(Fuck, he’s already saved the princess and walked away from her. Maybe I’m one more unwanted prize.)
I take another step back. And another. Snow’s wings drop a bit. He’s looking down at the floor, rubbing the back of his neck. His chest is pale—cream and gold and pink—but his arms are still sun-kissed from those days in the back of Shepard’s truck. It’s only been a week.
No.
I step forward. His head jerks up.
“You can’t just decide that you’re done with me,” I say. “That’s not what we are.”
Snow looks even more confused, even angrier, than before. “I can’t decide I’m done? I have to pretend that I’m happy like this—sitting at home waiting for you to spell my wings away?”
“Shut up about the wings! You don’t have to keep the wings!”
“I’m not! I’m having them off tomorrow!”
“Wait, tomorrow?” His wings . . .
Snow lurches towards me. He points at my face. “I’m done, Baz—I’m done playing dungeons and dragons with you lot. I’m done with, fucking, spells. And prophecies. Werewolves and vampires. I’m just a person. An ordinary bloke.”
“How can you say that? You were the most powerful magi—”
His wings flare out. “Was! I was all that. Not anymore. It’s like I’ve been living in a museum—‘Here’s Simon Snow. We thought he was the Chosen One for a few years. Gave himself a tail. Look at the state of him.’ I’ve got to let all that go, I have to figure out what comes next!”
“That’s what we’ve been doing! We’re figuring it out together.”
He rolls his eyes and shrugs his wings. It’s all one gesture. “I know what’s next for you and Penny—magic! It’s always more magic.”
“You keep talking about magic,” I say. “I’m talking about us.”
“It’s all the same thing!”
“I don’t care about magic!” I do care, I care passionately. But I’d give my magic to the Humdrum to fix this.
“That’s a lie,” Simon says.
I pull my wand out of my sleeve and hold both ends. “I’ll break it, Snow. I don’t care. I don’t need it. Not like I—”
“You’re not breaking your wand.” He tries to yank the thing out of my hands, but he ends up pulling me closer.
My face hangs over his. I’ve been yelling. I’ve been angry. But now I’m just . . . “Please,” I say, so quietly. “Please, Simon. Don’t do this.”
SIMON
His hair is brushing against my forehead. We’re both holding on to his ivory wand. The fight’s gone out of him, and that’s no good, because fighting is all I can manage right now.
“Baz . . .” I whisper.
He presses his forehead to mine. “Don’t do this. Don’t do this to me, love.”
“I have to.”
His head is rocking against mine, from side to side. “No, Simon. No. We can’t come apart like this. We’re not made of pieces that come apart.”
“Baz—”
“You can’t just give up on this. On me. Don’t you know what we have? It’s the sort of thing people dream about. They make potions to steal it.” He pulls his wand against his chest. He pulls me with it.
“I know,” I say.
And I do. I know.
I know I’ll never love anyone like I love Baz. I know he’s the love of my life. Of all my lives. The Mage believed in reincarnation. Of a thousand lives stacked on top of each other. “Some lives we squander,” he said. “And some we seize.”
This was my life to find love. The truest love. The biggest.
But it isn’t my life to have it.
I’m too . . . broken. I don’t know how to be close to people. I don’t know how to be quiet. When Baz gets like this with me . . . When he hands me his heart, I don’t know how to hold it. I want to scream. I want to run. Maybe it’s part of what the Mage did to me. He said he got me wrong, that I was a cracked vessel. I can’t hold on to anything good.
“Baz . . .” I’m still whispering. “I can’t be with you.”
“Because of magic?” His voice breaks on the last word.
“Because of me. I was never going to make this work.”
“Fuck.” He shudders. “You’re killing me, Snow.”
I’m killing me, too. There won’t be anything left of me after they take off the wings. “I’m sorry.”
BAZ
“I’m sorry,” Snow says. Like that’s a thing . . . Like that’s a thing that matters.
I push him away with my wand, then pull it back, out of his hand. He lets go.
His cheeks are red, and his chest is flushed and blotchy. The arrow end of his tail is lying on the ground. His wings have fallen.
There’s nothing left for me to say. How can I convince him that we’re a good thing if he doesn’t believe in good things?
It makes me so angry. I’m. So. Angry. I’ve never hated him more. I want to break my knuckles on his chin, I want to cast off his tongue, I want to shove him down a thousand flights of stairs—and then I want to catch him.
“I love you,” I say. (And I know it’s a not a thing. I know it doesn’t matter.)
I turn away from him then, and tuck my wand in my pocket. It’s only anger making my legs move. I can’t believe he’s doing this, I can’t believe I’m leaving. I can’t believe this is it—that this is how we’re ending.
It wasn’t the Mage. It wasn’t the War. It wasn’t the Humdrum.
I stop at the door. I look back at Simon one more time. “I never thought I’d be the first thing you ever gave up on.”
14
AGATHA
For the first few days I was home, my parents let me hole up in my room without bothering me.
I didn’t tell them what happened with Braden and the NowNext. I’m not telling anyone. Penelope can fill out the proper paperwork if she wants; her mother is practically running the World of Mages these days.
I keep expecting a summons. Or for someone to show up and take my official testimony about the incident. The American Incident. I don’t think I’ll be arrested. I didn’t intentionally break any rule—it’s legal to kill vampires—and Penelope’s the one who counterfeited our plane tickets. If anyone deserves to be arrested, it’s her. As per usual.
My parents are starting to worry about me now . . . My father keeps stopping by my room to talk about his day or to see if I’d like to come down for dinner. My mother keeps asking if I’d like to go shopping.
I would not.
I’m doing exactly what I’d like to do: I’m lying in bed, watching cat videos and ignoring Ginger’s text messages, while I twirl my wand first in one hand and then the other.
I dug it out of my top drawer as soon as I got home, and I haven’t set it down since. It’s teak with a red Bakelite handle. It belonged to my grandfather, my mother’s father. He died before I was born, which is why his wand was available. He wasn’t much of a magician. Neither am I.