Page 222 of Emylia

"It's okay," I murmured into her hair. "You're okay."

But she wasn’t.

Not really.

When her trembling finally eased enough that she could breathe, I pulled back just enough to tip her chin up.

Red ochre streaked her face, carving angry lines down her cheeks like the world itself had been unkind.

"You wanna tell me what's really going on?" I asked, gentler now. "Because I don't think this is about the dresses."

Her mouth twisted—a war between shame and honesty. For a second, I thought she might lie again.

Then she broke.

"I can't do anything," she blurted out, voice cracking on the last word.

"I’m not like you, Emmie. You’ve got a sword in one hand and the elements bowing at your feet and—and I’m just here. Sitting on the sidelines. Waiting for the war to come and not being able to do a damn thing to stop it." The words spilled out in a rush—raw, ugly, and desperate.

I opened my mouth—but nothing came out. Because the truth was, I hadn’t seen it.

Hadn’t noticed how the ground was shifting under her too, how the people who used to stand beside her were suddenly outpacing her, leaving her behind in a world that was getting sharper, bloodier, more unforgiving by the day.

"I need to do something," she whispered, voice breaking entirely now. "I need to matter."

Tears burned the back of my throat.

"Youdomatter," I said fiercely, gripping her shoulders. "You matter because you're you, not because you can swing a sword or cast a spell."

"But it's not enough," she choked out. "Not anymore."

The stream rushed around our legs, carrying away the dye, the lies, the pieces of ourselves we didn't want to face. I realized then that Evie didn’t want to be protected.

She wanted to fight.

To bleed.

To choose who she became instead of standing still while the world remade itself without her.

"I don't know where I fit in this," she said. "I don't know who I'm supposed to be."

I tucked a strand of her blood-red hair behind her ear, my hand lingering at her temple like I could somehow anchor her to this moment. To me.

But then her body convulsed—sharp, sudden. Like I’d shocked her.

And maybe I had.

Maybe my magik, wild and untethered, had reached for her without me calling it.

“Evie?”

She gasped once—a horrible, broken sound—then collapsed. Folded in on herself like a puppet whose strings had been severed.

I caught her just before the water could claim her completely, her weight limp in my arms.

No. No. No.

Her head lolled. Her skin was too cold.

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