Chapter Thirty-Six

Now is the time for Marigold to break her own heart. Shatter her own world even further than it already has been. Protect herself and her isle from any more damage. She looks at Lottie one last time, taking in every detail.

The gold flecks in the center of her wintergreen eyes.

The string of freckles across her nose that look like newly bloomed dandelions.

Wild red curls that touch her face softly, lovingly, the way Marigold cannot.

She takes a breath and shuts her eyes, unwilling to witness Lottie's face as she speaks.

"I need you to go."

Lottie almost laughs in surprise. "What?"

Marigold hears the sadness in her voice, but she cannot stop. "Go, Lottie."

Lottie stumbles for a response until she says, "Okay. I can give you some time alone, and then we'll figure this out."

Her entire body tenses; her muscles tighten like new violin strings. "No. I need you to leave the isle. I need you to leave and not come back." She finally opens her eyes and sees Lottie before her, breaking slowly, word by word.

"Why?"

Because I am desperately in love with you and I feel my heart bleeding out every time I look into your eyes. Because I feel like I am suffocating every time I think of how my curse broke you. Because right now I would rather be dead than say the things I'm saying to you, but I don't have a choice.

She says none of her truths.

Marigold gestures to the destruction around them. "Because it's not safe here for you."

Lottie shakes her head. "I don't need safe. I need you."

"I am not safe for you. My curse has already killed you once. It will do it again, and I cannot protect you."

Lottie says nothing, but she does not move.

"Please, Lottie, I am begging you to leave. What more can I say?" Her frustration builds and buzzes within her fists.

"Say you don't want me," Lottie says.

She almost laughs in her face. "What?"

"Say you don't want me, and I will leave," she says, her voice even more defiant.

She searches for words. "I…"

"You can't," Lottie interrupts. "You can't say it because it's not true. You want me."

"Stop it." Marigold's hands cover her face, but Lottie pulls them away.

"Admit it."

"Admit what? That I am hopelessly in love with you? Is that what you want to hear? Fine! I am! But my love will kill you if we let it, so you must leave. I cannot live with myself if you get hurt again."

"I cannot live with myself if I leave you now. Look around you! You need me now more than ever."

Marigold sobs and screams until the two sounds merge into one trembling voice. "Please. Go."

Lottie reaches for her hand. "After the night at the inn, I thought we could be—"

Marigold pulls away. "You're wrong. We were both wrong. We are nothing."

Lottie doesn't move, and Marigold erupts, her rage clouding above her. She calls to her magic and raises her hands, bringing a storm above them. Thunder cracks, lightning strikes, and harsh rain begins to fall, but only over the isle. The lake itself is calm. August's blue boat awaits under the dry, cold sun.

Lottie's panic rises, her chest rapidly rising and falling. "What are you doing?"

Marigold closes her palm, pulling the rain to the earth even harder than before. "Pushing you away."

"Mari…" Lottie says, her fear of the storm softening her voice.

"Get out of the rain, Lottie."

Lottie cannot stand it. She readies her stance, primed to run. "I cannot forgive you for this."

"I will never ask you to."

Lottie runs to the blue boat, far enough away that Marigold can no longer make out the details of her face. She is but a speck of wild red, leaving the isle for the very last time.

And Marigold is alone, the way she always should have been. She turns away, unable to watch Lottie fade into nothing. She walks back to the apiary to be with the rest of the broken things. She is one of them now. Lying in the grass, she closes her eyes and focuses on the raindrops hammering into her skin. Her grandmother's resting place is by her side.

"I'm sorry," she says. The rain taps against her teeth as she speaks. "I'm so sorry, Grandmother."

She rolls over, resting her hand over the grass, but as she moves, she sees something that makes her stomach turn.

There it is, in the smallest corner of the apiary, the one place that she was careless enough to miss before she left—only half of a protection rune. The rest of it has been wiped away. The other wards kept Versa off the isle, but even this small disturbance was enough to let ash magic rain down upon the land.

Someone had to come to the isle to do that.

Someone else let Versa in.