Mara’s Penitent moved faster: a stone streak, and Jace barely had time to scream. She caught his wrist and yanked him off his feet. He twisted there, and did not speak—glared, instead, at Kai, at Ms. Kevarian, at Claude.

No one spoke.

Stone ground on stone, and the Penitent split open; green-tipped crystals gleamed inside, and within them, Mara, her eyes open.

Kai ran to her, and caught her as she fell. She was lighter than Kai would have guessed, and feverish. Her eyes met Kai’s, clouded, unfocused. She hadn’t used them in days. And what she’d seen in the meantime she didn’t want to remember.

“Hey,” Kai said, and held her closer. “Hey.”

Mara’s hands found Kai’s shoulders, squeezed. “Kai. It was in my head. It was my head.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” Her voice broke. She swallowed, hard.

The Penitent moved again, on its own. Granite jaws closed around Jace, and they were alone, on the shores of the pool: Kai, and Mara, and Claude, and Ms. Kevarian.

Chapter 61

61

Ms. Kevarian left first, fading like a ghost in a child’s story, from the feet up until only a suggestion of form remained—then gone. Next Mara collapsed, convulsed, and Kai held her and shouted to Claude to get help, which he did; acolytes and lesser functionaries arrived soon after with a gurney, and though Mara clutched at Kai as they wheeled her away, Kai had to let her go.

Inside the statue, Jace began to weep.

Which left Claude and Kai. He approached her, by the pool, and together they gazed down into the black. They did not look at each other, and he did not touch her.

“They’ll make you a high priest now, I bet.”

“If only to find some way to clip my wings.”

“They put you in a Penitent,” he said, and seemed as though he might have said something else.

“You would have put me back.”

“Kai.”

“Don’t start. You would have.”

“You don’t have any idea what you risked, back there, with the Craftswoman. If I hadn’t—”

“I knew you would. That’s the thing. You have a duty. Or a duty has you.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re so caught in its grip you don’t see what happened here. Jace couldn’t have kept this up forever. There’s been a crossbow to this island’s head for a while, and he kept tightening his finger on the trigger. If I didn’t threaten to pull it now, he would have slipped up someday, and then there’d be no easy fix, no way to pretend this was all him.”

“It wasn’t?”