Page 73 of Saving the World and Other Bad Ideas (Grave Concerns 3)

It hit me how well we matched in that belief.

I recalled Hunter’s words to me when I’d been deep within that pit, when I’d struggled because I felt that, at my core, I waswrong.

Here was Grant’s moment when he had told himself the same.

“They needed to die,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure I fully believed it. It was easy to say people should be dead but harder to watch it, to see them killed not in self-defense but as retribution.

“Yeah,” he said with a nod. “I know it. If I hadn’t ended them all, they’d have kept doing it. They’d have killed countless other kids, used that power to hurt more mages. It was the right thing to do.”

“So why is it trapping you here?”

“Because I didn’t do it by turning them to ash. If I’d done it the good old-fashioned way, with normal magic, it would have been part of life. I killed them by doing something that shouldn’t be possible, though.”

The mages fell, one by one, until only the Magistrate remained on his feet. The bodies were limp, clearly dead, all except his father.

“I could have let him go,” Grant said. “I’d made my point. I’d stolen enough of his magic that he wouldn’t have been a danger to anyone ever again. I could have just stopped right there.”

“But you couldn’t because of that girl?” I guessed, recalling how he’d talked about that young girl he’d found.

“Would it make it better if I said it was because of her? Because it wasn’t. It was because of me. I thought about how things could have been different. They could have taken in those children, given us homes and training and lives. I got it all after they’d already screwed me up, but what if they hadn’t done that? What if they actually took care of those kids? We’d have more numbers, better adjusted members, and we’d take care of our own. I stood there thinking about everything he’d stolen from me.”

“What-ifs are the worst,” I acknowledged. “The world always seems better when you think about what could have happened. I used to think about that, how if I were just normal, how different things would have been. My mom wouldn’t have abandoned me, I wouldn’t have been ostracized—I’d have had friends, family.”

Grant nodded. “If I hadn’t been broken as a kid, I would have become a healer, I think. I always wanted to learn healing magic, to do something good. I would have focused on trying to fix the system, on helping those who needed it.”

“Why don’t you do that now?”

He turned to cast me a look, eyebrow raised. “Turns out healing isn’t my thing. I’m pretty much set in destruction magic.”

“You can set wards. That’s protection, at least.”

He snorted softly. “You’re pretty good at finding the silver lining, aren’t you?”

“I’m serious,” I said. “Just because you’re better at one thing doesn’t mean it’s what you have to do.”

“We’re all stuck with what we’re born into,” he said.

“No, we aren’t. I’m a reaper, right? Last I checked, I’m not ripping spirits from bodies and escorting them to the afterworld.”

He snorted softly as the scene replayed with him a child again, caught in that loop. “I don’t even know what it would mean for me to do something different.”

“Well, think about it. If you could do anything, what would it be?” He opened his mouth, and I knew it would be to say something dismissive, so I shouldered him. “I’m serious. We get back home tomorrow—what would you do?”

“I don’t want to be Magistrate. I don’t want to deal with the politics or the bullshit.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I’d open a school for mages, for the kids who don’t have anywhere else. I’d create a better system for finding foster parents for them. I’d turn it into what itshouldbe, taking care of the young mages and giving them what I never got.”

“So why not do it?”

“Because it isn’t my place in life. You don’t get to be normal, and I don’t get to just go help kids.”

I shook my head. “I realized what I wanted wasn’t ever to be normal, but to have a place. I’ve found that place where I belong despite all the bullshit, so why couldn’t you set up a school?”

“You’re only saying that because you want to playprofessor and naughty student with me.” He threw his arm around my shoulder and pulled me against his side, his gaze taking in the darkness as if he could figure something out from it. “You know, I’ve never had a single person in my life who told me I could do anything, someone who cared what I wanted. Not sure I’ve ever even thought about it, because it never mattered before.”

I wanted to press, to say something that could seal the deal and make him understand, but sometimes it was better to stay quiet and let someone work it out themselves.

He blew out a slow breath, his voice quiet as if he were talking more to himself. “Quit the guild, open a school”—he gave me a salacious grin—“screw the girl of my dreams in every free moment in between. Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.”

Yeah, I have no complaints with that plan.

It was weird to look at him like that, to feel him staring back and for the first timereallysee him. Not the person he liked to pretend to be, not the monster he feared he was, but him. No worries, no doubts, no stupid jokes in the middle to keep me off balance.

Just Grant, a man tormented by what he was and what he’d done and what he never thought he’d have. A man I loved without reserve.

“You know…” His smile slipped away, as if what he had to say meant everything. I leaned toward him, drawn to hear, needing the glimpse into whatever it was he’d figured out. Before he could tell me, however, that sinking blackness swallowed me again.

No, not yet!I wanted to scream at how unfair it was. Grant, the man who was at least half impenetrable safe, had beenthisclose to opening up! I tried to hold on to him, to that moment, need to hear what it was he needed to tell me, but everything dissolved around me like sand pouring through my fingers.

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