Page 77

“It is still your choice.”

I laugh bitterly. “There’s no fighting this.” I gesture to the bite on my lip.

He’s quiet for a moment. Contemplative. “Who says?”

“You’re scaring me.”

“I’m scaring you? After everything we’ve been through tonight?”

“Yes. You’re trying to give me hope. Hope is dangerous.”

Internally, I’m begging for him to say something, but he’s silent. He studies me till it makes my skin itch.

Then he lifts the chain of my timepiece, brushing the skin of my collar and leaving goose bumps in his wake. The ticking clock rotates in the air between us, and he meets my eyes past it. “At some point, Vesper, you’ve got to stop clinging to that broken heart of yours.”

I back away from him. “You’ve got some nerve, you know?”

“I know. It’s why you and I make a good team.” He hesitates just a moment, the sheerest shadow of indecision before he takes my chin in his hand, tipping my face toward his. “Courage isn’t just for the battlefield, not just for fighting fiendlings in the woods. And you—”The edge of his lips tics up. “You have more nerve than any girl I’ve ever met.”

“Thought you hated that about me.”

He laughs, head tilted back, dimples on display. “To my own detriment, I love it. Hopelessly.” He shrugs. “Bit of a sucker for a strong-willed girl.”

“Is that a siphon joke?”

This time, when he laughs, he pulls my head in to rest on his shoulder. I stiffen for a moment, and then let myself relax, let myself give in to the warmth of him, let myself wrap my arms around his waist while his fall on my shoulders. I inhale the smell of pine and leather-bound books.

Nightmare.

I should not be comforted by him. He should not feel like belonging, like home. But perhaps it says something about me that someone like him feels like safety. Maybe I’m most at home in the Dark. Maybe the shadows are where I belong.

I have been told I will die tonight. I have been told Galvin is my bloodmate, the other half of my soul. But for the first time, I wonder what would happen if I just said . . .

“No.”

Lonan pulls back. “No?”

I look up at him, resting my chin on his chest. “No, I will not let Galvin win. No, I will not abandon our friends. And no, I will not die. I refuse.”

Lonan’s lips curve into a smile. “The stars incline us. They do not bind us.”

“You’re a philosopher now?”

“I’m an optimist.”

I smile. “What’s this idea of yours?”

Lonan hesitates a moment. “Read that story your father wrote again. Just the last words.”

I pull it from the pocket of my dress and flip to the back, ignoring the tightness in my chest as I trace my father’s words. “ ‘What was once lost would be found, and the whole-hearted girl and her Fated love would be one, bound in the Dark, united in the Light, and chosen in the . . .’ ” I look up at him. “The last word cuts off.”

He nods. “I think the diction is intentional.” He opens the book I’d been flipping through to a page bearing an illustration of the sun, rays snaking artfully away from a bright core. Runes and charts surround it. “Start with your Light sigil,” he suggests.

“My what?”

“Did you pay attention at all in Astrology class?”

I bite my lip. It’s been years since Gossemort even held Astrology classes—one of the many subjects cut from curriculum as the need to train meigas for war crowded out all other concerns. But even those classes I did attend, I’d been scribbling bits of poetry in a notebook in the back of the observatory. Lonan rolls his eyes.