Doug doesn’t bother to turn around. He closes his eye, lips parted as if he can taste the others in the air. “Do you know why, Fleur? Why I didn’t kill him that day I left you in my office?” he asks, the words taut with emotion. “I could have found him. The same way I found you that day in the catacombs. I could have searched every tunnel and appeared right in front of him. I could have ended him then. Do you know why I didn’t?” His voice shakes, rage straining the cords in his neck. “Because I could feel what it would do to you. I knew it would tear the world out from under you. And I didn’t want to subject myself to that kind of pain again. But now?” He wipes his nose, paling at the thick smear of blood as the rain washes it from the back of his hand. “I’ll gladly kill both of you.”

Fleur rushes forward.

Kai’s bowstring creaks behind me. “Stay back, or I’ll shoot him!”

Fleur trips to a halt. Julio, Chill, and Amber pause beside her, their eyes darting back and forth between Fleur and me as if they’re not sure whether they should charge ahead with her or hold her back.

I give a slight shake of my head, hoping like hell I’m not wrong about this. Poppy and Marie watch through the rain-beaded windows of the van, their hands pressed to the glass.

“Doug, please,” Fleur begs. “It doesn’t have to end like this.”

“You’re in no position to ask me for anything,” he seethes, turning to face her. “You had your chance. You had a choice between saving Sommers and saving the world. And here we are,” he says, throwing up his hands. “The Observatory’s gone. The sky is fucking falling. Tell me how it ends, Fleur!”

“I can’t,” she cries.

“I can,” Kai calls out. Doug turns to her. A trickle of blood flows from his ear. “You want Inevitability?” she asks him. “You want to see how this ends? Fine, you can have it. But I want your assurance first.”

Doubt rides the crest of his brow. “Assurance of what?”

“That Sommers will get what he deserves.”

He laughs. “And you want to be the one to give it to him?”

“It’s only fair.”

This is what he’s wanted all along, isn’t it? To watch me die. That my end should be at the hands of someone I thought was loyal to me.

Fleur’s fist twitches at her side. I give another tight shake of my head, willing her to trust me.

Doug’s desperate gaze drops to Kai’s pocket. His hands flex around the staff, his palm slick with blood where he holds it. Pain contorts his features and he sucks in a ragged breath. “And in exchange, Inevitability will be mine?”