I jolt to my feet, take a step back. Distance myself.

I still need to find Ty. I’m still willing to do whatever I need to do, for his sake. This doesn’t change anything.

“You’ve got to focus on keeping us safe,” I say to Elliott. I make my voice strong, clear, certain. The opposite of how I feel. “A mirror is going to appear somewhere, so you have to counter my—”

“The stars were wrong,” Elliott says in that awful, empty voice, looking at his brother instead of me.

I stare at him. Thunder booms, shredding the air between us. “What?” I dare to say when it stops.

“That’s why he needed the telescope. He noticed it a week after the Fracture. Stars disappearing, whole constellations moving independently through the sky. No one else noticed. No one else ever looked up. But he did.”

I lift my hand. It hovers in the air. I’m not sure what to do with it … put it on his shoulder? Shake him out of his trance?

“He made it so far,” Elliott says. His voice doesn’t sound empty anymore. Now it sounds like it’s being wrenched out of him by some external force. “He must have walked for days. How many Beings did he have to face before one killed him? How much did he suffer, how many nightmares did he live through while I was safe on the island?” His hands twist into fists in the fabric of his brother’s shirt. “While you were safe on the island.”

I drop my hand. I say nothing.

Elliott bows his head. I can’t make out his expression, but once again, I don’t need to. “You’re not even going to admit this is your fault,” he says. It’s not a question.

I take another step back. My defenses snap into place. “I didn’t do this to him! Your mother—”

Elliott comes to his feet, his words a roar. “—did what she had to do!”

My own hands curl into fists. This is ludicrous, arguing about someone who’s been dead for months when the fog is roiling all around us, when a horde of Beings could be waiting on the other side of a mirror that’ll appear at any moment—but my mind is bubbling with panic and horror and something like guilt that I refuse to feel, and lashing out at Elliott gives all that energy a focus.

“That’s just what you want to believe!” I shout back.

His eyes are alight, and the hatred from earlier has overtaken the anguish and brokenness. All his energy has found a focus too. “What?” he demands, his voice a low warning.