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My bare feet on the stone weren’t cold, I suddenly realized.
My breath quickened, though I had no lungs. My heart raced, though I had no heart. I was merely a collection of thoughts and moments that remembered how to do those things. My body—my physical body—was somewhere else. The realization hit me like a frigid gust of air that would have sent shivers across my skin if I’d had skin that could shiver.
“But I was fine. I used a little blood magic, but not much. Not enough to . . . to . . .”
“No, child,” Simon said. “We were wrong about your magic. I was wrong about it. It was never blood magic that was killing you. It was Zan.”
“No. No. I don’t believe you. Zan would never hurt me,” I said with conviction.
“He wouldn’t mean to,” Simon replied. “He’d never want to hurt anyone. But he is. And he doesn’t even know it. Look.”
The scene shifted. Simon and I were no longer at the abandoned sanctorium but standing on the balcony by the window of Lorelai’s room. On the bed, there were two people frozen in a single moment. A girl and a boy, locked in a passionate embrace.
I should have felt embarrassed seeing myself that way, but I was moved instead. This girl, wearing naught a stitch of clothing, was equally vulnerable and invincible with her skin and soul laid bare. And the boy in whose arms she lay wore an expression that was bashful and brash and disbelieving all at once.
This was love, in all its frailty and fervor.
“Do you see it?” Simon said, coming up behind me. “Do you see the connection?”
I’d thought the glimmer was just the effects of the sombersweet wine, but while Zan was burning brightly, my light was faint and flickering, trickling from me to him like water from a drying creek toward an insatiable lake.
“It is your vitality,” Simon said. “Your life. Your Goddess-given spark.”
Zan was glowing everywhere, but our interlocked hands were nearly white as the sun. He was stealing life from me, killing me with his touch, and he had no idea.
“When he died on the tower . . . I couldn’t let it stand.” I was trying to put the pieces together, to understand.
“You went to the other side. This place, here.”
“Yes,” I said distantly. “I used my life force to awaken his. I took his wounds as mine. And then I crossed the borderline into death and tried to take his place on the other side.”
“But the transfer was never completed,” Simon said. “The connection was never closed. Because . . .”
“Because of the bloodcloth ritual,” I said, realizing. “My mother died instead of me.”
“There are two grave consequences of that event that you must now face, Aurelia. The first is the reality that when neither you nor he died, the tower spell was left unfinished. If you had died, the conduit between planes would have been closed forever. If he had died, it would have been torn wide open, and the Malefica, the entity that has forever been exiled to the darkness of the After, would have been free to roam the material world at last.”
“One or the other,” I whispered. The rhyme recited to me by my reflection was not so nonsensical after all. I was descended from Aren, the sister. Zan was descended from Achlev, the brother. And we were the key to keeping the Malefica locked up or setting her free.
One or the other. One or the other. Daughter of the sister, or son of the brother.
At the red moonrise, one of two dies.
“Aurelia,” Simon said, “you have to listen. We don’t have much time left, and I still have a lot to tell you. You cannot touch Zan again. His life recognizes yours as its own. It will take and take from you until there’s nothing left.”
“But I have to die. Isn’t that what you just said? If I die, the portal is closed for good.”
“There were three drops on that bloodcloth, Aurelia. Mine was only the second.”
“Stars,” I breathed. “Kellan. Can the bloodcloth binding be broken? Please, Simon,” I begged, “what do I have to do?”
“It can be broken only by death or something like unto it. I can’t give you answers, child. I don’t have them. What details I have are few. All I can do is set your feet on the right path: If there is a way to break your bond, you’ll have to do it here—in the Gray. It isn’t a border you can cross on your own, but there is one person to whom you can go for guidance: a feral mage who lives in the Ebonwilde. Powerful. Dangerous. And very, very old. You must go to her. If you’re going to stop the Malefica from entering the world without taking Kellan with you, you’re going to need her help.”
“But how?” I asked. “How do I find her?”
“Onal can show you the way.”
“Onal? But—”
