“But I did the surgery,” I insisted. “I did everything right.”
“Oh, Hazel,” Merrick said. I’d never heard him so sad before. “You were flawless. But some things cannot be fixed. You saw the changes in him already. The burst of anger, the surprising rage. Think of what that rage is capable of. Think of how many people he can hurt.”
The shattered window echoed through my mind. Cosmos’s yelp of fear. The memory of Kieron’s hands wrapped painfully tight around my wrists.
“Isn’t there something I could do to change it? If we retreat, if we go somewhere far from others? I can take care of him and keep him from hurting anyone else, and that will change everything, won’tit?”
Merrick shook his head. “He’d burn through your candles without a second thought. He wouldn’t mean to, but he’d hurt you, Hazel. And he’d go on to hurt so many others. More than you could ever treat, more than you could ever save.”
“How do you know all this?” It was a foolish question. He was a god. He did not operate on linear time. He knew every possible future there was, could see them shift as we mortals wandered about in darkness, making dozens of decisions that altered every second of the yet-to-be.
Merrick only sighed.
I remembered the terrible thought that had come to me just moments before I began the surgery. An echo of it rang through me now, sneaking its treachery up my throat to wait on my tongue until I was stupid enough to speak it aloud. “And you…you’re not behind all this?”
Merrick’s eyes flashed. “How could you think that?”
“It’s just…with this…with all of this…you get exactly what you want.” I wanted to throw the accusation with anger and force, but it was too sad for me to speak it any louder than a whisper. “You get what you want and I get nothing.”
Merrick took a step closer but stopped short of touching me. “This is not what I want. I don’t want to see you in pain. I’d never want that.” He reached out, and his fingers danced before me as if he were too scared to bridge the final gap. “Hazel, you are my daughter. My heart breaks when yours aches. If there were a way to spare you this pain, I would. But I can’t. I’m so sorry.”
“There are limits, even for gods,” I muttered, echoing his earlier sentiment.
Miserably, he nodded.
I dared to glance back toward Kieron’s candle. “I can’t do this,” I admitted. “I’ve killed so many others, just like the deathshead wanted. Please don’t ask me to do this.”
My plea broke his spell of stasis, and Merrick held out his arms.
I fell into them, letting myself be folded away in his embrace, and I cried. I cried great fat tears of grief and pain. For Kieron. For our future. For my future, which I was only now beginning to understand. I cried until I no longer had any tears within me and felt dry and miserable.
“Three lifetimes, Hazel,” Merrick whispered into the top of myhead. “Remember that. This moment hurts, and I’m sorry, but it’s only a moment. Only one tiny moment.”
I broke away from him, stumbling down the rows of candles to find Kieron’s.
His wax had covered the entire table now, sinking other candles into its liquid heat. I tried to pick them up, tried to free them from being devoured, but it burned at my fingers, leaving angry red welts.
“Every choice we make alters the present and the future,” Merrick said, coming up behind me. “By choosing to operate on him, by choosing to save him, you’ve put all these lives in jeopardy. Perhaps it won’t be today, but they will eventually meet their ends far sooner than they should.”
“I only thought I was helping,” I murmured. “I didn’t know.”
With a twist of his fingers, he plucked a slender piece of silver from midair. “You do now,” he said, offering the trinket to me. “And it’s what you do now—in this moment—that matters.”
When placed in my hands, the snuffer felt unnaturally warm, as though it had just come out of the forge, newly hammered and shining. Turning back to the bank of lights, I watched as Kieron’s flame danced at the top of its wick, writhing and reaching out toward me. Begging for me to leave it be, to not listen to Merrick, to let it burn.
I thought back to Kieron, lying spread out across my worktable, sleeping and warm and whole.
Would he feel this?
I glanced at the other candles, weakened and wilting, their lives already altered because of me. I couldn’t bear to hurt them any further.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered as I brought the little dome down upon the light, dousing it, Kieron’s life, and all my earnest hopes in one fell swoop.
Chapter 20
Pink starlight filtered through thelittle window above my kitchen sink.
I scrunched my eyes closed and flipped over, snuggling deeper into my bedsheets, wishing I could slip back into my dream.
