A deafening silence fell between them.

Ludivine smiled gently. “You understand, then, what you must do. You reawakened his power when your love for him was nearing its peak. Once when you healed Remy. Then again during your time at Willow. The world’s magic is dead, Eliana, the empirium wrenched and distant. Only through you does it live again. And with your trust in Simon lost, beneath the iron press of your angry will, his power has become dormant once more, and unreliable, as you have seen. You must truly accept him into your heart once more, allow him to find his power again, if there is to be any hope of doing what we must.”

Eliana shook her head. She found her chair and sank slowly onto it, her knees suddenly unsteady. “How can I? After what he’s done, after what he’s seen and heard…” She closed her eyes, struggling to find her voice. “I could say, ‘I forgive you’ until my throat bled, but it wouldn’t be true, even knowing what you’ve done to him.”

“I didn’t say forgive. I said accept.”

Hearing Ludivine kneel before her, Eliana opened her eyes and stared at her through a simmering field of hate.

“You could choose not to,” said Ludivine kindly, considering her. “You could continue to refuse him his power. We could sit in these rooms waiting for Corien to recover from the blightblade and find us. He’ll kill all of us, including Simon, and me, and you, perhaps, because he has very little sanity left now, and then this will all have been for nothing. Everything you’ve endured. Every moment Simon spent sobbing at my feet as I dissected his mind. I know that’s not what you want to happen.”

Eliana looked away, her shoulders aching under a terrible new weight. Arguing with Ludivine would be futile. She knew what Eliana thought as surely as she herself did.

“And if we do this,” she said quietly, “what will happen to everyone living now? Remy and Navi, everyone I’ve ever known and loved?”

“They will no longer exist. They will never have existed. At least not as they are now. Remy may still be born someday to Rozen and Ioseph Ferracora, but he will not be the Remy you know, not entirely. Nor will Rozen or Ioseph, nor even the city of Orline. If you succeed in convincing Rielle to kill Corien, then the world will begin again at his death. There will be peace. She will repair the Gate, and the angels will remain sealed in the Deep.”

They will never have existed. Eliana, numb with horror, remembered her discussions about this very thing with Simon. While he practiced threading in Willow’s gardens, they had spoken of altered futures, lives snuffed out. She had not truly been able to fathom the concept then, and now was no different. It was too colossal, too terrible. Navi, Patrik, Hob. Remy. Her Remy. All of them changed, or maybe not even born. Maybe alive, maybe not. Maybe themselves, maybe not. A whole world of people, blinked out of existence.

Her mouth went dry, her insides a plunging hot swoop of revulsion. She felt somehow dislodged, as if Ludivine’s words had shaken loose her deepest foundations. She stared at this golden-haired angel before her but found no comfort in that steely black gaze.

Then Ludivine rose and stepped back from Eliana’s chair, her expression shifting. From down the hallway came sounds of a brief struggle. Running footsteps approached, and a woman with warm brown skin and tangled black hair that fell to her shoulders stopped abruptly at the door. Her clothes were filthy, streaked with blood and grime.

Eliana’s shock bloomed swiftly, sweeping her mind clean. Her voice was a soft puff of air. “Navi?”

Navi let out a strangled cry, then rushed for Eliana and pulled her into a crushing embrace. Eliana clutched her shoulders, held her fast. Navi pressed her face into Eliana’s neck, saying things Eliana could barely hear, for there was a ringing in her ears, as if her joy were a struck bell.

She looked past Navi’s shoulder to where Ludivine stood pale and still in the shadows.

“Is this a trick?” Eliana whispered.

No, little one, Ludivine replied. Her black eyes glittered in the candlelight.

Navi pulled away, her cheeks wet with tears. She brushed Eliana’s hair behind her ears, looking ready to say a thousand things. How lovely Navi was, even with the blood drying on her arms, the smell of death clinging to her. Bright blue drops spattered her collar. Eliana held Navi’s face in her hands, and still she couldn’t speak. She shook her head, laughed a little, tried to pull her friend close once more.

But Navi stepped back, her hands warm around Eliana’s own. “Zahra is here. I think she’s been waiting to see you before she…”

Navi’s voice trailed off. She looked back into the hallway. Beyond her was a woman with chin-length white hair and ruddy freckled skin. Eliana blinked, her mind racing to catch up with everything she saw. Patrik was there, and Hob too, and Navi’s brother, Malik, and dozens of others Eliana didn’t recognize.

And drifting slowly toward the door was a figure faint and gray. Hair streaming like ripples of wind across water, eyes dark and flickering. An echo of the angel she had once been, drawn in thin shadows.

“Zahra,” Eliana whispered, reaching for her. At that single word, Zahra cried out softly, faded, and then reappeared only to float slowly to the ground.

Eliana knelt to meet her. Her hands hovered over what she could see of Zahra’s shrinking form. She had diminished to the size of a child. The shifting lines of her body were like curls of fading smoke.

“What happened, Zahra?”

“My queen,” Zahra mumbled. A thin hand of shadow moved toward Eliana’s cheek. “My queen, my queen. There you are.”

Navi knelt beside them, her hazel eyes shining. “She was wonderful, Eliana. She hid our ship for the entire journey across the ocean. She guided us through the Sea of Silarra, helped us elude dozens of imperial warships. She shielded us on the road to Elysium, through the city, and down here to you. The Prophet…” Navi glanced at Ludivine, her brow furrowed. “The Prophet guided her to you. All of us survived the journey. One hundred and seven of us, alive and well thanks to her.”

“Zahra, you marvel, how did you manage such a thing?” Eliana drew a picture in her mind: the two of them embracing, Zahra in her angelic form, as Eliana had seen in that vision so long ago. Rich brown skin, white hair falling like spider-silk to her hips. Platinum armor bright with sunlight, gossamer wings streaming like rivers of starlit shadow from her back.

But before she could send Zahra the image, Ludivine stopped her with a gentle press in her mind. She cannot bear it, Eliana. Her mind is losing cohesion from so much strain. Be gentle.

Eliana stared at the floor, where only the faintest black wisps marked Zahra’s unraveling. The vague dark print of her eyes were but a suggestion of shadow on the stone. Eliana shook her head, her throat aching. Her tears washed away all color from the world.

“Zahra, why did you do this?” she whispered.