“You don’t bloody need me,” she said.

“Don’t tell me what I need,” Bryde said.

“I couldn’t do anything back there. I couldn’t dream a weapon because there was no one to hold my hand. Ronan Lynch here can do anything I could do and lots I can’t. Just cut me loose.”

Bryde didn’t say, What about the Lace? because he rarely mentioned the Lace out loud unless he had to. He was just quiet for a very long time and then he said, “I won’t drag you.”

But Ronan would.

He snarled, “Get over yourself, princess.”

“What?” she demanded, shocked.

“Just say you want to do something easier if that’s what you mean, but don’t play the boo-hoo card. Oh, me! My whole family got shot, I’m not going to cope, please beg me to stay and make me feel good.”

Hennessy twisted as much as she dared to stare at him. “You’re a real piece of work.”

Ronan smiled meanly at her. Somehow he’d just jumped straight to nastiness, but it was too late to rein it back now. “I saved your life. You owe me.”

“I saved yours. That’s what we call ‘even.’ ”

“You want to give Jordan a call and let her know you gave up, then?” He couldn’t stop. Acid kept pouring out of him. “You’re setting a timer again, you’re living life in twenty-minute chunks of sleep denial, whatever, sleep deprivation again? Hey, Jordan, they died for nothing, can I crash with you? Thanks.”

Her expression didn’t change but he watched her swallow, the tattooed roses at her throat shimmering ever so slightly with the movement.

“And when I bring out all the Lace and blow up the world?”

Bryde said, “We won’t let that happen.”

“Ah, but you did, bro. Only reason why there wasn’t more Lace was ’cause there wasn’t enough ley for it, was there? I actually got the Lace out and got our boy here closer to dead at the same time. I multitasked like a mother.”

She was going to leave them. Ronan could tell she was. He could see every bit of her was ready to give up. Could they do it without her? Maybe. Probably. But somehow the idea of saving ley lines with just Bryde was awful to imagine. Awful like a thunderstorm. Awful. Aweful. Ronan couldn’t think about it too hard, because it made him feel like flinging himself from the hoverboard just to see what would happen. What was real? Falling? Dying? Flying? They were floating a thousand feet above the ground. Real? In a dream there would be no consequence.

Ronan was just as frightened to feel this impulse in himself as he was by the idea of saving the ley lines with just Bryde.

“Why do you even care?” Hennessy asked. “The truth. Not more shithead talk.”