“No!” His shout echoed over the water and skidded among the morning shadows. He clung to the rock, but his will pleaded with him. He’d been fighting the Well for his own will since receiving his Talent. Would he truly fight it until death? Did he have no faith in it?

He’d fought on behalf of the Well his entire life. But with his agenda. “I wanted to get you to all people.”

You brought Myrthe to me. She has finished your task.

“So she is to die too?”

The Well did not answer. It surrounded him with its warm arms of comfort. Bastiaan held on to the rock a little longer but finally released his grip and slid back into the depths. I trust you.

The Well made him what he was—all the good parts. It gave him life. A Talent that rescued both his and Myrthe’s mothers and other women from destructive servitude to the merchant. It had established Windmill Cottage as a home for Runt and those fleeing dark lives. It had given him a lifetime with a new father—King Vämbat. The Well was all things good. Wasn’t that what Bastiaan had been telling people his entire life?

He exhaled his last breath. I surrender.

The water closed over his head and pushed him down. Deep. But it wasn’t dark. It was light and life and rest. There was no fear. There was no pain.

And Bastiaan was no more.

Chapter 55
Bastiaan

It was raining light. Droplets splashing the crown of his head, sliding down his nose. Tickling the creases of his face.

Bastiaan awoke, but his eyes hadn’t been closed. It was like his mind gasped in air and a film of darkness receded from his vision. He blinked against the flicker and shimmer of water around him. The rain grew heavy, then light. Fell downward, upward, hovered in front of his face.

He stood on the surface of the Well water. It rippled beneath him in gentle pulses, light springing from below. He was completely naked. The hole in his abdomen had closed, though it was still extremely sore. His maimed hand no longer bled. All traces of bloodstains had been washed clear.

A new Talent Mark painted his other hand.

He wasn’t dead. Somehow his soul knew this, though the scene around him did not fit with the world and reality he had known his whole life.

Where . . . What am I?

You are new.

Something deep in his core understood and marveled. The Well had said it was his time. He had thought death. End of life. But it was giving him a choice:

Cling to his old life: his old heart.

Or surrender it.