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But that’s not the right question, is it? The one I truly want to ask. How did you do it? That’s the question that’s eating away at my soul. How did you find the strength to give up the person you love the most for someone you hardly know, when I couldn’t even do it for my oldest friend?
Piper shakes her head. “It was the right thing to do.”
She says it like she thinks she’s protecting someone innocent. I wonder if she would have saved me had she known what I’ve done. Had she known it’s my fault Amity was nearly ripped to shreds by an Other. That Evander and Ellie’s child had died for my folly.
That a mother might have died too.
All your fault. Always your fault, sings the parasite from the adamant box at my belt. I could make it go away, you know. The hurt. The pain. Silly silly servant girl…
I ignore it.
As much as I can.
“Abra was a blight on this world,” Piper explains. “I learned her story as we traveled. Abra was willing to go to any lengths to save her son. She allowed her affection for him to blind her to the truth of what he is. Who he might hurt if allowed to live.”
I frown. “You never intended to reform him with your Gift, did you?”
Piper pauses. “No. No, I didn’t.”
“You were going to kill him, even though it meant Abra would refuse to save Marcus. You’d already decided on it.”
Piper’s pale throat bobs. “Yes.”
“But you love Marcus.”
Tears shimmer in Piper’s green eyes. “Of course, I love him.”
Then why. Then how. Please, I want to beg, but I don’t. I simply wait for her to answer.
Instead, she turns to face me, sweeping me over with her gaze.
“How do you know that you love someone?”
I don’t hesitate. “When you know you’d do anything for them.”
“And what if doing anything for them means burning the world down?”
“Then you do it.”
Piper looks contemplative for a moment. “But if you burn the world down, what will there be for your love to return to? What home will be left for them?”
Her words settle in my heart. “I suppose then you’re their home.”
Her eyes pierce me. “And what if, in ruining the world, you ruin yourself, too?”
I open my mouth, but I can’t quite find an answer.
Piper sighs, then leans against a nearby tree. “I once had a man I would have burned the world down for. I loved him. He’d rescued me when I was a child, saved me from freezing to death in the snow. And when even my mother rejected me, he took me into his arms. Gave me a home. So I did as he asked, whatever he asked. Even if what he asked me to do chipped away at my soul. So, I suppose I burned the world for him. Is that love?”
Again, I don’t think I have a response, but I try anyway. “That’s manipulation. It’s not at all—” I want to say it’s not at all the same, to convince Piper that Nox hadn’t asked me to betray my friends, to burn down the world for him. That much is true, but I get the feeling I’m missing something.
So I say nothing.
“Love…” Piper says, trailing off, like she’s searching for the right words. “Love shouldn’t ruin a person, Blaise. If it does, you have to start questioning whether it’s love at all, or simply fear masquerading as something more pure than it can ever hope to be.”
I halt, chewing my lip. “You shouldn’t have saved me.”
Piper looks tired. “And why is that?”
