Page 153 of A Grave Not Made For Mourning
Unweaving him, unwinding him.
“Wendy!” he shouts.
He thinks it’s a warning.
But I think I’m tired of the universe underestimating me.
“Do you care for her?” I ask, pulling him apart with ease.
Magic seeps into his brain like gas, forcing words out that he may not know are there. “I think she’s hiding something,” he answers. His words echo, lifeless.
“No,” I say. This time I don’t give him an option. I pluck the truth from him, like dead leaves from a tree. “Beyond that. What do you feel for her?”
His tongue loosens, the truth slipping past like water flowing over stone. “Iwanther to be hiding something because I don’t want to face the fact that I’ve never been more attracted to a person in my life.”
How can he say that when the universe is unraveling? How can his attraction hold more weight to him than the truth? Lucian shakes his head in realization, as if this thought is dawning on him for the first time.
I nearly fall to my knees. My body trembles with the effort to stay upright.
Incredulity gnaws at me.Thisis what he truly cares about.
“I’ve lost everything!” I shout, the words ripping from my chest. “Twice! And you’re worried about your attraction to a killer!”
The sharpness of my voice surprises me, but it’s the only thing that feels real right now.
“It’s more than attraction,” Lucian says, still under my power, the truth shocking him.
And me.
The prophecy, the death, the loneliness and grief. The entirety of it dawns on me. The prophecy isn’t only Desdemona’s—how could it be, when it involves the entire universe?
In the depths of my mind, emotions flash. The dark and the light. The end of the universe. It isthem.
Theyare the end.
“The prophecy isn’t only hers.” I am not in my body, not in my right mind. But I understand the prophecy now. “Love won’t just beherdemise, Lucian. It will be all of ours.”
I shake my head as reality reforms.
I can stop this madness by killingoneof them.
The branches that hold Lucian pick up speed now that I know what needs to be done. They seem to move of their own accord. I hardly have to pull him apart.
“Are you trying to kill me?” Lucian gasps.
It’s him or Desdemona. One of the two to save the universe.
“It isn’t up to you,”the boy says, watching my actions with revulsion.
“If not me, then who?”
“You will destroy yourself to save the universe. If it is what you wish, I will not try to stop you.”
I feel the boy dissipating into smoke. Into darkness and shadow, retreating to the corners of my mind.
Desdemona or Lucian—Azaire’s best friend. I don’t know if I can kill him.
But Ihaveto, don’t I?
