“You knew Pip,” she said with a small smile. “I’m going to assume he followed you when you left, didn’t he? He did that because he wanted to, because he was a good friend. You didn’t make him do it. You’re not responsible for his death.”

I clenched my hands together. I was still freaked out after the bird, and I wanted to tell Ashwini about it just so someone could help me make sense of it, but now wasn’t the time. She needed me to be her friend right now.

“How are you?” I asked softly.

She forced a smile. “I’m okay. This is just like everything else. You get past it by taking one step, and then another, and then another.”

“You don’t have to put on a brave face for me,” I said. “You don’t have to pretend you’re okay.”

For a moment, her lower lip trembled and it looked like she might break down, but I watched her clench her jaw and brush her tears aside. “I’m fine.”

“Okay,” I said gently. I wasn’t going to force her to talk about it.

She was quiet for a few minutes, but then she said, “Will you tell me what happened in Lalith Mahal?”

I nodded. She probably wanted to know what Pip had done in the last few hours of his life, and I owed her that. So I told her the whole story. All of it. Even the part in the throne room.

When I was finished, she said, “You know it’s not true, don’t you?”

“What’s not true?”

“That there’s something wrong with you. It’s not true.” I started to shake my head, but she shook hers harder and said firmly, “It’s not true.”

“Whatever this is, I hate it,” I burst out. “The day I created this world, my mind got stuck on one thing and wouldn’t leave me alone and the only way to make it stop was to come home and check my front door. Today, it did the same thing and the only way to make it stop was to go back to the tear between worlds. And look what happened!”

“Kiki . . .”

“I feel like I can’t breathe because it’s so crowded inside my head. And I can’t make it stop. I never know when it’s going to happen. I don’t trust myself when it happens. I can’t trust my own brain.”

“But, Kiki, none of that means there’s something wrong with you,” she insisted. “It’s just an illness.”

I stilled. “What?”

“An illness,” she said. “A chronic condition. You know?”

I blinked. “That’s all? Just an illness?”

“That’s all,” she said. “I don’t know much, but I do know that sometimes our brains can get ill, not just our bodies. You must know that, too, right?”

“Yes, but . . .” I trailed off. Was it possible?

“Well, there you go. I reckon that’s all this is. It’s something that’s a part of you, but it’s not all of you.”