But more unnerving than all of that was the way it felt. It reminded me of how I had felt when I melded my magic with Tisaanah’s, except while that had been a pleasant, alluring sensation, this was odd and saccharine, like a noise so high-pitched it left my ears ringing.
I drew my magic to the surface, readying myself. I looked out into the dark fog, and though I couldn’t see Nura there, I knew she was waiting. There was a time when her magic was as familiar to me as my own, and here, in this twisted place of amplified senses, I could feel it hanging in the air.
“Do you expect me to come chase you?” I said. I did not raise my voice. She could hear.
Sure enough, her voice rolled from the darkness.
“That’s entirely up to you, Max. I wouldn’t stop you if you wanted to walk away.”
“I won’t.”
“What an interesting heel turn for you. Of all things, this is the one that makes you stay.”
I still could not see her. But her hatred — no, not hatred, hurt — slithered through the air like the hiss of a snake.
“I have no desire to do this,” I said, quietly. Flames thrummed at my fingertips, carefully tethered. “We don’t have to, Nura.”
“Why? Are you afraid?”
I felt her magic wrapping around me, burrowing deep, searching for fear in all the places she knew so well.
“I’m angry,” I said. “I’m tired.”
No lies there.
I turned around to see her standing there, silver stare picking me apart. Something was different about her. Something dangerous was closer to the surface.
“I showed you everything.” Her voice sounded like her knives whipping through the air. Quiet and deadly. “I showed you all of it and you still threw it back in my face like this. When we were together, all you wanted was for me to carve my fucking heart out for you. And that’s what I did. I showed you. I always have loved you. Always.”
It was the truth. I understood it, now — the dangerous constancy of Nura’s love. When she lifted her hand to my temple in Sarlazai, she had been utterly convinced that she loved me. Convinced, too, that she loved the people she was about to kill.
“And you love Ara,” I said.
An odd vulnerability rippled across her face. “More than I have ever loved anything.”
“Then help it be better, Nura. Let your love be an action, not a feeling. Love this country by sparing its people from yet another war.”
“You saw what I saw. You know I can’t avoid it.”
“You can. None of this has to happen. Not like this. Do you want people to speak of Ara the way they speak of Threll? Is that what you want to become?”
“If they’ll speak of me that way, I’ll let them. If someone needs to make the hard decisions to save us all from this mess, then I’ll be the tyrant and burn for it later. Hell, I already have.”
Until now, I had managed to keep my anger carefully controlled, measured against whatever scraps of compassion I had left for the girl I’d known. But now, fury ripped through me, so violently that the flames at my fingers brightened.
“Hard decisions?” I breathed. “People, Nura. These are people. What’s the difference between a life worth saving and a life worth throwing away? I saw what your hard decisions are. I lived it. Tisaanah lived it. And I won’t let it happen.”
I knew immediately that I’d said the wrong thing. One second, and the glimpse I’d seen of Nura as I knew her fifteen years ago disappeared like a corpse falling beneath black waters. In her place stood nothing but cold steel.
“I warned you back then that bleeding heart would get you killed,” she said. “But I never wanted it to be by me.”
“Nura—”
But she was gone. Shadows wrapped around her like a cloak, reducing her to a smear of darkness.
Just like that, her decision was made. And I knew her well enough to know that there would be no coming back from this — no half measures.
We had sparred hundreds, thousands, of times before. Just like she always did, she struck first. I dodged, then blocked, then danced backwards. Even after all this time, my muscles knew her patterns intuitively. I conjured a wall of flame, bright enough to sear her outline from the shadows that hid her, and she staggered backwards, only to immediately recover. I caught a glimpse of a grim, satisfied smirk on her lips.
I saw that smile and I thought of the expression she had worn when she brought Tisaanah to my doorstep. When she told me of her Blood Pact. Tell me I haven’t been grooming her for this, I had begged, and she had been so traitorously silent.
I blocked another strike. The familiar tendrils of Nura’s magic reached for me, irrational fear nagging at the corners of my mind. Nothing compared to what she was capable of. Just as I was still keeping my flames closely restrained, far away from her flesh. We were still playing.
She thought that she knew me so well. She had claimed so many of her sparring victories because she thought she knew me better than I knew myself. Often, she was right. But she had never expected this.
I had underestimated her. But she had underestimated me, too.
I let myself slow, deliberately, backing against the stone wall.
“I don’t want to do this,” I said, laying out the trap of my hesitation. And just as I knew she would, she took it.
It happened in a split second. She lunged, not only with her knives, but with her magic, shadow swelling around her like wings. And in the same moment, I let
