My body is cold. There’s a void that is getting bigger and bigger. It’s like losing a part of myself. I can feel a piece of me missing. Gone. The scepter is gone.

I try to lift my arms. Feel my chest. Move my legs.

Except I can’t move my legs.

I hold my breath and brace myself to look down. My vision is doubled and my temples pound. I lift my torso up and even that’s a challenge. The ground has stopped shaking, but I feel a wave of nausea hit me and I turn my face to the side and puke last night’s pizza.

When I see my tail, I could cry tears of joy that it’s there and I’m in one piece. I search the room and I must be dreaming because I see Adaro. His face is right in front of mine.

I shut my eyes to make his face go away and it does. When I open them again, I see Gwen. She presses something warm and smelly on my shoulders. I blink and she’s gone.

Off to the side, Kurt’s hands are chained against a wall. His blood is smeared all over his torso so that with my fuzzy vision, it looks like he’s wearing a shirt.

“Don’t say it,” Kurt says. He shuts his eyes and I picture him trying to retrace his steps to see what he could have done differently.

“Say what?” It hurts to talk.

“I told you so.”

“I didn’t say it, you did.”

He closes his eyes and leans his head back. “They’ve been coming in and out. Gwen healed you. She loves you. She won’t let Nieve kill you.”

The combinations of being without my scepter and the beatings I’ve taken have left me quiet. I did it. I killed the nautilus maid. I can feel the sleeping giants stirring awake. I signaled my army.

But I messed up badly. “How did we get here?”

“My father told me that if we follow our hearts to the very end, we’ll find what we’re looking for.”

I laugh and it hurts. “If what you’re looking for is death.”

“You don’t believe that.”

He’s right, I don’t.

“What made you change your mind?” I ask. “What made you come back?”

“Lucine herself.” Kurt lifts his legs and swallows the pain. “She told me to give the Trident of the Skies to the sea witch so we could be together in peace, away from all this. All I had to do was kill you myself. Now she has it anyway.”

I sit up like I’ve been set on fire. In the back of my head, I can see Kurt and me as mortal enemies. We can’t end up that way. Perhaps this is how it starts. Perhaps this is how it ends.

“Where was this when I was warning you, huh?” I could kick him. “We were together, Kurt. We were together from the beginning, through all of this. We watched your father die. And then you still went back to her.”

“Do you think I wanted this?” He leans forward, pulling on his chains. “I’ve spent my entire life doing what the king asked of me. Then I find that he’s—was—my father, and despite that, he chose you. Forgive me, Tristan, but that hurt me more than I’ll ever want to say. You have been in a land where time is unmoving, but it has only been a day of mine.”

Look at us, the mighty champions.

“Nieve promised me that my loved ones would be alive at the end of this,” he says. “And Lucine—I’ve loved her since I met her. When I was searching for vengeance for my parents’ deaths, she gave me a path. She gave me a reason to live for that was all consuming and wrong, but I wanted it. If she had told me to chop off my limbs and give them to her, I would have without question. Then she cast me aside because her mind isn’t right. I know that. When I saw her again, it was like she had never left me in the first place.”

“To be fair, you seemed to enjoy it,” I say, laughing.

He squints and gives me his cheek.

“The king was right,” he says, “in the end. You and I are not very different.”

I agree.

“Though now I have better hair.”

I point to my head. “This is your fault.”

“Tristan, why did you go to get the nautilus maid again?”

How do you change a future that seems to be laid out for you? Here I am, looking at my friend turned family turned enemy turned ally once again. He’s asking me to trust him. I’ve had too many misses with the trust thing recently. I never knew how much it would hurt to have someone betray me.

“Because I had to kill her.”

The fog lifts from my head when I say that.

“No one can do that.” He’s startled. “There’s a curse. If you kill an oracle, you’ll die a young king.”

“Well…I did. With the scepter.” I reach for a weapon that isn’t there and the emptiness grows tenfold. “She was in bad shape when I got to her. After you and Gwen came to get her—”

“That’s not why I went.” He looks away, ashamed. “Lucine told me to go to my father because he was dying. She told me to help Gwenivere rescue her sister oracle.” A bitter laugh leaves his lips and he looks to the hole in the ceiling. “Because you wanted her, that’s why. I’m such a fool.”

“Layla says it’s part of being a guy,” I say. “The fool thing. I don’t think she means that.”

Kurt nods. “I’m sure she does.”

“Thank you,” I tell him.

His brow creases. “What for?”

“For protecting her. From the sharks.”

The earth rumbles harder.

I shake my head. “You warned me that the people I love would get hurt.”

“It’s the best kind of way to hurt your enemy,” he says. “By taking away the things they love.”

“What does Nieve love?” I wonder aloud. “Besides her power.”

We say it together. “Her children.”