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Arlo scoffs, and I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to remember the way it used to feel when he held my face this way.

“Fine, let’s go,” I say before I can change my mind.

Arlo is quick to snatch my hand and lead us outside. The castle falls away behind us, its imposing walls giving way to rougher paths and open sky. The noise of morning preparations fades, replaced by the sounds of the island itself waking up.

For a moment, it feels painfully normal, like we could be walking any one of the paths through the woods near Crawly’s farm, like I could turn around now and run home to see Sable.

The thought becomes a physical ache in my chest, because I’m not sure the life I’m missing could even exist anymore. Before I left Purgatory, it was just us fighting for a future we weren’t sure we’d ever get.

“You’ve been different,” he says after a moment, his tone shifting just slightly.

“I know. I’ve been so preoccupied with my powers.” My gaze drifts toward the sky.

“That’s not what I meant. This place,” he says slowly. “It’s changing you.”

Something in my chest tightens. “It’s not the place,” I say.

“Then what is it?”

I don’t answer. Because I don’t know how to explain something I barely understand myself. Because every time I try to put it into words, it sounds wrong.

“Ali,” he pauses, stepping closer, his voice softer. “You don’t have to stay here.”

I don’t tell Arlo because I know it will hurt him, but I’m not sure I can leave. “I know.”

“Then come back with me.”

There it is. The thing we keep circling.

“You should go back,” I say instead. “Your mother needs you. Angie needs you.”

“And you don’t?” he asks.

My throat tightens. “I didn’t say that.”

“Then say you’re coming with me.”

Silence stretches between us. I can feel the bond stir faintly like it’s urging me back to the castle.

“I can’t,” I say finally.

His expression hardens slightly. “Because of him?”

“It’s not that simple,” I reply, because it isn’t, because nothing about this is simple anymore.

“It could be,” he says. “If you just choose.”

As if it’s that easy. As if there isn’t something else pulling at me, something deeper than choice, something I can’t see but feel every second I’m not near him.

I shake my head slightly. “I don’t want to argue about this.”

“I’m not arguing,” he says. “I’m trying to understand why you’re staying somewhere you clearly don’t want to be.”

“I never said I didn’t want to be here.”

“You don’t have to say it,” he replies. “I can see it.”

Part of me wonders if he’s right. And part of me knows he isn’t.