away from me, and he’s one ofthem.He’s been one of them this whole time?—
