“I was too kind to him before,” Cress muses. “A traitor deserves a traitor’s death. Drawn and quartered, head on a pike.”

I hear her, but I’m not really listening. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot something glint in the moonlight—just a faint shimmer that I wouldn’t see if I weren’t looking for it. There—at another balcony high above the garden. Too high to be of any threat.

I frown, trying to suss out what Heron is doing.

“Well?” Cress asks, forcing my attention back to her. “What will it be, Thora? Time is up.”

The air around me stirs, nudging me forward, but the branches of the tree at the center of the garden stay still. With a thudding heart and eyes fixed on that high balcony, I step toward the railing, bracing my hands on the railing on either side of my body.

“Thora?” Cress presses, her voice sharp.

The wind presses harder at my back and I swallow, understanding what Heron wants me to do. A leap of faith in the most literal sense.

I look over my shoulder at Crescentia. “Freedom,” I tell her. “That’s what I choose. Freedom for myself and every other Astrean.”

Before she can reply, I lift myself over the railing and jump.

For an instant, I am in free fall, plummeting down into a crowd of screaming Astreans, but then a gust of wind catches me, lifting me up and into the branches of the lone skeletal tree. I scrabble at the branches, then hold on tightly and find a decent footing on one of the thicker branches, near to the trunk.

“Attack!” Cress screams, her voice an earsplitting screech.

Her wraiths waste no time, throwing the orbs of velastra in what looks like a single synchronized movement into the crowd below, but the globes don’t hit the stones of the courtyard. They don’t break. Instead they hover in the air for a moment before sailing high above, even higher than the highest towers of the palace, where they break, too far away to hurt anyone.

Cress lets out a frustrated shriek that rings in my ears. “Fire!” she screams at the wraiths. “Burn them all!”

The wraiths are quick to obey, and fire begins to rain down from above, one ball of flame after another, never ending, but those don’t hit, either. They extinguish just above the heads of the people. Heron’s wind, I realize.

“Keep going,” Cress cries out. “It can’t hold forever.”

My stomach sinks as I realize that she’s right—even Heron has his limits, and it is much harder to hold a shield of wind over the entire garden than to throw fireballs. I summon my own flame, aiming it at Cress, only to realize that the shield has to work both ways—I can’t break it any easier than the wraiths can.

Something flickers in the air beside me, and the branch I’m clinging to dips with more weight before Blaise fades into view, his eyes alight and his mouth drawn into a tight line.

“He can’t hold it,” I say.

Blaise doesn’t deny it, but his eyes dart away. “No,” he says. “Get to the ground and stay there. Keep everyone calm, no matter what.”

I shake my head, struggling to make sense of his words, what he has planned.

“What are you—”

He doesn’t answer. Instead he opens his clenched hand to reveal a single Earth Gem the size of his palm, already glowing and pulsing with life.

Understanding dawns on me, not entire, but enough.

“Blaise, no,” I say, my voice rising.

He smiles at me then, a sad but determined smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“I’ll see you in the After one day, Theo. Don’t let it be for a long time yet.”

I’m frozen in place as he kisses my cheek, his mouth hot against my skin, and then he leaves me, dropping down to the ground below, feet landing on the roots of this tree that has been dead for almost a decade.

I find my body again, moving automatically and without any thought but one: I have to follow him.

It’s harder for me to scale down the tree branches, but a moment later, my feet hit the ground, a shock going up through my legs, but I barely feel it. People press in closely all around, panicked and shouting and crying, but all I’m really aware of is Blaise and the glowing gem clutched tightly in his white-knuckled grip.

“Blaise,” I say, grabbing his arm and wrenching it off the tree trunk. “Stop. There has to be another way.”

Calmly, Blaise places his other hand on the tree, looking at me with resolute eyes. “There isn’t,” he says. “Go—keep the crowd calm. I don’t want you to see it.”

I shake my head, squeezing his hand tighter. “If you’re going to sacrifice yourself, you aren’t going to do it alone,” I tell him, my voice cracking. “I won’t let you die alone.”

For an instant, he looks like he wants to argue, but I know he doesn’t want that, either. He nods once, his eyes glancing away. He passes me his sword, closing my hands over the hilt. “When it starts—when I’ve done all I can and I’ve lost control of it—stop me before I start hurting our own people. Before I hurt you.”

Numb, I shake my head. “I can’t do that.”

“Of course you can,” Blaise says with a bitter smile. “For Astrea.”

“You are always fighting for Astrea, above all else.”

Suddenly I hate him for those words, for the brutality of them, the absoluteness, the cold ignoble truth. I hate him for understanding what that sentiment meant, long before I understood myself.

“For Astrea,” I reply, but the voice doesn’t feel like mine.

“Blaise!” Heron shouts from the balcony above. “I can’t hold it much longer!”

“It’s time,” Blaise says. He releases my hands and places his on the trunk of the dead tree, taking a deep breath.

I throw my arms around him and hold him as tight as I can. I feel the thrum of power reverberate through his body, turning his skin scorching hot, too hot, but I don’t let go. I hold him tighter, as if by holding him I can somehow protect him, like he has so often protected me.

The dead tree responds to his touch, stretching its branches, waking up. With my cheek pressed against his chest, listening to the erratic beat of his heart, I look up, watching in wonder as the branches don’t just grow larger—they sprout leaves. They unfurl quickly, spreading wider and wider until the whole of the garden is underneath the canopy.

It’s terrible and beautiful and I can’t look away.

The first fireball hits the leaves with a sizzle, but it doesn’t break through. Blaise’s power holds the canopy, firm and unyielding. His brow is furrowed in concentration, but he isn’t losing control. He’s all right.

For one beautiful moment, I think he’ll survive this in one piece. All he has to do is hold one tree in place—he can do that. But then he opens his eyes and looks at me, and I realize there’s more left to do. It isn’t enough to protect the garden; he needs to extinguish the threat above—Cress and her wraiths.

The ground quakes beneath my feet, and screams go up from the slaves around us. They clutch one another and I clutch Blaise.

The wall of the palace, visible over his shoulder, splits, a crack running up the side of it, toward the window where I know one of the wraiths stands. There’s a crack, the unmistakable sound of stone crumbling, before a scream pierces the air. It’s the kind of scream that can only precede death.

“What are you doing?” I ask Blaise, unable to see anything above the thick branches.

Another tremor goes through the ground, another part of the palace crumbling, another scream.

“Earthquakes,” Blaise says between gritted teeth. “Contained, but strong enough to bring the wraiths down, to drag them into the earth and close it over them again.”

I imagine it, each wraith falling into rubble, being buried by more of it. None of it falls into the garden itself, which I imagine is more of Blaise’s gift, or maybe Heron’s.

A gust of wind whips through the garden and beyond, in tandem with another earthquake, the combined forces spreading the destruction. More screams, more deaths.

“I’m scared, Theo,” Blaise tells me, his eyes finding mine. His voice cracks, and suddenly he sounds so young again, like the child I grew up with.

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “You’ve done enough. You can stop now.”

But the rain of fire hasn’t stopped. There are wraiths still out there, and if he stops, innocent people will be hurt. He knows this as well as I do, his eyes determined and intense and also unmistakably afraid. He shakes his head. “It’s time.”

I can’t talk him out of this. I can’t tell him to hold back. So I don’t try to—not now, at the end of it. Instead I place the tip of the sword where his heart is, ready for when the time comes.