Chapter 20
EZRA
The last time I remember living without fear, is when the sound of applause echoed like a thousand wings beating all at once, rippling up the columns and across the ceiling. A sea of clapping and laughing and crying because, for five minutes, the world wasn’t cruel.
Daisy squeezed my fingers so hard my rings left little marks in her palms, and I didn’t care because she was shining, and Korithax looked at her like she was the only star he’d ever learned the name of.
They kissed and the room sighed, and I had leaned into Talia like, babes, we are living, and she whispered back, “universe, do you see my girl?” And I swear my heart grew two sizes and sprouted sequins.
Then the doors blew open and the night fell in.
Not darkness—worse. Light that didn’t belong to living things.
Light that carved. Light that sneered. Six figures strolled through the fog like the world was their red carpet, and the scream in my throat laid down and played dead.
Korithax’s wings tore open in a snap of shadow and fire.
I tasted metal. Ozone. The after-smell of burnt churches.
Seraphiel said something vile in a voice that scraped down my bones, and I only half-heard it because my brain was busy unravelling like a cheap thrift-store sweater.
Behind her, the others gleamed. Calrix, with his murder-toy already out; Mal’Thariel, who looked like a glass saint you’d cut your lips on; Amarithe, glowing like a bad idea wrapped in honey; Elaron, smiling the way I imagine a knife would smile when they’re about to be used for murder; and Velentha, hood up, silent, the only one who didn’t make my skin feel like it was blistering.
I knew the names because Daisy had whispered them in fear against my shoulder, the stories of them sounding like pure horror.
“Leave them out of this,” Korithax snarled, and I had never once been comforted by a snarl before, but there you go—first time for everything.
Seraphiel’s gaze found me, and I felt it like frostbite. “We warned you not to return, little mortal,” she said, and I felt Talia go still beside me, felt the tremor race through her arm where it linked with mine. We were nothing more than tiny little rabbits. And she was the hawk.
“Let’s choose your punishment,” Seraphiel cooed, her smile serpentine.
She lifted her hand and sang, “Eenie…”
“Don’t,” Korithax said, voice low, as powerful as thunder.
“Meenie…”
I stepped in front of Talia because my body decided it would rather be brave than alive. “Take me,” I said, voice cracking but honest. “Don’t touch her.”
“Minie…”
Talia’s nails dug crescents into my palm. “I love you,” she whispered, without turning her gaze to me. She spoke those words the way people do when they know their time is running out.
“Mo.”
Seraphiel pointed at Talia. My stomach fell through the floor.
“Catch a mortal by the toe…” she sing-songed, and somewhere far away, I heard the first raindrops hit the windows of the throne room.
“If it screams—”
“Stop,” Korithax said, stepping forwards like a sculpted mountain.
“We won’t let it go.”
“Don’t,” Daisy choked. She sounded like a small child.
“Eenie. Meenie. Minie—”
“No,” Korithax growled.
“—Mo.”
She landed on Talia again, light and laugher and malice in one delicate flick of a finger.
Calrix moved before thought happened. A silver flash, a hiss, a sound that will haunt me, even in death.
The blade buried itself in Talia’s chest. She didn’t understand at first. She inhaled like she’d been surprised.
Her eyes went wide and so full of emotion.
Then blood made a red map of her dress and she collapsed into Daisy, who fell to her knees, hands already slick and sliding, whispering no no no like you can bargain with the Grim Reaper if you say it fast enough.
I caught Talia’s head before it hit the stone.
Her face was still warm, a little damp from humidity, smelling faintly of coconut oil and the cherry lip gloss she loved that I hated.
Her mouth shaped my name in a silent plea, and then flattened.
The world tilted and I screamed until it felt like my throat bled.
I would’ve given all of my tomorrows for one more breath in her lungs, for one more eye roll, for one more, “baby, your blush is patchy, come here.”
Korithax’s voice cut through the ringing. “Aran.”
Aran was a shadow that learned how to be a man, and he moved like shadows do. He knelt, and I swore I saw grief in his eyes, but I didn’t have room to care for it; I only had room for the Talia-shaped hole I knew would now be permanently etched into my heart.
“I’m not leaving her,” I said, because I had apparently decided to audition for the white knight. “I’m not leaving.”
“You’ll die if you stay,” Aran told me, and I wanted to tell him that death sounded like a dream, in all honesty. Because what was life without the other two parts of my heart? One was now dead, and the other stuck in a kingdom I could never just turn up to.
Korithax didn’t look back at me—he looked at Aran. “Get him out of here. Now.”
And here’s the thing I didn’t know about Hell until that moment: it can be merciful.
Aran was mercy with calluses. He grabbed me by the shoulders, and I clawed at him, at the air, at the floor, at Daisy, at a life that I didn’t want anymore.
A rift tore open behind us. The air split at the seams and the light on the other side made me think of lightning trapped in a jar.
I dug my heels in, but Aran didn’t care.
He was stronger than my grief, he was stronger than me.
“Bring me back,” I begged, bargaining like a loser in the last round of a drag competition. “Please, I’ll do anything, I’ll burn, I’ll bargain my soul, I’ll—”
“I will,” Aran said, and his voice broke on words. “I promise.”
Promises are made of sugar glass. You can look right through them and still somehow get cut.
He shoved me through the portal and the world around me vanished into something…
normal. Rain. Cold, ordinary rain. Asphalt slick as spilled ink.
The thump of a dumpster lid closing somewhere nearby.
The buzz of a streetlight. The alley behind Daisy’s building, the one we burnt her Halloween costume together.
I sprawled on wet pavement like a lost puppy. The portal shivered behind me, a swirling mirage of what I knew would be my last moment of happiness, and then it vanished. The alley went dim. I stared. I waited. I begged the air to tear again and give her back. But…nothing.
I don’t know how long I lay there. Long enough to soak through. Long enough for my hands to prune. Long enough for my sobs to turn to hiccups, then to silence. When I finally stumbled up the stairs and pressed my forehead to her apartment door, I strained, begging to hear something.
I knocked. “Daze?” I whispered into the wood.
Silence answered. A silence so deafening, it made my chest ache.
I slid down the door and sat. I stayed until the hallway light went off, then back on, then off again.
When the old lady from down the hall shuffled past with her cart the next morning, she dropped a pack of tissues into my lap without even a second glance.
I used one to wipe my face, and three to try and polish away my grief.
The days after became a necklace of waiting.
Bead after bead of hoping, threaded on a string of no sleep.
I went to class once and sat in the back, and Phoebe—may her cuticles forever peel—whispered, “She ran off with that freak,” and my hand shook so hard, my pen drew a heartbeat straight across my notes.
I left before my mouth did something my soul would regret.
Talia’s mom called. I practiced a smile she couldn’t even see, putting on my customer service voice.
“No news yet,” I lied, and her breath hitched like mine always does when a new Taylor Swift album drops. I hung up and threw up, then apologised to her through my tears as I cleared the sink.
Night was a slide show of the same three images: Seraphiel’s finger, the glint of Calrix’s blade, Talia not breathing.
Every time I closed my eyes, the film rolled.
I tried sleeping on the couch, on the floor, in the bathtub.
I drank the kind of vodka that burnt the entire way down.
It didn’t matter though, because the movie played anyway.
I unlocked Daisy’s door a few days later because the outside of it wasn’t enough anymore.
I wanted to see if the inside still remembered her.
It did. The place still smelled like Daisy: her coffee and the winter candle she said smelled like the perfect blend of vanilla and a good book.
The almost bare Christmas tree squatted in the corner; ornaments stood still in time.
A lipstick kiss on a mug. A sweater draped on the back of a chair that I pulled to my nose to inhale her warm, comforting smell.
And on the floor: the circle she told us about.
Her blood had dried to a colour I’ll never forget.
I knelt and traced the pattern with my fingertips.
I tried to mimic exactly how her voice would sound when she called him, broken and alone.
“Korithax,” I whispered, then called it loud, then raw. “KORITHAX. I SUMMON YOU.”
Silence. The lights didn’t even flicker.
I laughed. It sounded so broken, so not me.
“Fine,” I said, because bargaining runs in my blood even if magic does not.
I picked up the knife that lay by the circle, and opened my palm like a red flower.
My blood threaded the grooves and I pressed my hand flat to the circle, relaying the words until they sounded like nonsense, like a desperate prayer I knew wasn’t going to be answered.
The air moved. Or maybe it was just me swaying from exhaustion.
For a heartbeat, I heard Daisy laugh from the bedroom, that snort-laugh she would try hiding when she thought something was stupidly hilarious.
“Daze?” I croaked, whirling around. I listened again. But… nothing. Clearly delirium was settling in.
I lay down on the floor inside the circle, and let it comfort me in a sick sort of way. I cried until I hiccupped, until my ribs hurt, until my cheek stuck to the wood, until grief became nothing but heavy breathing and exhaustion.
The next day, I cleaned the mug because it felt like maybe if I did, she’d return.
I folded the sweater. I lined up her shoes like she’d be back to wear them any minute.
I talked to her. “Your plants are dying,” I told the empty air.
“Water it yourself, next time.” I watered it anyway.
It perked up a little, and I took it as a sign that she was coming home.
I tried going to class again, but I made it as far as the quad before I saw the MISSING posters with Talia’s smiling photo.
None for Daisy. Of course not. These were done by Talia’s parents.
Daisy’s dad wouldn’t have even noticed she was gone.
I took a different route. Then another route.
Then, I just stopped going anywhere that required routes.
I learned how to be quiet even though it didn’t suit me.
My glitter lost its sparkle. My eyeliner dried out in its drawer.
And my wardrobe went from rainbow to raincloud.
Every day for seven days I would stand in that alleyway.
But Aran didn’t come. The portal didn’t open.
So, I stopped going. And then, I stopped going to Daisy’s apartment just two days later.
It didn’t smell enough like her anymore.
It didn’t bring me comfort. It was just another painful reminder that Aran lied about coming back.
One of my best friends was dead, and the other was in a realm I could never return to.
Maybe even dead herself. I texted the group chat in pure desperation, but of course, no reply came.
I laid on my floor in silence, because even Taylor Swift couldn’t bring me joy anymore.
When my phone buzzed, I ignored it. But it buzzed again.
And again. I flipped it over with one finger, ready to block whoever was calling.
I didn’t realise I was crying until the screen blurred.
I wiped at my eyes with the hem of my shirt, and stared at the number with my pulse thundering in my ears.
My thumb hit ‘answer’, hoping it wasn’t just my delusion setting in on a whole new level.
“Hello?” My voice came out cracked.
A sob echoed down the line. “Ezra.” I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move, in fear that anything I did would make this mirage vanish. “Ezra, it’s me. Daisy.”
The sound I made was not dignified. It was not pretty. I pressed the phone to my mouth like I could breathe her through it. When she told me she was in her apartment, I had never moved so fast in my life. Not even in cheer.
“Please don’t vanish. Please don’t vanish. Please don’t vanish.” I repeated the words over and over again, as I scrambled to get my shoes on and sprinted out the door.
It was raining. Of course it was raining.
But I ran anyway. Because when your life reappears, you don’t walk to it—you sprint like your life depends on it.
The city blurred, my lungs burned, and my legs shook.
My feet barely brushed the stairs up to her floor as I ran up them, the last one like a victory line I couldn’t wait to dive over.
When Aran answered, I didn’t think. I didn’t weigh the moral algebra of angels and demons and promises made all that time ago.
I just let my hand do what my heart had been rehearsing since he left.
I punched him. His head snapped to the side, blood blooming from his nose.
And for one sharp second, that hit felt better than any forgiveness ever could.
But when Daisy said my name, every other sound fell to its knees, because I saw her, alive, breathing, and in the flesh. And I broke all over again. I just stared at her, and for the first time in a month, the world didn’t feel monotone. It felt like itself, vibrant and ours.