I gaze down at my arms, at the darkness fading, melting away. My torso belongs to me once more, only burns and scrapes and bruises to show for past battles, but nothing close to the charred color of Void-infused flesh. The blackened veins? The Void? Gone. But where—?
A whimper followed by a bloodcurdling scream gives me my answer.
The moment Isabeau takes on the Void is unmistakable. The show she invited all to witness has become her production alone. “Don’t look at me!” She claws at her hair, pulling it over her face. Locks fall to the floor in clumps. “Close your eyes and bow! Bow to your queen!”
But no one moves. Not a single subject obeys her screeched commands.
I rise and help Em do the same, becoming the strength she has yet to regain. Arms around each other, we take in the unfolding scene.
Isabeau backs away, bumps into a Guard who doesn’t bother to get out of her way. “You are wretches, all of you!” Another stumble, she ends up on her rear. Gets back up with a fumble and zero help from anyone. “Just wait! I will have my day. This is not the final chapter. I will rise again.”
I sense Em’s heart sink and hold her firm against my side. “Empathy won’t help her,” I say in her ear.
“But what will? What can we do?”
“I don’t know.” My lips curve down. Here we thought we were heroes, ready to unbreak a heart that’s been in pieces for years on end. Naive is what we were. A bunch of kids playing a game. At this point we’re back at square one. Where do we go from here?
When at last Isabeau departs, the room is left in frozen awe. I’m about to take Em away too. She needs rest, clothes. I nudge her.
“Wait.” Her gaze passes mine.
I follow it.
“Look,” she says.
And I do. The Shadowalkers. Are they . . . ?
Some remain in their cages, as before. But the others . . .
My jaw goes slack. “Well, I’ll be—”
“They’ve turned into Fairies.” Em lifts a finger, extends her arm toward the nearest cage.
A transformed Shadowalker flits from his prison, dark wings flapping. The tiniest cry emits from his miniature mouth. He flies fast, follows the direction of his queen. One by one, those altered follow suit, until only a handful remain caged.
“They’ve chosen the darkness.” Em leans her head against my shoulder. “The Fairy Queen holds the Void they worship. Their choice to continue as her servants has cursed them to do just that.”
“And the others? What of them?”
She smiles softly. “What else? They’ve chosen to be set free.”
In the aftermath of it all, there’s one thing Em keeps thinking over and over.
“Talk to me,” I tell her.
Sadness radiates from her wide eyes. “We didn’t change anything.” She releases the final no-longer Shadowalker from her cage. The woman who lost her child. “Isabeau was always going to take on the Void. The Shadowalkers who preferred darkness were always going to become Fairies, doomed to serve the infamous Fairy Queen. And . . .” She swallows. Her eyes brim with tears. “Joshua was always going to die. We changed nothing.”
I take her hands. “But we did what we were supposed to. And now we understand what we’re up against. Now we know she’s carried a portion of the Void all these years. The Void is bigger than Crowe or me or my brother. One vessel tries to contain it, but it’s like an infection, spreading and doubling throughout the decades. It’s why Crowe could inject it into his victims. Why darkness shrouded the Second for so long.”
She presses her hands into her side. Cringes. “Don’t you see, Ky? We can’t stop the Void from being created. We can’t change the choices people make. Where has the Verity gone? It didn’t return to me. What now? We have less than when we began.”
“Not quite.” I turn her toward the nearest reflective surface. “The Verity left its mark on you. Unless the new Verity’s vessel gives a Kiss of Infinity to another, you’ll stay the only Mirror in existence.” I rub her back to reassure her. “According to my birth mother’s theory anyway.” I wink, then add, “I don’t know what happens after this or where we go from here, but I do know we can’t go on without doing one thing first.”
Reading each other’s minds is easy. Like breathing. I nod and glance at my brother’s body. She does the same.
A grand exit deserves an even grander send-off. And I know just the thing to make his ending epic.
THIRTY-EIGHT
No One Like Him Anywhere
Jasyn Crowe is gone.
He will probably become the same man I met. Nothing I did changed him, though I understand him better. And now I know where Mom’s name originated. At the very least, perhaps I touched him in some small way. And . . . I guess I wouldn’t try to change him—only he can do that for himself. But I would live out my own moments differently. Treat him a bit more kindly. With more empathy and compassion. It’s such a different perspective, knowing where one’s been.
The mirrorglass crown vanished too. Focused on freeing those who chose not to follow the Fairy Queen, we didn’t even notice when my teenage grandfather slipped away, crown returned to his possession. We know Aidan ends up with it in the future. Did Jasyn return the crown, or do we only assume Aidan wore it? If mirrorglass reverses, I can’t imagine the crown would do the Verity’s vessel any good. The thing ought to be tossed into the sea.
“I smell it,” Ky says. “A sailor always knows his way to the ocean. Just a bit farther.”
He and Preacher carry Joshua on a stretcher. Wren follows in griffin form close behind. I walk along with one hand on Joshua, two fingers wrapped around his thumb. He could be sleeping. I wish he were.
The farther we tread, the more the houses thin out. When the briny aroma of saltwater hits me, I know we must be near. The feeling is good and bad. We’ve made it, but am I ready to say good-bye?
His crooked smile flashes in my memory. I’ll never forget the first time I heard his voice. The song in my heart come to fruition.
“Please don’t stop,” he’d said. “That was . . . you have the most beautiful voice.”
He was a prince in every meaning of the word. Joshua saved me from myself. He saved us all, if I really think about it.
“With a voice like that you could do anything.”
I squeeze his thumb. Imagine he still smells of my favorite autumn holiday. I want to tell him I have and I will. That, like Ky, he helped me find my true voice in a way no one else could. Joshua is, and always will be, the white knight on his steed from my favorite Monkees song. Now I feel the cold sting of the razor in the lyrics. Not much longer now. Soon our tune will end for good, only a memory. A daydream.
When the Sixth’s ocean comes into view, we head down to the beach. I abate the inevitable sobs and bite the inside of my cheek. Hold fast to his thumb before at last letting go.
Ky and Preacher set Joshua on the shore and begin gathering large pieces of driftwood. They attach it to the stretcher with rope from Preacher’s supply pack.
I’m not much help. Instead, I sit in the sand beside the boy who gave everything for me. I don’t touch him again, knowing if I do it will be too hard to let go. I mull over lines of lyrics before finding some worthy of him. Remembering his life, honoring his death.
“I’ve been thinking of all you’ve done,