“I will not!” My voice is raw with rage and failure. “I will not let you torment her to death, even if stopping you tears my own body to shreds. All the world can burn, but I will not simply leave her to suffer.”

All things have a price, Elias Veturius. The price of saving her will haunt you for all your days. Will you pay it?

“Just let her go. Please. I—I’m sorry for your pain, your hurt. But she did not cause it. It’s not her fault. Mauth, help me.” Why am I begging? Why, when I know it will do no good? Only mercilessness can help me. Only abandoning my humanity. Abandoning Laia.

But I can’t do it. I can’t pretend that I don’t love her.

“Come back to me, Laia.” Her body is heavy in my arms, hair tangled, and I push it back from her face. “Forget them and their lies. That’s all they are. Come back.”

Yes, Elias, the jinn purr. Pour your love into her. Pour your heart into her.

I wish they would shut the hells up. “Come back to the world. Wherever they have taken you, whatever memory they have locked you in doesn’t matter as much as you coming back. Your people need you. Your brother needs you. I need you.”

As I speak, it’s as if I can see into her thoughts. I can see the jinn clawing at her mind. They are strange, warped beings of smokeless flame that are nothing like the beautiful, graceful creatures I saw in the city. Laia tries to fight them, but she weakens.

“You are strong, Laia. And you are needed here.” Her cheek feels like ice. “You have much yet to do.”

Laia’s eyes are glazed over, and I shudder. I hold her now. I call to her. But she will grow old and die, while I will live on. She is the blink of an eye. And I am an age.

But I can accept that. I can survive long years without her if I know that at least she had a chance at life. I’d give up my time with her—I would—if only she would wake.

Please. Please come back.

Her body jerks once, and for one heart-stopping moment, I think she is dead.

Then she opens her eyes, staring at me with bewilderment. Thank the bleeding skies. “They’re gone, Laia,” I say. “But we have to get you out of here.” Her mind will be fragile after what the jinn just put her through. Any more pushing from the ghosts or the jinn would feel torturous.

“I can’t—can’t walk. Could you—”

“Put your arms around my neck,” I say, and I windwalk out of the grove with Laia held close. Mauth yanks at me futilely, and the earth of the Waiting Place shakes and cracks. I reach out to the borders; the pressure is immense. The strain on them makes me break into a sweat. I need to get Laia out of here so I can corral the ghosts—get them away from the edges of the Waiting Place, lest they break free.

“Elias,” Laia whispers. “Are . . . are you real? Are you a trick too?”

“No.” I touch my forehead to hers. “No, love. I’m real. You’re real.”

“What’s wrong with this place?” She shivers. “It’s so full, as if it’s about to burst. I can feel it.”

“Just the ghosts,” I say. “Nothing I can’t handle.” I hope. Flat patches of rolling grassland appear through the trees ahead: the Empire.

The border feels even weaker now than it did when I first passed through it. Many of the ghosts have followed me, and they press against the glowing barrier, their cries rising eagerly as if they sense its weakness.

I go well beyond the tree line and set Laia down. The trees sway back and forth behind me, a frantic dance. I must return. But for just this one moment, I let myself look at her. The messy cloud of her hair, her worn boots, the tiny cuts on her face from the Forest, the way her hands grip the dagger I gave her.

“The jinn,” she whispers. “They—they told me the truth. But the truth is . . .” She shakes her head.

“The truth is ugly,” I say. “The truth of our parents uglier still. But we are not them, Laia.”

“She’s out there, Elias,” Laia says, and I know she speaks of her mother. Of Cook. “Somewhere. I can’t—I—” She slips back into the memory again, and though the Forest seethes behind me, it will have done me no good to get Laia out of there if she ends up in the grasp of the jinn again. I take her shoulders, stroke her face. I make her look at me.

“Forgive her, if you can,” I say. “Remember that fate is never what we think it will be. Your mother—my mother—we can never understand their torments. Their hurts. We may suffer the consequences of their mistakes and their sins, but we should not carry them on our hearts. We don’t deserve that.”

“Will it always be chaos for us, Elias? Will things never be normal?”

Her eyes clear as she looks at me, and she is released, for a moment, from what she saw in the Forest. “Will we ever take a walk by the moonlight, or spend an afternoon making jam or making . . .”

Love. My body turns to fire just thinking about it.

“I had dreams about you,” she whispers. “We were together—”

“It wasn’t a dream.” I pull her close. It kills me that she doesn’t remember. I wish she could. I wish she could hold on to that day the way I do. “I was there, and you were there. And it was a perfect slice of time. It won’t always be like this.” I say it like I believe it. But within my own heart, something has shifted. I feel different. Colder. The change is great enough that I speak even more adamantly, hoping that by saying what I want to feel, I will bring it to life. “We will find a way, Laia. Somehow. But if . . . if I change . . . if I seem different, remember that I love you. No matter what happens to me. Say you’ll remember, please—”