S he was wrong. She was wrong about everything. She was wrong that I could not save him.
She was wrong.
I held the shards so tight that blood pooled in my palm.
Caduan looked up at me as I approached him. In one hand was the glowing amber of creation. In the other was the withering branch of death. With every step I took towards this magic, my body recoiled. My eyes stung at the sight of him. The darkness had progressed so rapidly, black lines now extending up his throat, over his chin, at the corners of his eyes and mouth.
Tisaanah’s words echoed in the back of my mind. You cannot save him. She is wrong, I told myself.
“You should leave,” Caduan said. His eyes were strange—bright like fire, and yet so far away. “I don’t want you here.”
You cannot lie to me.
I reached for him, and he jerked away. “Let me help you,” I said.
“You can’t.”
I can. I must.
“You do not have to go,” I said, voice cracking. “We have all three, now. We can do anything. We can save you.”
His expression changed. For the briefest moment, he looked like— like himself. “Save—?”
I showed him the shards.
But the broken Lejara was too unstable, too volatile. The moment I opened my fingers, I lost control of it. The power aligned with that of its siblings—creation, change, death, falling into step with each other. The river swept us away in a powerful rush.
I reached out and grabbed Caduan’s wrists, where the three Lejaras now hovered between us, only to gasp and resist the urge to yank my hands away.
I could feel how far he had drifted—could feel how much pain he was in, as the magic ate him alive.
We fell deeper, deeper, into the darkest levels of magic.
I knew this place. As Reshaye, I’d been nothing but a ghost here, trapped between worlds. I expected to see a star-scattered black above us. But instead, it was a grotesque cacophony of colors, red and violet bleeding over the sky like infected wounds.
No. This… this was wrong. It was not supposed to look like this.
He will destroy everything, she had said. Caduan’s hand cradled my cheek.
“I want justice,” he ground out. “I want justice for you, for Meajqa, for Niraja, for my house, for your sister. I want it to be made right. I want to die knowing that it will never happen again.”
He wanted it so badly that he did not see what else was breaking—he did not understand that he was sacrificing more than himself.
Again, Tisaanah’s voice:
What good is justice, if there is nobody left to witness it? She is wrong, I told myself.
But already, my lies had begun to chip and crumble. All those terrible things Caduan spoke of would happen again.
They were happening right now, in this moment.
I put my hands on his face, looked into those eyes that had once been the only thing in this entire wretched existence that felt real. Now, they were clouded with his grief and anger.
Caduan so wanted revenge. Yet, I thought of the way I felt when Ishqa’s body fell from Ela’Dar’s castle. Empty.
All this time, I felt that death circled me like a lost lover. I had longed for it, loved it, lusted after it. Now my lover had become death, and all I craved was life.
You will find another thing to burn, Nura’s voice echoed. It’s all you know how to do.
She is wrong, I decided.
“This is too much.” My voice was a broken sob. “This is not what you wanted. Look at what this power is doing. Look at everything it is destroying.”
I forced him to see what was happening around us—how the magic he wielded threatened to rip the foundations of our world apart. I forced him to see what he had refused to let himself believe. We looked up, at the tears shredding the boundaries between magics, wide enough to devour the world. A million years spread out before us, time reduced to streaks across the sky. We watched Ela’Dar crumble and the eternity beyond it fall into dust.
Emotions shuddered across his face in waves, settling on stubborn resolve.
“No. No, I can do this still. I can control it.” “You cannot lie to me, Caduan,” I murmured.
For a moment, he looked angry, and I thought he might resist—but then that fury melted away, leaving only regret in its wake.
“It’s too late,” he rasped.
“You taught me that nothing is impossible,” I said. “It is never too late.” “I can’t—” His eyes were pained. His knuckles stroked my cheek. “If
we shut this magic away, it will take with it…”
Me.
I knew it, even if he could not bring himself to say it. I was brought back to this world by this magic, and when it was gone, I would be too.
A streak of silver rolled down his cheek. “I cannot save you, Aefe.” And that, I realized, was the cruelest truth of all. He could not save me.
I could not save him.
“Together,” I choked out. “We go together.” “Your story deserved a better end.”
I kissed him, and it was there, on the precipice of life and death, I felt the final shift in his resolve.
“Nothing ever truly ends,” I whispered.
We looked at the power between us—the means to create, to destroy, to alter, so powerful that no mortal ever should have wielded them. How many wars were fought over this? How many lives lost?
They were the only thing strong enough to heal the tears that they had opened. The only weapon that could be used against itself.
Caduan took my hands. Together, we stitched the world’s wounds closed. Together, we gave the life we were about to leave behind one more chance.
