Miss Quine. It mingled with his after the attack, healed his wounds. He’s your responsibility now. You must stay close or all that your blood accomplished will be undone.”
And like that, the solitude I’ve always known on the open road—the freedom of escape—disappears. Kyn’s my responsibility. Of course he is.
A sob surprises me and I clamp a hand over my mouth.
YOU CAN’T BELIEVE HIM. Winter laughs. I TOLD YOU, HE LIES.
But the truth of it weighs heavy on my bones. I’ve felt the burden of our bond since High Pass. The threads of our emotions, Kyn’s moods twisting tight across mine, knotting my gut—was it nothing more than a reminder of my duty to him? I can’t decide if I’m embarrassed or relieved that I thought it was something more.
“For how long?”
Mars looks down, pulls the square of cloth from his pocket, unfolds it, folds it again. Puts it away.
“Miss Quine—”
“I can’t,” I say, fumbling, panicking. “I can’t . . . be needed like that.”
YOU WEREN’T BUILT FOR SUCH THINGS, Winter agrees. OF COURSE YOU WEREN’T.
“You’re needed more than you think.” Mars’s voice is sharp, pointed. “By many hundreds and thousands more than you will admit. But just now, if you don’t come, Kyn will die. I don’t imagine that’s a thing you want to see happen.”
I stumble back, the force of his words too much. I fall, water splashing as I connect with the ice, my momentum spinning me across the Desolation, positioning my gaze on the horizon to the east. Ice topped by black, kol-drenched mountains and beyond them the Kol Sea, churning.
“The rebel camp is just on the other side of the Desolation, isn’t it?” My voice is flat. I’ve no energy to pretend it’s really a question. “Somewhere near Queen’s Point. That’s where your smuggling ship makes port. It has to be.”
Mars goes quiet. And Winter too. I wonder if they’re having a silent battle of sorts. Eventually, it’s Mars who breaks the stillness.
“What will you do, Miss Quine? Tie Miss Trestman to your bike and drag her kicking and screaming back to Whistletop? The river crossing is impossible to navigate now, and that bike would never survive the Cages.”
“There are other roads, safer paths. It would take us much longer, but we could find shelter to escape the Flux. Trapping cabins, dried-up mines. Drypp and his brothers survived out here for weeks without much more than I’ve got on me now. Lenore and I could make it. With Winter’s help—”
“Entering the camp at my side is the only way you’ll get Miss Trestman to listen to you. Is her life, is Kyn’s worth so little that you’d forfeit both just to be rid of me? I know you care for him. I’ve seen—”
But I don’t want to hear what Mars has seen between Kyn and me. I’m ashamed. That I mistook magic for the kind of connection Hyla spoke of. That what ties Kyn and me together is nothing more than duty.
“You swear you’ll help me with Lenore? That you won’t let your own personal feelings about the Majority interfere?”
“What shall I swear by, Miss Quine?”
My eyes are restless, they won’t still. “What is it you worship?”
“You,” he says. “Is that not obvious?”
I laugh then, but it sounds more like a sob, like rock on bone.
“I can’t be what you think I am. I can’t be . . . bound to another person.”
“But you are. To kingdoms of them.”
I run my hands over the ice, splay my fingers like the soul buried beneath me. My hand is numb now, blue almost. But still alive. I’m still alive.
“And Kyn—”
“I won’t lie to you, Miss Quine. I don’t understand everything about the magic you carry in your flesh. I was not born in the Pool of Begynd like you were.”
I turn toward him, ready to argue.
“No, listen,” he says with a curt shake of his head. “I know. I know how hard this must be. But your blood runs through Kyndel’s veins and just as the Shiv depend on their proximity to Begynd, I believe Kyn’s sustained healing depends on his nearness to you.”
“You believe?”
“In so many ways, you and I are the same. But we are different, Miss Quine. My mother gave birth to me in our home.” He smiles, a real thing, with feeling behind it, with love. “And yours . . . your mother gave birth to you in the Pool of Begynd just before she unleashed Winter on this island. She didn’t know