Page 132 of The World Undone

As usual, whenever I thought I was saving her, she was the one saving me.

Maybe I needed to stop chronically underestimating her strength.

Or overestimating mine.

“Nash is in the medical building.” Claude's eyes narrowed slightly as he turned back to the lake. He was stiff here, somehow even more uptight than usual. He wasn’t used to not being the one in control of things, and he didn’t do well with trusting strangers. “He’s looking over the notes here, apparently one of the boys,” his face scrunched in thought, “Arnell, I think his name was?” At my nod, he continued. “Right, well apparently a recent security breach has helped him break into some database. He’s pulled up a ton of Guild research on those tainted with shadow magic, on their experiments. Nash doesn’t understand much of it?—”

“But he’s hoping that he might find something to help Nika?” I finished for him. My chest tightened at my friend’s name. I hadn’t been to see her yet, not that it would make much of a difference. She was unconscious, and every time she came to, she had to be knocked out again. She was much stronger than Eli’s father, the werewolf, so Nash was in charge of keeping her under control here so that she didn’t lash out and kill anyone.

Claude nodded. “While he isn’t versed in the way of medicine or machinery in this realm, apparently he’s been fighting for a way to cure her for years. Perhaps combining both sets of knowledge will point to a lead.” He shrugged. “That’s his hope anyway. Not much else for him to do here in the meantime. We’re both just sort of—” he paused, searching for the word, “waiting. Nash has it in his head that the four of us here together might somehow help balance her out, restore her. He swears he’s noticed an improvement in her temperament since being here. Can’t imagine what that says about her temperament before.” He exhaled, exhaustion evident in every line of his expression. “But you pulled us here for a reason. Maybe there’s something to his theory about balance. He’s clinging to that possibility anyway, and I agreed to stay for a little while longer, to satisfy my own curiosities.”

“You don’t think it will work?”

“What?” He grunted. “Do I think that existing in the same space will just magically heal her somehow after years of being trapped in her own mind? No.” His fists were clenched at his sides. “You weren’t there, when the magic tore her apart. It’s not something that can just be—undone.”

I knew that the ‘her’ he was referring to wasn’t Nika.

He meant our sister. Nessa.

The sister I’d effectively killed when I abandoned my post.

But Nika and Nessa were not the same.

Nika survived because she was a true mirror—a twin and appointed portal guardian.

Maybe she could be saved, restored—like I’d been.

Of course, it was equally likely that Claude was right. The prick did have an obnoxious habit of rarely being wrong. Perhaps, like Nessa, Nika was simply too far gone. For all we knew, the four of us together in the same spot could push her faster towards her doom.

“Then again,” he said, pulling me from my thought spiral, “you’ve come back from that very edge—a thing I would have said was impossible yesterday. Maybe it’s possible that Nash really will find a way to get her back. Who am I to destroy his pipe dreams, particularly when the world might very well be collapsing around us as we speak?”

We were quiet for a moment, the silence heavy and uncomfortable.

“Odds he’ll trust me enough to work with me?”

“Work with?” Claude snorted, but in a way that was somehow still dignified. “No. But I think he’ll be okay with using you.”

I sniffed, staring aimlessly at the water, resisting the urge to glance at my brother, to read if the grudge he held against me was as strong as Nash’s.

“You abandoned them both in hell, when they thought they’d found a ticket out. Instead, our freedom led to their imprisonment.” Claude’s lip curled, though his stare didn’t waiver from the lake. “It was never quite that neat. You and I merely traded one prison for another, I suppose. Of course, then you abandoned your post here, which directly led to his twin’s demise.”

The truth screamed against my lips, but I wasn’t ready to release it. To tell him why I left. That at the time, I thought I was saving Ness. I thought I was saving him.

“Sometimes I let myself wonder what our lives would have been if we were never given our posts. If we’d simply stayed in hell and found another way to protect her—if we weren’t attached to a magic that is slowly eating us alive, beholden to its volatile greed and violent whims. Perhaps she’d be alive. Perhaps we’d—” he shook his head, abandoning the thought. “Of course, what ifs are useless in the grand scheme of things, especially now.”

Silence fell between us, thick with all of the unsaid bullshit.

Claude sighed. “No, brother, if you want to procure Nash’s help with anything, I think you’ll have to offer him something too tempting for him to resist.

Claude spoke for more than just Nash, and we both knew it.

I owed them both apologies. But I also knew I owed them more than that, that right now, apologies were meaningless. My brief tour was going on hiatus.

“How about revenge?”

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