I don’t know what I’m going to say to her.

But it isn’t her.

“Seelie,” Raze breathes. Hearing my chosen name in his voice is jarring, and not just because he sounds so relieved.

“Go away,” I say, not looking back at him. “I know you’re scared of me.”

I hear him stop, standing just behind me. He wants me to turn and look at him, but I can’t face anyone right now. “Okay,” he admits. “But what else is new?”

I stare straight ahead, jaw clenched. There’s only a faint trace of light left, barely enough to make out the path ahead.

“Isolde is sorry,” he says, after a long moment.

Each word feels like struggling to lift a heavy weight. “You don’t understand.”

“I do.” He ignores my glare, leaning against the wall at my side. “Isolde explained what that necklace meant to you. What it holds. I’m sure she’d come beg for your forgiveness herself, but I wasn’t going to pick her up and carry her.”

I picture Raze running after me with my sister bouncing up and down on his back, and a small laugh breaks through the knot in my throat. I let my back relax a little, let myself catch his eye out of the corner of mine. “You don’t think...you don’t think she...?”

I can’t make myself ask if he thinks she thinks I’m a monster. I don’t want to know the answer.

Raze takes a long, measured breath, and I repeat it. A little of the tension wound around my chest loosens. “You’re both under a lot of stress. You’ll figure out how to forgive each other.”

I wonder how he can be so sure.

“But you don’t have to go back and sort it out now if you don’t want to.”

I’m still angry, but it’s deeper down, not burning through me. I feel bare without my necklace, but maybe Isolde breaking the cord is a good thing. Maybe it’ll make her actually think about what she’s planning to do to us. Maybe it’ll change her mind.

Maybe everything will be okay.

I repeat that in my mind, silently forming the words with my lips, until I force myself to believe it. Everything will be okay. I didn’t actually hurt her, just zapped her a little. I can control this. I’m not dangerous. Isolde will realize she’s in the wrong. When I return, triumphant and buried in gold, she’ll apologize, and everything will be okay.

The anger subsides into something hard and small, something I can tuck away for now but not get rid of completely. “What now?” I ask, after a long silence. I turn my attention ahead, to the immediate task, instead of my jagged past and nebulous future.

Raze stands, offering me his hand, and I let him help me to my feet. We stare into the darkness of the tunnel ahead, uncertain. I’m still tired and stiff and achy. Olani’s healing helped, but I still feel wrung-out. And not quite like myself.