“So what if I do?”
“Well, then maybe you were right. Maybe thisisa mistake.”
However, for all Ellery’s logic, she wrapped her arms behind his neck. He nudged his forehead against hers and shuddered at the exquisite cold of her magic, the torment of it. The dancing lights of gas lamps and shimmer of graffiti brightened around them. Yet they were elsewhere. They were in a forest bathed in color and stars and impossible dreams.
But his own confession festered inside him. He couldn’t kiss her and not tell her. Even he knew it wasn’t right, wasn’t noble.
“No, we shouldn’t,” he agreed.
Yet as he readied to admit the awful truth, no words came. Maybe it was his cowardice, his selfish want to survive. But ever since Hanna had told him that every Chosen One had sacrificed themself, a desperate hope had lurked in Domenic’s heart.
He and Ellery weren’t like every Chosen One before them. They were the Chosen Two.
And if Domenic wasn’t sure, what good was it to burdenEllery with this same fear that’d been unraveling him? He’d already broken her heart once. He refused to do so again.
As he lowered his mouth to hers, suddenly, someone kicked him behind the knee.
He spun around deliriously. Hanna and Kester glared up at him. His heart careened to a stop.
“I knew it,” Hanna snapped. “You are so fucking typical.”
“Hanna,” Domenic croaked. “It’s not…”
He had no idea what he meant to say, but it didn’t matter, as Hanna cut him off to bark at Ellery, “The seeds, the hearts, whatever they are. Give them back.Now.” She held out her hand.
Ellery didn’t protest. She withdrew Maltherius’s and Eledrium’s hearts from her pocket and relinquished them to Hanna. “Wh-what are you going to tell the Council?”
Hanna’s gaze flitted furiously between Ellery, then Kester, then Domenic, as if she wanted to fight someone but couldn’t decide whom. Then she grunted, defeated, “I don’t know.” And she stomped away.
Kester hugged their arms tight to their chest. Their brashness from earlier had dimmed, though after Syarthis excavating their mind, Domenic couldn’t blame them.
“So after I just enduredthatdelightful experience, you’re still not gonna listen to me?” Kester spat. “Fine. Why should I matter to you? I’m just a person who has to survive whatever bad choices the two of you make.”
They stomped off, too.
Ellery tugged Domenic’s sleeve and muttered, “Come on. Let’s just go.”
He hesitated. However direly he wanted to escape with Ellery, he couldn’t reconcile with one person he cared about while betraying another. He needed to make things right with them both.
“I’m so sorry, but I can’t leave Hanna. Not like that.” Helooked at Ellery pleadingly. “I promise I’ll catch up with you. Is that all right?”
Her jaw clenched, like it wasn’t. But she nodded. “Yeah. Go.”
Domenic scoured the crowds for Hanna, but she was too short. He considered silencing the music, climbing atop a stool and calling for her—him, a Chosen One, at 2 a.m. in a bar. But as he squeezed Valmordion, he felt that familiar heat of Syarthis, familiar in a way that ran deeper than friendship, deeper even than blood.
He found her out in the cold.
Hanna sat against the wall with her knees to her chest, clutching Syarthis to her heart. A circle of wet pavement haloed her from the wand melting the slush.
She didn’t look at him. “So did you tell her, then? How your great love story ends?”
“Not yet.” He didn’t tell her it was because he wasn’t sure. Hanna would only call him a fool.
“She deserves to know, Dom.”
“Like I did, all this time?”
Hanna glowered at the nearest trash bin.
