Ask yourself where power comes from, Ezra said in her head. If you can’t see the source, don’t trust it—
Don’t tell me who to trust!
“Rhodes.”
Tristan came no closer, and she couldn’t decide whether she wanted him to.
“Why would we have done this?” Her voice sounded thin, girlish. “Why?”
“Because, Rhodes. Because look around you.”
“At who? At what?”
He didn’t answer. Bitterly, she conceded that he didn’t need to.
She had more power now than she had ever possessed. It wasn’t a matter of what she was born with or what she was given; being here, among them, with access to the library’s materials, she had every opportunity to travel miles beyond herself. She could feel the outer edges of her power more distantly than ever, further than the tips of her fingers or the soles of her shoes. She could feel herself in waves, pulsing. She could feel herself expanding, and there was no end to it, no beginning. Who she had been once was as distant and unrecognizable as what she would, inevitably, become.
“Whose side are you on, Tristan?” Libby choked from the depths of her remorse. She was dismayed with herself for even asking, but it was making her nauseated, flooding her with bile. The not knowing was making her physically unstable, and she shivered, suddenly sick with it.
“I don’t know.” Tristan’s voice, by contrast, was mechanical and measured. “Yours, maybe. I don’t know.” He gave a little off-color laugh, sounding precisely as unhinged as she felt. “Did you know Callum’s been influencing me? I don’t know how much, or how strongly, or how lingering its effects have been, but he has. Did you know that?”
Yes. It was obvious. “No.”
“I thought I had control of myself but I don’t.” He turned to look at her. “Do you?”
No. Even now she didn’t.
Tristan’s lips parted and she swallowed.
Especially not now.
“I’m not being influenced by Callum, if that’s the question,” she managed to snap at him, incensed by the desperation of her longing. It wasn’t what he’d asked, but selfishly she couldn’t bear to tell him the truth, not even a sliver of it. There were only so many pieces of herself she was willing to lose.
Tristan faced away from her again, turning his back.
Libby wanted to sob, or to vomit.
Fine. “I want it.” Her voice was small when she confessed it to his spine. “This life, this power, Tristan, I want it. I want it so badly it hurts me. I’m in such terrible, disgusting pain.”
He brought one hand up, leaning his forearm against the door and sagging against it.
“When Atlas was telling me about it,” she continued slowly, “it almost made sense: Of course there is a cost. Of course we all have to pay a price. And maybe there is one person I could stand to lose.”
She inhaled deeply; exhaled.
“And for a moment, I thought… maybe I could kill him. Maybe I could do it. Maybe he shouldn’t even exist; maybe the world would be better without him. But my god,” she gasped, “who am I to decide that?”
Silence.
“Who am I to place value on someone else’s life, Tristan? This isn’t self-defense, this is greed! This is… it’s wrong, and—”
Before she could continue, dissolving into a puddle of her own incoherent babbling, Tristan had turned away from the door, pivoting to face her.
“Do you worry much about your soul, Rhodes?”
In another world he might have touched her.
In another world, she would have welcomed it.