Neither had her power.
She was an assassin, but only because that was what the world had made her into. Because her brother had needed a black hand of death to smite his enemies, and his life was the one her family valued. His success was all that had mattered to them. She might have been made an assassin, but her affinity had never been intended for death. And nothing they did, nothing anyone could do, had changed that.
But it wasn’t enough. She wasn’t enough.
Even now she could sense Tilly’s blood, the beating of her fragile heart, the energy that was the very signal of life within a body. Even now she pushed everything she was, every ounce of power she had, into her friend. She had been doing it for days, but no matter what she did, the broken part wouldn’t heal.
Because Viola could only command flesh, and what was broken in Tilly was something more.
Around dawn, something had changed. The wave had come over them, cold as the lonely sea she had once crossed, and the fight had gone out of her friend. That spark of energy that signaled a life began to waver, and for the first time since Viola had seen Tilly writhing in Jianyu’s arms, she truly worried that Tilly might not pull through.
Since then, Tilly’s skin had gone even more ashen, and now she lay still, her chest rising and falling in uneven, ragged breaths that rattled in her throat. Viola had heard that sound before, but now she could not—would not—allow herself to believe its message.
She barely noticed when Esta went to find Dolph, or when he arrived. Even when the room began to fill with the people from his crew who had loved Tilly, who had depended on her calm, steady presence in the Strega’s kitchen, Viola was scarcely aware of them, she whose every day was filled with the rushing thrum of rivers of blood, the beating drumbeats of a world filled with hearts.
The crowd in the room might as well have been made of stone that morning for all she noticed them as she fought against the truth lying in Tilly’s bed. ??As she willfully ignored the way her friend’s hands had turned cool, the way her fingertips and nails had lost all color.
Dolph stepped forward from his vigil at the foot of the bed. “You know what needs to be done, Vi. ?You know it’s time to let her go.”
Viola shook her head, pressing her lips together. “She’ll be better tomorrow. I know she will.”
Dolph rested his hand on Viola’s shoulder. “I understand,” he said softly. “I know exactly what it’s like to watch someone you care for slide away from you. ?To watch your own heart cease to beat.”
Viola swallowed down the hard stone she felt in her throat and turned to him. “She is not dying.”
“Her magic’s gone,” Dolph told her. “It has been for days. Now she’s going too. It’s time we let her. It’s time you let her.”
“She will not die,” Viola repeated, her voice barely a whisper. “She will fight. She will be better. I just need to give her more time.”
“You know that’s not true,” Dolph said gently. “Yes, she did fight. You’ve helped her, and she fought hard, but what’s happened is too much. It would have been too much for any of us. Think of what it would be like, what it would mean to lose your power. Can you imagine not being able to reach a part of yourself?? To feel it stripped away?” His voice broke, and he paused for a moment to compose himself. “To live without it.”
Viola grimaced. “No,” she whispered. All at once she realized what he must have felt watching Leena die. No wonder he had seemed so changed after.
“Tilly’s fought hard enough. ?Allow her the rest she’s earned.”
Anger spiked through her, drowning the pain with a sense of righteous fury. She would not be commanded. She would not be the instrument of death. Not this time. She would use her affinity to keep Tilly’s heart beating and in doing so atone for all those other hearts she’d stopped. And no one would stop her. Not Dolph Saunders. Not even with the threat of his mark.
Dolph staggered a bit, his lean face twisting with pain as she let her power fill the room, as she found all the parts of him that made him a living man and started to pull them apart one by one. Slowly, so he could feel what she felt. She was so focused, she didn’t notice the way the others rustled in fear, backed away.
“You know I’m right,” Dolph gasped, gripping his cane as he tried to stay upright. “Do this last thing for her.”
Viola shook her head, her vision blurry with tears as her power crackled through the room.
“Free her,” Dolph said, barely able to stand. The veins in his cheeks had turned dark, like tiny rivers floating to the surface of his skin. “Kill me if you must, but let her go,” he rasped.
Yes. She would kill him for even suggesting it. She’d killed before, and for lesser reasons. But despite what people believed, she did not often kill like this. Years ago, she had learned to throw knives, to carve out a life with the sharp tip of a blade, because she knew her god damned her for using her gift to take lives, as her brother wanted, rather than to save them, as she could. But she would use everything she was now. She would risk the fires of hell and everything that came with them for Tilly. For herself.
Dolph staggered to his knees as she pushed her affinity toward him, felt the pulse, the light . . . and the broken pieces that even she couldn’t heal.
She realized then what he’d been carrying since that night they lost Leena. The secret he’d been hiding from them all.
The fight went out of her. She released her affinity, let go of her hold on Dolph, and crumpled against Tilly’s barely moving chest, unable to stop the sob that tore from her throat. She stayed there, emptying herself of pain and grief, for who knew how long.
Until she had nothing left.
Until she finally felt the warm, steady hand on her shoulder.
She shrugged Dolph off and wiped the wetness from her cheeks.
“It’s time,” Dolph said. “Allow her to go in peace.”
Viola turned to the crowded room, her eyes burning from the tears she’d shed. Who were these people? Not the family she’d been raised by, when blood was supposed to be thicker than anything. No, that family had turned from her. They’d wanted her to be what she could never be, and she had chosen again. She saw now in that motley group that she had chosen well. And so had Tilly.
“She wouldn’t want them here for this,” she told Dolph. “She wouldn’t want them to see.” Because it would be hard for them to watch, and Tilly would have hated their suffering. ?And because Viola knew somehow that Tilly wouldn’t want them to understand what she could actually do.