“You didn’t.” Her gaze caught on his face, half turned to her. He’d always been handsome, that much she could admit even if it had irritated her. “I’m not … saying that I was in a good place. Or that I would’ve done it in other circumstances, but it was my choice.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “You liked me because you didn’t need to try to be good while you were with me. Because you didn’t have to worry about hurting me or disappointing me.”

He was right, of course. “I did hurt you, though,” she said, gazing up at the bookshelf instead of at him. “I tried to convince myself I couldn’t, but the truth is I knew exactly how to hurt you, and I did it. When I said that … about you not knowing how to love someone … I was really talking about myself.”

When she looked back at him, his expression was mystified. “You love more fiercely than anyone I’ve ever known.”

“No,” she said. “It isn’t love. Or—if it is, it’s a selfish love. Look at what it’s brought. Look at everything I’ve done.”

She thought of Anton, sobbing into her shoulder. Of the tense line of Jude’s shoulders when he’d told them about the Sacred Word and what it would cost him to release it.

Ephyra was responsible for all of it. She’d raised the god from the dead in Behezda. She’d started all this. She’d done terrible, unthinkable things to keep her heart from breaking. And it was going to break anyway. It had been breaking for seven years.

“I tore the world apart for my sister,” she said. “But I wouldn’t do the one thing she wanted. The only thing she ever asked me to do.”

“What?” Illya asked softly.

“Let her go.”

She thought of Beru, using her last scrap of strength to ask Ephyra—no, to beg her—to stop.

“But I’m going to,” Ephyra said, wiping a tear as it slipped down her cheek. “It might kill me, but I’m going to.”

“Well, I’ll be here,” he said. “If you’ll let me.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

He smiled wryly. “The funny thing is, while you had yourself convinced that you could only ever make things worse, you made me want to be better. You made me believe I could be. That I could open myself to someone again, that it might even be worth the pain.”

“And is it?” she asked, afraid of the answer.

“I’m still hoping I get to find out.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “Illya—”

“I’m not asking for anything,” he said. “It’s late. And the world might very well end tomorrow. So if you want, I will sit here with you until it does or until the sun rises. Whichever comes first.”