They’d come out like a reflex, something to say so Wesley didn’t get the last word or convince himself he was the only awful person in the realms. But by the Many Gods, Tavia felt those words crawl across her skin like insects, biting down hard.

She wasn’t okay.

She hadn’t been okay for a long time.

Not since her mother died and not since Wesley had been taken from her.

And now, with the knowledge that his little sister was going to kill her. It was just another thing piling up on the unsteady walls she had built around herself, and with each new brick an old one crumbled.

Tavia had always said she didn’t believe in fate or destiny. They were just excuses for people who didn’t have the conviction to make their own choices. And yet here she was, with her life on the line, and she didn’t know what she could do to stop it. She couldn’t tell Wesley and take his focus from the war and to her own life, which she knew that he would in an instant.

She could only wait to die.

“I’m not okay,” Tavia said again, picking up her cards and trying to keep her focus intently on them. “And maybe I’m not turned out yet.”

“I hope that isn’t true,” Wesley said. “I hope this is who you are forever.”

Tavia glanced back at him, and she wanted so badly in that moment to tell him everything, but the way Wesley looked at her, like she was so shiny and new, like there was a light in her that never dimmed, trapped the words in her throat.

He hadn’t looked at her like that since that time in the tree house. At least not without turning away or making some kind of quip.

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t save you from Ashwood,” Tavia said. “I’m sorry you had to deal with all of that on your own.”

Wesley painted an easy smile on his face. “Quit apologizing,” he said. “It was just another day at the office.”

Tavia threw down her cards and stood up from the table with a disbelieving sigh.

“Stop messing around,” she said. “Can’t you be serious for once? You could have died.”

Wesley rolled his eyes, as though that was the most dramatic thing he had heard all day. “I don’t die,” he said.

It only made her angrier.

Wesley was stupid to believe that Ashwood’s twisted obsession with him made him indispensable. He was reckless and arrogant enough that someday someone was going to kill him and he wouldn’t even see it coming until the bullet landed between his eyes.

Wesley Thornton Walcott was not invincible.

He was just a boy.