“But not today.”

Not today. You have released your ties to strangers, to friends, to family, to your true love. Now surrender to me, for it is your destiny. It is the meaning of your name, the reason for your existence. It is time.

It is time.

I know the moment everything changes. The moment Mauth joins with me so completely that I cannot tell where I end and the magic begins. I am back in my body, in Antium, standing before Laia. It’s as if no time has passed at all since she asked for my aid and I rejected her.

When I look down into that beautiful face, I no longer see the girl I loved. I see someone lesser. Someone who is aging, dying slowly, like all humans. I see a mortal.

“E-Elias?”

The girl—Laia—speaks, and I turn to her.

“The jinn have a part to play in this world, and they must be set free.” I speak gently because she is a mortal, and she will take this news hard. “The world must be broken before it can be remade,” I say, “or else the balance will never be restored.”

“No,” she says. “Elias, no. This is the jinn we are speaking of. If they are free—”

“I cannot keep the balance alone.” It is unfair to expect Laia to understand. She is only a mortal, after all. “The world will burn,” I say. “But it will be reborn from the ashes.”

“Elias,” she says. “How can you say this?”

“You should leave,” I say. “I do not wish to welcome you to the Waiting Place—not yet. May the skies speed your way.”

“What the hells has that place done to you?” she cries. “I need your help, Elias. The people need you. There are thousands of Scholars here. If I cannot get the Star, then I can at least get them out. You could—”

“I must return to the Waiting Place,” I say. “Goodbye, Laia of Serra.”

Laia grabs my face and peers into my eyes. A darkness rises in her—something that is fey, but not. It is more than fey. It is atavistic, the essence of magic itself. And it rages.

“What have you done to him?” She speaks to Mauth, as if she knows he has joined with me. As if she can see him. “Give him back!”

My voice, when it comes, is an unearthly rumble that isn’t my own. I feel shoved to the side in my own mind, watching as I incline my head. “Forgive me, dear one,” Mauth says through me. “It is the only way.”

I back away from her and turn east, toward the Forest of Dusk. Moments later, I am through the masses of Karkauns ravaging the city, then beyond them, speeding through the countryside, at last one with Mauth.

But though I know I go now to my duty, some old part of me twinges, reaches out to whatever it is that I have lost. It feels strange.

It is the pain of what you have given up. But it will fade, Banu al-Mauth. You have endured much in a short time, learned much in a short time. You cannot expect to be ready overnight.

“It . . .” I search for the word. “It hurts.”

Surrender always does. But it will not hurt forever.

“Why me?” I ask. “Why do we have to change and not you? Why do we have to become less human instead of you becoming more so?”

The ocean waves thunder on, and it is man who must swim among them. The wind blows, cold and brittle, and it is man who must protect against it. The earth shakes and cracks, swallows and destroys, but it is man who must walk upon it. So it is with death. I cannot surrender, Elias. It must be you.

“I don’t feel like myself anymore.”

Because you are not yourself. You are me. I am you. And in this way, we will pass the ghosts through, that your world be spared from their predations.

He falls silent as we leave Antium far behind. Soon, I forget the fighting. I forget the face of the girl I loved. I think only of the task ahead.

All is as it must be.

LIV: Laia

Cook finds me beside the stables moments after Elias disappears. I stare after him, disbelieving. He is not the Elias I left even two weeks ago, the Elias who brought me back from the Nightbringer’s hell, who told me that we would find a way.

But then I remember what he said: If I seem different, remember that I love you. No matter what happens to me.

What in the skies happened to him? What was it inside me that lashed out at him? I think of what the Nightbringer said to me in Adisa: You know not the darkness that lies within your own heart.

Deal with Elias later, Laia. My mind reels. The city has fallen. I have failed. And the Scholar slaves—they are trapped here. Antium is surrounded on three sides. Only the north end, built against Mount Videnns, is not overrun with Karkauns.

That is where Cook and I entered the city, and that is how we will escape. That is how we will help the Scholars escape.

Because I know this feeling sweeping through me far too well, the feeling that all my effort, all I have worked for, means nothing. That everything and everyone is a lie. That all is cruel and unforgiving and that there is no justice.

I have survived this feeling before, and I will survive it again. In this fiery hellscape of a world, this mess of blood and madness, justice exists only for those who take it. I’ll be damned if I’m not one of them.

“Girl.” Cook appears from the streets. “What has happened?”

“Is the Mariner Embassy still clear?” I ask her as we head away from the sounds of fighting. “Have the Karkauns taken that district, or can we escape that way?”