I walked slowly up the stairs out of Leben’s training hall. The weight of everything that had been happening over the last two weeks eased with each step, as I finally began to realize the cost of it all. Malik’s death wasn’t my fault, but it was my doing. If I hadn’t rushed to help him, he would never have lashed out against his brother.

  I should have trusted him, even if that meant allowing him to make mistakes that could endanger me.

  I should have trusted him to deal with his own family issues.

  I should have trusted him with my reasons.

  I should have trusted that he would reach out to me if he needed help.

  I should have trusted him, because he had earned that trust.

  I should have trusted.

  And so now, standing right before the doors, I made a conscious change in my behavior—one that went against my hard-ingrained nature. I would be open with the people I kept close to me, even if it meant putting both them and myself in danger. Then the choice of staying would be theirs.

  I pushed the door open and stepped into the light of day.

  Jason was clothed in what looked like an oversized sweater and pants, sitting on the couch, sipping coffee and talking with Ariana, while Bonnie sat in an armchair a few feet away, staring at him as if he were a ghost. Damien was in the kitchen, making sure the stew cooking there smelled like a feast fit for kings.

  My ex-boyfriend’s eyes moved toward me the moment the doors opened.

  “Hello there,” he said. “According to what I’ve just learned from these lovely people here, you owe me some explanation, my dear Lexy.”

  “Ain’t that the greeting a woman expects from the damsel boy after she goes bareback into the tower of an evil mage to get him out of a glassy cocoon?”

  “Damsel… boy?”

  “I think it would be best if you two talked privately through this,” Ariana said, her tone firm but polite.

  “You were in distress and I took you out of it. Damsel fits like a glove, my boy.” I ignored her a bit with my words, but let her know with a slight nod and a squint of my eyes that I’d noticed her remark and would behave.

  “My boy suggests that maybe not everything is lost between us?”

  “I could be inclined to give myself another chance, after I’m done explaining myself. Maybe you’d be too, when you’re done listening. What do you say?”

  “I say, let’s talk,” he replied, pointing at the couch opposite his.

  “Oh no. We will not do this here,” I said as I walked up to him. To his credit, he stood up, waiting for me to come closer.

  “Please come back quickly. I’m almost done with dinner,” Dam said, turning around. He wasn’t joking. His tone was pleasant but lacked his usual playfulness—something lost with Malik’s recent departure. I hoped he’d regain it in time.

  “Where are we going?” Jason asked when I placed my hand on his shoulder. He followed it with his eyes, and when he looked back up at me, the world had already spun enough of its mass to place us right in the middle of my own room.

  “What!?” he shouted, landing on the bed with his ass. “So I wasn’t dreaming this?”

  “No, you were not. You thought I’m wearing this suit just for fun?”

  “The suit gives you power to do this?”

  “No, of course not. But it stands out enough to warrant some questions, don’t you think?”

  “I thought it was some art project of yours.”

  “No, it’s—” I started, taking a chair from my desk and sitting on it backward, my legs spread on either side while my head rested on my arms draped over the backrest. “—actually, yes. That is an art project. The thing is, for a few months now, any art I do, I can pour some magic into and make it believe it’s real.”

  “Mhm,” he murmured, looking at my legs.

  “Focus, please. How much do you remember from what happened to you?”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “What happened to me? Not much. Just a terrifying and overwhelming feeling of dread and inevitability. Being unable to move or breathe. I remember motion and voices, and wetness, then being held in some kind of stasis, while my mind kept drifting away and returning. I imagine I was in some form of a coma, right?”

  “You were taken by a magical creature into another world to be turned into a different kind of magical creature—something akin to a vampire. I’ll give you the details later, but they targeted you because you felt that an important part of your life wasn’t as it was supposed to be. You felt uneven, as if reality didn’t reflect how it should, according to you.”

  “That’s… wildly accurate.”

  “Part of it was due to you feeling that I’d never love you back, but I think there were other issues there as well. It’s for you to discover and focus on. The important thing is that I got you out of it, with the help of a lot of people.”

  “A lot?”

  “Yes. Peter—that stupid boy—rushed in without any hesitation. So did Nickolas, and even Sophie and Zoe when I gave them the chance—and another boy you’ll never know. His name was Malik, and he died four days ago.”

  “Because of me?”

  “No. It was unrelated. But he did everything he could to help me get you out, and I think you should know that. He was a mage like me.”

  “That’s the reason you were never able to tell me anything straight?”

  “Partially. Before I became one—long before, actually—I was and still am a criminal.”

  “No fucking way! I knew it. You’re a sex worker.” I squinted at him, then let it go.

  “No. I’m a thief. I steal valuable things from wealthy people…”

  **********

  “Are you okay?” I asked, coming over to sit at the edge of my bed as he lay there with his arms spread to the sides, as if crucified by the weight of everything I’d just told him. And I swear that this time I told him almost everything—especially the things that had happened over those long weeks.

  “My world just kind of vastly expanded, you know?” he replied, staring at the ceiling.

  “You tell me,” I said, dropping down to rest my head near his armpit as I lay alongside him. “I can tell a piece of painted ground that it’s melted nuclear waste, and it will cook a dragon alive in seconds. It’s nuts.”

  “It is kind of nuts. You made that part up, right?”

  “Maybe,” I teased him a bit. It was honestly nice being physically close to him again. “What do you think about all of it?” I asked as I rolled onto my elbow and traced my finger over his chest.

  “It explains a lot of the issues I had with you, but it also makes your story—and by extension you—no offense, please—really fucked up, you know?”

  “No offense taken. At least not a big one. Could you elaborate on that?” I asked, stopping my playful finger dead in the middle of his chest and pressing a little.

  “Disregarding all that magic stuff, your very upbringing just screams abuse to me. You were forcibly molded into a killer. And don’t give me the thief-cover nonsense. That might be the reason, but thieves don’t have to kill.” He moved my hand away and got up into a sitting position, forcing me to do the same. “Penrose asked you to kill puppies when you were a kid, and you’ve probably killed enough people by now to be considered a serial killer. Another man—whose name blanked out on me—was along for most of that, and he’s your friend now?”

  “Thomas…” I whispered.

  “Yeah, that guy. He might be even more deranged. Seeing his employer mentally and physically abuse a little girl and staying, just to try to get out when his own life seemed to be in danger.” He looked at me with eyes I’d never seen on him before. It was contempt, maybe even repulsion—something I hadn’t expected. “I don’t think any of that is healthy. Fuck. I think I should go to the police with all of that.”

  “You’re speaking from a position of a privileged kid, Jason,” I replied calmly, despite the anger building inside me. “Just because you got to live a life of comfort, away from the ugly underbelly of society, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. And Penrose—or Thomas, for that matter—for all the crap they put me through, did it to prepare me to live in that world pretty damn fucking well. Would you say a family of Bronze Age hunter-gatherers were fucked up when they forced their kids to kill to survive? Do you think that kid would’ve survived if they hadn’t taught those skills?”

  “We are not in the Bronze Age anymore, Alexa,” he had the audacity to reply.

  “You’re right. We aren’t—and by that I mean you aren’t, because of the wealth your parents have, because of the soft cushion society has built for you and the safety net cast all around you. I, on the other hand, am still living in the Bronze Age of human attitudes, because despite all the philosophical beauty of compassion, altruism, and live-and-let-live, it only works because of the violence that keeps it so. Violence kept away from your eyes, or the eyes of people like you. The people I worked with, the people who were part of my life, don’t pretend that humanity has outgrown its basic urges.”

  “But they didn’t give you a choice.”

  “No. I wasn’t asked if I wanted to do this. To be like this. Were you asked by your parents to be raised a certain way? Was anyone?”

  “So you’re fucking glad they did this? That just makes you even more fucked up,” he replied, standing up and looking down at me.

  I grit my teeth and clenched my fists before standing as well, pushing him away slightly.

  “I didn’t know up until this point. I honestly thought—honest to Reality—that it broke me. Made me a bad person. But maybe it didn’t. Maybe it just made me unable to pretend that the world can be butterflies and rainbows if I shut my eyes hard enough.”

  “I can’t believe it. So you think killing another person is okay? Lashing a girl is okay?”

  “No, you dimwit, it’s not fucking okay! It’s hurtful, it’s mentally exhausting, but sometimes it’s the only way and pretending otherwise is just deluding yourself.”

  He looked defeated, shoulders slumped low, his face sad. I knew he felt sorry for me. He couldn’t understand what I was saying. In the end, it wouldn’t be the divide between the magical and mundane worlds that stood between us, but his vision of a perfect society and his inability to see the cracks in it.

  “I love you, Alexa. I still think I do. But I don’t think I can be with you, even after all you’ve been through to help me.”

  “A cherry on top, right?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I can’t ever win without losing something else,” I said, walking up to him and pushing him away just slightly, while asking the world to move him to Lebens.

  The world responded, sending him away—

  —but not without a slight opposition from Jason’s own authority.

  Fuck!

  Should I have trusted?