Liam holds my gaze as I reach out to take the bag he’s packed. “Wait.” His fingers brush the back of my hand, then pull away. He opens a drawer under the table and takes out a small, battered book bound in leather. The sight of it plunges me into memories—cold nights in our cottage, sitting on Papa’s lap while he read stories from the book. Opening the cover on my own and tracing the words there, knowing they belonged to me, even though I was too small to read. And other memories too, mine but not mine, the minds of Antonia and all my other lives, my other selves, their memories and hopes and loves and terrors laced through my blood and bones. This is what my father sought in the vault, what he gave his life for.
“I hate the thought of you alone,” Liam says softly.
For the first time in what seems like centuries, I feel a spark of hope. “I’m not alone,” I tell him as I take the book. I couldn’t be alone, not with the words of my past speaking to me from these pages.
Liam watches me, holding his hands stiffly at his sides like he wants to reach out again but won’t allow himself to. “What are you going to do?” he asks quietly.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “Hide. Learn about myself. Then try to face Caro, when I’m ready.”
“It’s not too late to disappear,” he says. “You could change your name. Leave Sempera. She’d never find you.”
“She would find me,” I say with certainty. “You don’t know her like I do. But I won’t disappear. I won’t leave you—leave everyone under her thumb forever.” I reach out and grab his hand, and he blinks. “Stay here, at Everless,” I tell him. “I’ll need you before this is over.”
Slowly, slowly, he nods. “I’ll help you in whatever way I can. And I won’t say good-bye, Jules,” he whispers. “Now run.”
I take one last, long look at him—this boy who I hated for so long, who’s been protecting me since he was a child himself. His eyes are dark hollows, brimming with yearning and fear. For an instant I want to kiss him—but hold myself back, remembering that my touch is a mark of death.
“Thank you, Liam,” I say.
Then I turn my back on him and walk into the night, the past weighing heavily on my shoulders, toward a future as wild and unknowable as my own heart.