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But what if it wasn’t? What choice did she have?

“Your friend will be entirely unaware that we ever had this conversation,” he said. “By the time I leave you here, she’ll have no recollection of this incident at all, will have no idea that someone had attacked her or that she ever lay bleeding in this alley. She will only wonder how she ended up sitting against this wall, whether she’d fallen and forgotten. Most of all, she will wonder who you are.”

She hesitated, her mind whirling. “What? She won’t remember me?”

“You will be resetting her life, giving her back something that she shouldn’t have. You are starting her down a divergent timeline, and the consequence is that her memory will be severed from yours. You will become a stranger to her.”

A stranger. Their friendship, in exchange for Laine’s life.

Later, Rose would understand that he meant her soul was at his bidding, that in exchange for Laine’s life, she would sever herself from her past life, become a mortal forever bound to her immortal, a Harbinger to her patron god. But in that moment, all she could think about was the fact that Laine was hanging on by a thread, and that, somehow, this young stranger was the only thing standing between her life and death.

And she thought, too, that none of this was real. What was the harm of agreeing to a hallucination?

So she said yes.

He leaned toward her. She shivered as he took her left hand and pushed the sleeve of her coat up. Before she could react, he wrapped his hand around her wrist. A searing pain encircled her forearm.

“It is done, Harbinger,” he said.

And then time started again. The cars and buses were moving again, the noise of their honking and engines once more filling the streets. Overhead, the planes continued on their flight paths. You unfroze from your spot at the bus stop, your phone still pressed against your ear. You blinked. On the other side of the street, the girl named Laine was laughing, picking herself up from the wall as if she had just slipped in a patch of icy snow. The girl named Rosie looked pale. They stared at each other for a moment, and to you, it was obvious that Laine didn’t know her. Just passersby on the sidewalk.

And you couldn’t remember why you were on the phone either, why it was held up to your ear or who you were trying to call. You put it back in your pocket, settle once more against the bench, and put your music back on. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you could have sworn you recognized those two girls across the street, that they must have been friends at one point.

But then they walk away from each other. And you just think to yourself, must’ve reminded me of someone else.

7

I drift through the rest of the evening in a daze.

As gods and Regents alike approach me to offer their guidance, I hunt constantly for Étienne, trying in vain to find him in the crowd. But he never appears.

Of course he wouldn’t. We are playing against each other now.

Maybe he’s glad for the chance. Maybe all his advice to me had just been for show. More lies. Hadn’t he told me that I wasn’t Regent material? Now he gets to be the one to decide it.

At last, the gods and their Regents leave, and Raven’s estate settles into serene stillness. I stand beside my patron god against one of the balconies curling around the central atrium. A branch of the Eternal Tree extends so close to us that I could touch its silver-white leaves if I desired. When the space below was filled with guests, I hadn’t felt the sheer vastness of the space, but now I realize that it is larger on the inside than the outside, an illusion caused by the mortal world meeting an immortal place.

Raven’s attention stays on the tree as he leans against the balcony railing. Looking at him has always felt disorienting to me—his face smooth and youthful, yet his eyes haunted by immortality, by all the things he must have seen.

Who had he once been, as a young man? How did he die? How did he get his immortal name?

“Did you know?” I ask him now as I turn to look up at him. “That Thorn would challenge my confirmation?”

“It is not uncommon for a god to challenge a new confirmation,” he answers, “if that’s what you’re wondering.”

I look down at my hands. They’re trembling slightly against the balcony, so I clasp them together and turn my attention back to the tree. I don’t know why I thought that perhaps I’d have it easy tonight, that I would just step into the position that Raven offered me.

“I just didn’t expect him,” I say at last.

He casts me a glance. “You’re thinking of his Regent.”

I hate that Raven can read me so well, and I don’t look back at him. The thought of Étienne being the one to test me, with that smug look on his face, sends a current of dread through my stomach. “There are other Regents I’d rather face, yes,” I admit.

“It’s good that he was chosen.”

“And why’s that?”

He nods at me. “It will be in our best interest to keep our enemies close.”