“I came because we’re bound,” I said. “We always have been. We can figure this out, okay? We just need to think. Just—help me think.”
“Cut my connection to the Circle,” he scoffed. His speech seemed to shift with every word, every syllable. Now he was Verrick; now Gideon; now both. “That’s what Iris told you? It’s not a connection, Audrey. The Circle is part of me. It made me what I am. It’s what allows my lungs to inflate and my heart to pump. Its power. The light that I took from it. You’ll have to unmake me if you want the light back. You’ll have to rip it right out.”
And that would kill him. Just as Iris had said.
“There has to be some other way,” I said.
He jumped to his feet, and with quick strides stood before me, grabbing my shoulders and letting his hands turn to talons. I felt them slice into me, breaking the skin.
“Perhaps I’ll just kill you,” he said.
“You won’t. You’re Gideon,” I replied. “And Gideon would never hurt me.”
“That’s what you want me to be. It’s not what I am.”
“That’s what you wanted to be,” I countered. “You wanted to be Kin.”
“You’re wasting time. If you want the light, you’ll have to take it. Do what you came here for.” His grip tightened painfully.
I told myself not to hesitate. I told myself that the city was dying all around us, that every second the Beneath was taking hold. Even now the people I loved were fighting, maybe dying.
But I loved Gideon, too. And love changed the rules.
I thought of Brooke Oliver, hunched in her house, afraid. Dying so that the Kin would be safe. I don’t know that the right choice was made, I heard Esther say. I do know that it was the same choice we have made throughout history, and that it is a choice we’re sure to make again.
I looked at Verrick. His eyes met mine. He didn’t release his hold on me. I could feel my blood oozing out, steaming in the icy air. But though the anger that wrapped him was still present, below it I sensed something else—a weariness, deeper than his rage, more potent than his hate.
He was going to let me kill him.
He wanted me to kill him.
He wanted to heal the corruption inside him, Shane had told me once, to leave the Beneath behind forever.…
My lips parted.
“You wanted to leave the Beneath behind,” I said.
He sneered at me. “Wouldn’t you?”
That was it, I thought.
It wasn’t his connection to the Circle that needed to be severed. It was his connection to the Beneath.
He needed to not be a Harrower.
He needed to be human. To be Kin, like he’d wanted all along.
The Old Race had done it. They’d crossed over. They’d taken human form, and then they’d left the rest of their power behind in the Circles. The Circles they’d built from their blood.
And the Circle itself had altered Verrick. It had made him into Gideon.
It just hadn’t finished the process.
I had done it before—I had released the Circle’s power. And now I would do the opposite. I would take it. But I wouldn’t keep it.
If the Circle’s power was what Gideon needed in order to be human, I would give it to him. All of it.
The Circle would die, but once the connection was severed, the Beneath would sleep again. And Gideon would live.
Slowly, I detached his hands from my arms, holding them in my own—those talons dripping with my blood, digging into my skin. His eyes met mine. I saw into them, into the ancient dark that moved behind them, into the wrath and corruption that ate at him. I saw the faces of the Guardians he’d killed, their bodies broken, their final sighs escaping. But I saw Gideon as well, a flicker, a hint of warmth within the chill.
I felt the connection to the Circle, a quiet burn. I reached out with instinct, with intuition, just as I had that night six months ago.
“What are you doing?” Gideon gasped.
“Just trust me,” I said.
Light gathered around us, rippling, rising, so bright I couldn’t see anything beyond Gideon’s face. With everything in me, I willed the light into him. With Knowing, with the speeding of my pulse and the fear that clenched my heart, with each breath I exhaled, with the last hope I held.
The light burned away the air between us. It seared my skin. Panic kicked into me, telling me that I was on fire, that those were real flames crawling up my flesh; the Circle was melting away my bones, and in another moment I’d be nothing but ash, blown away and lost in the swirling gray sky above us. But the moment passed, and then the light was shining and clean, and it didn’t burn at all, it was just light. It guttered, fading, as it wrapped about Gideon.
I felt my connection to the Circle break.
Verrick’s wrath began to recede. His rage abated. That malice that wormed within him was charred into cinders, nothing more than dust. The grief was soothed, the hunger fed.
He fell to his knees, and I fell with him.
His hands were still in mine. Warm, human hands now, not claws. When he looked up at me, his brown eyes were rich and clear. Gideon’s eyes. I couldn’t see the Beneath. The connection was severed. His corruption was healed.
He smiled at me.
I smiled back.
Knowing surged into me, quick impressions, memories we channeled between us: the day we’d met, the sunny classroom and the sound of footsteps, the opening door. Camping trips we’d taken, out in the country where the sky was thick with stars. I saw other images that lingered in his mind—the soar of a baseball overhead, the bright glossy sheen of Brooke’s hair. He was Gideon again, I thought. Just Gideon. My Gideon.
And then his hands released their grip.
He slumped to the ground.
I grabbed his arms, his shoulders, trying to lift him back up. The light was pooling around us once more, but this time it seemed to be spreading outward, away. Pulsing out in ribbons and waves. Leaving him.
He was reversing it. Sending the light of the Circle back.
But the light was what had made him, I thought frantically.
He would die without it.
“No!” Desperately, I reached out once more. But I was no longer connected to the Circle. I’d given the last of its light to him. I couldn’t call it back. I clutched at Gideon, wrapping my arms around him, holding him against me, trying to stop him. “You can’t,” I said.
“You gave the Circle to me,” he said, still smiling weakly. “It’s mine to give back.”
The light flooded away from him, out across the streets, the buildings, pushing back the gray of the sky and the harsh red glare of the stars.
“But I’m saving you,” I said.
His lips curved up in that crooked grin of his. “Maybe we’ll meet again.”
The last of the light fell away. I turned my face toward the horizon, where I could see it ripple beneath the blue, the faint glimmer of light of the Circle, throwing back the Beneath. The decay had vanished. There were no whispers, no low rasping hiss. The air was warm, untouched by rot. But Gideon was no longer there to breathe it. I rocked backward, closing my eyes.
That was how they found me a few minutes later, my arms still wrapped around Gideon, clutching his body against me.
Gideon was laid to rest on a sunny afternoon, beneath a sky so blue and clear it hurt to look at. He would have liked that, I thought; he wouldn’t have wanted rain.
His official cause of death had been heart failure. Mom and Leon had taken me from Gideon before his body had been found, so that there needn’t be explanations—but I wished there were some explanation I could offer. At the service, I sat on the pew with my own hands folded in my lap, listening to voices that didn’t connect. I felt distant, outside of myself. I could only think how strange it was to be there, in that big room that smelled of flowers and polished wood, noticing little details and not being able to point them out to him. I’d found myself searching the room, scanning faces. Remembering, finally, that he was there, at the front of the room. The dark wooden casket.