“You think I don’t want to believe Lou will be okay?” She shook her head in disgust. No—in pity. She pitied me. My teeth clenched until they ached. “That Nicholina will go easily, that Lou will wake up and smirk and ask for fucking sticky buns? You think I don’t want to pretend the past three months never happened? The past three years?” Her voice broke on the last, her facade finally splintering, but she didn’t cower. She didn’t look away. Even as fresh tears slipped down her cheeks, as every emotion shone clear in her eyes. Every unspoken fear. Her voice flattened as she continued. “You’re asking me to hope, Reid, but I can’t. I won’t. I’ve hoped too much and too long. Now I’m sick with it. And for what? My mother left, Ansel died, my aunt betrayed me. The person I love most in this world has been possessed.” She scoffed through her tears, through the smoke that curled from the sand, and lifted the vial to Lou’s lips. “Why should I hope?”

I seized her wrist to still the movement. Forced her to meet my eyes. “Because she’s the person you love most in this world.”

She stared at me over our hands. Her fingers tightened around the vial. “Let me go.”

“What are you doing?”

“Healing her.” She snatched her wrist back, wiping furiously at her tears. “Because apparently, I can’t heal myself. I’m sick with hope, but I can’t make it go away. It’s still here, even now. Poisoning me.” When she looked back at Lou, one of her tears dripped from her cheek to Lou’s throat. To Lou’s scar. Together, we watched—silent and anxious—as the tear sizzled against her skin, transforming the silver gash into something else entirely.

Into a vine of thorns and roses.

Delicate, intricate—still silver and raised on her skin—the scar looked less a disfigurement now. More a masterpiece.

And it was.

Behind us, Célie gasped. A small, wondrous sound. “Il n’y a pas de roses sans épines.”

There is no rose without a thorn.

Coco said nothing, staring at the scar with a frightfully blank expression. I hardly dared breathe. One blink. Two. When her eyes opened on the third, resolve had crystallized sharp and bright within them. I nearly wept. “My blood poisoned Lou because Nicholina has assumed control,” she said. “I can’t use it to heal her.” She lifted the vial once more. “We’ll use my aunt’s blood instead. It won’t evict Nicholina, but it’ll counteract the effects of mine. It’s powerful—more powerful than anything on this earth. It’s also rare. I nicked it from her tent at the blood camp.” She grinned then. A truly terrifying grin. “I’m sure she won’t mind.”