“What if someone had found you out here? What if it led them to—” He stops himself and shakes his head.

I take a step forward. “To what? Tell me what I need to protect, and I’ll do it. But I can’t help what I don’t know.”

Gil watches me, face still. Finally, he motions for me to follow him.

We weave through the trees, trampling bracken and heather-moss, until we stop near a boulder half-hidden in the earth. Gil reaches down beside it, his hand disappearing into the soil, and he gives a hard tug.

A hatch springs open, revealing a steep ladder that disappears into the darkness.

“After you,” he says.

I snort. “This looks like the kind of place where you’d hide a dead body.”

“You do know where you are, right?”

I open my mouth to reply, but the words fizzle on the tip of my tongue. I’m frozen with thoughts of people doing atrocious things and hiding the evidence in the darkness.

Ophelia told me Infinity was already corrupted when she found it. I didn’t want to believe her. I didn’t want it to be true.

But what if it is?

I bite the edge of my lip, flustered. “Do you ever wonder where the bad people are? The bad humans?”

He quirks a brow, puzzled.

I wave a hand around like I’m signaling to everything. “There’s no heaven and hell. There’s just Infinity. Which means all the awful people of the world must come here when they die.” I stare into the hatch, frustration getting the better of me. “Statistically speaking, someone we know could be a criminal. Maybe even a murderer.”

Gil flattens his mouth. “He isn’t here, you know. The man who took your life.”

I swallow. I hate that the urge to cry is still so overpowering when I think about my death. “You don’t know that,” I say quietly. “And the truth is I’ll never know it either. He wore a mask—I never saw his face. Which means he could be anywhere. Be anybody.” I think about all the unblinking faces of the humans in the palace basement. What if he was one of them? What if I had tried to save a man who turned out to be my killer?

I want to believe every life is important. I want to believe everyone deserves the right to exist in an afterlife. But that doesn’t mean I’m okay with being in the same room as him.

And it doesn’t mean I’m okay with doing him any favors. I have zero interest in putting myself on the line for the person who took me from my family. Who took my life.