“Nice,” I mutter, thinking this must be the worst thing that has ever happened in the history of the world and it’s my fault. I was too slow. I should have killed him at least.
As I’m thinking this, Astley lunges for Frank, knocking him down. “No! You cannot! You cannot! Fool! Do not do this!”
“It is already done.” Frank laughs as the earth shakes around us, and that’s when I do the only thing I can think of doing.
“Astley!” I step out and throw him my sword. He catches it by the hilt and plunges it into Frank’s chest. Frank gasps as blood splurts out and then begins to trickle away more slowly.
“It is too late,” he whispers. His arm grabs Astley by the cloth of his shirt. “It has begun.”
“No!” Astley shakes his head, yanks out the sword, and with one smooth movement he slashes the blade across Frank’s neck, silencing him forever. I turn away as he whispers, “It is never too late.”
The ground continues to shake as one moment passes and then another. Astley comes up beside me. “I am so sorry.”
I whirl around, stare into his grimy, grief-stricken face. His face is beautiful and so good. How could I have believed he’d betray us? Relief floods into me, pushing tears to my eyes. I rub against them with the heel of my hand. “You should have told me what you were doing. I thought—I thought—”
“That I had betrayed you all. I know. But Nick and I—”
“Nick knew!” I interrupt as the floor cracks.
“It was his idea. We thought it was the only way we could get all the information we needed. I learned how to stop the apocalypse, Zara. I learned about this room, about Loki. That’s why we didn’t fight him more on the stage. We let him take us here.”
I swallow hard as the floor dips beneath us and slants. “I am so mad at you.”
He grasps me by the waist as we start to lose our footing. “I know.”
His eyes are so honest and upset. The color of them changes, but the truth of him doesn’t. He is always Astley, and sometimes he does stupid reckless things, but so do I. Forgiving him, and Nick too, is easy. If we survive, I can yell at them later.
Clutching each other, we scramble toward the hole in the wall that Loki escaped through. Pixies, the bad pixies, are screaming and trying to run too. Looking behind me, I see what Frank did. There’s a pit, a hole into the earth. Icy blue flames leap out of it. It’s what Hel showed me before. It isn’t getting bigger, but there are cracks radiating out from it. Something explodes and I stop moving, my heartbeat fast.
As we reach the auditorium, people and pixies are scrambling toward the exit doors. A curtain falls, flaming. Betty’s feline form leaps over the tops of chairs and toward the outside. Then the building starts to crumble down around us. We dodge and duck and scurry, but make it to the street. It looks like it’s been bombed. Buildings smoke. Some blaze. Sirens go off. With a roar, the Grand collapses into rubble.
Issie and Betty hobble from the ruins. Issie’s hand clutches the fur on Betty’s back. More people, survivors, teeter and moan. Some film things on their cells. Some stand and stare, sobbing. Betty sees me and howls. A frazzled-looking FBI agent makes eye contact with me. I hold his gaze for a moment, but look away. There’s dead all around us. So many dead. My insides break with the loss of them, all of them, good and bad.
“Zara!” Astley orders at my elbow, trying to pull me toward the end of the street, where there seems to be less disaster. “Come.”
My voice is calm, quiet. There is no more fighting, just doing. I let go of my hold on Astley’s arm. “No.”
Head lowered, Astley looks at me. His eyes meet mine and there’s a chill inside his. He understands.
“Zara, no,” he repeats, even as a piece of road topples into the slowly expanding hole. “You can’t. I can’t.”
Orange haze from fires colors the white snowy air.
“I am the one who has to close it up, Astley. Me. That’s what the prophecy said. It’s what I’m meant to do.”
He growls, an inhuman noise, full of fear and pain. “I cannot lose you.”
“You will lose me either way. At least …” I stare into the pit that’s growing now, growing even as we speak. It’s engulfed every bit of the rubble from the Grand. It’s like the theater never existed. “At least this way the world will survive.”
“You aren’t even pixie.”
“Isla said I didn’t have to be.”
“You’re going to trust my mother now?”
“Then make me pixie. Make it so it works. So there are no uncertainties. Just turn me, Astley.”
The ground shakes beneath us. I grab him by the front of his shirt. He’s so alive and beautiful. I need him to stay that way.
“I need to do this. It is my destiny to do this.” I am determined even though my stomach is cramping. I can feel my expression grimace.
“Zara.” His eyebrows raise up and he pulls me backward, away from the ever-expanding edge. It tugs at me, just as it did in Hel’s home. Doesn’t he feel it too?
From the top of the Maine Grind, two of our hunters have their rifles loaded and they are calm enough to shoot every blue pixie they see. Most of them have turned blue. Most are running away. They must feel Frank’s death. They must know everything is different now. Humans scream down the street. Sirens blare. Astley and I sink to the ground, clutching each other.
“I have to do this, Astley.”
“But—”
I cut him off. “You know I have to.”
“I love you,” he says. “You have to know I love you.”
He loves me, and that is such a good, lovely thing, and it makes me happy to know, but it can’t change who I am, can’t change my priorities, can’t change what I have to do even if I wish it. Part of me just wants to run away with him and go to that castle place he talked about—the one with the flowers and the seals. But the world will end if I don’t stop it right now. There will be no more warmth, no more flowers.
“What if I survive this?” I ask, even though I know I won’t. I might not be able to even stop it since I have no magic. “What if by some crazy luck I survive it and I’m a pixie? Or I don’t change and I’m a human?”
He holds my shoulders in his hands. His thumbs move slowly back and forth. “It doesn’t matter.”