I hurtled toward the platform without a backward glance. My voice broke on Lou’s name. I remembered her. I remembered. The Doleur, the attic, the rooftop—the entire story she’d woven in the wooden cage. It’d all been true. It’d all been real.

I’ll find you again, I’d told her.

She’d taken the promise to heart. She hadn’t given up on me. Not when I’d insulted her, threatened her, envisioned a thousand different ways to kill her. I’d think of a thousand others to atone. I’d never leave her again. My voice gained strength. It gained hope. “Lou! LOU!”

She still didn’t answer. With the fire at last extinguished by Coco’s rain, the wreckage smoked gently. Diving into it, I tore through the charred boards, the ash, the remnants of the stake. Beau and Coco followed hot on my heels. “Where are you?” I asked under my breath, wresting aside plank after plank. “Come on. Where are you?”

Pale hands joined mine as I searched. Célie. Darker ones. Jean Luc. They met my gaze with determined expressions and terse nods. They didn’t falter, even as my own body shook. Please, please, please—

When a board to my right shifted, untouched, I wrenched it free. She had to be here. She had to be—

Lou exploded upward in a shower of light.

The Final Battle

Lou

Power flooded my limbs and lungs, and I burned not with fire, but light. It shone through my bloody chemise, through the wounds across my body, bursting outward in blinding rays of magic. Though Coco’s rain still fell thick and heavy around us, the drops didn’t soak me as the others—no, my skin and hair absorbed each one, and they healed me, strengthened me, soothed my aching heart. They tasted of hope. Of love.

I found her tearstained face amidst the wreckage, grinning and descending gently beside her.

She’d done it. Though the city still smoked around us, undulating softly—though she would always grieve for Ansel—the black fire had gone. She’d conquered it. She’d conquered herself.

Returning my grin, she clasped Beau’s hand and nodded.

“Lou.” Still crouched with a board in his hand, Reid looked up at me, his eyes brimming with tears. With love and relief and—and recognition. Awareness. It sparked between us like a living thing, as shining and bright as a pattern. He rose slowly to his feet. We stared at each other for a long moment.

“You found me,” I whispered.

“I promised.”