Evie’s brow furrows for half a second—probably surprise about the passages—but then I say the next part and none of that matters.
“Oliver was yelling about not letting someone recruit you to become a Revenant, and we followed the sound out of the passages and to the bottom of the volcano.”
“Professor Thaddeus was there,” Logan adds, and the tightness in my chest loosens the tiniest bit at the fact that he’s standing with me through this. “He had Oliver.”
“And before we could do anything…”
I can’t say it. The words are sitting on my tongue, and I can’t make myself spit them out.
So, Logan finishes for me.
“Thaddeus stabbed him in the chest.”
The sound that tears out of Evie is animal and broken. Her heat shield dies, her knees buckle, and Kieran catches her before she hits the deck.
I did this.
The thought slams into me so hard I can barely breathe.
“You could have used your time magic to save him,” she says, softer now, clinging to Kieran’s arms like he’s the only solid thing left in the world.
“I tried.” Logan’s mask cracks, and for a second I see the Logan from that night, exhausted and desperate as he pushed his magic to the brink. “I brought us back again and again. I pushed my power further than I ever have before, but I couldn’t get us there early enough to stop it. His fate was already set in stone.”
It was just like Deidre during the hellhound attack. She always ended up dead, no matter what I did differently.
Kieran cuts through my thoughts, his arms wrapped around Evie like he’s trying to shield her from the truth she’s already heard. “How many times did you go back? How many loops?”
“Five,” Logan says, sounding steadier than I ever could.
His eyes find mine, and I’m not on the boat anymore. I’m on wet rock with rain in my eyes and Oliver’s blood between my fingers while Logan told me there was nothing I could do to change it.
“So, Oliver died,” Evie says so flatly that it sounds like she’s somewhere else. “And Thaddeus?”
“Dead.” The word comes out before I can stop it. “We killed him.”
Evie takes a sharp breath inward.
“Thaddeus kept coming for me.” The memories crash over me, and I can’t stop them. Cold steel sliding into my stomach in the first timeline, then into my chest in the second. The world tilting sideways when he threw me off the Crown during the third loop, using what must have beenair magic,which means Thaddeus was a Revenant too. “He killed me three times.”
Callie inhales sharply. Kieran’s eyes bore into me.
“Logan kept bringing me back seconds before I died.” My nails are biting into my palms so hard that I’m drawing blood. “In the final loop—the one that ended up sticking—I channeled lightning through my body from the storm overhead, like I did with the hellhounds, and I threw it all at Thaddeus.”
Although my lightning didn’t kill him, and now I know why. It’s because he was a Revenant, and I needed help from Logan—another Revenant—to end him.
“We killed him together.” Logan takes over, and thank the gods, because I’m not sure I can describe the rest. “We burned the bodies on the Crown to destroy the evidence.”
Evie takes a deep breath, then stands. Kieran stands with her, as if he’s prepared to catch her if she falls again. I move closer to her, because out of me, Logan, and Callie, I feel the most at fault here.
“You burned my brother’s body,” she says, so quietly I almost don’t hear it. “You turned him to ash.”
“We had to,” I say, and the excuse sounds pathetic, because itispathetic. “If anyone found out what happened… if the Council discovered?—”
“I don’t care about the Council!” Heat explodes from her hands in a wave. “He was my brother, and you burned him like garbage and let me spend two weeks thinking he might still be alive!”
“I’m sorry.” I’m crying now. When did I start crying? “I wanted to tell you every single day, but I didn’t know how?—”
“How?”She laughs, and it’s the worst sound I’ve ever heard. “You open your mouth and say the words. ‘Evie, your brother is dead. I watched him die, then I burned his body, and I’ve been lying to your face this entire time.’That’show.”
