The cold from the frozen lake rises up through my boots, and I begin to shiver. I think I hear Oliver calling for me, searching, but the smoke is too thick now, swirling in strange gusts across the lake, and he can’t find me.

Fire spits up into the sky from the tops of trees along the shore. Devouring, angry, hungry. It sounds like a monster, sucking up all the oxygen. And I know my home is gone. Nothing left but a scar across the ground. Only piles of soot and brick.

Tears break over my eyelids and fall to the ice, becoming a part of the lake.

I was born in that house—where every Walker before me has lived—and now it’s gone, only ash.

And it’s my fault.

I was wrong about so many things. I was wrong when I thought Oliver had killed Max. I was wrong when I thought my death was near. Or maybe I wasn’t—maybe death will still find me. Out here on this lake. In this burning forest.

Is it better to burn alive or to drown? Which will hurt less? The ice shifts beneath me, bending away from my weight. An inch of water now at the surface. I squeeze my eyes shut and push away the cold, pushing away the sound of trees cracking and falling to the ground in the distance. The sound of flames roaring along the edge of the lake. Ash in my hair, embers falling at my feet, melting the ice.

I waited too long, I think again. I should have left with Suzy and Mr. Perkins.

Eventually the ice will crack and give out beneath me. Eventually I will sink into the lake and drown just like Oliver.

Another offering to the lake.

A wilderness covered in snow shouldn’t burn. But fury can fuel strange things—tonight, it fueled a forest fire. If my grandmother was here, she could fix it, she would wave her finger in the air and the trees would listen. She would make this right.

Through the smoke, I glimpse the boys’ camp across the lake and see several boys running from their cabins. They haven’t all fled yet. Some of them are still there. “The forest wants to burn,” I think, I say aloud to no one. And it wants us all to burn with it. Maybe the forest deserves it. Maybe it’s lived too long. I squeeze the spellbook against my chest and think about all the Walkers who sprouted up from these woods. All the stories that live in the soil, live inside these pages. And now it will all burn.