Page 109 of The Narrow

“And what is it, if not that?” Grace asks.

“A shelter from the storm, maybe,” I say. We stand shoulder to shoulder, looking down at the water. Our hands don’t quite touch.“The scent of rain in the air before you feel the first drop. The flowers that bloom after. I don’t know.”

“It sounds like you do,” Grace says. She lets out a breath and looks up toward the sky. Tears or river water trickle down her cheeks—I can’t tell which. “It shouldn’t have ended like this. We shouldn’t have died. She wasn’t evil. She was... she could have changed if she lived.”

“But the dead don’t change,” I say.

My fingers brush against the back of her hand. It feels insubstantial, as if I’m only imagining her touch.

“She let me go,” I say. “At the very end. I don’t know why. Maybe she did change. Just a little bit.”

“We got to live again, she and I,” Grace says. She laces her fingers with mine. “Maybe that was enough to change us.”

“How much of her was you?” I whisper. I don’t need to explain what I mean.

“I don’t know. It wasn’tthis part is Graceandthis part is Delphine. I was just me. And I still feel like me. I still feel like the girl who loves you. I love you, Eden.”

“Then stay with me. Stay,” I say, knowing she can’t.

“I can hear the river calling me,” she whispers. There is a tension in her limbs, a trembling. “I have to go.”

“No. This can’t be what happens. You can’t be trapped down there forever.”

“What the Narrow takes does not return,” she says. She touches my cheek, thumbing away a tear I didn’t know I’d shed. “I know how it should end.”

“What?” I ask, confusion stealing past my devastation.

“Grave Belles. You said you didn’t know how to end it, but I do. Lenore and Belle, they end up together. They’re happy, and they’re safe. They live. Both of them live.”

“Grace, I—” I begin, but she kisses my words away. One soft, swift kiss, too quickly ended. She steps back.

“I have to go,” she says. “The Narrow is calling. I can’t hold on any longer.”

I look at her helplessly. Can this be it? In the end, a surrender after all?

No.

“Take my hand,” I say, voice shaking.

“Eden...”

“Take my hand,” I say again, and this time, puzzled, she does. I lace my fingers with hers. I face the river. Only a short jump to the other side. To the east, the sky is growing light with the first hints of the dawn. I look at Grace; she nods.

And together, we jump.

We jump to defy the Narrow.

To be free.

For a moment, we are in the air, only our linked hands to tether us to anything at all.

And then I land on the other side, alone, the first rays of sunlight slicing through the air where we leaped. The air stirs across my cold, damp skin, and Grace is gone.

Not below. Not lost in the deep, in the dark.

Gone.

My knees shake. I sink down into a crouch, unable to stayupright. I stay there until Veronica comes to find me. Gathers me in her arms, plants a kiss against my brow.

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