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Charlotte throws out her arms. “Truth? What’s a truth of the universe, then?”

“Balance means that something cannot come from nothing,” Willow says. “Day exists because of night. Joy exists because of grief. Hope exists because of suffering. And in order to bypass the natural circle of mortality, one must sever oneself from mortality. The universe cannot exist without balance. You are beholden to it.” She bows her head to Charlotte. “As are we.”

“I don’t believe you,” Charlotte cries. “You could change it. You just don’t want to.”

Her voice is breaking, and I half expect Willow to punish her for her outburst, for speaking so brazenly to her patron. Instead, Willow just holds a hand out to her. For the briefest moment, her luminous immortality shivers like a ripple on a lake’s surface—and I see a glimmer in her expression of something mortal. Empathy. Sorrow. A glint of who she must have been when human.

“Come here, child,” she says gently.

And instinctively, I think, She was once a mother.

Charlotte looks like she wants to resist, and for a second I think she’s going to walk away from Willow.

But then her fists loosen. Her shoulders sag. And even though she’s partly turned away from me, I can see her face crumple at Willow’s outstretched hand. She walks up to her goddess, wiping at her eyes, and lets herself fall into Willow’s arms.

“I’m sorry,” I hear Willow murmur to her.

Katie exchanges a quiet look with me, but there is no relief on her face. She only seems exhausted, and in this moment, we all feel it—the weight of being not mortal, not immortal, but Harbingers, trapped in this in-between space. We can’t feel the freedom of a god who has been released from human emotions, nor can we be grateful for the finite presence of our mortal loved ones. We’re a cacophony of souls forced into the semblance of a dysfunctional family, trying to fill the gaps in one another’s hearts.

But at least we have each other.

After a while, Charlotte wipes her nose and turns to me. Her eyes are glossy, but when she speaks, she sounds steadier. “You’re still looking for Étienne, aren’t you?” she mutters.

I nod.

“Well, he’s in Paris. He always goes there after a mission gone wrong.”

A mission gone wrong. My test.

What had Thorn said to him after he’d returned without having claimed me? How had Thorn punished him? Despite myself, something constricts within me at the thought. Why do I still care what happens to him? Why am I afraid on his behalf?

“Thanks, Cookie,” I say. “I owe you one.”

“I’ll put it on your tab,” she mutters, but this time, she gives me a grudging little smile.

I squeeze her elbow in gratitude. We may be cut off from our pasts, but at least we are in each other’s presents.

We are all we have.

25

I arrive in Paris right after a storm has coated the streets in a glittering sheet of new snow. Most of the tourists have gone for the year, leaving the city in a serene stillness, the kind of quiet romance that Paris always shimmers with in love stories and holiday movies.

If I didn’t know what I needed to do to Étienne, I would find the atmosphere peaceful.

As I go, I tell myself that he deserves this. He was the thief who stabbed Laine. He is the reason I agreed to become a Harbinger. And through it all, he never told me. All the times he had seemed to protect me, the moments where he appeared to open his heart, to be honest with me.

He had never been honest at all.

I should never have expected more from the Regent of Lies.

The eternal pull in me toward Raven is persistent today, a reminder of where my loyalties lie. And when I close my eyes, I only remember my patron god touching my lips, breathing death and life into me, filling my mortal veins with fire. An act of purpose, but perhaps that is how gods have always seen their Harbingers. Tools. Investments. Objects of use.

Do the gods love mortals, or do they simply love mortal things?

Based on Charlotte’s directions, I head west of the train station, passing through long, snowy avenues until I reach a neighborhood lined with trees and narrow alleys. Small boutique shops sit tidily along the first floors of the buildings here, half of them shuttered for the evening.

I’m almost to the end of the street before I finally spot him. He’s sitting at a round table at the edge of a café, one of its only customers in this frigid air, partially hidden behind a row of potted cypresses. His attention isn’t turned in my direction, but at the intersection, as if he’s waiting for someone.