Because I’m looking at Logan—reallylooking—and I don’t see a monster. I see a boy who lost his parents and made a terrible choice trying to get them back. I see the person whocounted me through soul fire and trained me in the Scorched Circles when everyone else thought I was hopeless. I see a man who told me he loved me and that I was the only thing that made him feel alive.
I love you, Jade,his voice rings through my mind—a memory from the Crown, before we burned Thad and Oliver’s bodies, when I was no better than he was.Always. I need you to believe that, and to never forget it, no matter what.
Those final three words repeat in my mind.
No matter what.
No matter if he’s the man I fell in love with or the monster I’m destined to destroy, Logan loves me, and he always will. That’s what he was trying to tell me then. He wanted me to know that when this inevitable moment happened, his love was always real.
As long as that token never gets destroyed.
No. I won’t let my mind go there. The tokenisthere, which means the person I love is there. I’m going to hold onto that, even if I can’t wrap my head around it yet. Because if I kill him now, I’m not just destroying a Revenant. I’m destroying the person who loves me enough to die by my hand rather than fight back.
“I’m not killing him.” The lightning dies as quickly as it came, leaving me so tired I could collapse on the deck. “Not today.”
“No.” Kieran whirls on me, and for a second I think he’s going to attack me instead. “Tempest chose you to destroy creatures like him, and you’re going to?—”
“I know what I was chosen for!” The words explode out of me, thunder cracking in their wake. “Do you think I don’t know? Do you think I haven’t been running that through my head on repeat since the Geryon opened his mouth and laid our secrets bare so we could destroy ourselves before getting a chance to sail through the Pillars?”
Kieran’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t respond.
“Logan isn’t attacking anyone.” I force myself to take a breath. “He’s not our enemy right now. I’m not going to execute someone who handed me the weapon and told me to swing, and that’s my call to make. You said it yourself—it’smycall.”
The silence that follows is suffocating.
Logan’s still on his knees, and when our eyes meet, a crack splits his composure. Hope, relief, and the desperate gratitude of someone who expected to die and didn’t.
“This isn’t forgiveness,” I say, needing him to understand that. “It’s not trust. It’s just a stay of execution.”
Logan nods once and rises, keeping his eyes on mine the entire time.
“I understand.”
“Do you?” I ask, and it comes out sharper than I mean it to. “Because I don’t. All I know is that killing you would destroy me, and I’m not going to become a murderer because a goddess decided I should be.”
Logan’s expression doesn’t change, although the rigid line of his shoulders eases, just barely.
Evie cuts in before he can speak.
“I don’t care about any of this.” Flames are dancing at her fingertips, her face streaked with tears that evaporate before they can fall. “I don’t care about Revenants or fate or whatever twisted relationship you two have. I just want to know about Oliver.”
My stomach drops, and she continues.
“You both know what happened to him. So someone’s going to tell me the truth, or I swear to every god in existence that I’ll burn this boat to ash and everyone on it.”
Logan and I look at each other, and I realize we’re about to break what’s left of Evie’s heart.
29
JADE
My nails pressinto the sigil on my palm as if pain can ground me and make everything okay, even though nothing will ever make any of this okay.
“It was Halloween night.” The words fall out of my mouth before I can stop them. “During the ball.”
Flames are flickering in Evie’s palms, and her chest is heaving, and all I can think isI’m about to destroy you, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
“Logan and I were in…” I hesitate. “There are these tunnels underneath Blaze Academy. Secret passages that connect different parts of the school. Logan showed them to me a few weeks ago—it’s how I snuck out for our training sessions. Anyway, we were down there when we heard screaming.”