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“Rose,” he whispers, his gaze searching my face, his heart open and vulnerable for a moment. He looks like he wants to say more, falters, and stays silent.

Let him love you.

If there was ever a time to carry out Raven’s order, it is now. I could kiss him, knowing with certainty that he would kiss me back, and everything would be over.

But I look up at him and cannot do it. Not yet, with so many lies hanging between us. I have to know first, must hear it from his own lips.

“Étienne,” I say. “Tell me the truth. Please.”

And to my surprise, he doesn’t look confused. He looks resigned, as if he’s always known I would one day ask him.

I take a deep breath. “Many years ago, I was walking through an alley with a girl named Laine. She was my closest friend, the best person I ever knew.” I swallow as the memory comes back to me, a dark cloud shrouding the magic of this moment. “Someone attacked her in that alley. To keep her from dying, I made a deal with Raven to become his Harbinger.”

I look back at Étienne. “Was it you that day?” I ask him softly. “Were you the one in the alley? Did you do that to her?”

He says nothing. His jaw is tight. But his eyes tell me everything I need to know. And I should have known it, of course, because Raven has no reason to lie, but part of me had still held out hope that it wasn’t true.

Finally, Étienne removes his silk bracelet, then slides it onto my wrist. His fingers linger for a second on my skin, sending a spark through me. Then he steps back.

“Yes,” he says at last.

The bracelet doesn’t react at all. It is the truth.

The earlier moment between us is fading away now, and the feeling in my chest grows heavy, turns darker, twists tighter. I touch the space over my heart and feel my breathing constrict.

“It was you, all along,” I whisper. “How could you?”

There is a hopelessness in his eyes that sends a chill down my spine. It frightens me because it reminds me of how Laine had looked right after she’d been stabbed, after he had stabbed her. Like this was just fate. Inevitable. Inescapable.

A surge of anger hits me. “How could you?” I say again, gritting my teeth. “All your pretenses of befriending me, saving my life—during our test, you even conjured Laine on the street to try to distract me. I couldn’t figure out how you created her illusion without knowing what she looked like.” I stab a finger into his chest. “You knew because you saw her! You were the one who attacked her!”

He doesn’t deny it. And I picture the fateful moment all over again—Étienne in his scarf and hood, shoving me to the ground, stabbing my friend, sprinting away.

Every tangled knot of emotion in me now bursts out at last. Tears well in my eyes. “You’re the reason I’m here, that I’m trapped. And you never told me.”

“Do you know why?” he asks.

His question cuts through my tirade, and I blink, confused for a moment. “What do you mean, why? Why you’re the reason I’m here, that I have to do this? To be Raven’s Harbinger? Your patron god wants me dead, to claim my soul for himself. He’s tired of the balance in the world and doesn’t want to follow the rules anymore. That reason? Have you been working toward that for him, all this time?”

“Is that what your god told you?” he says in a low voice.

Now he’s trying to turn me against Raven. “I was a fool to have let my guard down around you,” I say quietly. “He told me everything.”

Étienne closes his eyes, as if in pain, then gazes at me again. “Then did he tell you his role in all this? Did he tell you about Laine?”

I frown at him. “Laine?” I echo.

He lets out a bitter laugh, as if he’s angrier with himself than me. After a pause, he says, “I knew Laine before you ever did. Before she became your friend, she was mine.”

I blink. His words cut through me like a knife. Everything in me stills.

“What?” I say.

“Laine works for Raven. She is a Harbinger of Death.”

I wait for his Artifact to alert me that he’s lying, for a spark or a jolt or a stab of heat. Tell me. But it doesn’t.

I laugh a little, because it’s absurd. “You’re lying to me,” I whisper. “You’re manipulating me right now.”