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“Ah, yes. The lunar eclipse on the Day of Shades: the day you’re going to die and save us all.” He gave a short bark of a laugh. “Why? Why do you always get to be the martyr, Aurelia? Why do you get to save the day and all the rest of us have to just sit back and watch?”
“That’s not—”
“Admit it. You were relieved when you found out that it had to be you to die to keep the Malefica out of the world, weren’t you? And admit that if it weren’t for Kellan, you might have already just gotten it over with.” He smiled—a bitter, mirthless smile. “I never thought I’d be glad to have him around.”
“If someone has to go,” I demanded, “why not me? I have done terrible things. I deserve the consequences.”
“No, no, no, no, no.” He was shaking his head, scoffing. “This isn’t about accepting the consequences! This is about escaping them. Because that’s what you do, Aurelia. You push everyone out. You turn everyone away. When things get hard, you run.”
Through gritted teeth, I said, “I do what is necessary to keep the people I care about safe. Even if it means keeping you safe from me.”
He came as close as he dared, a hairsbreadth away from my lips. “That’s not something you get to decide.”
“Oh, I see now. You’ve got your own death wish! And here I thought you lived by the horseman’s motto. What was that again? Si vivis, tu pugnas.”
“You think I want to die? I don’t! I want to wake up every damned day to the sun. I want to fall asleep with you beside me. I want days of hard work and sore muscles and arguments and nights spent reading together by the fire. And, Dear Goddess on High, I want to be everything that my father was not. I want to live a life, a real life, and I hate that someone else had to die for it, but I do. And damn this curse and damn the Empyrea and damn you most of all, Aurelia, for wanting to leave me in this starsforsaken world without you.”
I could feel my chest moving, I could hear air moving in and out of my mouth, but it felt like I was drowning again—not in a dream, but on dry land.
After a long minute, he turned back to the place where he’d scattered Simon’s blood and gave a haggard salute. “Empyrea keep you, Uncle,” he said.
And then he left me alone in the darkness, Simon’s empty blood vial warm in my hands as Zan’s words settled into my heart.
* * *
Eventually I returned to the castle, slipping beneath my blanket without waking the others. I slept but woke just after sunrise. Only Rosetta was awake before me; she was sitting in one of the window benches, next to the rattling panes, Galantha’s grimoire in her lap and a candle sputtering on the table at her side.
“Anything interesting?”
She sighed and closed the book. “Nothing you’d understand.”
I shook my head. “You think that just because I’m a blood mage, I won’t understand the mere fundamentals of feral magic?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. Feral magic and blood magic are diametrically opposed. You can’t force them together any more than you can force the wrong sides of two magnets together.”
“And yet the Tribunal is doing it, with success.”
She snorted. “If you can call rotting-corpse wolves a success.” Then she looked at me. “What is that?”
I had begun to absently fidget with Simon’s empty blood vial, now around my neck. I tucked it away. “Nothing you’d understand.” I sighed.
“Mathuin wasn’t a blood mage,” she blurted. “But he knew their traditions. He gave a vial like that to Galantha. A terrible gift for a feral mage, really. Iron weakens us.”
I watched her thoughtfully. “You loved him,” I said. “But not like a brother.”
She gave a self-mocking smile. “There was a little fox I was especially fond of. A vixen who had made her home not far from the Cradle. She used to follow me whenever I walked the forest. I have always been good with animals, but she was the closest thing I had to a pet. Saffron, I called her. And then, one day, a group of Renaltan soldiers came into the forest to hunt. They didn’t need meat; it was all for sport. They left a trail of carcasses all across the Ebonwilde.
“I was with Mathuin when I found Saffron. He helped me bury her, and he held me quietly while I cried. For hours and hours I cried.” She sniffed. “And then he and I went to the soldiers’ camp and destroyed everything in it. Everything. If they’d been there, I’d have destroyed them, too. And afterward, I gave Mathuin a vial of my blood. It was the only way I could think of to tell him how I felt. I didn’t know then he’d already pledged himself to Galantha.”
“Were you angry with them?” I asked.
“Not angry enough to kill either of them, if that’s what you want to know. But the night of the comet—the night I lost both of them and somehow became warden—I dreamed I saw Saffron again. But she was not orange anymore. She was silver.”
“Saint Urso believed that when we die, we’re guided into the afterworld by a familiar spirit. Maybe that’s what you saw.”
“I didn’t die that night,” Rosetta said. “But, stars save me, I’ve often I wished I had.”
I looked at Kellan, who was stretched out across the floor, snoring softly into his rolled-up cloak, which was stuffed under his head like a pillow. I said, “After we find the bell, and break the bond, and I finally fulfill my mission . . . I’ll be glad to go knowing you’re still around to look after him.”
