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“You know, crossing your fingers behind your back doesn’t actually make it okay to break a promise,” I said to Ali.

“Did you hear me promise?” she said, spinning around to face me.

I smiled, shaking my head. “Deviant.”

“Nah, I’m just an evil little Cerulean Witch.” She laughed. “So, how about we get you dressed and go down to the forest.”

“The forest?” I sat up a little. “Why?”

“It’s dawn—the best time to find Lilith there.”

“Oh…” I couldn’t get my head straight though. I knew I needed to see Lilith, but couldn’t remember why. Not at this hour.

“So I have a list of things we need to know,” she said, digging into her black jeans. She unfolded a page and scanned it.

“Need to know for what?”

“Well, for one”—she pointed to her thumb—“how did Lilith get cursed?”

Oh, the curse. That’s why I needed to see Lilith! I rubbed my head, trying to tune back in to Ali and to the greater known universe, but my head just couldn’t grasp the concept of waking without a coffee in my hand.

“Two”—she pointed to her index finger—“how was the curse written, or rather, by whom? Three: what did the witch use to bind the curse? And was it a spell or a potion?”

“That’s a lot of information,” I noted quietly.

“Yes, but it’ll speed up the process. I mean, Jason can go about his research and use science to find the answers, but sometimes magic is just magic and needs to be dealt with using magic.”

I ran those words over in my head, getting tangled in them. “Um, so… these questions”—I looked at the page, deciding I’d have to take it with me—“only Lilith will know the answers?”

“Yes. And also, I might need you to get a vial of her blood so we can run some tests.” She grinned apologetically. “I know it won’t be easy and, I mean, we thought about just killing her to end it, because she’s the obvious source of the curse, but you’re a carrier, so killing her won’t end it.”

Wow, these guys had gone to town on theories while I was sleeping. “What kinds of tests can you run on her blood?”

“Well, we know that you give off some kind of toxic spell, or if you want to get all scientific, like Jason, you can call it a chemical, and that goes out whenever you get close to someone emotionally. So we can assume that the part of the victim’s brain that’s affected is the limbic system—”

“How can you know that?”

“I’ve spent way too much time with Jason over the last year. Not only has it made me smarter, but it makes me throw random bits of information at people even though they don’t need to know them.” She laughed. “But for us, knowing which part of the brain your curse affects means we can aim any magic spells or potions right at it, although a general curse-breaker or protection spell won’t be enough. I can make a potion, like an antidote, I guess, using your blood, so those affected by you will be cured, but that won’t stop you from re-infecting them and it won’t stop others in your bloodline from doing it either. We kind of need to kill the curse at its source, which is what Jason would say too. He’ll most likely run some tests to isolate the exact molecule carrying the curse in the original Lilith’s blood and then he’ll try to create a kind of anti-venom of sorts or some stimulant for the immune system—he called it something else, but I forget what it was—and I’m not sure, but that stimulant might require a spell to transport it. Alternatively, if we can isolate the voodoo cell, that’s what we’ll call it, I can maybe use magic to ‘block’ it. Who knows? But whatever we do, it’ll involve weeks of testing and research, so you might as well stick around for the beheading and then fly back home and have Christmas with Harry.”

My head was spinning. It was five in the morning; the sky was still dark, and I hadn’t had coffee. How could I possibly process any of what she just said? In fact, I wasn’t totally sure she was speaking English just then. It was like being in a room with five teenage girls all chatting at once. I had no idea what just happened.

“Just get dressed,” she said, patting my foot. “You don’t need to understand any of it. You just have to get what we need from Lilith, and the sun will be fully up by seven, so you best hurry.”

Ali and Quaid waited on the edge of the forest while I stepped into the thick brush alone, feeling an odd sense of fear that I wasn’t sure I should feel in this place. The trees felt dead here, infected with something toxic and sad, but I pushed on, hoping to find my solace deeper in the forest.

No one told me what to do to summon this ethereal being. They just sort of ‘dropped me off’ here and expected me to find her, as if I could recall how to on my own. So all I could really do is wander around in the trees and hope to God I didn’t get lost. I wasn’t even sure what I was meant to feel. They all talked about some great connection to life, to all things living, and some tree I was supposed to have awakened when…

Oh. I stopped dead, my eyes wide to drink in the scene before them. So that’s what they meant.

It appeared before me in a clearing, presenting as nothing more than twisted branches, aging with time, but it was almost like I could see past its disguise. I could feel a kind of heat coming off it—something that made my arms tingle, made my ears hot on the edges. I looked up at the sky through the tree, half expecting the sun to be beaming right down onto the clearing, but the dark dawn couldn’t explain the light I saw, and nothing I’d ever come across could explain the sense I had that the tree stood as a sentry to a gateway somehow. I knew that if I walked just past it, I would connect with something else—something not of this world.

My shoes felt unwelcome in this place all of a sudden. I kicked them off and tore away my socks, laying them aside. Even my clothes felt unwelcome, but I wasn’t taking them off for anyone.

“Knock-knock,” I called, stepping into the clearing. The radiance of that supernatural light consumed me, as if I’d stepped over a threshold into another dimension. I had to look at my arms to make sure they were still there, because they felt as light as if I’d been drinking giggle water. “Is anyone here?” I tried again, circling around as I walked toward the tree.

“Amara,” a deep, sort of echoing voice said. “How nice to see you again.”

I stopped, feeling the presence of something at my heels, its pink glow meeting with the bright yellow one in front of me. “You must be Lilith,” I said, slowly turning.

“At your service, my old friend.” She bowed her head, her soft smile reminding me of Lily.

“I’m here about the curse—on our blood.”

Her smile changed and she floated backward, seating herself on something invisible, making her head higher than mine. “Why on earth would you be asking about that?”

“I need to break it. End it,” I said. “David’s trapped and—”

“Ah.” She nodded, floating to stand, moving away as though she was pacing. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen a ghost pace before. “I’m not a ghost,” she said.

“I didn’t say you were.”

“But you thought it.” She appeared beside me, her finger pointed at my head.

“What are you then?” I shoved her hand down, shocked to feel that she was as solid as me, even though I could see right through her in the light.

“I am a guardian of the realm. Some refer to me as a goddess, some a demon.”

“And what are you really?”

“Whatever people believe,” she said, laying her hands out in a passive gesture, her smile betraying the smite beneath.

“Well, I don’t really care right now either way. I need you to tell me how to break this curse.”

“And what if I do not want it broken?” Her arms folded. “That curse has been of more use to me than it has been a nuisance. I rule the hearts of men—bend them to my will. I will not help you bring an end to it.”

“You don’t have to. I only need to cure myself and my daughter, and maybe Lily.”

“That is not possible. You cannot be cured.”

“But—”

“But David can.”

I snapped my gob shut, ending my argument. “He can?”

“Those of our blood are not affected by the curse—only carry it. Drake, Lily, Harry—”

“Harry’s a boy, so he wouldn’t be anyway.”

“It is an old wives’ tale that our curse is passed on only to females.” She smiled. “It is passed on to all in our bloodline but, as I said, we cannot fall victim.”

“So how do I cure David?”

“By giving him my blood.” She reached inside the folds of her flowing pink dress and withdrew a small empty glass bottle. I looked closer, trying to make out a pocket, but I was pretty sure she just pulled that from her proverbial ass. “You cannot cure him with your blood, as you are only a descendant of mine. But my blood contains the purest form of the curse. Give it to him,” she said, laying it in my hand.

“It’s empty,” I noted, insulted by her trickery.

“Look again.” She smiled, making a fist over the rim. The curved glass filled with a dark red liquid then, but I couldn’t even see a cut in her hand. “If he carries my blood inside of him, he will be cured, as if he were one of my descendants. Then, turn him into a vampire quickly, before he sees you again. And he will be cured indefinitely.”

“But I can’t help anyone else? Falcon? Mike—”

“They will survive, as they have done all these years.” She closed my hand around the vial. “Now keep this safe, for I will not give you more.”

“I will,” I said, tucking it into my coat pocket. In essence, she’d given me what I truly needed, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted the cure. I wanted to help Mike, and Emily. And to do so, I’d have to be sneaky. I’d have to summon the part of my brain that recalled things—the part that was dead at this hour. I had Ali’s list in my pocket, but this kind of sneaky probing required wit, not a list.

“So tell me…” I took up a seat on the damp leafy floor. “What did you do to get cursed in the first place?”

Her wide, cold eyes narrowed on the outer edges into a devious smile. “I told you once that my husband had the angels curse me—”

“So angels did this?”

“No, angels cursed me to bear one hundred sons that would die.”

I placed my hand across my belly. “Why?”

“Because I would not return to Adam as he demanded.”

My lip curled. “Ass-hat!”

Lilith laughed sweetly, sitting down on her invisible throne again. “I thought so too. And so, I refused, bearing that curse for more than a century.”

“How did you break it?”

“I didn’t. I ended it,” she said with a triumphant bow of her head.

“How?”

“By giving birth to one hundred dead sons and burying them all.”

Wow. I actually wanted to cry for her. That must have been horrible. “What about their fathers—did you remarry?”

“I did. Later, once all one hundred children were long gone. But it was my determination to end that curse that saw me afflicted with another.”

“How so?”

“I knew I would not be free until I ended the curse. I had to accept that I would lose one hundred sons, but I did not want the blood of good men to go to waste, so I assumed mortal form and roamed the earth, seducing unworthy or sinful men.”

“And let me guess,” I said with an encompassing grin, forming a sisterhood bond around us that would hopefully allow her to open up to me and inadvertently spill the beans I needed, “one of the men put a curse on you?”

“Something like that.” She studied me more carefully then, her expression passive but her eyes searching mine in a way that made me defensive. “I see you are expecting a new babe of your own.”

The shield dropped and I smiled, laying both hands across my stomach. “I am, yes.”

“How wonderful.” Her hands closed together under her chin. “Another Pureblood descendant.”

I nodded, not really sure what else to say.

“This calls for celebration.” She flew like a feather on a breeze to stand before me, helping me to my feet. “I simply must bless this new life you will lead with a gift.”

“A gift?” I said, a little worried as I thought of the evil witch in the story of Sleeping Beauty.

Her hand covered the side of my face and she pressed her lips to my ear, whispering something in another language—her voice going deeper, making the day dark, the trees sing and sway around us. And then it stopped. The wind receded and the tree stood still once again, the only sound between us my thumping, worried heart.

I waited, hoping she’d explain herself, but she didn’t. She just drew back, her hair and clothes floating in a breeze that wasn’t present in this world, and smiled.

“What was that?” I rubbed at the dull ache in my head. “What did you say to me?”

“The face of the sun will be the light upon your shadows,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“Farewell, Amara.” She bowed her head, fading away. “Until we meet again.”

“Wait!” I chased after her. “I don’t understand. What did you say to me!”

Up ahead, her pink light went out like a snap. I stayed put, knowing it was stupid to chase a ghost, only mildly concerned about what she’d said to me because, not only did my heart tell me she wasn’t a threat, I was just more concerned about returning from my treacherous journey into the woods with only a single vial of blood to cure my friends and family. I wanted to cry, but I at least had to take heart in the fact that David would be set free, even if it meant letting the others down.

I headed back down the trail, carrying my shoes and my heavy heart. As I passed the dead patch of shrubs and winter grass, I studied it more carefully. It looked almost like a large creature had been sleeping in there. But what creature on earth could make everything die like that in an almost perfect circle?

I couldn’t see Ali or Quaid nearby, so while I waited, I crouched down by the dead shrub and laid my fingers to it, closing my eyes and drawing a tight breath as the charge of pure and raw hurt travelled up my arm and stuck my heart like a pin in a cushion.

“Ouch.”

“Ara!” Brett shouted, running toward me at human pace.

“Brett!” I stood up, ready to hug him. “Hi. You’re finally here.”

“Arrived about twenty minutes ago,” he said with that cute smile, taking in my bare feet and then appraising my body with what looked like disappointment. “Hi.”

He hugged me, and I hugged him back tighter.

“Ali sent me to find you.”

“Where is she?” I asked, pulling away. “She was supposed to wait.”

“She found Morgana—”

My blood ran cold. “Where? When?”

“She was…” His eyes shifted to the forest. “She was coming for you—they caught her roughly a mile off your trail.”

“Oh my God.” I dropped my shoes, moving my hand over my baby. I’d come so close to danger and I didn’t even know it.

“It’s okay.” He bent and grabbed my shoes for me, stuffing a stray sock back in. “Quaid and Ali had her before she got anywhere near you, but we have a problem.”

“What?” I said, wishing he’d just come out with it instead of leading me into suspense.

“We can’t find David now.”

Dread sucked back the suspense, flooding me with cold shock. “Does he know she’s been caught?”

“He was there when Ali called and asked me to come over here to bring you back. After that, he vanished, faster than a vampire.”

“Oh my God.” I almost folded over, imagining all the horrible things that might have happened. He was human. What if someone took him by magic, just… zapped him out of the sky? What if they were hurting him?

“It’s okay.” Brett took hold of my shoulder. “We’ll find him. I promise.”

“Like the last time he went missing?” I said, holding his gaze with a look that brought up the past.

He closed his eyes, bowing his head. “I’m sorry, Ara. I should have—”

“It’s not your fault.” I walked past him. “I just need to find him. Now.”

Morgana was locked up in a cell, where she would stay now until we found David. After that, she would be taken to the square for immediate execution, as would the guard she tricked into setting her free. He was to be made an example of, and the only thing I could feel was relief that it wasn’t Blade. Lily said we had to protect those under our curse, and yet, here she was, punishing a victim. I had to wonder if she would’ve been so hasty if it had been Blade.

While Brett joined the search for David, I headed down to Jason’s lab, the cold day becoming a smoky grey around me with the impending rain and the looming dread of my husband’s disappearance. Up ahead, as the building came into view among the vastness of the rolling green hills, I saw a flash of blonde hair that I immediately knew was my daughter.

“Elora!” I called.

“Mom!” She charged at full speed up the grassy slope and wrapped her arms around me, nearly toppling me backward. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

“What about Dad?” I drew back. “Has anyone seen him yet?”

“No.” She shook her head, stepping out widely and moving backward down the slope. “I came out here to get a feel for the energy—see if I can sense any magic or foul play.”

“And?”

She studied the ground, arms folded. “Nothing. I can feel the resonance of extreme rage, and it leaves a trail, almost as if he walked off by himself.”

“Did he, do you think?” I walked forward to see if I could feel what Elora had felt. “Maybe Brett just didn’t notice him walk off.”

“It’s possible.” She shook her head in deep consideration. “Dad might be human now but he’s still damn smart—probably smart enough to outwit Falcon.”

“I never was,” I said with a smirk, recalling a time when he’d bested me on my escape attempts, and as that one memory charged through me, several more followed, flashing one by one and so quickly I almost didn’t realize it.

Elora just smiled at me. “Memory?”

“No.” I grabbed her arm to steady myself. “Several.”

“What do you remember?”

“Only Falcon.”

“Falcon?” she said, holding me up. “I haven’t heard you call him that in… ages.”

I smiled, until I remembered my husband was missing, then it slipped away as I took in the landscape: wide grassy fields, with one lab building all on its own, and a forest in the distance. How would he have escaped Falcon? There was nowhere to hide.

Then again, if Falcon was concerned for me, he might not have noticed a bomb drop on his toe.

“If he did walk away… I mean, we’re all freaking out, thinking he’s been kidnapped, but we’re not really thinking about him as the David we all know.” It occurred to me then like a hit with a rock in the head. I drew the vial of blood from my pocket and handed it to Elora. “Take this in to Jason’s team for me.”

“What is it?”

“Lilith’s blood—a cure for one person.”

She looked at the vial, her brows pulling together, head whipping up as I turned away. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to check Morgana’s cell. That’s the first place I’d go if I were David.”

Last time I was down here it was pitch black, the echoes of violent screams lingering in the tunnels long after they’d ended in tragedy. This time, the torches on the wall had been lit, casting orange flickers over the path like swords being crossed, warding me off. I walked along, my hand to the sickly-wet wall, praying in my heart that David hadn’t come down here but praying also that he had. I needed to know he was safe. Needed to know where he was. But if he did come down here, Morgana could have hurt him by now and no one would’ve been there to save him.

Distracted by rage last time, I barely noticed the cool brush of ghostly whispers moving down my spine, or the way the low ceiling felt like it was miles above my head, making the tunnel longer, darker than it was before. I looked ahead, seeing shadows move in the darkness, my heart tightening in my chest and screaming for me to turn back. But I walked on, determined to find David, shutting my eyes to imagine a better place and just letting my hand guide me, the sticky muck making my fingertips grainy and sore. If I couldn’t see with my own two eyes what was waiting up ahead, I couldn’t fear it. I knew I had the gift of Sight—that I could talk to and see spirits—which only made this worse. I hadn’t yet encountered a vengeful spirit, and if there were any place on earth to do that, this dungeon would certainly be it.

My eyes scrunched tighter and my head sunk into my neck defensively when a loud bang echoed down the tunnel, surrounding me like it happened just a foot away. I stopped dead, holding my breath, my eyes popping wide to scan the walls and the floor. I wanted to call out hello, like all those stupid people in horror movies, but I didn’t want anything to answer back.

I stole a peek to the length of tunnel I’d left behind me, the torches so distant now they were just a blink of light. I’d travelled much farther with my eyes closed than I intended—much farther than the last person down here had gone—and with that in mind, my arms frosted with little bumps. I had no idea where Morgana’s cell was, but I did have an eerie feeling that I’d come too far and an even eerier one that if I turned my back, something out of the darkness up ahead would touch me.

I stood frozen with my back to the wall, taking slow, steady breaths, too afraid to go forward and too afraid to go back. I could see it in my mind—see the long, creepy fingers of something dark and horrible reaching out to grab my arm and suck me into its black abyss, so when I felt a solid thing on my shoulder a second later, I sent a shrill scream ripping down the tunnels before dropping my knees and landing on the floor. I smacked at the hand, fighting it away, but it kept grabbing until it caught my arms and held them still. It was then that I saw its face, and a rock of solid horror landed on my chest, filling me with embarrassment.

“Are you okay?” Quaid laughed, his stark-white teeth the only thing I could really see in the darkness.

“Oh my God.” I breathed. “You scared the living hell out of me.”

He laughed harder, helping me up. “I noticed.”

“Why did you do that?” I asked, slapping him playfully on each word. “Why didn’t you just announce yourself?”

“Because I didn’t want to scare you,” he said, and we both laughed.

“What are you doing down here anyway?” I asked.

“Elora sent me. She was worried.”

I nodded.

“So you think David came down here, huh?” He cast his eyes from one end of the tunnel to the other.

“Yeah. I’m worried.”

“About what?”

“That she might hurt him.”

His throat made a funny grunt before it pushed out through his nose and he folded over, hacking out his hilarity. “I’d be more worried about what he’ll do to her.”

“He’s human, Quaid—”

“Yeah, and she is in no state to do anything to anyone,” he said with a reassuring kind of certainty.

“What do you mean?”

“Come on.” He took my arm and turned me in the opposite direction. “I’ll show you.”

By the time we took the fifth turn down a series of narrow passages, it became clear to me that I would never have found Morgana on my own. In fact, I could’ve wandered these tunnels for a year and not found her, so I was very glad at this point that Quaid found me, even if he did make me almost pee in my pants.

“When we found Morgana, she was looking for you,” he explained, his voice echoing in the darkness but in a comforting way. It was nice having a friend down here with me. “But she was crawling,” he added, “she was too weak to walk.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” He turned us around another corner at a crossroad, where the walls were lined with cells once again. “She said she didn’t want to hurt you—that she needed to tell you something important.”

“What?”

“She wouldn’t say.”

How odd. I slowly turned my attention back to the path ahead, my stomach churning with the possibilities. Had David been taken by magic and she knew where he was, wanted to torture me with it?

Quaid’s hand whipped out across the path and I stopped dead, winded. “What the hell, Quaid?”

“Listen.”

I held my breath, tuning my ears to the hollow tunnels, the sound he’d heard reaching them a second later. “Crying?”

Quaid moved swiftly to the wall and grabbed a lantern, the comforting smell of a lit match claiming my worries a second later. He shook it out and tossed it on the floor, closing the glass door as he held the lantern up to a cell. The light reached in and touched the places my Lilithian vision couldn’t, illuminating a shape against the back wall.

A pair of reflective cat-like eyes fixed on me from that darkness then. I jumped back to the wall, my mind erasing the iron bars between us as though the creature in there could grab me. It crawled toward me, its movements jerky, stiff, like it was carrying an anvil on its back. One eye hung from its socket by a skinny thread of flesh, its long black hair tangled into an unrecognizable state, missing in bloody patches around its scalp.

“Quaid?” I said in a shaky voice. “What is that?”

He moved a bit closer with the lantern and sighed. “That’s Morgana.”

My eyes widened more then and fixed on the creature. I’d expected, in the back of my mind, to recognize her, but I had no memory of her face, and yet I was sure that even if I did, I wouldn’t have seen a human there. Not now.

I loosened myself from the wall, intent on folding the flap of skin dangling down on her arm back into place. It tore a little more every inch she moved, and when she reached the bars and wound her bloody fingers around them, crawling to her feet, gushes of blood flooded from between her legs, pooling at her feet.

“What the hell happened to her?”

“I don’t know.” He hung the lantern on a hook. “She wasn’t like this when we locked her up.”

With my heavy breath making circles of fog to lead the way, I forced myself to walk forward and take in the face of my enemy. I’d wanted to kill her so badly when I first arrived here, but now… all I felt was a sense of great pity and stale hatred. I was glad to see her so brutally injured but also deeply horrified.

“Who did this to you?” I asked, battling with my suspicions. I could smell him here—smell his recent presence lingering. David had left here not long ago, so while I felt relieved to know he was safe, not bloodied in this cell, I also felt sick by what he’d obviously done. This kind of torture wouldn’t end our pain. He knew that.

Morgana reached out through the bars, her hand trembling so violently with agony that her shoulders shook. “I needed to tell you,” she whispered, her voice thin with despair. “Come. Closer.”

I looked at Quaid, who shook his head. But I went closer anyway. She didn’t scare me. Not anymore.

Her hand closed around thin air, her single eye obviously marking my location incorrectly. I stayed a few inches away from her reach, leaning in to hear her weak voice. “What did you want to tell me?”

“I…” Her mouth gaped widely, and an almost heartbreaking cry left it. She dropped to her knees and folded in on herself, her back against the bars. “I practiced so many times,” she blubbered. “So many times. So many times. So—”

“What are you talking about?” I went to touch her, deciding against it as my hand reached between the bars, and drew it back quickly, a cold shiver running up my spine.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her head reeling around so our eyes met. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” I asked spitefully.

“I just need you to forgive me for what I did to you. I don’t know what happened.” She grabbed both sides of her head, folding into her knees and bashing her eye against them. “I don’t know what happened. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I—”

I backed away, standing up beside Quaid. Of all the things this evil witch could have said to me, an apology was so unexpected I just didn’t know how to react.

“Please,” she whimpered weakly, resting her face against her knees. “Please absolve me. Please say you forgive me.”

It filled me with the darkest, most menacing rage—made my tight fists shake as I imagined smashing them into her repeatedly, screaming that there was no forgiveness for taking a child’s life, but all I could do was move my head, my teeth caged to say no. “You will die today, Morgana. I will watch as your head is hacked from your body, and I will live on after that. I will have another child and I will breathe clean, free air. But you will not.”

She lifted her head and looked at me, her dangling eye weeping.

“I will offer you no forgiveness,” I added, “because it will ensure that you rot in the hottest pit of hell for what you did to me.”

“No!” She rolled to her knees and grasped the bars again. “No, say you forgive me! Say you forgive me!” The words trailed off to pathetic howling.

I shook my head and she screamed the words at me again, repeating them over and over.

“Keep begging,” I said. “So I can remember you like this when I want to cry for what you took from me.”

“Pleeeease! I need you to say you forgive me,” she cried, reduced to tears as it became apparent that I never would. She hugged the bars, sobbing on her knees in a bloody white cloth that barely covered her nakedness underneath, and not one cell in my body pitied her. I did nothing as she lifted her face and brought it back down onto the bars with the force of a hammer, splitting her cheek open.

Quaid stood beside me, both of us frozen; one with anger, the other with disbelief. She bashed her face against the bars until her mouth was cut so deep on one side that her teeth showed through the torn flesh, and when she fell onto her side, I thought for a moment that she was unconscious.

My hands trembled, my blood so thick with a chill that I couldn’t move. My sister, a girl I once loved at some point, lay on the floor in a ball, whimpering. She looked like a beaten dog, and though I felt no pity for her a moment ago, something in my heart changed then. It wasn’t enough to forgive her. Her pain would never lead to my forgiveness, but it was enough for me to see how beaten she was—that she was genuinely sorry. Perhaps her torture had given her pause. Perhaps it had given her insight. Perhaps she had become truly repentant as she suffered. And I was glad of that—glad she was sorry; glad that she would die knowing I would never forgive her.

“What should we do?” Quaid asked.

“Leave her,” I said coldly, turning away. “She can suffer until we chop off her head.”

Quaid hadn’t expected that. I saw the look in his eye, saw the depth of his pity for this vile creature, and as I went to walk away, I saw what he saw in me then. I was no different from her now. I knew that. I knew I could walk away and leave her to suffer, and I knew I would also hate my own reflection from this day on. But maybe it was worth it.

With my head held high, I pushed on, making it only five steps away before her quiet sobs reached my soul. My eyes shut tight and my feet halted on their next step, the sound moving through me and entering my heart—a place I knew I’d closed off to her. I didn’t want to forgive her. My heart was trying to, but I needed to hold onto this anger to help me deal with my pain. And yet I couldn’t.

I turned back. There was something inside me, something as deep as my own DNA that wouldn’t let me walk away. Not because I felt connected to her, not because she was my blood, but because I couldn’t walk away from any creature, foul as it may be, when it was in that state.

By the time I left my shell of grief and confusion and reached her cell door again, the sobbing had stopped. She lay on the dirt floor, her torn arm stretched out high above her face, scratching something into the ground. I listened carefully to the words she muttered, realizing it was a little song, but I couldn’t make out the lyrics. The melody, however, made the air icy.

“Morgana,” I said.

She gasped and stopped singing, rolling over so fast that half of her face remained on the ground. I covered my mouth, sickened to my core, but tried not to let it bother me visibly.

“Have you changed your mind?” she said, blood splattering the bars as she spoke. “Do you forgive me?”

I couldn’t bring myself to forgive her. Not even now. I wasn’t even sure now why I’d turned back, why I was squatting here by her cell. I backed away, horrified by my own reaction to her, and shook my head. “I… No.”

Like an implosion, Morgana took a breath, her face splitting wide open then as the moment of dead silence became a shrill scream, so haunting and so deep with pain that it sounded like a reaper calling for the dead. I scuttled back to the wall beside Quaid’s feet, and the creature in the cell scampered away to the back of the cell, darkness swallowing her whole.

“What the hell was that?” I said, breathless.

“I don’t—” His words stopped short, the meaty sounds of splattering blood coming from the back of the cell.

“What the hell is that?” I asked.

Quaid grabbed the lantern and held it up to the darkness, illuminating the figure down the back.

“Morgana. No!” I yelled, but she didn’t even look at me. I couldn’t make out what was in her hands, but it was long and obviously sharp. She drove it repeatedly into her stomach, her chest, her own eye, turning to us as she parted both legs slowly, fixing our gazes before driving the thing between her legs. She didn’t scream out in pain, didn’t even flinch—just kept stabbing it into herself.

“Stop her!” I yelled.

“I can’t.” Quaid put the lantern on the ground, fumbling for a key on his belt. “If I open this door, she might attack you.”

“Let me!” said a stern, rough voice. I didn’t recognize it at first, but as he stepped into the light, I realized it was my father, and the coiling knot of dread popped open in me. Drake took the keys and shoved the door open before I even saw him unlock it. I tried to find some justification in my mind for why I let her do that to herself, but there was none. When faced with the truth, when standing before another, placed with the responsibility of my own actions, what could I say but I was glad she did it.

“Ara!” David grabbed me, coming up out of nowhere.

“David!” I spun into his arms and wrapped mine so tightly around him that he coughed. “Where were you?”

“I’m so sorry I scared you.” He kissed my head. “Scared everyone, I guess.”

“Where did you go?”

“I came here.” He nodded to the cell. I could only see Drake now, his back to us, as he tried to restrain his daughter. “I wanted to kill her, Ara, but…”

“But?”

He drew back and looked down into my eyes. “She started hurting herself… she…”

“She apologized?”

He nodded.

“You don’t seriously forgive her, do you?”

“No.” He looked over at the cell. “But I couldn’t stand there and watch her do that to herself either, and I couldn’t find it in my own dark mind to hurt her after seeing that.”

So he hadn’t done that to her. Any of it. I thought I’d feel relieved to know that, but it was more like my soul shone. I wanted to hurt her in the worst way, but seeing her do it to herself made me glad I hadn’t, and that David hadn’t. It would only haunt me later, worse than recalling what she’d just done to herself.

Drake fought desperately with Morgana as she screamed and kicked like a demon had possessed her, his voice breaking in despair. “I’m sorry, Morgana,” he whispered, holding her head tightly in his arms before a sickly cracking sound ended it all.

Morgana dropped limply to the ground and Drake drew back like she was a disease. I didn’t even feel David break away from me, didn’t notice he was gone until he appeared at Drake’s side, holding the lantern high over Morgana.

“It is over now,” Drake said, taking the lantern.

“What are you doing?” David asked.

“Setting things right.”

Quaid vanished from my side and reappeared behind David, moving him backward as Drake smashed the lantern down on Morgana’s torso, setting her alight.

“What are you doing?” I yelled.

“She must not live,” he said, stepping back to watch her burn. “A snapped neck will not kill her. She must not be allowed to return from this dark world she exists in now.”

My lips filled with so much blood I couldn’t close them, my arms and hands heavy and cold with shock. I stood by the wall and watched her body ignite from torso to head, the flames traveling down her legs and consuming everything in a fierce orange glow. I’d never seen a body burn before, but the smell of flaming hair and flesh entered a part of my mind that I knew it would never leave. I glanced at David, who watched on with a stiff lip, his fists curling in hatred by his sides, flashes sparking in his mind of my face, licked with flames, the image mingling then with the horrid corpse on the floor as it burned.

I moved over and slipped my hand around his fist, bringing him back down. “David.”

He drew a tight breath through his nose and looked at me.

“It’s over now,” I offered softly.

“Yes,” he said, his voice deep and cold. “It is.”

Drake looked back as David walked away, watching until he vanished in the darkness.

“I’ll go with him,” Quaid offered, “make sure he finds his way out.”

“Thanks.” I sighed, looking back at Drake, but he was gone.

“Amara,” he said, startling me as he appeared at my other side. “I’m so sorry for what she did to you.”

All I could do was nod, wishing that could fix it. And as if he seemed to know how I felt, he cautiously moved in and wrapped his arms around me, holding me in a way that no one ever had before. I realized, in that moment, that while Falcon may have posed as a father, he had never loved me as such. His love had always been so much more. But as this man embraced me in a warmth that only could be the love of a father, I felt fragile—like I’d come home without knowing I’d ever been gone. I felt it move up my legs and into my heart, weakening it and making it stronger, and as the feeling moved out over my chest, I started crying.

“Shhh,” he whispered, holding me up where my legs buckled. “It’s okay now, my sweet daughter. Everything will be okay.”

And I knew it would, but the past had just hurt so much that I didn’t want to see the future right now. I just wanted to cry. And so he let me. He stood here with me in the dark, smoke-filled cell, under the rotting stench of my sister’s death, and held onto me, erasing all the hatred I once had for him.

As we stood in silence for what felt like most of the day, I was sure that one or two times I had imagined myself barbecuing a sausage over the flaming corpse, but so many other things passed through my mind as I watched her burn that I wasn’t sure what I’d imagined after a while.

Drake said nothing the entire time. We were both just lost in our collective thoughts, processing a future that would never happen for Morgana against a past that had made her what she’d become. I saw myself in her as she burned, maybe because I’d burned in just the same way not so long ago. I saw the life I left behind, still not able to picture it but definitely able to understand it, and I saw the future I had once, before I knew any of my past. I woke up one day with my flesh burned and no memory of who I was. No memory of the things I’d done. And I expected to move on, clean slate—be who I knew I was inside and not the person everyone kept expecting me to be. I’d been given a fresh start, no matter what atrocities I’d committed in my past. It felt so final seeing Morgana die. I felt at peace in my bones, knowing how much she had suffered—more than I could ever have inflicted on her for what she did, and I was the one that she had done it to. It seemed she almost hated herself for it all more than I hated her. More than even David hated her. I saw it in his eyes as he left earlier. I saw the disgust, but mostly, I saw the disgust in himself for feeling the way he did. He wanted her to hurt, but not even he could’ve imagined such horrors for her. I knew he felt sorry for her and I knew it hurt him to feel that way, but I also knew I could help him come to terms with that.

As the flames simmered down and left an oddly-shaped pile of ash, a tunnel full of smoke that burned my irises, and a stench that would stay in my skin for weeks, I looked at Morgana with new eyes, speaking with my heart before my mind could step in and shake me. “She can be brought back.”

“Excuse me?” Drake said, his voice weak from disuse.

“Like me.” I faced him. His cheeks were black with soot, muddy lines running roads through the dirt where his tears had fallen all day. “We can bring her back—a new mind, new body, fresh start.”

His eyes widened, the whites so stark around the blue that, in a face so blackened with grief and soot, they stood out like gems. “You would allow that?”

I looked back at the charred remains, walking over to inspect the orange embers of what was once a being. What was once my sister. “I know I loved her at some point. I know David did, and if I ask only that part of myself if it feels right to leave her dead, she doesn’t think so.”

Drake let out a jagged breath, covering his mouth with a tight hand.

“When I first met David after Morgana killed me, all I wanted was for them to see me as the person I was when I wasn’t their Ara. I felt like I was new, reborn. I didn’t care about the past they said I had, and I didn’t see why I should have to.” I turned back to look at him, breathing the thinner air as the smoke began to clear, taking the fog in my heart with it. “It makes sense to me, Drake—a fresh start. She’d have no memory of what she’s done if she wakes, and if I deserved a fresh start—was given one by Lily after taking her soul all these years—how can I expect anything less for Morgana, even after all she’s done?”

“I… are you sure, Amara, because—”

“No. I’m not sure. But…” I looked back at the ash where her face would be. “If I can forgive myself for the things I did in the past, what right do I have not to eventually forgive her, especially if she doesn’t know who she is?”

“And if she does one day remember?”

“We can erase it. All of it.”

“She could be dangerous if she were to remember,” he warned.

“As could I have been if I’d remembered the wrong stuff first, like when I tried to take Harry to save him from David because I thought he was evil.” I laughed, the sound fizzling away. “But I had people there to support me—to bring me back down from it all.”

Drake seemed stuck at first for what to say, but he nodded after a while, moving to squat beside Morgana and me. “Burn away what was; burn to ashes all the mistakes of the past and scrape up what’s left of the heart that was hurting to begin with,” he said, as if he was casting some spell. “Nourish it and let it grow into what it was always meant to be—free of this tragic world it grew up in.”

“Just like with me,” I said, feeling a chill in the air as the last of the smoke was sucked down the tunnel by an unseen force.