“Wait,” I blurted out, remembering the sorrow in his eyes when he had suggested the curse. He’d used it before. Maybe he knew how to justify it. “Don’t go,” I whispered.

Slowly he turned. Heartache showed on his pinched brow. For me? I wondered. For his part in helping me lose my innocence? The question of whether I’d use black magic to save those I loved had been answered, and I didn’t know how to feel about it.

I watched Pierce’s grace as he came back and sat across from me, perched on the edge of the chair with the coffee table between us. Exhaling, he put his elbows on his knees and looked at his hand, burnt and sore. I could smell the garden on him. It mixed with his redwood-witch smell, strong for just having done high magic—black magic.

“Is everyone okay?” I asked, guilty for thinking only of myself. “Bis? Jenks’s kids?”

Pierce tossed the hair from his eyes. “Three of Jenks’s kids were savaged but will mend. Jenks is death on as a strategist.”

I put my feet on the floor and heaved to a stand, tired. “I should see if I can help,” I said, even as I dreaded going back out there.

Pierce rose with me. “They’re fine,” he said, taking my fingers with his unburnt hand to give his words more strength. “It’s you I’m powerful worried about.”

The concern in his eyes caused my eyes to well. Damn it, I wasn’t going to cry—even if I’d almost wiped out an entire clan of people. Pierce reached out, and I drew back. I needed something, but not that. I didn’t deserve the comfort of another person. And not him. It would be too easy, and it might not be real.

Pierce’s hand dropped, his expression becoming even more concerned as he saw my fear. “Talk to me,” he said simply.

That … I could do, and I looked at him miserably as the band around my chest tightened. He was probably the only person who might understand. “I don’t know anything anymore,” I whispered. “I almost killed them. Pierce, what am I doing? I am exactly what they call me. A black witch. Maybe I should just go with it. Go hide in the ever-after with Al. Leave my friends …” The tears started to well again. Leaving was not what I wanted.