His eyes dart up to mine, the unspoken future written out, chosen by my word choice. Choices, made one by one, to bring me standing here, in a starlit pool with the most beautiful person I’ve ever known.

I reach my free hand out to his left one, wanting so badly to interlace our fingers. He’s looking at me with so much softness, but his hand doesn’t move. Doesn’t give. It just hangs there, my fingers working into his clumsily. Doesn’t he feel it?

He glances down, and I see his eyes widen. But still, his fingers don’t move.

“Is…is something wrong?” I ask.

“No.” He pulls his hand out of mine. “I’m just tired.”

Cold, slow horror crawls into my lungs. The teleportation of the four of us from the airship all the way into the village. And then the water snake, winding and enormous.

“Lucien, your magic—”

Suddenly, he pulls his whole body away from mine, and his hawk eyes harden. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?” I step in, the water feeling like tar. “What else makes you lose function in your body? Surely you weren’t poisoned when I wasn’t looking?”

Lucien turns, bracing his hands on the rock wall like he’s going to pull himself out of the pool. But he just hovers there, clutching on to the harsh, wet rock, to the cracks and crevices of it, one hand limper than the other.

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself.” A plead tinges my voice, and it’s so strange. Uncomfortable and pinching like a brand-new pair of shoes.

“It’s my magic,” he asserts softly.

“You’re my witch,” I fire back. “I’m your Heartless. It’s my magic, too.”

He falls silent at that, and I watch the water ripple around the small of his torso with a helplessness bubbling in my veins.

“You said,” I start, “that whatever I choose, you’d still love me. So I’m telling you now: whatever you choose, I’ll still love you. But I won’t stand by and watch you hurt yourself over and over. You’ve done that enough for the both of us.”

He’s quiet, and then he tilts his head barely over his shoulder, nose and mouth strong. “There’s no other way to stop her.”

“There might be. You don’t know that for sure.”

“I know that when the time comes, I’ll have to fight her,” he says. “Witch to witch. And the thought terrifies me.”

“She—she won’t kill you—”

“No. But I might kill her.”