Emilio shifted into his human form, naked and feverish, his body wracked with pain.
“Gray?” He blinked up at me, his eyes wide with shock, the arrow lodged deep in his throat. “How could you do it?”
Tears leaked from my eyes, dripping onto his face. “I didn’t know.”
He stared at me for a long, agonizing moment before speaking again, his voice as thin as the breeze. “You betrayed me. You betrayed all of us.”
“I didn’t mean to! I’m so, so sorry. Just… just hang on. We’ll get help. Liam is—”
“No.” Emilio coughed, his chest heaving with the effort. “It’s over,querida. Just… just let me go.”
“It isn’t. It isn’t over! You have to be okay,” I said, stroking his face. “You have to come back home with me and make brownies. There’s so much I have to tell you. So much I want to ask you. Please!”
I leaned over and pressed my lips to his, desperately trying to breathe life back into his broken body, but he’d already gone cold.
Grief took hold of my heart, squeezing it until it cracked. I couldn’t scream. Couldn’t sob. I couldn’t even breathe. I had nothing left inside.
We are, all of us, bound for darkness.
The words rung in the distance, a faint echo a thousand miles away and a million years in the past. At the time I’d said them to Liam, I believed their message was prophetic.
Now, I saw that message for what it was—a pathetic warning come much too late.
My broken heart slowed. I could feel the blood thickening inside me, my magic leaking out through my limbs. There was nothing I could do to stop it. To stop any of this.
The breeze slipped through the orchard, rustling the leaves and gliding over my skin, lifting the hair off my neck. It carried with it a hundred tarot cards, each one turning into a whisper that fluttered against my ears, cruel and cold and true.
You failed him.
You failed all of them.
You are a failure, a death-bringer, a dark pit of despair from which there is no escape.
You don’t deserve to live.
I fought off a shiver and closed my eyes, trying to remind myself that I was still human. That Ididdeserve to live, even though I’d made so many mistakes. So many things I couldn’t repair or take back.
But truth was the sharpest weapon in any arsenal, relentless in its pursuit. It pried open my chest, sliced my heart into ribbons.
He would still be alive if not for you.
They probably wish they never met you.
Your rebels would be better off without you. The witches would be better off without you. The world would be better off.
End it.
End it, Gray Desario.
End it. End it end it end it end it end it end it end it—
“No! Leave me alone!” I curled up on the ground in agony, but no matter how bad the pain, I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t give up like that. I wouldn’t let my regrets and doubts consume me.
I would live. I would walk away from this.
Even if it meant I’d spend the rest of eternity nursing this wound.
It was mine to carry. Mine to nurture. Mine to remember.
