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I clasp Kiran’s goblin-iron cuffs I swiped from the floor onto Az’s wrists, stifling his Flame.
“You foolish child. Let me go,” he says, to which I shove his head against the marble wall just for good measure. The motion leaves him looking dazed, but not enough to slur the oncoming insults. “They’ll never forgive you for betraying them.”
“Well, no reason to pile on,” I say.
“Asha,” Kiran cries from behind me. “Asha, please. Please don’t leave me. Why…”
Az lets out a laugh. “The fool believes her. Someone so dull-witted doesn’t deserve—”
“Asha is dead,” I say, and though Az’s face falters for a moment, he regains his confidence quickly enough.
“Not you too. I would have thought you were more clever than that. Perhaps your life of lies has blinded you to them.”
I shake my head, flicking my neck to gesture toward the blade Asha dropped. “I can scent the ressuroot on its tip. She doused it in the formula before she arrived. It brings a person back, but only if it’s injected directly into the heart. She was trying to trick you, Az, but not in the way you thought. There’s no Rip in the library, nowhere for Asha to draw on to amplify her powers. There’s no illusion. No pretending. Asha is dead, and you’re the one who killed her.”
Az’s beautiful features go still for a moment, but then he blinks, shaking his head as if to rouse himself from a nightmare. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not. Fates,” I say, trying my best to hold it together, but I don’t know if I can. Asha is dead. Fates, she’s dead, and I’m the one who turned her over to her murderer.
Guilt swarms my chest, but instead of allowing it to control me, I absorb it, I own it. Just like I did the parasite.
I think of Asha. Asha, who forgave the king who planned to slaughter her the morning after her wedding. Asha, who…
Asha would have forgiven me. Fates, she probably already had.
In some ways, it makes it hurt worse, knowing that. Knowing I’d lost such a friend, even if a friendship between us had only been potential.
It’s the type of pain the parasite couldn’t understand, didn’t know to look for, so I hold on to it, allow it to roll through me.
It only feels like I’m drowning. I take a breath to remind myself I am not.
“Only moments now,” Az says, his sage-green eyes fixed on Asha’s corpse. “She’ll turn to dust any moment now.”
“No,” says a voice, ominous and familiar. One that has haunted my nightmares since the day I forced Asha to open the Rip. Since I forced him to open the Rip. “No, Azrael. She won’t.”
Az’s eyes go wide, his cheeks sallow. Sweat breaks against the line between his forehead and hairline, and his lungs work rapidly underneath my forearm, where I have him pinned.
“No,” he whispers. “You’re just part of the illusion.”
Something blue glows in the pits of Az’s eyes.
I am afraid to look, but there’s no pretending it away.
So I turn and stare the Old Magic in the face.
He’s small. A vibrant blue light that I might have considered gentle if I didn’t know any better.
“Are you happy now, young Azrael? Are you pleased with what you’ve done?”
Beneath my clutches, Az shakes.
“I listened, you know,” says the voice, the voice that echoes not around us, but from inside of us. “All those years, all those dreams you shared with her. Tell me, child. Was she worth it?”
Az’s eyes fix on the Old Magic.
Even Kiran’s cries have gone silent.
“TELL ME!”
