Page 194 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

As I run, the labyrinth falls away. Walls collapsing, floor tiles vanishing from behind us as we sprint through the corridors. My side hurts. My chest is caving in—bisecting my heart with an unbridgeable chasm. But I don’t stop. I don’t dare stop.

Not until all that remains is one long marble runway, the darkness of the void, and the stench of stale blood.

It goes forever. It goes forever until it doesn’t. We reach the end of the path and find Damien collapsed in an inelegant, filthy heap. His lips are blue, where they aren’t smeared in the same viscous gore all over Wren.

Aside from that, he looks as if he could be sleeping.

Only, his chest isn’t rising and falling. His eyes aren’t flickering with visions of dreams I can’t see.

The mark I gave him is gone. The last sliver of my magic—the bit that was supposed to protect him... It’s the very thing that killed him. I know it somehow.

And it’s entirely my fault.

I drop to my knees in the bloody sludge, slipping as I get closer to him. This is wrong. It’s so wrong. I take his hand in mine and look at the ring on his thumb, smearing the fluid from it to look at the constellations inside of it. At the wrist bereft of my magic.

I don’t understand. Why has none of this magic worked? Why would this have even happened? Why didn’t the portal close before he could get through? Why would the sacrifice of going to him to heal his burns lead to this? What was the point if my intuition wasn’t leading me somewhere that I’d find Damien, alive and well, at the end of the path?

My tears carve paths in the sticky black blood clinging to his skin.

I’m so full of rage, and every time I reach for the fire inside of me to do something, the embers don’t even stir. There is nothing but brittle ash inside of me. I am a walking ruin. A little disaster.

Is this really what’s supposed to happen? The wards on The Buried City are meant to break? Magic is about to die forever? Maybe even life as we know it?

A hand lights on my shoulder. It’s warm, but not comforting. It’s like bare thighs sticking to vinyl in the summer heat. Falling asleep with too many blankets on. A fever. The oppressive weight of Virginia humidity.

“Lilipad, we have to go.” Bastion says,

We all stand on an island of tiles quickly vanishing into the void that the Aberrant summoned. I shake my head. “I’m going to stay here,” I say.

“No,” Wren says. “You’re not.”

“Yes,” I say, glaring up at her. “I am.”

“We didn’t come here just to leave you here to die.”

“You shouldn’t have come at all,” I snap. “If you’d never come, Damien would still be alive.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she sneers. “That was his fault. We told him to stay back, Lillith. You can’t just—”

“I don’t care whose fault it is,” I sob. “Goddamnit, Wren. Even if Damien wasn’t dead, my magic is gone. What point is there in living anymore? I have nothing. I thought I had nothing before and now I’m here with even less.

“And I’m going to go back to—to do what? Sit around and wait for that monster to devour each of you one by one? Steal the rest of the magic from the world? Destroy the fae? Devour the life left in this planet? No. I’m not doing that. Fuck that. I’m going out the way I choose to. On my terms. I’m done with this bullshit. I’m done deluding myself into thinking that I ever get to be happy.”

“And what about us?” Wren snarls. “Just fuck your best friends because your fuck buddy died?”

“Wren,” Bastion says. “That’s enough.”

“Fuck buddy?!” I shout. “Gods, who even are you right now? Maybe you like to play with your food, but this is the realest thing I’ve ever experienced, Wren.”

“Well—”

“Shut it!” Bastion shouts. I’ve never heard him yell like that. He’s chronically unbothered. “Wren. You’re not helping.”

Wren glowers before shaking her head and turning away from both of us. Bastion sighs and kneels down next to me, taking my face in his soft hands.

I feel such anger, but tears pour out of my eyes anyway. And before long, the anger gives way to grief. And sorrow. I’ve lost... everything. And the only thing that remains before me is the gaping maw of despair.

“Bash, I—c-can’t,” I hiccup.