“That’s a warning.” Bastiaan had another disc at the ready. “Don’t touch her again. There’s nothing here for any of us. Myrthe and I are leaving.” He held out a hand for me.

Sven straightened the same way he used to before a schaat race. Resolved. Determined. Unshakable. “Hedy.”

She released an arrow.

It stuck in the caulk of the well rocks behind Bastiaan with a twang. I exhaled. She missed.

Then Bastiaan swayed.

Blood spread from his middle. He stared down, confused. The arrow had gone clean through him. In his stomach. Out his back. Leaving behind a shock of silence.

Bastiaan dropped to one knee with a grunt. A scream ripped out of my body of its own accord. I launched myself over him in case Hedy sent a second arrow.

It didn’t come. Hedy and Sven seemed to be waiting. Waiting for my screams to stop. Waiting for Bastiaan to die.

Or waiting for a wish.

The same helpless panic that gripped me in the Summer Trial rose again. This couldn’t be happening. Not again.

Bastiaan trembled under my touch, fumbling for my hand. His was slick with blood.

“No,” I whispered. “No.”

It was so much worse than the Summer Trial. This was real Bastiaan. My Bastiaan. Not a false, enchanted one. No glassy eyes, no confusion. He saw me—all of me. And he felt every thrum of approaching death.

“I . . .” Bastiaan licked his lips, already turning pale, whether from fear or blood loss, I wasn’t sure. “Myrthe. I’m so sorry.”

Sorry for what? “No!”

As though immune to the dying man at their feet, Hedy and Sven turned back to the Well. “It’s hopeless then.” Hedy looked ill—more from the dried well than her actions of murder. “We’ve lost.”

Sven nodded toward Bastiaan. “We may not be able to use the Well water to our advantage, but we have one last bargaining chip.”

I angled myself in front of Bastiaan, still holding his hand in a desperate grip. “You can’t have him. Do you really believe Mattias cares about avenging his father now? Imprisoning Bastiaan?”

“He has my people! The ones you abandoned! Because you wouldn’t share your wishes, we were stranded in the valley when Mattias’s men came.”

“There was no other way. I’m sorry, Sven.” This time I allowed myself to feel. To remember. To regret every selfish choice I’d made. To will my last tear to fall.

Because I was going to save Bastiaan.

This was it. The time to use my last wish and bid farewell to this life. I’d been holding on to life so tightly. Determined to live, in defiance of my curse. But now, with Bastiaan at my feet bleeding out because he had helped me, I realized that my story was not about what was worth living for. It was about something—someone—worth dying for.

I would save him.