“That’d be great!” Tara glanced at Rainbow, then quickly averted her eyes, as though regretting the eye contact. “I’d never turn down an opportunity this cool. Well, maybe some alternate-universe version of myself would. Can I joke about that?”
The five of us went around the clinic building, weaving through tall grass. Blades crunched under my shoes. The night was dipping into freezing temperatures. I kept one hand in my pocket, resting on my knife. Just in case. I opened my mouth to call Neven—
Actually, no.
Neven wasn’t responsible for this. I needed to talk those who were.
“Power!” I hollered at the forest. “Um, Powers That Be! You know who you are.”
The others looked surprised. Carefully, Red said, “I don’t know if they’re the kind of entities we can actually . . . talk to? Maybe Neven could convey a message.”
“Trust me. We can talk to them.” I had my fists clenched, my arms tight by my sides. The tension hurt. I’d gotten more banged up in that truck than I’d thought. I’d even found blood caked in my hair and zigzagging across cracked knuckles. I tossed my head back and raised my voice. “Hey! Glowy Hazel! We need to talk!”
The fluttering of wings announced Neven’s arrival. She’d probably kept an eye on the clinic from afar. “Ah,” she said, landing in the grass. “I see we’re doing this.”
“Well, we’re trying.” Rainbow blew out a breath. “Neven, do you know whether the rift will close? What if—?”
“How about you stop the what-ifs,” Four said to my right. My head snapped toward her.
Except it wasn’t Four who’d spoken. The voice was identical—all our voices were—but there had been an echo to it.
And the sound had come from a few feet past Four.
Tara inhaled sharply.
A light shape stepped across a fallen branch. It looked like me, down to the concerned expression I’d come to recognize on the others’ faces.
“Is that . . .?” Red asked.
“One of them,” I whispered.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
“Yes?” the Power said.
“The rift didn’t close,” I said. “Even though we defeated the trolls. Didn’t we win? Did we do something wrong?”
The Power raised an eyebrow. “You’re not serious. Are you?”
I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it again, unsure what the Power was getting at. I heard indistinct whispers behind me, while beside me, Neven gave the glowy Hazel a flat look. “Explain,” she growled.
“Yeah, explain,” Rainbow said. “We helped take down, like, a hundred trolls—”
“Exactly. Helped.” The Power fixed its eyes on me. “I’m not surprised the rift didn’t respond to your actions. This was far too much of a team effort. You’re supposed to be the hero.”
“I got killed trying to be a hero.” My voice trembled. I ignored the confused whispers of the others.
All this couldn’t have been for nothing.
“These trolls tried to shake me out of a truck like an insect stuck at the bottom of a mug. I hurt my leg, I . . .”
The Power started ticking down on its fingers. “You spent the evening eating tomato soup—”
“I was trying to gain Alpha’s trust. Help her control the trolls.”
“—you took forever discovering your mission—”
“To kill an innocent girl,” I said. “It wasn’t the first solution to come to mind, no.”
Its eyebrows rose. “Even after hearing ‘having no alpha makes trolls vulnerable’ and ‘vulnerable trolls can be killed’ within minutes of each other? Truly?”
“Maybe she’s a nice person,” Neven suggested.
The Power ignored her. “Then, when you learned what you needed to do, your first response was to run away. You even let strangers take care of the trolls so you could flee.”
“But they—”
“Just like you shoved a weapon in the hands of an injured, scared bystander while you played arts and crafts—”
“You mean the truck driver out on the fields? That’s how we ended up taking out the trolls!”
“And I’ve lost count of the number of times Neven fought on your behalf.”
“I don’t even know how to throw a punch and she’s a goddamn dragon!” My voice skipped. “Wasn’t she supposed to help?”
“The operative word is help. See, if you’d sat on her back during that last fight . . .”
“I was busy almost dying inside a box truck!” I crushed icy grass as I stepped forward. My fists clenched enough to hurt. I couldn’t tell whether I was screaming or pleading or apologizing or all of those at once. “What are you saying? It doesn’t count?” My eyes stung. I couldn’t hold back the tears for long. “The trolls are dead, they’re defeated, they . . .”
“Do you know what I believe was the coup de grâce?”
I stared, uncomprehending.
“You took the easy way out.”
“You’re kidding,” Rainbow said. “How was any of this easy?”
“You couldn’t even kill a girl who was prepared to die. You went for a coma. That’s so—” The Power gestured wildly. The glow left an echo where its hands had been. “It’s so . . . practical. On top of that, you neither came up with nor executed the final plan yourself. You let some bystander risk her life”—it eyed Tara—“while you and Neven were out flying in circles. I hardly expected a dramatic self-sacrifice, but you could’ve followed basic standards. It’s out of my hands, regardless. The rift’s programming is fixed, and apparently you weren’t heroic enough to trigger it. We’re done.”
“But . . .” I deflated. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening. Those three words kept running through my mind, making it hard to come up with others. “I thought that our plan made more sense.”
“We asked you to be a hero. We did not ask you to be sensible about it.”
My mouth twisted into something ugly—a smile or a grimace, I didn’t know. Nor did I know what to say. It wasn’t enough.
It was never enough.
None of the others spoke. Their eyes were wide, their faces unsure. They expected me to keep arguing.
