He chuckles darkly. “I’ll admit I enjoyed that last one quite a bit. It makes some sense, doesn’t it? If Vayla and Vahlo were truly lovers, not twins, and the apocrypha were removed from the Codex to keep them and those of us descended from them apart, then our ‘joining’ might be the answer to everything. Gods, it might be worth it to end the world if that’s the way we do it.”
I don’t laugh. I don’t feel anything except numb, numb and sad in a way I can’t articulate, like I’ve already lost him and my mind hasn’t caught up to it yet. “I know you don’t put much stock in religion, but the power we have. It feels like something beyond us, something beyond this world. What if this is true? What if we are the gods reborn somehow, and this is their power?”
“Then we’ll use it to remake the world. Don’t you see? If it really is as you say, then the gods must have chosen us for a reason. Maybe they chose Julia and Leander the same way, only something stopped them. Julia was a reformer like me, remember. She healed Selara after the first civil war. She gavecommon folk and shadow-born new rights; she tried to end slavery over a hundred years before it happened. If the gods chose us, it’s for a reason. We have the chance to do what she couldn’t, to wield this power to fix this world.”
I wish I could be so certain. I wish I could be certain at all, but when I close my eyes, all I see is a sky filled with fire.
“Sylvie,” Ronan says, his voice turning serious as he senses my doubt. “Sylvie, tell me this hasn’t changed anything for you. It hasn’t changed anything for me.”
I’m silent for a long moment, unsure of what to say.
“Sylvie.” Ronan holds my face in his hands, his voice raising in pitch. “Sylvie, I love you more than this entire world. I would watch it burn one thousand times over before I even thought of letting you go.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” I say softly. “You say that now, but I know what the world matters to you. What Selara matters to you. It’s part of why I love you, Ronan. You care about something more than yourself.”
“More than myself, yes. But not more than you. Nothing more than you.”
My heart shatters at his words. He’ll never walk away from me willingly, not even if it means dooming the entire world. He can’t.
And I don’t know if I’m strong enough to do it either. I want to believe that he’s right, that we can use the enormous power between us to fix things rather than ruin them.
But I’m terrified that he’s wrong. And if the world is doomed, it doesn’t just mean an end to Selara and the countries beyond. It may mean an end to everything and everyone. Seth, Quinn, Larus, Taran, everyone we know and love and care aboutdead.
And we could die too. We’re part of the world, aren’t we?
Would I walk away from Ronan to spare the world?
I don’t know.
But would I walk away from Ronan to spare himandthe world?
“Let’s find the others,” says Ronan. “We got what we came for.” He reaches out with the new power, the boundless power, finding them where they wait for us in the middle of the fire traps.
Gods, I can feel them too. I can feeleverythingthat he feels now, even other people. Even while exhausted.
No one should have this much power.
“Let me get the ink and paper. I want to write it down,” I say, heading to the stairs to fetch the satchel, which I dropped at some point during my fight with my other self.
Ronan nods, reluctantly letting me go.
The air above the chamber is strange, the red light of the braziers casting the same distorted shadows as before, their figures twisted and monstrous. I want to believe Ronan, but I can’t shake my sense of unease. This place feels wrong. It feels like the underworld clawing its way to the surface.
It feels like death.
I find the satchel just beyond the pillars, the ink bottle shattered and spilling onto the ground. “Never mind,” I call back to Ronan. “We’ll have to memorize it. The ink is gone—”
The second I step off the platform to grab the satchel, the braziers go out.
“Sylvie?”
The ground rumbles, and there’s a loud, crashing sound in the distance as something collapses.
Then a chunk of rock falls from overhead.
“Oh gods. It’s falling down. Run!” I scream.
Ronan flies up the steps to me, grabbing my hand and heading for the ramp up. A boulder shatters in front of us, narrowly missing us as we frantically climb the narrow path, the ground shaking and flinging me off the side.
