Page 77 of Can you take it?

Anna had saved me.

On the other side of the painting, the landscape couldn’t have been more opposite from where we’d just been.

We were now in a large field with tattered wooden fencing around it. A few tall broken-off trees stood in the empty field. The mooing of cows indicated they were somewhere nearby. Crisp golden sunlight, as if it would be setting in a couple of hours, heated the ground we sat on.

I sat up and looked at what appeared to be a large picture frame with intricate gold detailing hanging on a wooden post in a cow field. In the picture was a beautiful dining hall—or at least, one corner of it. What was left of the hall had turned black, with a thin, jagged outline of orange flames burning. The soft scent of smoke stung my nose. In the next blink, the entire canvas was black.

I looked at my hands, surprised to see they were mine and not Eletha’s. I turned around to see the others—except for Anna—standing, checking if everyone was okay and trying to figure out what the creature in the room was and where we now were. I looked at Anna holding the pendant, unsure of what to say.

I was so disappointed I had failed to get her to Moirai. I knew she could do so much. She was good and deserved to be in a place full of goodness. But another part of me—the part that had grown feelings for Anna—felt more at peace knowing she was finally with her magic. I knew she’d been waiting a long time for it, and I couldn’t imagine how it felt to be missing such an important part of yourself.

“You saved me,” I muttered, unable to take my eyes off her.

She held the pendant in her hand as if it were a new kind of bug she was examining. When I spoke, she looked up at me, surprised. “I wasn’t going to leave you,” she said nonchalantly. “You saved me,” I repeated. She shrugged as if it were nothing. But it was far from nothing. “No one’s ever saved me,” I said.

“In all this time of you saving damsels in distress?” She smiled, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “No one’s ever bumped you out of the way?”

“No,” I said. “No.”

“It wasn’t a big deal,” she said, waving me off. But she was wrong, for me it was a huge deal.

“Why did you do it?” I asked. “You had the pendant. Why did you come back and save me?” I reached out to touch her arm, then her face, needing to feel her. Needing to understand. Before she could answer, Walter interrupted. “I think we should get up, away from the painting, and figure out where we are,” he said softly.

We both nodded and stood. This wasn’t the place to discuss this.

I followed at the back of the group as they walked away, my mind swirling. Saving me may have seemed like a small gesture to everyone else, but to me, it meant the world. It meant that Anna shared the same feelings as me, even when she had the pendant.

“You coming?” Eletha shouted from the front of the group as she grabbed Bexley’s turkey leg, flinging it aside, and shoving him forward.

“Yeah,” I said absently, still unable to believe what had just happened. In all my days, I’d never been saved. I’d never known what it felt like to be saved. I’d imagined it many times. I wondered if this was how people felt when I saved them.

No—what I felt now was different. I touched my empty chest, where the pendant had once been. I couldn’t believe she had it. “So what happens now?” I asked. As I turned to look at Anna, my eyes met her outstretched hand, the pendant lying inside it. “What are you doing?”

“Take it before Eletha sees,” she said with a small grin. “What? What are you doing?”

“I’m giving it back,” she said softly.

“You’re giving me your powers back?” I asked, unable to believe what I was hearing.

“Yeah, I-I don’t think it really counts. You weren’t in your body.

You didn’t technically hand it to me, so I don’t think it counts.” “And that matters to you?” I asked. By all accounts, she had technically won, and I had given her the pendant—or at least my body had. I doubted Kaohs would argue with that.

“It’s dishonest, and that’s not me,” she said firmly. “I know you’ll hand it to me, and when you do, I want to know that I earned it. And when my father lets me rule over Tartarus, I want to know I earned it the right way—without trickery.” She dropped the pendant into my palm.

My mouth hung open, all words emptied from my mind. She looked longingly at the pendant now in my hand, then grinned.

“It felt so good to hold it though. I can’t wait until I feel that power inside my body,” she said before focusing on the group and running a few paces ahead to Walter and Eletha.

I sat for another moment, staring at the pendant in my hand, before placing it around my neck. This time, I kept it outside my shirt, no longer worried about it being snatched.

Anna was far more honorable than I had ever expected. In giving me back the pendant, she proved what a good person she was. And I was suddenly more determined than ever to get her out of this hellhole and to keep her with me. I wanted to be with her—tied or not. I wanted to see more of her. I wanted good things for her. I wanted her to be her best, and she was so much more than the Queen of the Underworld.

If it was the last thing I did, I would get her to Moirai, where she could ascend and help the Fates. After all, there was no higher honor. And even though her loyalty was stopping her from thinking about it properly, I knew she would regret it if she didn’t go—not to mention, on a selfish level, I was tied to her and wasn’t about to stay in Tartarus to be with her when I could take her to the Elysian Fields and Moirai. Would the Fates let me go with her to Moirai? The thought hit me like a branch to the face. If she went to Moirai and I went to the Elysian Fields…we wouldn’t be together. I would never see her again.

I knew I couldn’t leave without her. I thought I might have known that all along. The only problem was going to be that she was loyal and stubborn and wasn’t going to leave Kaohs or Tartarus without a fight.

I took a huge breath as we all walked farther into the middle of the field, all of us silent from the shock and exhausted from the effort. I watched Anna from the corner of my eye and I knew what I had to do. She had chased me here to steal the pendant, but I was going to do something I’d never in my lifetime thought I would ever do.