Libby spun, or tried to. She felt her pulse suspend again, a thing that didn’t belong. Just to exist in the room was terrible enough, because she wasn’t meant to be there. There was no way to explain the sensation; only to feel it as a lack, an absence. She suffered it, her alienness, with the way her own lungs didn’t want to expand.
If she had caught it sooner she could have stopped it. If she knew where to find its source now, she could drag it to a halt. This was the trouble with her, a weakness she would never have known she had if she had never met Tristan. She could have all the power in the world, enough to rid the global population twice over, and still, she couldn’t fight something if she couldn’t see clearly what it was.
But it wasn’t total emptiness. Distantly, she could hear something.
Do you really even know what you’ve said yes to?
An arm wrapped around her waist, dragging her backwards, and the air in the room rushed back into her lungs at the moment she finally found the voice to scream.
TRISTAN
HE ALMOST DIDN’T HEAR HER over the sound of his blood rushing, but it had been enough to make Callum blink. Enough for him to glance down at the knife in his hand and toss it away after looking at Tristan with visible disgust.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” he said, but Tristan’s adrenaline said otherwise. The knowledge of Callum’s face unmasked said otherwise. The reality of their circumstances said, quite firmly, otherwise. Tristan’s muscles ached, his entire body slow to reconvene its usual rituals of survival.
How would Caesar have made Brutus pay if he had lived?
“I’m sorry.” The words left Tristan’s mouth numbly, unevenly.
“Apology accepted,” said Callum, his voice cool and unaltered. “Forgiveness, however, declined.”
The red light in the corner flashed, attracting both their attention.
“No one could have gotten through the vacuum,” said Callum. “It’s nothing.”
“Is it?” Tristan’s breath had yet to slow. “That’s not what it sounds like.”
“No.” Callum’s brow furrowed slightly. “No,” he agreed, “it doesn’t sound like that.”
He rose to his feet, exiting the dining room, and Tristan glanced at the discarded knife before shuddering, stumbling upright in Callum’s wake.
Callum’s stride was long and surprisingly urgent as Tristan followed him up the stairs.
“What is it?”
“Someone’s here,” said Callum without pausing. “Someone’s in the house.”
“No shit,” came Parisa’s voice around the corner. She was hurrying after them from somewhere else in the house, lovely and disorderly and wearing a man’s shirt over bare legs.
Tristan arched a brow in response to her appearance, and she gave him a silencing glare.
“I don’t understand how it happened,” she said. “The house’s sentience usually alerts me when someone tries to enter. I see he’s still alive.”
It took Tristan a moment to register that the last line had been said in his thoughts.
“Obviously,” he mumbled, and Callum’s eyes slid to his. Tristan didn’t have to look to know that Callum had understood perfectly well what Parisa had asked him, even without words. Even without magic, Callum knew.
He knew they had agreed on him to die, and now none of them would ever be forgiven.
They rounded the gallery corner to the rooms. Nico was forcing open the door to Libby’s bedroom, Reina at his heels.
“Did you—”
“No,” Reina answered Parisa blandly. “I heard nothing.”
“Who could have—”
There was a blast of something inconceivable from Nico’s palm as Tristan thought for the thousandth time, my god—marveling at the power they had, Libby and Nico; individually and apart.
Imagine having something so wild in your bloodstream. Imagine feeling something, anything, and seeing it manifest without the blink of an eye. Even at Tristan’s angriest he was nothing, only of any use to anyone when he was thinking clearly, seeing sense. No bombs exploded at the whims of his frustration, which made him ordinary. It made him normal; something he had tried his whole life not to be.
It was Nico who entered the room first, letting out a sound like a wounded dog in answer to the fading sound of Libby’s scream. The bitterness on Tristan’s tongue at the sound, however mystifying and incongruous it was to feel, was envy, because of course. Of course one pseudo-twin would suffer the other’s pain, the two of them in orbit to something Tristan would never grasp or understand. It was the same reaction as always: brittle unsurprise.