All my life, I have tried to protect you.

The room blurs behind my curtain of tears. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. My words float in the air, quiet and lingering. Before me, Violetta sighs, and her eyelids drift closed again. She murmurs something else, but it is too quiet for me to hear. I squeeze her hand, unsure what I am holding on for, hoping she will wake and recognize me not in a fever dream, not in a nightmare, but here at her side. I stay long after her breathing turns even. Finally, when the lantern has burned so low that the tent is all but shrouded in darkness, I put my head down against her bed and listen to the wind howl until sleep finally, mercifully, claims me.

Maeve Jacqueline Kelly Corrigan

Maeve hears Lucent calling for her, but not until she reaches the entrance of her tent does Lucent finally catch up. Maeve turns around to face her former companion. In front of her tent, the queen’s personal guards place their hands on their swords’ hilts, their eyes following Lucent’s movements.

Maeve hesitates at the sight of Lucent’s grave eyes. They had ended their relationship a year ago, right along the white cliffs of Kenettra. She should let it be; after all, Lucent had told her then that she would not agree to Maeve’s wishes. I cannot be your mistress, she said. So why does Lucent look so desperate to speak to her now?

“Yes?” Maeve says coolly. The girl looks ill, and the sight of her wan skin and aching limbs twists Maeve’s heart.

Lucent hesitates, suddenly unsure of what to say. She runs a hand through her reddish-blond curls, then gives Maeve a hurried bow. “Are you well?” she finally asks, her voice faltering.

“Are you?” Maeve asks in return. “You look terrible, Lucent. Raffaele mentioned in his last letter that you were . . . suffering.”

Lucent shakes her head, as if her own health were not important. “I heard what happened,” she replies. “Tristan. Your brother.” She bows her head again, and the silence drags on.

Tristan. This was why Lucent is here. The weakness of her voice cracks Maeve’s resolve, and she finds herself softening toward Lucent in spite of herself. How she has missed Lucent’s presence, how quickly they had been separated again after the last battle against Adelina. She turns her head and nods once at her guards. With a clatter of armor, they step away and leave the two alone.

“He was never meant to stay this long,” Maeve replies after a while. She shakes away the image of her brother’s dead eyes, the mindless nature of his attack. It wasn’t him, of course. “He was already in the Underworld.”

Lucent winces and looks away.

“You still blame yourself,” Maeve continues, gentler now. “Even after all this time.”

Lucent says nothing, but Maeve knows what must be going through her head. It is the memory of the day Tristan had died, when the three of them had decided to go hunting together in the winter woods.

Tristan had shied away from the lake. He’d always been afraid of the water.

Maeve closes her eyes, and for an instant, she relives it again—Lucent, gangly and laughing, dragging Tristan forward through the brush to see the deer she had tracked for them; Tristan, staring at the deer that had made it halfway across the frozen lake; Maeve, kneeling into a silent crouch, lifting her bow to her line of sight. They had been too far away from the creature. One of us will have to get closer, Maeve had suggested. And Lucent had goaded and encouraged Tristan.

You should go.

They’d played on the ice often, never with incident. So, finally, Tristan grabbed his bow and arrow and crawled out onto the frozen lake on his elbows and stomach. They toyed with death a thousand times, but that day would have a different outcome. There was a hairline crack in the ice at a fateful spot. Perhaps the deer’s hooves were the cause, perhaps the weight of the creature made the ice unstable, or perhaps the winter was not cold enough, had not frozen the lake solidly. Perhaps it was the thousand times they’d cheated death, all returning for them.

They heard the crack of the ice an instant before Tristan fell through. It’d been just enough time for him to look back at them as he plunged into the water below their feet.

“It was my fault,” Maeve tells her. She reaches up, about to lift Lucent’s chin, then stops herself. Instead, she gives Lucent a sad smile. “I brought him back.” She looks down. “I cannot reach the Underworld any longer. The touch of it has leaked into the mortal world, its harsh presence like ice on my heart. My power will kill me, if I choose to use it again. Perhaps,” she adds in a low voice, “part of all this is my punishment for defying the goddess of Death.”

Lucent studies her for a long moment. Has it really been so long since they were young? Maeve wonders whether this will be the final journey they take together, whether Raffaele’s predictions will all come to pass, that they will enter the mountain paths and never return.

At last, Lucent bows. “If we must all go,” she says, eyes turned down, “then I’m honored to go with you, Your Majesty.” Then she turns to leave.

Maeve reaches out and grabs Lucent’s arm. “Stay,” she says.

Lucent freezes. Her eyes widen at the queen. Maeve can feel the heat rising to her cheeks, but she doesn’t look away. “Please,” she adds, quieter. “Just this time. Just this once.”

For a moment, it seems Lucent might turn away. The two remain fixed in place, neither willing to move first.

Then Lucent takes a step toward the queen. “Just this once,” she echoes.

All my wealth, power, territories, military might . . . none of it matters now. She has gone, and with her shall I go.