Chapter Fifty

Kierse was in a bed.

It was not as soft as the one she normally woke up in.

Where was she? Everything felt so fuzzy and distant.

She peeled her eyes open and blinked rapidly at the harsh lighting. Her eyes didn't adjust fast enough, and she sluggishly raised her arm to shield them.

"Ugh," she groaned.

"Kierse!" a voice gasped.

Kierse recognized that voice. And when she lowered her arm, she saw Gen leaning over her. Gen?

"What... what are you doing here?" Kierse asked her.

Gen frowned. "What do you remember?"

She thought back to it, tried to remember, but it was blank. She'd been working with Graves. She'd gone to Third Floor. Talked to Torra. Seen Lorcan. What happened after that? How had she gotten to Gen?

Another face appeared over her. Ethan.

Kierse blinked rapidly. Was she dreaming? "What are you doing here?"

"You're at Five Points," Ethan said, sinking into the chair next to Kierse's bed. "You saved my life."

Kierse's eyes lifted to Ethan's. He didn't look like she'd saved his life. "I did?"

"Ethan was drugged," Gen said softly. "You showed up and drew the drugs out of him with your... with your bare hands."

Her bare hands? What were they even talking about? And then she felt it—the magic. "Oh god."

She turned her head and vomited into a wastebasket next to the bed. She threw up the entire contents of her stomach. And then she threw up some more.

She hadn't been this sick since the wish powder. Right. The memory of what she had done flooded back to her all at once. This was wish powder.

After she emptied her stomach, she flopped back in the bed and waited for the room to stop spinning. She was a wreck, but at the same time, everything about her awareness felt different. As if the world had settled a second layer over her consciousness. Now she didn't understand how she had missed it. Would it always feel this overwhelming in its intensity? Or would it eventually feel normal? As if the world had never once been so dull?

"I remember," she told her friends. "I remember everything."

Gen and Ethan exchanged a look.

"You used... magic, right?" Gen said. "Did Graves teach you that?"

"Yes," she said. Then also: "No. I mean, he tried to train me, but I only figured it out to save Ethan and the others."

Gen blanched, and Ethan dropped his gaze to his hands. There was something they weren't saying.

"The others," Kierse whispered. "What happened to Cara and the other two wolves?"

Gen swallowed. "They... they didn't make it."

Kierse realized then that her other arm was bandaged. She remembered Cara slicing her claws into her as she tried to dredge the magic from the wolf. But Kierse hadn't been strong enough. She hadn't trained long enough, and she had broken the connection.

"I let them die," she whispered in horror.

"This isn't your fault," Ethan said at once.

Kierse felt tears gather on her lashes. But it was, wasn't it? The wish powder in the city was because of her thievery. The wish powder to Ethan was targeted at her. It all came back to Graves, but none of this would have happened if she hadn't accepted that first job. If she had decided to back out because she didn't have enough information. She was so focused on the score that she didn't prepare enough. And now people were dead on her watch.

"It is," she said hoarsely. "It is my fault."

"You saved Ethan's life," Gen reminded her.

"I wasn't strong enough to save the others."

"It wasn't your responsibility," Ethan said, taking her hand gently. "You did what you could do, and I'm forever grateful."

Kierse nodded, closing her eyes and holding the tears at bay. This was because of Imani. This was revenge. She would remember it, and she would get stronger.

No one would ever die on her watch again.

"Kierse," Gen said. "When you drew the magic out of Ethan... I felt something, too."

She pushed down all the guilt and pain and opened her eyes to look at her beautiful friend. "You felt your magic."

"My magic," she said in awe.

"And Ethan's."

Ethan balked. "I don't have magic."

"You do," she told him. "I don't know how, but you do."

"I felt it, too," Gen told him.

"I don't know what either of you can do or what you are. I still don't have any answers for myself, but we will find them out together," she promised. "All I can say is that there's a reason you can read tarot." She shifted her gaze from Gen to Ethan. "There's a reason you can grow plants in the winter."

Ethan's eyes flicked to the dozens of new plants he had growing all over the room. "That's not magic."

"It's something," she told him.

"And we're all together in it," Gen said.

"Yes," Kierse said. "Like a thread that's knotted between us."

Gen looked hopeful. Ethan was skeptical. But she'd felt it, just as Gen said. Her friends weren't as perfectly human any more than she was.

And there was only one way to get answers.

Her eyes widened in alarm. "Wait, how long was I out?"

"Three days," Ethan told her.

Kierse reeled. "Three days?" She counted the days in her head. "Oh fuck, is it the solstice?"

"Day before," Gen told her. "The night of the twentieth. The full moon is tomorrow. So the wolves are all on lockdown under the club. We were going to meet Maura as soon as you woke up."

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," she said, flinging the blankets off of her.

Three. Fucking. Days.

"I have to get to Graves."

"You're going back?" Ethan asked in disbelief.

"I have to," she said, coming to her feet and wobbling. She felt woozy, but she needed to get to him as soon as possible.

"You can't even stand. You can't go anywhere," Gen said, putting her hand out to stop her. "You have to go on lockdown with us. It's safe."

"I love you both. I made the right call coming back to see you, even if Graves disagrees." The thought of him slamming the door in her face still infuriated her. She covered her irritation by reaching for her clothes on the nightstand. She was in nothing but a hospital gown, and she needed to get going. "He said I broke the bargain by coming here, but there is too much at stake to walk away now."

"What is at stake?" Ethan asked. "The money? We're fine here, Kierse. I was skeptical at first, but I like being with the Dreadlords."

She shook her head. "It's not safe. This is proof that it isn't safe. And it won't be safe until I finish."

"And that's why you're going back?" Gen asked. "For our safety."

"Torra is alive," she gasped out.

Gen and Ethan looked at her in shock.

Gen whispered. "How?"

"She can't be," Ethan said.

"I found her," Kierse said. She steadied herself against the wall. Fuck, she needed to do something about this. "I found her, and I promised that I would get her out. Plus, this heist is so much more than what I first signed up for. Just trust me when I say that we cannot leave this object in the hands of King Louis unless we want another Monster War."

Ethan's jaw dropped.

"You're serious," Gen whispered in shock.

"Deadly."

Kierse tugged on her T-shirt and then slid her arms back into her fitted jacket. She hissed as she drew it over her hurt arm.

"But surely you can rest one more day."

"No, it's happening tomorrow night," she said. "I need to go back now. Graves has to see reason about all of this. Broken bargain or no." Kierse bit her lip and wavered. "He has to."

Gen's expression softened at those words. "You want to go back to him."

Leave it to Gen to see to the heart of it.

"I do," she said like an admission. "He was... different. Kind, in his own way."

Ethan cringed. "I thought he was a monster?"

"So did I," she whispered.

Her thoughts went distant as she remembered him giving her his coat, the way he'd held her in the tunnel, the tuck of her hair behind her ear as he stared down at her with those inimitable gray eyes. The taste of the babka and the crush of his lips. That little smile that she had just begun to interpret. All the many little ways in which Graves the monster had become Graves the man in her mind.

Gen touched her hand. "You sound like you actually like him."

"He's a monster, but he's my monster."

Gen and Ethan were silent at that proclamation. And it was the truth about Graves. The whole truth. One she wasn't even sure she had taken the time to look at.

"My entire life, I've been running from my past. I don't want to run anymore. Not from him." She cleared her throat and looked up at her friends. "So, I love you, but you're going to have to enter lockdown without me, because I have to leave."

"You do," Ethan said as if he finally understood, too.

"One thing before you go," Gen said, retrieving a card from her belongings and offering it to Kierse. "I pulled a card for you."

Kierse turned it over and revealed the Magician. Graves.

"Thank you," she said.

Then she pulled her friends into a long hug, gathered her strength, and walked out the door.

A weight settled on her as she stepped out of Five Points. The door sealed shut from the inside. She tugged on it twice just to make sure that no one was getting in after her.

She looked at the edifice with resignation. This was the right thing to do, but she didn't feel right leaving them undefended. If wish powder could get inside once to hurt her friends, it could happen again. Maybe it was Imani; maybe it was someone else trying to get to her or Graves. But she didn't care. They wouldn't hurt her friends.

She had something to protect now. Something to ward. And when she focused her intent on the building, her magic came to her with ease. She drew the ward for the entire building. She didn't stop to wonder if she was doing it correctly. She just used her magic how it came to her intuitively. When she was done, Five Points was a wish-powder-free establishment. No one would be able to bring it inside. Her friends were safe.

The hum of magic was just a small buzzing in the back of her mind as she saw the little wren in the shape of her ward.

Now, she could walk away.