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It’s him.

35

His soul may be frozen in place, but he looks like he is merely in a deep sleep, his skin still flushed and rosy. His hair falls across his closed eyes. In this hazy space, he looks almost unreal, his figure a stark contrast against the pale wood.

I take a step toward him. As I draw nearer, I can see that his chest rises and falls in a gentle, steady rhythm, and his eyes are shifting subtly behind their lids, as if he might be dreaming.

“Étienne.” I whisper his name, wondering if this might be what makes him stir, but he doesn’t react at all.

As I go, the smoke grows thicker and darker, until it seems to seep into my skin. I hear the sound of distant ambulances and the shouts of firefighters, the breaking of glass, the crackle of a fire I never see. The smoke thickens further until the world looks shrouded in night. Glimpses of shadows dart behind the smoke, the flicker of fleeing people.

Just like the moment I’d seen of Raven’s mortal form, this moment is a hinge on Étienne’s life, where his soul has come to rest.

Then I see the memory of him. Étienne, before he became a Harbinger, when he was just another mortal boy. He has his shirt pulled up over his mouth and nose like a mask, with one of his hands holding it as tightly in place as he can, but even so, he’s coughing uncontrollably, tears running down his face. As he goes, he calls out for someone.

The person he had come back to save.

As I look on, he trips and braces himself against the bar counter. He gasps for air, his gaze turning listless.

I want to rush toward this memory of him. But the instant I get near, he vanishes behind the curtains of smoke. I blink, squinting, trying to see him through it, but the more I look, the less I’m able to see. When I make my way to where I thought he was crouching, he’s gone. Behind it all, the Eternal Tree still looms, Étienne bound to it.

I approach the base of the trunk and stare at him. He doesn’t look dead here. He only appears locked in a deep sleep.

“You would give up everything, for him?”

Raven’s deep, smooth voice makes me freeze. I whirl to see him emerge through the smoke like an apparition to stand beside me. The bar around us fades away, leaving behind only the curtains of dark smoke and the figure of Étienne bound against the Eternal Tree’s pale trunk.

My dream. This moment looks exactly like it: Raven materializing out of the darkness before me, pristine and elegant, gray eyes haunted and tragic, smoke curling around him.

“I would give up everything,” I reply, “because it’s the right thing to do.”

“To relinquish all the power bestowed upon you?” he asks. “To turn your back on your gift? You are carrying the first light of the universe in your soul, the ability to make and unmake gods, to grant life, to reshape the world around you. Imagine all you could do with it. All that you could fix.”

I shake my head. “I can’t fix anything alone,” I say. “Neither can you. You cannot prevent evil simply by preventing life from happening. It isn’t up to you.”

“Isn’t it?” He tilts his head thoughtfully at me. “Think of all the innocents who must die, give up their lives when they don’t deserve to. Let’s say that, some years before that, the death of someone else could prevent those innocent lives from being taken. Would you ask me to take that soul, to save them?”

I grit my teeth. “Nothing is a guarantee, you once told me yourself. Even you cannot predict the whims of mortals. There are infinite pathways you cannot foresee.”

“Would you take it?” he asks me harshly.

Everything in me wants to say yes. Because it is the truth. Selfishly, if I could choose to let someone else die, I would save those I love. How could I not? How could anyone? Except, is that simply one evil replaced with another? One grief taking precedence over another?

I take a deep, shuddering breath. “No,” I say.

“What if it gave you a chance with your mother?” he replies.

His mention of my mother fills me with fury. “Did you know about her?” I say. “Did you know why she gave me up?”

“I am always near when a woman gives birth,” he says. “Your mother fell in love with a boy from an extremely powerful family. They forced her to sign a contract to terminate the pregnancy, sought to rob her of a choice she should have been allowed to make for herself. But when it came time, she ran away from home. She couldn’t keep you. When they found her, she’d already given you away.” He nods at me. “Always, the gods are at odds with one another, each of us forwarding our own agendas in defiance of others. Before your birth, that imbalance was already forming, tension growing between legions of us, certain gods winning too much against others. I was meant to claim you then, to gather your soul from your mother’s death of choice. But she defied that death. The creation of you was the doing of the goddess of Love, as well as the god of Lies. You became the tipping point for the universe’s imbalance, and the first light was reborn into your soul.”

The tipping point. Me. My mother’s love had crossed the gods’ plans, and I had unknowingly shifted the balance of power amongst the immortals. And all I can think of in this moment are Scarlet’s words to me, of how often love and lies are entangled. Always, that hope for something different.

“You never told me,” I whisper at him.

He looks tragic now. “Would you spend your life hunting for your mother? Getting revenge on your father and his family? Would it consume you? Is that a better life, or worse?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say to him through clenched teeth, “because all you wanted was to have me for yourself.”