I BREAK THE surface gasping. At first I don’t know where I am or why—or how Del could be here, under the dark sky, holding on to me as if for dear life. Then my heel hits the edge of the rock and I realize what lies at my back, placidly waiting for that single careless slip.
I freeze. The events of the last twenty-four hours present themselves like murky images, scenes watched from below the water.
“Eden? Is it you?” Del asks.
“It’s me,” I say, voice grating.
“I don’t know how much you know,” she begins.
I blink, shaking my head to clear it. “It’s all muddled,” I manage. I grab her hands. “You said you’d go back with her.”
“I don’t have a choice. Not if I want to save you,” Del says. “It’s okay. I got more years than I was supposed to. I got a chance to meet you. That’s more than I should have had.”
“You should have had decades,” I tell her, my throat tight. “I don’t want to lose you, Del.”
“Delphine will live,” she says.
“But Grace will go back to that horrible place. And you—Del—you’ll be gone,” I say.
“I was never supposed to exist in the first place,” Del reminds me. “Eden, we don’t have much time. I just wanted to tell you—I wanted to say . . .” She trails off helplessly.
I lean forward and kiss her. Gently, carefully. She kisses me back, all grief and longing and things we will never get to say.
It isn’t fair. She never got to live. Not as Grace or Delphine or Del. All of them were stolen by the Narrow.
“I never got the chance to love you,” I say. I step back from her. Inches from the edge of the Narrow, my feet planted firmly. “I can’t let you die again.” I can feel Maeve rising up through the dark water once more to claim me. I look past Del to Veronica and the others. Veronica’s expression is contorted in fear and the agony of helplessness. We are all just frozen here. Trapped.
I am done being trapped. I am done with surrender.
I wrap my hand around Veronica’s silver pentacle, still hanging around my neck. “I love you,” I say. Maeve’s spirit wraps around me, dragging it toward the dark. “I love you all.”
Veronica screams, as if she realizes immediately what’s happening. But she’s too far away and too late as I spin around, holding Maeve at bay for a second, two seconds—
Long enough to jump.