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But Cassia needed him to learn how, right here, right now.
He hadn’t been able to save Pakhne. And now the prophecy in his nightmares was coming true. He was failing to save Cassia with each moment that passed, each heartbeat that came slower and quieter in her chest.
Pakhne was beyond his reach now, just like everyone else the Collector had destroyed. But Cassia was here in his arms. There was still hope for her.
She was his hope. She was his answer.
“You save the people you can,” he said. “And everyone else…you must let them go.”
She clung to the front of his robes, but her grip was loosening. “How can I let Miranda go?”
Lio held Cassia’s hand against his chest. “You are responsible for her hurt, but not her choices. And you have already done the brave, difficult thing—you’ve faced your own deeds and taken action to make them right.”
“No action I take can save Agata. She didn’t deserve this fate.”
“You are not to blame for her death, any more than I am to blame for Pakhne’s suffering. We must recognize that we are not responsible for the Collector’s abuses.”
“But he did it to them because of us.”
“He did it. He harmed them and us. All of us…Agata, Pakhne, Eudias, you, me…we are all alike.”
“But admitting that…means admitting he controls us all.”
“No. He might call us his playing pieces, but we are not. We are all players in our own right, making the best moves we can.”
“What about when we play into his strategy? There is no escaping his evil. It’s too easy to become part of it and never know we’re hurting others.”
“But Hesperines have always violated the rules of the game. We are the complication he fails to predict. We are living proof that it isn’t futile to resist him.”
He sensed the moment when his words sank in, and she did not merely think they were true—she felt their truth. She tightened her fingers around her spade. “You’re right. The only heroic choice is to resist.”
He wrapped his hand around hers. “You made a promise in that room, the night you chose our side. You told the Collector you would fight him.”
“But I don’t feel strong enough. Not without my magic.”
“Cassia, look.”
She followed his gaze. There in the dead ground beside them grew one tiny moonflower seedling. A fragile thing, and yet it did not sway in the howling wind of her collapsing memories.
“Do you feel it?” he asked.
She sucked in a breath. “There’s Lustra magic in it.”
“It’s your magic, Cassia. That little reserve of it that Miranda and the Collector had to let you keep, so you would survive. It’s still there inside you.”
She reached out and touched the delicate leaves with one finger. “This is the magic I’ve been using. You gave me enough power that I could wield what’s left of mine.”
He held out his wrist to her once more. “Try. That’s all I ask. Don’t give up until you find out what the Gift will do to your magic. Let me have this chance to give you back what he took from you.”
Cassia’s fragile hand closed around his wrist. She stared at his blood with that broken girl’s longing in her eyes.
With her other hand, she lifted her spade.
“Yes, Cassia. Open my vein. Everything I have within me is yours. Take my Gift.”
She slashed the sharp edge across his wrist and covered his bleeding vein with her mouth.
A tremor went through the ground. The moonflower burst from the soil, blossoms unfurling along its strong new vines. The green tendrils coiled around Lio and Cassia.
