Valerie didn't know what it would be like to be absorbed into the ether, with her parents, but she doubted that it included a shard of ice lodged in her heart. That was how she knew that there was a flicker of life within her.
Her vivicus power rose like a rising tide, spreading from her heart through her veins to every part of her body. Every time she'd saved someone with her power, it had almost consumed her. She thought she'd drown in it, or be swept away by it. And always, there was pain, as if something incalculably precious was being torn from her.
This time, releasing her power was simple and painless. Her magic hummed within her, winding itself around the shard of ice in her heart and melting it bit by bit.
She became aware of the sensation in her fingers first. They were interlaced with Thai's, she knew from the scar on one of his knuckles. He was pumping his own magic into her, amplifying and containing her vivicus power.
Her body ached everywhere, and an acute pain in her chest made her worry that Reaper's dagger was still inside her.
Then she heard sounds, a low bustle that reminded her of the Oakland Children's Hospital. She cracked her eyes open, half expecting to see Dr. Freeman leaning over her, listening to her heart with his stethoscope.
Instead, she saw a large tent set up with neat rows of cots. Thai's grip on her hand relaxed a fraction. His face was gray, and Valerie pulled her hand away, guilty that she had stolen so much of his strength to heal herself. But he grabbed her hand back and gripped it tighter.
"Don't you dare," he whispered.
"Another heroic battlefield rescue that you were unconscious for," Cyrus said, and she turned her head and saw her best friend in the chair next to her. "Why I'm not the guy who gets the girl is beyond me."
Cyrus sounded tired, and his jokes were forced, but he was there, even though Thai was holding her hand. She could guess what it cost him.
"Reaper?" Valerie croaked.
"In Plymouth, we think," Cyrus said. "Sanguina and I attacked him together, and I called forth as much light as I could. I think he would have killed us, but Willa set off a whole bunch of explosions around that fountain that used to lead to Plymouth, and he left to close the hole she created. We took off with you while he was distracted."
Valerie tried to sit up, but the effort made the room spin, and she collapsed back on her pillow. She touched her chest with a gasp, expecting to find a shard of Reaper's dagger still lodged in her heart, but all that was there was the bump of what promised to be a fantastic scar.
Involuntarily, she reached for Pathos, before remembering that it was gone, destroyed by Reaper's scythe. Its loss wasn't anything like losing a person, but it was more than a broken weapon to her. It was her connection to her mother, and a reminder when she doubted herself that this ancient, powerful sword had chosen her to wield it.
Pathos had had dozens of owners over the centuries, and had survived thousands of battles. But she had broken it. An old, horrible feeling clawed at her heart that she was meant to be alone because everything she touched suffered.
There was some truth to it. Hadn't she failed Midnight, her father, Dulcea, and Henry? They were only a few of many more who had been hurt because of choices she'd made, or times when she hadn't been strong enough. Her eyes drifted to Cyrus, whose heart she'd obliterated, and then to Thai. Would he be next?
She pulled her hand from Thai's, and this time, he let her go. She couldn't stand their love, didn't deserve it. She knew that the worst part of herself was surfacing, but she didn't have the energy to fight it. It was time for the Fist to find a new leader. She'd done her best to defeat Reaper and hadn't come close. But she knew no one would let her quit, not now. The thought was so overwhelming that Valerie squeezed her eyes shut.
"I'm really tired," she said. "Can you guys leave me so I can rest for a while?"
"Sure, Val," Cyrus said. "I'll tell Skye and Chisisi that you'll talk to them later, when you've had a chance to recover a little."
"You can do better than this," Thai said, and she heard a thread of anger in his voice.
Even with her eyes shut, she knew that he was still there, as if he hoped that she would get mad at his comment and fight back.
Instead, Valerie found that she could summon unconsciousness and draw its numbness around her like a blanket, so she did.
Valerie's dreams were odd fragments, shards of time that contained memories too painful to touch when she was awake. Her memories were intermingled with Henry's, and she relived with him the loss of his mother and father, and countless nights of terror from Zunya and Sanguina.
Wherever he was, did he see her memories of fending off thugs when she'd lived beneath the overpass in Oakland, foster homes where she'd been beaten or locked up, or each moment when she'd lost someone she'd loved?
The pain kept mounting and mounting, so intense that her head ached. It was more acute than even the stabbing pain in her chest from the wound Reaper had given her. Had Henry seen that, too? Did he know she'd almost died?
Abruptly, her memories and Henry's memories were wiped away, and Valerie knew she was fully in her twin's mind. He was back in Babylon, on the top stone tier of flowers, staring down at the lake, which perfectly reflected the trees around it.
His self-hatred had reached a crescendo, and then it evaporated all at once. She saw his decision. She didn't even have the chance to scream before Henry threw himself off the edge, not into the water, but onto the rocks beside it.
Valerie was falling, falling, falling, and she sat up in bed with a gasp when Henry's body smashed into the rocks, expelled from his mind.
Valerie reached for him, and her certainty that their connection was one that could not be broken so easily obliterated any other possibility. Her mind found his, so faint that it was almost an echo, but completely open to her. His thoughts flowed through her as if they were her own.
He was almost gone, and in his final breaths, he was overpowered by the need to see his sister, his only family, one last time, to look into her eyes when he passed into the ether. If she could be there, she'd see that he was sorry, understand how much he loved her, know that he had to die because he was a plague on the universe.
Valerie had taken a wobbly step out of bed when her body hummed, touched by magic that was within her and around her at the same time. She heaved as she was racked with waves of nausea.
The bed she gripped faded, and she collapsed on the wet sand of the lake in Babylon. For the second time in her life, blood had called blood, and it was a tie that overcame even the magic that Reaper had sewn into the fabric of the molecules in her body.
Henry's broken form was bleeding on soft, green grass, where he'd rolled after crashing on the rocks. He didn't move when he saw her, but the relief in his mind flowed through hers. He couldn't let go without seeing her first. The force of that need had dragged her to his side.
"I won't let you die," Valerie said, kneeling at his side and summoning whatever magic remained in her after using her vivicus power to save her own life.
"You can use your power to fix my body, but I'll always be broken inside," Henry said, his words barely audible. "Please forgive me, and let me leave you."
"I can fix it all," she said, as a strange sensation of weightlessness enveloped her.
Valerie always thought after she used her vivicus power, her magic was gone until she built it back up, but she was wrong. More magic than Valerie imagined could live in the entire universe, much less inside of her, filled her. It was light and love, and she would embrace it even if she lost her connection to the logical part of herself by using too much of her vivicus power, like Darling.
She squeezed Henry's hand and brushed his cheek with a kiss that released her power into his body, joining with his. Their combined magic collided with a low boom that rippled out around them.
Valerie gasped as her magic tore through her in a torrent. Without Thai there to help control it, the pain was intense, but it worked its way through Henry's system. Her connection with Henry's mind let her see her power at work more intimately than she ever had before. It stitched together broken bones, healed torn places within him that were internally bleeding from the impact of the rocks.
But the magic didn't stop there. It traveled through the circuits of Henry's brain, rerouting, rewiring. She saw broken connections and healed them. Places where the flow of chemicals in Henry's brain had been choked off opened back up.
Finally, even her newly discovered store of magic was used up, and she collapsed backward on the grass next to Henry, entirely depleted. She managed to turn her head to look at him, and the sight was familiar. When she'd been initiated into her guild, she'd had a vision of the future where she'd seen Henry from exactly this angle before he vanished from her mind, gone forever.
But little things were different from her vision. Instead of smiling at her in resignation, Henry's eyes were watery. And her connection with his mind was intact, though it felt different, warmer somehow. His self-loathing and fear were muted, and in their place was a tentative peace. It coexisted with grief and pain, but in an entirely new way.
Henry was telling her something, but Valerie couldn't hear the words. She watched his mouth and finally realized that he was reciting the words of the prophecy he'd received from an Oracle three years ago.
Over mountains, across seas,
Through despair, into bliss,
Though pain will bring you to your knees,
You'll find the answer you seek in a kiss.
"You're the answer, Val. You can heal more than me. You're going to make the whole universe better somehow," he said. "And I'm going to help you."
Henry's words should have added to the burden of responsibility she always carried with her, but right now, she was weightless, and she let Henry's hope flow from his mind into hers, buoying her up.
When Valerie awoke, she was back in her cot in the long tent. Before she could question if she'd dreamed her entire encounter with Henry, she saw her brother sleeping in the chair next to her, still wearing the bloody, torn clothes he'd been in when she saved him.
She thought she'd been drained before, but she'd been stronger than she knew. Now, she couldn't summon the strength to even let Henry know she'd awakened.
Her mind was as sluggish as her body, and she struggled to remember little details, like when her hair had grown long again, or why Nightingale was nearby, obviously caring for her when he'd made it clear that he wouldn't heal her, the last she remembered.
In place of her memories was a connection to something or someone else. At first, she couldn't place what it was, but after a minute, she figured it out. She could sense Darling, the only other vivicus in the universe, as if he lived in a piece of her heart. She hadn't seen him all year, and it was a relief to know that he was okay. She didn't understand what had triggered their sudden connection, but before she could think about it more closely, Henry's eyes opened and he saw her.
"Nightingale! She's awake!" Henry called, moving to her side.
Nightingale's cool green hand was on her back, helping her sit. He brought a drink to her lips and helped her sip it. She coughed at the taste, but he kept pouring it down her throat.
The potion hummed as it made its way down, and a little of her energy returned. She searched the room for Thai, and saw him assisting another Master Healer with a patient.
He looked over his shoulder at her and briefly shut his eyes in relief. But before he turned back to his patient, she saw him shake his head once, his lips compressed tightly. Henry followed her gaze.
"He's mad at me because of Tan," Henry said, staring at his shoes.
"Not you. Me. Because I was giving up, and he knew it," Valerie said.
Getting the words out required about as much effort as running a marathon, but Nightingale's potion was helping. It was like being hit by a bus instead of a train.
A giant red bird entered the room and came to rest beside her. She stared at him. Why was he so familiar?
"You have brought Henry back to us," he said, his black eyes alight.
Valerie turned a questioning gaze to Henry.
"Who?" she managed to ask.
Henry began biting his thumbnail.
"What's wrong with her, Dasan?" he asked the bird. "Why doesn't she know you?"
Dasan passed a wing over Valerie's head, and from the buzzing between her ears, she guessed that he was using some kind of magic on her. She trusted that Henry wouldn't let him near her if he was dangerous, so she remained still.
As the buzzing continued, little memories flickered across her mind. Dasan dropping Henry into a fountain, Dasan giving her a gift of peace, Dasan counseling her on how to help Henry.
"Yes, I remember," she croaked. "Why did I forget?"
Thai joined them at her bedside now, his forehead creased as he listened.
"Your mind has begun to fray a little, only at the edges, little vivicus," Dasan said, his head cocked to the side as he examined her with beady eyes. "The vivicus power will take its toll, and tapping into it twice in one day sped up the process. Rest your power, and your mind will recover this time. But every time that you unleash it, your mind will unravel a little faster."
Valerie wanted to tell him that the unraveling of her mind had started months ago, but she didn't have the energy to form the words. Anyway, she didn't regret any of the lives she saved, in spite of the price, especially today. Henry was whole.
"Thank you for helping her," Henry said.
"It is my honor," Dasan said, and then moved to another patient's bed.
"Why didn't you take me with you to find Henry?" Thai asked, gripping her hand so tightly, it almost hurt. "Were you trying to kill yourself?"
"She didn't have a choice, man," Henry said, when Valerie struggled to find the strength to answer. "I didn't mean to, but I basically snatched her from thin air to my side."
"Before she left, she'd given up. She didn't say so, but I knew. It didn't matter that she had friends who loved her, that she had me. She wanted us all to leave her."
"Even Valerie can't be strong all the time," Henry said.
Why were they talking like she wasn't lying right there? Then she noticed that her eyes were shut, too heavy to stay open. Before she slid back into unconsciousness, a warm pulse in the part of her mind that was now connected to Darling soothed her to sleep.