“He’s not going to do anything.” Finn is many things, a monster among them, but I don’t believe he’d hurt me. “I’ll be all right.”

With a wave of his hand, he magicks open the entrance to his tent and waves me inside. I take a step forward.

I brush aside the sick feeling that rises in my throat at his simple use of magic because I know what it means.

“Frances, please don’t do this,” Oliver begs.

“I won’t be long, I promise.”

He shakes his head sadly and the gesture breaks my heart.

“J’ne comprends pas. I do not understand,” Pascal says quietly, more to himself than to us.

“We knew Finn back in New York,” Oliver says. It’s such an oversimplification of our actual relationship to him, I nearly laugh.

“Finn?” Pascal asks.

I would laugh if I didn’t feel so close to vomiting. It is so like Finn to not even tell them his name and somehow amass a new band of naive magicians. I’m sure he smiled as he lied to them too.

My footfalls feel like sins, one after another, committed so publicly, as I walk across the clearing to Finn’s tent. The weight of my friends’ gazes is heavy as their eyes follow me.

He waves me into his tent, and the flap to the entrance falls behind us in a hush.

The tent is surprisingly homey. There’s a threadbare carpet on the wooden floor, a twin bed frame made of rough-hewn wood, neatly made with a white quilt. There are two chairs around a small breakfast table, and a few leather trunks stacked in the corner.

The sunny afternoon is made dimmer here.

He paces for a moment, awkward in this small space, then takes a seat at the table.

I stay standing in the entrance, but he waves me over and I relent.

Get in and get out. Just tell him what you need to tell him. It would be pointless to stand sniveling waiting for an apology I know won’t fix anything.

I sit across from him at the small oak table and for a moment we just breathe. I don’t know where to begin.

“Frances—” I wish he wouldn’t say my name. I wish he’d stop smiling at me like he missed me.

I don’t know what happened to Finn’s magic after that awful night at Haxahaven November before last. The night he betrayed me, admitted to killing my brother, and nearly killed my friends. When I stabbed him in our shared dream, and left him for dead on the icy lawn, I thought I’d taken away his magic permanently, or perhaps it was just an easier fantasy to live in than letting myself be afraid of him forever.