He glances at me, his ancient dark eyes serious. “I suppose. There are people out there who might be able to help with that; descendants of magical bloodlines. But that would require much research and time, and I’m afraid I don’t have the latter.”
“But I do.” I jut my chin out, squeezing his hand even tighter. “I’ll find out how to break the curse.”
He smiles at me, heartbreakingly gentle. “But that is of no use to us if I cannot be summoned again.”
“The summoning spell,” I mumble, looking back up at the treacherous sky, turning from black to blue so quickly. “I wish I could remember what I did wrong with the spell.” I smile wanly at him. “Or what I did very right.”
He leans forward with a sudden urgency to brush his lips against mine. “I can feel my connection to this world breaking,” he breathes, looking into my eyes. Lines of sadness are etched around his mouth. “Goodbye, Nia.”
“Wait,” I say, reaching a hand up to his cheek. “Don’t go. Not ye—”
But Jax has disappeared like a wisp of smoke into the ether. And I’m left staring at an empty chair in the bleak gray light of dawn.
I sit there, hunched over in bone-deep pain, for a good twenty minutes. Then I stumble to my bed, where the sweatshirt I was wearing when I first summoned Jax lies in a pile. I curl my body around it; it still smells a little like him. After burying my face in the fabric, I inhale deeply, my hands clutching it to me. Tears flow down my face, a warm waterfall I can’t stop. It feels like I’ve lost something vital, some part of me that can never be replaced. Somehow I know I’ll never be the same. The Nia who went to the party is not the one who returned home.
I wipe my face with the sweatshirt, frowning when I feel something hard press into my skin. Sitting up, I reach into the pocket of the shirt—and pull out the jasper stone Jax gave me when he first appeared. It glows softly in the palm of my hand.
You can use that stone to see any moment in the past, Jax had said.
At the time, I’d laughed it off. But now I can think of one very precise moment I want to view again: the moment I butchered Michaela’s spell and invoked the summoning spell instead.
Jax and I both thought that mistake was lost forever, but what if I use the stone to listen to exactly what I said, write down my exact words (mistake included), and then just do the spell again? I still have roses and candles. I don’t need the blood moon—that was for Michaela’s spell. And when Jax returns, we can look for the antidote to the banishment curse. I might have to summon him over and over again every time his twenty-four hours with me expires, but I would do that for the rest of my life. I would do that without complaint until he can be here with me forever.
Grinning, I hop off the bed and race to get another rose from the greenhouse. My heart sings with every step.
There’s a tall figure at my doorway, indigo eyes glittering like polished stone.
“Hello,” Jax says, and I leap into his arms.
Destin, I think as I inhale the sweet scent of his skin. This is forever.
Katrine and Rowan’s Exit Interview
bySARAH GAILEY
KATRINE: I DON’Tunderstand why you can’t interview us together.
Martre: The idea is to get both of your perspectives independently. You might remember things differently.
Katrine: I don’t see how. We were both there for all of it. Which is more than I can say for you.
Martre: Maybe we should start with the wreck of theGravarius V? You certainly experiencedthatdifferently.
Katrine: Okay, sure. Fine. Let’s start with the shipwreck.
I saw it from shore, from the rocky banks where the wind blows cruel. Idryss always brought us all out to watch the water when the weather was ugly. She said it was important for us to see what might come for us, good and bad alike. We were well provided for, the island being what it is, and aftera storm, all kinds of things would wash up. Trials and treasures. New clothes, jewelry, barrels of food we couldn’t have made ourselves. Wine, once, dark as the sea.
But also sailors.
You just never know what might come ashore. Idryss always said that it was safest for us to stand together. Idryss said a lot of things. I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about her right now.
Rowan: It was a sea devil that got us. It showed up out of the clear blue sky, just dropped on our heads. I’d never seen one that big. In fairness, I’d only been at sea for a year or so, since I ran away from home on my fifteenth birthday. The others would tell me later that none of them had ever seen one that big either, though, so I think it’s safe to say it was giant. A huge spout of water, maybe twice as tall as the mast and faster than you’d believe. It was just there all of a sudden, like the finger of an angry god pointing at us, and then there was thiscrack. I thought it was thunder at first, but then I realized it couldn’t have been thunder because there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Come to think of it, I’m not sure where the sea devil came from—
Martre: So what was it, then, if not thunder? The cracking noise?
Rowan: Oh, that was the ship breaking in half. The spout just tore through us and then we were in the water. I’d never seen anything like it. I know I said that already, but... well, Ihadn’t. Cracked us right down the middle, like when you break a stick over your knee for kindling. So then we werein the water, ship gone, nothing to cling to but barrels and flotsam. The water was pretty warm, but even warm water is bad to find yourself stranded in, you know?
Good news was, that afternoon we’d sighted land. We could still see it on the horizon so we started swimming. I made it to shore just as the sun was going down.
