form. I did that. I killed him. I killed him, echoed through my head.
Tea? Tea?
I killed you.
• • •
“You didn’t kill me,” Fox said once they’d returned. I was tending to his wounds, the wards modified so I could draw on Bloodletting and watch his flesh slowly knit back together. Even seeing him made whole again couldn’t shake the nightmare from my mind.
“Then why do I keep having these visions?” I demanded bitterly. “Am I going crazy?”
“Is it because you were in my head before I fought the blighted? You’ve never done that before. Not while I was being… Well.” He looked pained.
“Maybe.” I gulped in air. “And it’s the first time you fought a daeva-like creature without me in control.”
“I know. It won’t happen next time. I’ll boot you out of my head—”
“Next time? Fox, are you hearing yourself? Next time? Is this how you really want to live? Is this how you want to come home to Inessa, looking like you’ve been tortured and left for dead? What’s next time going to look like? What body parts will you be missing? Your head? I’m sure Inessa would love that.”
“You leave her out of this, Tea!” my brother fired back. “I don’t have much choice!”
“Maybe you should! Maybe we should have found a better way to live instead of me putting you back together all the time!”
Fox quieted. “There isn’t a better way, Tea.”
“What if there was?”
“What?”
“The book we found in Istera for starters. It said that we weren’t intended to have these abilities, that no one should have been an asha or a Deathseeker to begin with.”
“Hollow Knife was a trickster.”
“And so was Blade that Soars!”
“You know the real problem? It’s that damned heartsglass of yours! It’s darkrot, Tea. You’re so stubborn thinking you can control it! We have to tell Mykkie, or it’ll be too late!”
“You promised me more time!” I yelled back. “It’s my decision! Not yours!”
“You’re tired.” Fox sounded exhausted, grim. “And you’re obviously stressed. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
What was the point? My brother wasn’t going to believe me tomorrow any more than he did today. But I nodded, because he was right about one thing: I was tired of talking.
“Are you okay?” Kalen asked, entering the cell after Fox had left.
I sniffed, looking away.
“I can go.”
“No.” I reached for him, and a new vision rose to meet my gaze. But unlike Fox’s horrible deaths, there was warmth, love. Another Kalen superimposed himself over the original—stubbled, face framed by long hair and a wilder look, reaching his hand out for mine. Are you ready, love? he asked.
Then there was another me accepting his offer, rising to my feet, feeling strong and beautiful and happy, answering him in a voice that was mine but also wasn’t. “Always.”
I blinked, and both were gone. Kalen, clean-shaven Kalen, was the only one left.
“Please stay.” My voice was husky, unwilling to think about what this meant, why all my visions prophesied the worst for everyone but him. “Always stay.”
• • •
I was dreaming again. I held a knife and I was covered in blood, but the blood was not my own.
There was someone on the floor in front of me. I saw red pouring from her chest, and I knew she was dead. Her eyes were wide, mouth open in stunned surprise.
She looked familiar. I tried to place her face through the strange haze that obscured my view but could not.
She wasn’t enough, something in my head spoke up, but it was not my voice. It felt wrong to have it there, but try as I might, I could not dislodge it. We need another.
“Tea,” someone said from behind me.
I turned.
Fox stared back, face so pale that the moonlight drifting through the window did nothing to change his pallor. He looked past me at the fallen figure, then sank to the ground, his breathing uneven.
“Tea,” he said again. “Why?”
My view widened. I was standing before the entrance of the Valerian asha-ka, not in my cell. But I was wearing the same clothing as before I had drifted off to sleep. I blinked at the knife in my hand. I knew this make, this style. I carried it with me often, only now it was stained crimson. Disgust and fear raced through me. I dropped the knife, and it clattered to the ground.
Fox cradled the dead girl in his arms, sounds of agony coming through his lips. There was more commotion behind me. “Tea,” Kalen said, in a voice so