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I give him a questioning look, and he gestures for me to produce the book—not the tome of legend my mother kept from the rulers of kingdoms—the journal of stories recorded by my father, the folklore he recorded along his travels.

I open it to that story. Lonan pulls me down onto the steps, and we sit and read. I read it aloud to him, but when it gets to a particular paragraph, he takes the book from me. And then Lonan reads to me, his smooth, deep voice so gorgeous I can’t help but be captivated by the words.

“And so it was that this love was destined to heal the old wounds, to repair what was broken, not only in the broken-hearted girl, but in magic itself. For the Light and Dark, once torn, would be mended. The tear in all magic repaired. What was once lost would be found, and the wholehearted girl and her Fated love would be one, bound in the Dark, united in the Light, and chosen in the . . .”

I recite the rest, the words my mother gave me from Oras’s book. “Chosen in the Dim. For though Darkness enthralls and the Light liberates, Choice and Will are the shield of Fate. The stars incline. They do not bind. Whatever Fate dictates, it is woven by mankind.”

Lonan watches my face, a look of strange wonder glimmering in those dark eyes. The morning light pierces his cracked lenses and illumines shards of amber in that dark gaze. “Vesper,” he says, “was Galvin your ‘love destined to heal old wounds’?”

I snort. “Fuck no.”

His lips quirk at my crassness. “Did he repair your broken heart?”

“I repaired my broken heart.”

That magnificent smile breaks across his face. “Exactly.” He winds his fingers through mine. “Are you whole-hearted now?”

I study our entwined fingers. “I am.”

“Then I think healing the rift in magic is up to you.”

My eyes rise to his. “I’m no one special.” I’m from no royal bloodline. My father was a soldier.

“The daughter of a Saint. No one special. Right.” He rolls his eyes. “Listen. I’m a fighter, not a ruler. I don’t need a throne. But Gault, Imaelhain, the whole world needs magic to be whole again. By my reading . . .” He traces his fingers over the text written in my father’s hand. “You can do that.”

My brows quirk together. “How?”

“Well . . . I think you’ve already started. You’ve embraced both. You can teach others to do the same. Perhaps you are the love that heals old wounds.”

I look up at the clocktower, its stonework awash in the oranges and pinks of sunrise. One of the panes of its face is still broken. It’s the only sign that it has endured anything other than a quiet night over Gossemort. The hands lie motionless, fixed at the moment of dawn.

In that tower, my lavender Light blended with my Darkness, the worlds of pain and passion that I’d so demonized before synchronized with reason and order. The magic from within does not need to be separated from the magic from without. The Dark that is drawn from my heart marries the Light gleaned from the earth.

“You’ve also wielded them both,” I tell him. “Will you help me?”

He squeezes my hand. “Obviously.”

“It’s a lot of work.”

“Don’t be lazy.”

I elbow him. Hard.

He folds over, wincing. Melodramatic bastard.

I lean back on one hand and toy with his hair with the other, studying the way the dawn turns strands of dark tresses to bright auburn. Even now, with the dawn of day upon us, he’s half shadow, half Darkness. Nothing that has happened in the last twelve hours has erased who either of us are, what we’ve done. But we are something new—the space between the Light and Dark.

Lonan’s hand trails up to the nape of my neck. He works his fingers into my hair, gripping firmly and then pulling my head back to look at him. “There will be a problem with King Marcel.”

My stomach sinks. He’s right. No matter what Galvin did, we’ve murdered the crown prince of Gault. We hold each other’s gaze for a long moment.

“We could leave,” he says, gaze steady and full of longing. He caresses his nose along the edge of mine, and my eyes flutter shut. “The headmaster is gone. There will be questions. We were his apprentices.”

I open my eyes again. This is a rude awakening. I hadn’t thought of that—that we are left to take the fall for all he did.

I frown up at Lonan, studying his obnoxiously perfect face for a moment. He tips his forehead, pressing it to mine again, and holds my gaze. I don’t want to think of these things.

I want to know the feeling of losing myself in him, my heart and his locked together until we can’t peel ourselves apart.