I slip in the side door. There are a few night-owl members still awake in the great room. I climb the stairs to avoid their attention. When I finally reach Nick’s room and slip inside, the adrenaline that carried me through the woods slips out of my body, and I collapse in a heap on his bed, turning Sel’s words over and over in my mind.

I did this, I think. Just by being here.

I’ve gone from being hunted by Sel to being the reason his title, his humanity, his very soul, is at risk. And what’s worse, the hot fury I’d grown used to seeing in him has turned into something darker. The desolation in his eyes, the self-hatred…

I pull out my phone, but there’s a reason to skip every one of my recent contacts. I texted Alice earlier to say I wouldn’t be home tonight, and what could I say to her anyway? Where would I have to start and stop? I’d been texting my father with updates that “everything is going well with Patricia,” so how do I tell him that she let me go? He’ll find out soon enough when she calls him, and I don’t have the energy to think that far ahead. Nick is driving to pick up his father, and I’d have to wait until he gets home to tell him about the red flames I can’t control.

In the end, every conversation would require an explanation first, because no one in my life knows all of the threads that have led me here.

I squeeze my eyes shut, but the tears come anyway, dropping onto the cheery blue-and-white comforter until there’s an ugly stain.

I must have fallen asleep on Nick’s bed, because a loud slam jerks me awake. I rub at the damp skin of my cheek where the wrinkled fabric of the comforter has pressed it into misshapen creases. A moment later, there’s another loud slam, this time overhead.

Sel.

Sarah said that when he was done, he came home and slammed doors, then shut himself in his room. I imagine him there, drained from destroying half the forest, maybe still recovering from aether’s effects. I check the clock.

It’ll be hours still before Nick comes back. I already know I’ll tell him everything that’s happened. I’ll even break Patricia’s trust and tell him about Rootcraft. But I know that Sel is right; it won’t change how Nick feels about his Kingsmage, the boy he’s been bonded to most of his life.

The Wall of Ages stretches up in my memory. Their names, carved side by side for years. Nicholas Martin Davis. Selwyn Emrys Kane.