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“Please tell me you can get rid of it.”
“I can try. You’ll have to take me inside.”
“Inside?”
“The Seal is also a gateway. Look.” Chaghan pointed into the heart of the character, where the glimmering snake blood formed a swirling circle. When Rin focused on it, it did indeed seem to call to her, drawing her into some unknown dimension beyond. “Go inside. I’m betting that’s where Daji’s left the venom. It exists here in the form of memory. Daji’s power dwells in desire; she’s conjured the things that you want the most to prevent you from calling the fire.”
“Venom. Memory. Desire.” Very little of this was making sense to Rin. “Look—just tell me whatever the fuck I’m supposed to do with it.”
“You destroy it however you can.”
“Destroy what?”
“I think you’ll know when you see it.”
Rin didn’t have to ask how to pass the gate. It pulled her in as soon as she approached it. The Seal seemed to fold in over them, growing larger and larger until it enveloped them. Swirls of blood drifted around her, undulating, as if trying to decide what shape to take, what illusion to create.
“She’ll show you the future you want,” Chaghan said.
But Rin didn’t see how that could possibly work for her, because her greatest desires didn’t exist in the future. They were all in the past. She wanted the last five years back. She wanted lazy days on the Academy campus. She wanted lackadaisical strolls in Jiang’s garden, she wanted summer vacations at Kitay’s estate, she wanted, she wanted . . .
She was on the sands of the Isle of Speer again—vibrant, beautiful Speer, lush and vivid like she had never seen it before. And there Altan was, healthy and whole, smiling like she had never really seen him smile.
“Hello,” he said. “Are you ready to come home?”
“Kill him,” Chaghan said urgently.
But hadn’t she already? At Khurdalain she’d fought a beast with Altan’s face, and she’d killed him then. Then at the research facility she’d let him walk out on the pier, let him sacrifice himself to save her.
She’d already killed Altan, over and over, and he kept coming back.
How could she harm him now? He looked so happy. So free from pain. She knew so much more about him now, she knew what he had suffered, and she couldn’t touch him. Not like this.
Altan drew closer. “What are you doing out here? Come with me.”
She wanted to go with him more than anything. She didn’t even know where he would take her, only that he would be there. Oblivion. Some dark paradise.
Altan extended his hand toward her. “Come.”
She steeled herself. “Stop this,” she managed. “Chaghan, I can’t—stop it—take me back—”
“Surely you’re joking,” Chaghan said. “You can’t even do this?”
Altan took her fingers in his. “Let’s go.”
“Stop it!”
She wasn’t sure what she did but she felt a burst of energy, saw the Seal contort and writhe around Chaghan, like a predator sniffing out some new and interesting prey, and saw his mouth open in some soundless scream of agony.
Then they weren’t on Speer anymore.
This was nowhere she had ever seen.
They were somewhere high up on a mountain, cold and dark. A series of caves were carved into stone, all glowing with candle fire on the inside. And sitting on the ledge, shoulders touching, were two boys: one dark haired and one fair haired.
She was an outsider in this memory, but the moment she stepped closer her perspective shifted and she wasn’t the voyeur anymore but the subject. She saw Altan’s face up close, and she realized she was looking at him the way Chaghan once had.
Altan’s face was entirely too close to hers. She could make out every last terrible and wonderful detail: the scar running up from his right cheek, the clumsy way his hair had been tied up, the dark lids over his crimson eyes.
Altan was awful. Altan was beautiful. And as she looked into his eyes she realized the feeling that overcame her was not love; this was a total, paralyzing fear. This was the terror of a moth drawn to the flame.
She hadn’t thought that anyone else felt that way. It was such a familiar feeling that she almost cried.
“I could kill you,” said Altan, muttering the death threat like a love song, and when she-as-Chaghan struggled against him he pressed his body closer.
“So you could,” Chaghan said, and that was such a familiar voice, the coy, level voice. She’d always marveled at how Chaghan could speak so casually to Altan. But Chaghan hadn’t been joking, she realized, he’d been afraid; he had been constantly terrified every time he was around Altan. “So what?”
Altan’s fingers closed over Chaghan’s; too hot, too crushing, an attempt at human contact with absolute disregard for the object of his affection.
His lips brushed against Chaghan’s ear. She shuddered involuntarily; she thought he might bite her, move his mouth lower against her neck and rip out her arteries.
She realized that Chaghan felt this fear often.
She realized that Chaghan probably enjoyed it.
“Don’t,” Chaghan said.
She didn’t listen; she wanted to stay in this vision, had the sickening desire to watch it play out to its conclusion.
“That’s enough.”
A wave of darkness slammed down onto them, and when she opened her eyes she was back in the infirmary, sprawled on top of her bed. Chaghan sat bolt upright on the floor, eyes wide open, expression blank.
She grabbed him by the collar. “What was that?”
Chaghan stirred awake. His features settled into something like contempt. “Why don’t you ask yourself?”
“You hypocrite,” she said. “You’re just as obsessed with him—”
“Are you sure that wasn’t you?”
“Don’t lie to me!” she shrieked. “I know what I saw, I know what you were doing, I bet you only wanted to get in my mind because you wanted to see him from another angle—”
He flinched back.
She hadn’t expected him to flinch. He looked so small. So vulnerable.
Somehow, that made her angrier.
She clenched his collar tighter. “He’s dead. All right? Can’t you get that in your fucking head?”
“Rin—”
“He’s dead, he’s gone, and we can’t bring him back. And maybe he loved you, maybe he loved me, but that doesn’t fucking matter anymore, does it? He’s gone.”
She thought he might hit her then.
But he just leaned forward, shoulders hunched over his knees, and pressed his face into his hands. When he spoke he sounded like he was on the verge of tears. “I thought I could catch him.”
“What?”
“Sometimes before the dead pass on, they linger,” he whispered. “Especially your kind. Anger depends on resentment, and your dead exist in resentment. And I think he’s still out there, drifting between this world and the next, but each time I try all I get is fragments of memories, and as more time passes I can’t even remember the beautiful things, and I thought maybe—with the venom—”
“You don’t know how to fix me, do you?” she asked. “You never did.”
