“No.”

He howled, magic rising against mine with a strength I hadn’t known he possessed. Too much, enough that he’d burn out his life, and so I clamped down on it, contained it. Fury spewed from his mouth, a tide of hate. Things I’d thought of myself but never once believed he thought of me. And though I knew it was motivated by her loss, that did not make them less true. “Stop.”

“Why must it always be your way?” he screamed. “Let me go!”

“No.”

Anaïs shouldered past me, falling to her knees and pulling her sister into her arms. “Penny, Penny, no!” She was shaking, face coated with tears. Lifting her face, her gaze latched on mine. “Tristan…”

A broken plea for me to help her. To make this right.

But I couldn’t.

“I’m sorry,” I said, then backed away, dragging Marc with me. Jamming magic into his mouth to silence him, because I was too much of a coward to hear anything more. The twins stood at the doorway, shoulders sagging. “Help her.”

The corridor was a blur of papered walls and carpet. Of servants staring wide-eyed as I dragged their master down the hall and into what had been his father’s rooms. My hands were shaking and icy, but I tied him to the bed. “I’m not letting you die.”

He answered me with a gaze full of hate.

The tool Pénélope had given me lurked in the back of my thoughts, but I was afraid to use it. Afraid of how such power would change our friendship. Whether it would even exist if I did.

And so my vigil began.

Days passed. Then weeks. Exhaustion like nothing I’d ever known gripped me, the few moments when the twins watched over Marc, or helped force food down his throat, not enough to compensate for the drain of watching his fury fade, his grief return, and then even that disappear along with his will to live.

My father came once.

I felt his presence behind me, and if he had told me that I was wasting my time, that my energy was better dedicated to the tree or other ventures, I think I might have tried to kill him where he stood.

“He has to find within himself the will to live,” he said. “To make him otherwise endure will only have consequences.”

“I know.”

“Not everything in this world is within your power to control.”

I turned to meet his gaze. “Nor yours.”

His eyes dug into me for a long time, then he nodded and silently left the room.

My vigil continued.

“He’s not getting any better.”

Anaïs sat across the bed from me, dressed in black, the lace across her throat eerily similar to the bonding marks on Marc’s fingers. She was different already, I could tell. A ruthlessness simmering around her that hadn’t been there before.

“I know.”

“Everyone thinks you should let him go. That to keep him alive like this is cruel.”