believing it would die with him, but she—she—had turned him loose with it.
“What have you done?” she asked, unbelieving, her voice breaking.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Black handprints, blue infernos.
An end to resurrection.
Akiva’s hands, his hands that had held her in dance, in sleep, and in love, his knuckles that she had kissed and forgiven—they were newly etched. They were full. She cried out, “No!” the word pulled long and pleading, and then she was grabbing his shoulders, nails digging in, grabbing and holding him
and forcing him to look at her.
“Tell me!” she screamed.
In a husk of a voice—such pure sorrow, such deep shame—Akiva said, “They’re dead, Karou. It’s too late. They’re all dead.”
EPILOGUE
A slash in the sky, that’s all it was, nothing like Brimstone’s cunning portal with its aviary doors. There was no door at all, and no guardian. Its only protection was its nowhereness, high above the Atlas Mountains, and its narrowness, less than a seraph’s wingspan.
It was remarkable that Razgut had managed to find it after so long.
Or, Karou thought, looking at the creature, perhaps not so remarkable, that the worst moment of one’s life could be seared into the memory, brighter than any joy. She understood now why pain was the tithe for magic: It was
more powerful than joy. Than anything.
Than hope?
She saw the pyre in Loramendi as if she’d been there herself: chimaera corpses fed to the flames like scraps of flung cloth, and Akiva watching it all from a tower, breathing the ashes of her people. She tasted ash, and imagined it had still lingered on his flesh when she’d kissed him.
Because of her, he had lived to do this.
And still, she hadn’t been able to kill him, though he had brought her knives from Prague himself, and would have fallen to his knees to make it easier for her.
She left him, and even after everything, the distance between them felt like a sphere pulled out of proportion. Wrong, that growing distance. Aching, the void that had been her new fullness. A miserable part of her wanted to unknow Akiva’s treachery, go back to before, to the incandescent happiness before it all came crashing down.
“Are you coming?” Razgut asked, shouldering his way through the gash in the world, so that half his body disappeared into the ether of Eretz.
Karou nodded. The rest of him vanished, and she breathed deep of the raw air, gathering herself to follow. There was no more happiness. But under the misery, there was hope.
