“So is your bond with Reeve.” He smiled like the Mal she’d met at Vaukore. “I managed to work around that just fine.”
“Good,” she said shakily. “Then we are in agreement. Even if we can’t destroy her right now, we circumvent the prophecy of Maxius and seal her away just as Reeve did three hundred years ago.”
Mal’s eyes left her for the first time. “So we’re just prolonging both the prophecies?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I know how to unlock Maxius’ Magic. And once I can show him how to give you his Dread Magic while maintaining his Shadow Magic, then you’ll be able to defeat her.”
Mal’s face fell, his eyes darkened. “She has my Magic, Maeve.”
“You let me worry about that.”
“And your Dread Magic? When are you going to take it back?”
“I’m not. I don’t need it for this to work. He stays there, under protection, until she is defeated or I am.”
“So he lives forever past our deaths in a crystal coffin of your Magic?”
“He’s safe there.”
“He’s the same as dead there.”
Maeve didn’t have a reply, despite just how painfully right he was. Mal watched her intently for a moment. His voice was smooth, void of any retribution.
“Do you love Reeve?”
Maeve couldn’t bring herself to answer.
“Your silence is an answer unto itself.”
“Mal,” she said, her voice quivering.
“The thought of you finding happiness with another man is a distinct form of torture. And yet. . . I know you deserve it all the same.”
“How am I supposed to do that without you? How do I live knowing that I failed?”
“Failed? We’re not done yet, Maeve. We have time to ensure our son sees a future. If we can do that, I will consider our life a success.”
“And if it destroys you to vanquish her?”
“Then my sacrifice for my family is given willingly.”
My family. The words were just another blow. Another dream shattered.
“What redemption is there in such a sacrifice where your son grows up without the only person who understands his Magic?”
“Look at him, Maeve,” he said. “He already is growing up without me.”
“No,” she began, shaking her head.
“We are holding on to something that no longer exists. We are not sinking. We have already drowned, Little Viper. You’ve spent your Magic creating worlds in which this is not our fate.”
“And I can do it again,” she cried. “I can save you.”
“No,” he said gently. “It is time. It’s time for this reality, the true reality, to put an end to it all. I don’t have much time left. Make me a promise—”
“I can create more time,” she cried, ignoring his logic still. “I can give us whatever world we want until—”
“You already have. And she has found us in every alternate reality you create within our minds.”
