Page 115 of Petrify

“What did I do?” The question shakes past my lips.

If I cover my eyes, if I hide away the world with total darkness, then maybe I can sink into myself, away from this moment and away from him. There’s another universe out there, one where this never happened, and Jason never happened, and Reece never happened.

And what scares me the most is not that they are dead, but that I feel onlya littlebad about it.

“Nothing.”

He wraps his arms around me, and I want so badly to relax against him, to pretend that we’re cocooned together in his attic room. I want to pretend we met in another life, and that he and I are normal.

Especially when I finally open my eyes and see red spatter on his hands.

“It’s alright. You’ve been asleep.”

“Asleep.” I’m not sure if I believe him, not when there’s literal blood on his hands. My head spins, the room spins.

His arms tighten around me. “It’s okay. You haven’t missed anything.”

“Did you?—”

“Not yet.” He’s thrumming, a coiled snake anticipating the strike, crushing me into his chest.

I can’t breathe. “Baz, whose blood…?”

There are no bodies. The house is empty. Did he slash his way through hundreds of people? And then somehow dispose of them all? Did Ihelp?

“It’s Leo’s,” he murmurs against my throat. Unmasked. “He wasn’t being very cooperative.”

Dread pools in my stomach, knowing there is carnage housed within these walls. That I may have had a hand in it.

Bastien was planning something, and I did not stop him—because I know what it feels like when the injustice of it all boils over and you have no choice but to lash out.

That’s what I’ve been telling myself—that this is some version of justice.

“You did so well.” A kiss pressed to my temple, tender, gentle. “I was watching. You gave life to our song—they don’t realize what they witnessed tonight. They heard our music, Mallary.Oursong.”

“I—I didn’t see you.”

“I was there,” he assures me, pressing our foreheads together. His skin against mine. “I’ve—I haven’t worn my mask tonight. Everyone saw me. I was invisible, and they didn’t know it was me, but theysawme. And it’s because ofyou.”

“Baz.” I reach up until my fingers are brushing his cheek. The rough scratch of his stubble beneath my palm is so human, the warmth of his skin, the stray dark waves of his hair curling around my hands. I can feel his cheekbones, his skull. Not an animated corpse.Alive.

“Show me.” I knew this was the inevitable conclusion. Is that my fault, then? Is it my fault that I did nothing to stop him?

But whoamI to stop it?

He walks freely through the halls, his strides quick, fingers linked through mine so that I almost have to jog to keep up. Every light hanging from the ceiling seems close enough tobrush the top of his head. He’s too big for this house, for the men that came before him. He doesn’t fit.

“I’m glad you got some sleep. You needed rest,” he says over his shoulder. “I didn’t want to disturb you until it was time.”

“I don’t remember going to bed.”

He glances back at me. “Don’t worry about that. It’s good you spent a few hours lying down. We have a long night ahead of us.”

He doesn’t say another word, doesn’t look at me. We don’t pass another soul until he’s leading me straight to the ballroom doors, and I’m terrified that inside will be a massacre, blood painting the walls and corpses strewn over every inch of the room.He dragged everyone in here, slaughtered them all, and I’m the one that let it happen. I could have stopped this.

He shoves the doors open and they slam against the adjacent walls. Someone shrieks.

But there’s no massacre.