Every Last Breath (The Dark Elements 3)

I smacked Roth’s arm when he opened his mouth, obviously forming yet another retort; if I didn’t stop him, he never would. He shot me a look, but Tony let out a very childlike giggle.

We followed him into the living room. There was a massive tree all decked out with ornaments with a mountain of presents already tucked under it. Another video game was paused on the TV, but this time it didn’t look like a medieval game. There was a car and what looked like a police officer chasing after it.

Tony plopped down on a beanbag, and somehow he made that look like a throne. “I know why you guys are here.”

“Of course,” I murmured, sitting down on the couch.

He raised a blond brow as he glanced at Roth. “Just so you know, when you ended up chained in the fiery pits, I wasn’t laughing like I predicted.”

Roth’s eyes narrowed at the reminder as he sat on the arm of the couch beside me.

“Maybe just a low chuckle of amusement,” Tony added slyly.

“Are you sure it wasn’t a high-pitched giggle of amusement?” replied Roth. “Since you haven’t hit puberty yet?”

Oh dear.

Tony lifted a chubby hand and flipped Roth off.

“Ah, did I upset the wee, little baby—”

“Roth,” I sighed, punching his leg lightly. “I can’t take you anywhere.”

“Not true.” He winked at me. “I’m adaptable in any situation.”

Tony propped his legs up on the coffee table, crossing them at the ankles. “While I think it’s great that you two have obviously come to terms with what you both are and your feelings for one another, I have better things to do than watch you two—”

“Tony!” his mom’s voice rang out from somewhere in the house. “Get your feet off the coffee table now!”

I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing as Tony rolled his weird eyes but did as he’d been told. His feet thumped off the hardwood floors. “You want to know how to kill the Lilin,” he said, staring balefully in Roth’s direction. “You know the rules. I cannot help one side over the other.”

“Screw the rules,” Roth ordered.

“Easy for you to say when it’s not your life that will be on the line,” the seer retorted. “The thing is, you both should already know the answer you seek.”

“We know how to kill the Lilin,” I said, scooting forward on the cushion. “Stab it in the heart or decapitate it, and we almost succeeded with a stab to the heart, but—”

“But you discovered a small complication?” He turned a woeful stare on his screen, as if spending a minute away from his game was torture. “A fatal wound to the Lilin delivers a fatal wound to you.”

I nodded.

“It’s expected. A part of you was used to create the Lilin, just as a part of Lilith was used to create both of you,” he continued, tilting his head to the side. Several blond curls flopped over. “All three of you are joined.”

That had been said before, but no one had mentioned the fact that killing the Lilin would also kill me. That little tidbit had been left out. Not that I was entirely surprised.

“We need to know how to separate the two.” Roth opened and closed the hand closest to me. “That’s why we’re here.”

“And I know that.” Tony barely dragged his attention from the paused game. “This conversation is wasting my time and yours.”

“Do you not care? I know your stupid game is important, but if we can’t stop the Lilin, you’re going to die. Everyone is going to die!” I shot to my feet, wanting to grab the little seer and shake him, but—but there was a part of me that understood he wasn’t being obtuse. We were the ones who were. Frustration pounded through me. “If we don’t succeed, the Lilin will jump-start the end of the world. Even you warned us of this last time we were here.”

“Last time you were here, I saw that there was a good chance for that to happen.” His pupils were at once a brilliant white. “Now I see that it will not happen. You will stop it.”

I tensed. “But—”

“You,” he repeated, eyeing me intently, “will stop it. And you already know how. The story is over. The end.”

Roth sucked in a shrill breath, but I think I stopped breathing for a second. What none of us wanted to acknowledge in the hours after we’d gone toe-to-toe with the Lilin was now smacking us in the face again.

Killing the Lilin meant killing myself.

“You’re not helping us out here, bud.” Roth’s voice was calm, but anger and something else, something akin to desperation, were rolling off him, becoming a tangible entity in the room. “We need to know how to kill the Lilin without harming Layla.”

“And as I’ve said, you already know the answer to that,” Tony replied from his beanbag throne. “You just don’t want to accept it.”

I closed my eyes briefly. “So what you’re saying is...vice versa. If we kill me, we kill the Lilin?”

“That’s bullshit,” Roth spat, and he was on his feet by the time I opened my eyes. “It’s an unacceptable answer.”

A look of remorse flickered across the young seer’s face. “It’s the only answer.”

Roth started toward Tony, and I snapped my hand out, grabbing his arm. He breathed in deeply, his chest rising sharply. A second later, Tony’s mother was in the room.

She held a casserole dish above her head, as if she was ready to pitch it at one of us. “I think it’s time for you all to leave.”

My grip tightened on Roth’s arm. She was right. It was time to go, because we knew what the answer was. We’d known what it was before we’d even come here, or at least I had. Roth was still mad eyeballing the seer, so I tugged on his arm.

“Roth,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”

He turned a sharp glare on me. “You’re just going to accept that?” He threw an arm up toward Tony. “That there’s no other way?”

“No,” I said, and it wasn’t so much a lie as it was an attempt to end this before we ended up wearing green-bean casserole. “But we’re done here.” When he still hesitated, I pulled on his arm again. “We’ll figure this out on our own.”

My words sounded weak to my own ears, but Roth finally relented. We started toward the front hallway, passing Tony’s stern mother.

“Everything is for a reason,” the seer called as we neared the archway to the foyer, and when I looked back, he was standing, his expression solemn and wise beyond his years. “Not one thing in this world happens without a purpose. Everyone’s actions—those of the Prince and of your Wardens—have all been leading up to this. They’ve all sacrificed for you, for this. And it will not be in vain.”

* * *

Stacey’s face was the color of a piece of notebook paper and her dark eyes were wide. “No,” she said, and then louder, “No.”

Twisting around in the front passenger seat, I glanced at Roth. At his hands. His knuckles were bleached white from gripping the steering wheel. He hadn’t said much since we’d returned to the Mustang. He stared straight ahead, a muscle ticking along his jaw as he drove us back to drop Stacey off at the high school.