The pain was unbearable. So intense I could barely breathe.
And in that moment, several worlds collided. Suddenly I was no longer in the Scar, looking into Max’s familiar and unfamiliar face. I was looking, too, into a face I had never seen before, a man with dark copper hair and moss-green eyes, and pointed ears peeking through the wave of his hair.
And I was looking up, at a starry sky that I recognized as the world beneath this one, the deepest level of magic. I was looking at all the bleeding threads of magic that connected us — me, Max, Reshaye. And so many more streaks, a hundred more, tethered to this — this thing that held Max.
{Why do you call me that?} Reshaye whispered.
I saw Max. But I also saw this man who stood behind him, thousands of miles away and yet also here, his presence floating up from beneath the surface of magic like blood into water. “Aefe,” he whispered. “That is your name.”
{I do not know that name.}
A flicker of sadness. A strangely human emotion. Yes, you do.
The betrayal. Blond hair flowing in the wind.
Golden grass beneath my fingertips.
The warmth of an embrace, the scent of skin. The feeling of safety.
You do know, Aefe.
Aefe. The feeling of hatred — hating the way he said that name. Hating it and loving it. Knowing this person. Trusting them. Mourning them. Perhaps loving them.
You just do not remember.
Tenderness shifted to ice-cold. The threads of magic linking us went dark and malevolent. The copper-haired man’s face hardened in anger.
You do not remember because of all they did to you. But I have come to take you home.
{I have no home,} Reshaye whispered, but the words were barely formed before Max’s hands were at the sides of my face — an ugly mimicry of our goodbye — and the pain split me in two.
As he set to work ripping Reshaye from my mind.
Chapter Eighty-Four
Max
The world was unraveling. I threw every bit of myself, every scrap of magic, every remaining drop of willpower, into fighting it. My flames still roared, out of control. With what little strength I had left, I tried to whisper to them enough to keep them from devouring us all. But almost all of my magic was being siphoned off by this presence that had taken hold inside of me. I couldn’t close myself off from the deepest level of magic — as if something had been wedged inside the door.
Tisaanah was fighting him, albeit weakly, her eyes closed, mouth twisted in a soundless scream of pain. The king reached deep into her mind. Searching. Slicing.
Stop, stop, stop—
It was like slamming my fists against a sheet of glass.
Tisaanah’s eyelids fluttered. When they opened again, they flicked to me and held there, searching mine, bright with tears.
“He has roots,” she choked out. “Everywhere, Max. He is connected to this world everywhere.”
She could barely form the words.
The horrible realization hit me. In the world beneath this one, the world where I was trapped, I looked up at the sky — at strings of light lashed from star to star.
I realized what I was looking at.
Not stars.
They were him. Holes he had torn into the boundaries between magics. The little threads he had planted to draw himself to Ara.
And the biggest tear of all was within me. I was the opening that he was using to claw his way into this world.
Magic collided with magic, and Tisaanah’s silent scream became a piercing one. I felt her magic withering. I felt him hacking away at the power that still was hidden, deep and weak, within her. Whatever was left beyond it was barely magic at all. And she was stretched so thin, going in so many different directions at once.
If he didn’t stop, he would kill her.
You’ve destroyed everything you’ve ever loved.
Of course it was Nura’s voice, of all things, that floated through my mind, then. Maybe under any other circumstance, I would have been angry that we were here. All of this was a result of selfishness and pettiness and stupid, Ascended-damned human selfishness.
But now, I only could think of one certainty.
Tisaanah needed to close it off — this bleeding wound within me. She could do it, perhaps, under normal circumstances. Not now, with her magic so far gone.
“Caduan.”
The voice made the king stop short.
My face turned. I felt the king’s recognition, and his anger. I felt the distant, distant echoes of Reshaye’s hurt.
Ishqa stood there. He had wings, now, which were tucked in close to his back, golden feathers bathed in the scarlet light of the flames. His white robes were singed. A large sword was in his hands, steel reflecting the licks of fire.
“Ishqa.” I heard the word come from my lips. One of my hands still pressed Tisaanah to the wall, where she slackened, half-conscious. “Why are you here?”
He wasn’t speaking Aran. Still, I felt the words’ meaning in the magic that we shared.
“This is not the way,” Ishqa said. “You are making a mistake. You will only discard more lives if you do this.”
Hatred spiked through me.
“How many lives have already been sacrificed because of the choices you made?”
“Too many, Caduan. Do you think I do not know that?” Ishqa stepped forward, cautiously. “It is not too late to turn around.”
I felt an expression twitch in the muscles of my face — a sneer at my lip. “I am not like you. I will not leave behind the people of mine that the humans have stolen. And I will not leave her.”
“Aefe is gone, Caduan. She has been gone for centuries. This thing is not her.”
“It’s more convenient to believe that,” my voice said. “But I have had enough of leaving my blood behind. The humans have proven who they are. They have proven that they will never stop.”
“You are trying to cure your loneliness.”
“I am trying to right the wrongs that
