Nevermore

“That doesn’t explain why the fire I made didn’t burn me.”

“You created the fire in a dreamworld that is subject to the rules of its queen, yet influenced by the imagination and desires set in motion by an outside force—your friend. Therefore, the same power that protects you from the Nocs perhaps also protected you from the fire. Furthermore, when you destroyed the link—the book, I should say—you also destroyed the page that held your name. Your sole connection to the dreamworld was broken, and you existed here fully, in your world, once more. And finally, because the fire was created by you in the dreamworld and was, in essence, a dream itself, it also ceased to exist the moment the link was severed, the moment the two worlds parted.”

“She asked me to join with her,” Isobel blurted.

“Then,” he said, sounding unsurprised, “I suspect that she knew of the power that protected you. Invulnerability in a physical form caught between two realms? There is no greater power she could wish for.”

“What about you?” she prompted. “Did you know about the protection?” She asked this, already knowing the answer. For a long moment, the question hung between them like a dead thing. A knot of discomfort deep in her stomach tightened to the point that she felt sick, and she wished that she hadn’t spoken the question aloud. After all, he wouldn’t have had to guess at why she was still alive if he had known all along that she’d been under Varen’s protection.

“A long time ago,” he said at last, “I made a vow to a friend that at all costs, I would not let the events that led to his death threaten his world or any other again.”

Isobel blinked long and slow. She glanced down at her hands in her lap and past them to the tattered and stained ruffles of her once pink dress.

“So . . . I was the cost,” she said finally. “You thought I’d be done for if I did what you said. That’s what Lilith meant when she said you hadn’t told me everything.” Her eyes flicked to him, and it was his silence that told her she’d hit the mark.

He watched her, and in return, Isobel studied the portion of his face she could see, just that strip of skin around the eyes. They were young eyes. Misleadingly young, she thought. Who knew how old this guy really was? Older than Christmas, probably, especially since he seemed to have the moral code of an Aztec priest on sacrifice duty. She looked down at her hands in her lap again. She shrugged, doing her best to pretend that it didn’t bother her. “You could have told me, you know,” she said. “I—I still would have . . . If—if that was the only way to—to save him.”

She waited for him to say something. To tell her that he hadn’t really believed she’d die. Instead he said, “I . . . am not sorry that you survived.”

She laughed, but the sound came out hollow. It was funny, because she could tell he’d meant it. And saying so was probably a lot coming from him. She swallowed with difficulty. In truth, the realization that he’d sent her off to become barbecue without so much as a heads-up was not something that sat well with her. Still, he’d come for her after it was all over. He’d helped Varen return. And he’d brought her home, too. He’d cared that much at least, right? “What are you, anyway?” she asked. She thought she might as well, as long as they were being blunt.

“It makes no difference.”

“Lilith said you were a Lost Soul.”

“I suppose that is one way to view my existence,” he replied.

“Is that what would have happened to Varen? If I hadn’t . . . ?”

“Possibly,” he said. Then he glanced away, amending his answer by adding softly, “Yes. At least . . . eventually.”

She tilted her head toward him. In that moment, he had sounded so terribly sad that she couldn’t help herself from asking her next question. “What does it mean to be a Lost Soul?”

Perhaps it had been the note of sympathy in her voice that he’d found so deplorable, or maybe it had simply been the underlying shift in focus from Varen to him. Whatever the case, she had apparently overstepped her bounds by asking. He turned toward her suddenly, his tone sharpening once more. “Isobel, after tonight, you will not see me again.”

Her mouth clamped shut. She knew that this was his way of snapping the shutters closed on that particular topic and all others. But she had too many questions left to stop now. She blinked up at him. “Where will you go?”

“I will return and continue my vigil, as promised.”

She smiled at him sadly. “The party never stops for you, does it?”