Marc screamed.

In my life, I’d seen men injured. Tortured. Killed.

This was something different.

This was something worse.

Grief, in its purest form. The sort that carved into a soul, ruthlessly destroying everything good: love, hope, passion, devotion. Leaving behind only the blackest of emotions to drag one down and down until the slice of a knife, the twist of a neck, or a bullet in the skull seemed like a blessed relief. A mercy.

I hadn’t known there could be grief like that.

For all my preparation, it froze me in place in the corner where I lurked.

He screamed again, her name this time. Dragged her up into his arms. Pénélope’s head lolled back, silver eyes dull and sightless. Even in death, she was lovely. But lovely like an object. A thing. It was an echo of the beauty she’d once possessed, because what had made her her was gone. And even though I had not loved her – had, perhaps, even hated her in the end – the absence of that radiance hurt.

Marc sobbed into her hair, the sound ragged. His lips were pressed against her ear, and though I couldn’t hear what he said, the intention in them would have been clear even without his hand reaching for the knife concealed in his boot.

I moved.

My magic lashed around him, binding his limbs, prying his fingers from Pénélope, the sound of bones snapping and popping out of joint making my stomach twist. Marc didn’t even feel the pain, shrieking only in anguish as Pénélope’s body fell to the floor.

“Stop,” I said. “Marc, you need to stop this.”

His face twisted toward me, eyes bloody from capillaries bursting and reforming, his fractured features full of manic hate. “Let me go.”

“No.”

He howled, magic rising against mine with a strength I hadn’t known he possessed. Too much, enough that he’d burn out his life, and so I clamped down on it, contained it. Fury spewed from his mouth, a tide of hate. Things I’d thought of myself but never once believed he thought of me. And though I knew it was motivated by her loss, that did not make them less true. “Stop.”

“Why must it always be your way?” he screamed. “Let me go!”

“No.”

Anaïs shouldered past me, falling to her knees and pulling her sister into her arms. “Penny, Penny, no!” She was shaking, face coated with tears. Lifting her face, her gaze latched on mine. “Tristan…”

A broken plea for me to help her. To make this right.

But I couldn’t.

“I’m sorry,” I said, then backed away, dragging Marc with me. Jamming magic into his mouth to silence him, because I was too much of a coward to hear anything more. The twins stood at the doorway, shoulders sagging. “Help her.”

The corridor was a blur of papered walls and carpet. Of servants staring wide-eyed as I dragged their master down the hall and into what had been his father’s rooms. My hands were shaking and icy, but I tied him to the bed. “I’m not letting you die.”

He answered me with a gaze full of hate.

The tool Pénélope had given me lurked in the back of my thoughts, but I was afraid to use it. Afraid of how such power would change our friendship. Whether it would even exist if I did.

And so my vigil began.

---

Days passed. Then weeks. Exhaustion like nothing I’d ever known gripped me, the few moments when the twins watched over Marc, or helped force food down his throat, not enough to compensate for the drain of watching his fury fade, his grief return, and then even that disappear along with his will to live.

My father came once.

I felt his presence behind me, and if he had told me that I was wasting my time, that my energy was better dedicated to the tree or other ventures, I think I might have tried to kill him where he stood.

“He has to find within himself the will to live,” he said. “To make him otherwise endure will only have consequences.”

“I know.”

“Not everything in this world is within your power to control.”

I turned to meet his gaze. “Nor yours.”

His eyes dug into me for a long time, then he nodded and silently left the room.

My vigil continued.

---

“He’s not getting any better.”

Anaïs sat across the bed from me, dressed in black, the lace across her throat eerily similar to the bonding marks on Marc’s fingers. She was different already, I could tell. A ruthlessness simmering around her that hadn’t been there before.

“I know.”

“Everyone thinks you should let him go. That to keep him alive like this is cruel.”

“No.”

She nodded slowly, then said, “I want to hate him. To blame him for taking her away from me. For killing her.”

“He didn’t kill her.” My voice rasped against my dry throat, but I was too tired to reach for a glass of water.

“Yes, he did.”

I opened my mouth to tell her to leave – that I didn’t have the patience to argue with her, but then she said, “But he was also the only one who let her live.”

Taking Marc’s hand, she lifted it to regard his blackened bonding marks. “The rest of us thought that what mattered was keeping her wrapped up in a safe little box, protected from anything and anyone who might hurt her. Marc was the only one who saw that setting her free was what she needed. He made her happy.” Her voice cracked, and she scrubbed a hand across her eyes. “For her sake, we need to fight for him, Tristan.”

“For all our sakes,” I said.

Anaïs nodded once, then stood, leaning down to kiss my cheek. “Don’t let him die.”

She left the room, leaving me alone with Marc.

And I made my decision.

---

“Marcanthysurum.”

It had taken all the nerve I had to put voice to his true name, but I was rewarded when, for the first time in weeks, his head lifted, eyes fixing on mine.

“She told you my name.”

Betrayal. For a heartbeat, I wondered if Pénélope giving up his name to me would be the straw that broke him beyond repair, but his chest still rose and fell with steady breaths.

“Marcanthysurum,” I said. “I want you to believe that you gave me your name of your own volition, as a show of loyalty and goodwill, not that Pénélope betrayed your confidence.”

“That’s not the truth.”

“I know,” I said. “But I want you to believe it anyway.”

The hurt painted across his face faded away.

“Our revolution needs you,” I said, then stopped. Because that wasn’t the real reason why I was doing this. “I need you. You’re my cousin and my best friend. The only person in all the world that I trust, and you… you make me want to be better than I am. And I’m afraid of what it will mean for me to carry on without you. I need you to live.”

He stared at me, then shook his head.

Clenching my teeth, I took a deep breath. There could be no other way.

“Marcanthysurum, I want you to give me your word that you’ll live. That you will not undertake any action for the purpose of ending your life.”

His shoulders tensed, the muscles in his face standing out in stark relief as he tried to refuse my command. Seconds passed, then minutes, and terror clawed my insides that somehow – impossibly – his will was greater than the power of his true name. Before my eyes, he waged an internal war, the paper on the walls blackening and catching flame from the intensity of the struggle. But in the end, the name won out.

He gave his promise.

I released my hold on him.

And the madness set in.