Page 240 of Carousel

“It’s over,” he says, flatly yet giddily. “Our relationship is over.”

I’m breathing faster for a few seconds.

But then I’m softening.

Osimidite, I remember.

Just the osimidite talking.

Opting to ignore him, the way I would the ramblings of one of the regular drunks back in Vikemy, I get him to hold onto the ladder and stand there while I climb it, going up two or three rungs of it until I’m a head taller than him.

Then I turn and guide him to me, my hands on his shoulders to keep him balanced. I help him take the first few wobbly steps up to the rung I’m standing on. Then I get myself higher again and repeat the process.

It’s aggravating, but it’s working.

Until, when we’re still only halfway up, he stalls.

“Cosmer,” I say, gritted. “I need you to keep climbing. So I can get you to our cabin – or maybe even the infirmary⁠—”

“You don’t believe me,” he states, bluntly. He sounds surprisingly sober.

“Believe what?”

“That I’m breaking up with you.”

“Because you’re not,” I snap. “You’ve probably inhaled enough osimidite to calm a raging bull⁠—”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything,” he says, with a grating, choked sort of laugh. “You’ve been playing me⁠—”

My mouth drops. “Playing you?”

“We argue, and I try to tell you something important, but then you tell me exactly what I want to hear, and I just end up forgiving you…” His voice is slow and slurring, yet clear. I hear every painful word. “And you lie, Ara.”

“I lie,” I echo.

“You could have told me who you were engaged to. You also could have told me what happened with Ephraine when I asked you⁠—”

I almost laugh myself. “Ephraine? What does he have to do with this?”

He sways on the ladder.

Calmly, he says, “You killed him, didn’t you?”

It’s like I’m swaying now.

He was never supposed to know.

I part my mouth to answer him, but he’s speaking again.

“It was something Meg said. About how he would have needed to have been made against his will. And that’s what you do, isn’t it? Make people do things against their will.”

“You don’t know what Ephraine did to all of us, Cosmer. He’s basically the reason Riss died⁠—”

“Your magic,” he interrupts, in a tone I can only describe as cruel. “Is the reason Riss died.”

I flinch.

I’m sinking. Being downed. I don’t know how I’m still upright.