“Your personal best or mine?” Lyra managed.
“I love you, Lyra.”
Lyra closed her eyes. She’d told him so many times that she didn’t fall, but shedid. Shehad. She might not have beenhisLyra, and he wasn’therGrayson, but the sum of their whole was greater than the parts. “I would choose you,” Lyra told him, choking out the words. “Not over my family but as a part of it.”
SayingI love you, toowould have felt too much like good-bye, but Lyra knew to her bones that Grayson knew. He was Grayson Hawthorne. He always knew.
“No good-byes,” Grayson said quietly. “And, Lyra—no regrets.”
And just like that, he was gone.
Chapter 82
JAMESON
Do you know the difference…” Toby’s voice was rough but not hoarse. “Between a labyrinth and a maze?”
They’d been in this one for almost an hour.
“A maze has branches,” Jameson replied automatically. “Dead ends.”
“And thanks to Greek mythology, labyrinths are associated with monsters.”
Jameson allowed himself to read into that. “I’m not sure I believe Alice is a monster anymore, and I know you don’t believe Hannah is one. No matter what was done to her, no matter what kind oftrainingshe’s been forced to undergo, you don’t believe your Hannah the Same Backward as Forward is capable of being truly monstrous. You think she’s on our side—or at least Avery’s.”
“I know her.” Toby said that like it was the underlying, overarching core truth of his life. “With every cell in my body, every fiber of my being, all I am, all I’ve ever been, all I ever will be—that is the way that I know Hannah, so believe me when I tell you that she isn’t just on Avery’s side. She’s on Eve’s, too. I don’t know why she took her, why she chose to bring Eve into this, but I do know that she would see any childof mine asours. Whatever Hannah has done until this point, whatever she’s doing, she’s doing it forthem. For AveryandEve. Somehow. Some way. We just can’t see it.”
“The art,” Jameson said quietly, “of the cascade.”
The path in front of them branched again. Jameson turned. This time, Toby didn’t follow. “Our chances of finding something increase if we split up.”
And so do the chances of them picking us off one by one, Jameson thought, but he didn’t argue. He just tightened his grip on his knife and took the right-hand path. Eventually, he arrived at what appeared to be the center of it all. There was no sign of a monster, but there was a sword—a long sword. He bent to pick it up, and then there was a sound like a faint rush of air and a pinch in his neck, like the bite of a mosquito.
The sword clattered from Jameson’s fingers. The knife in his left hand joined it, then Jameson’s body did the same. He fought the darkness closing in and the onset of paralysis—fought them, or he tried to. His vision blurred as a woman crouched beside him and put two fingers under his chin.
She had Lyra’s eyes.
First there was darkness. First there was nothing. And then there was Prague. There washer.
Avery.
The world around them was ice—nothing but ice. Jameson could see his breath in the air… and Avery’s. He could seetheirbreath, interwoven like their hands. Her fingers were interlocked with his, and on her right ring finger, there was a ring.
Infinity.
“Like it?” Jameson knew on some level that he’d said those words before, just like on some level, heknewthat he needed to wake up.
He was cold.
He was so cold, and she was so warm.
“Like the sun and the moon, I loved her,” Jameson murmured. He’d let Avery read the words herself last time, but he needed to say themthis time. “Saint Avery.” She wasn’t a saint. He very much knew she wasn’t a saint. Just like he knew he probably wasn’t going to live long enough to give her another ring. “Until death and beyond.”
When Jameson had given Avery that ring, he’d told her it was a promise. He’d told her that he was a work in progress, that he wasn’t yet the person he was going to be—someday.
I’ll be that person, he’d said,and you’ll be you, and this is what we’re going to have.
Infinity.As Jameson stared at the symbol, it dissolved. And then there was smoke.
