“You were born to be immortal, Louise.” Morgane lifted her hands, pouring her rage, her frustration, her guilt into another bout of fire. I rolled to avoid it—squashing the last of the spiders—and seized the lion’s skin as a shield. “Though destined to die, your name would have lived forever. We could have written history together, the two of us. You may scorn me now, you may hate me always, but I gave everything—I sacrificed everything—for you. For love.”

Feeding strength to the fur through another pattern, I crouched lower. The grass beneath her feet ignited instead. She leapt away from it with a hiss. “You cannot imagine the grief of your birth. Even you cannot imagine the bitterness I felt. I should have killed you then. I’d even lifted the knife, prepared to plunge it into your newborn heart, but you—you clasped my finger. With the whole of your fist, you clutched me, blinking those sightless eyes. So peaceful. So content. I couldn’t do it. In a single moment, you softened my heart.” Her flames subsided abruptly. “I failed our people that day. It took sixteen years to harden myself again. Even then, I would have gifted you everything. I would have gifted you greatness.”

“I didn’t want greatness.” Casting my shield aside, I pushed to my feet at last. Her heart might’ve softened for a newborn babe, but she hadn’t ever loved me—not me, not truly, not the person. She’d loved the idea of me. The idea of greatness, of salvation. I’d mistaken her attention for the genuine thing. I hadn’t known what real love looked like then. I glanced across the chasm to Reid, Coco, and Beau, who stood hand in hand at the edge, pale and silent.

I knew what it looked like now—both love and grief. Two sides of the same wretched coin. “I only wanted you.”

When I clenched my fist, exhaling hard, my grief ruptured into a storm wind: grief for the mother she could’ve been, grief for the good moments, for the bad moments, for all the moments in between. Grief for the mother I had lost, truly, long before this one.

The wind blasted her backward, but she twisted midair, and the momentum carried her closer to Célie. Wicked intent flared in Morgane’s eyes. Before I could stop her, she jerked her fingers, and Célie skidded from the blood witches as if pulled by an invisible rope. Morgane caught her. She used her body as a shield, pressing her knife to Célie’s breastbone. “Foolish child. How many times must I tell you? You cannot defeat me. You cannot hope to triumph. Once upon a time, you could’ve been immortal, but now, your name will rot with your corpse—”

She broke off inexplicably, her mouth falling open in a comical O.