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I swing the door open and rush into Nilam's room, ignoring Lav's incoherent whining behind my back. The place is dark, unnaturally stuffy, and it feels like walking into a current of hot steam for a moment. The chandelier's bulbs have exploded, and their glass crunches under my feet as I take a step forward, nothing but the furniture outlines guiding me.

"Nilam?"

Yaroslava follows us, quiet and sullen. She has no idea what she has just done. It's dark, yet my world's too bright around the edges, surreal, unmoored. Magic menaces to spill over, to burst out, responding to my emotions running amok.

I've been keeping my sigil's powers in check for months, not a heartbeat missed, not a feeling awry. I've been keeping my past separated from my present, and this girl ruins everything with several words? With one touch. It's always been me who knew the right words and questions, yet it's her who thumps me off balance and cracks open my old wounds.

I should have left her among the dead.

"Nilam?" I approach the sofa, but he's not there.

Show affection for someone, Father said, and they'll use it against you. And that's what she just did, isn't it?

But what have I done? Those bracelets, they were meant to keep her safe from magic--mine and his. I didn't mean to make it look like a punishment. But then she lied again, and I snapped.

I can't even bear the thought of glancing at her now because I saw her tears despite her attempts to cover them. What have I done? I've spent years burying my feelings so deep down that sometimes I could hardly believe they've ever existed at all. No one saw my lips tremble and my hands shake. Give up everything I've built because of this girl's tears? Never. It's a lie.

"Here," Lav whispers, drawing me to round the sofa. "I found him like this."

As if hiding, Nilam sits curled up in a ball under the window, his arms thrown around his knees, his eyes staring at nothing. His hat's gone, and under the weak moonlight seeping through the clouds into the room, his blue hair is dead ashen. Yet his face's even more ashen. He's like a ghost in his own flesh, touch him--and he will dissolve into thin air.

I crouch down on the floor beside him. "Nilam?" He's motionless, his breath steady, and his mouth works on inaudible words, repeating something like a mantra. "Nilam, look at me."

He doesn't hear me.

My gaze wanders around the room and finds the vial of Morox empty on the windowsill. He must have taken the rest. He must have been slipping out of Jasna's memory but decided to take his chances and plunge deeper. He's always been good at this, at risks and surviving. So bold sometimes that he's become a byword for defiance in my mind.

My head's getting heavy as the magic inside me pleads to flee. My shirt clings to my side, and sliding my hand beneath my jacket, I realize I'm bleeding. The sigil scar. The elixir I took to suppress my powers shouldn't have lost its effect so fast. Is it because of what Yaroslava has made me feel? Or because a demon is nearby.

"Nilam?" I try to lock eyes with him, but he looks right through me. "Come on, idiot. You knew I wouldn't be able to pull you awake as I used to. We already have Jasna trapped in sleep, I don't need another comatose friend to deal with."

If he got lost in Jasna's memory, he'd be still asleep, but he's not. He's halfway awake. And if he's halfway awake...What he sees now is the world of the dead--ruins and mold and decay. And I can only imagine what kinds of forsaken creatures are out there.

"You remember you're alive, right?" I ask under my breath so the girls won't hear. "You've been through worse, Nilam. Remember you're alive. Remember you're a survivor. Look at me!"

He can do it, I know he can. When I first saw him at the law school he called our Criminal Law professor a biased money whore in the middle of a lecture. Everyone stared. Everyone knew how much it cost to pass her exams, but no one dared to shove that fact into her face. She was the mayor's friend, after all. And my father's friend.

And Nilam simply said it. Her crimson face twisted in fury then, but Nilam just turned his head, solemn and serious, and...met my eyes from across the lecture hall. And I knew--he was perfectly aware of who I was, of what I was capable of.

Do it, his lips formed.

I needed a mere heartbeat to make Money Whore calm down, another one for her to smile into everyone's shocked faces. It would take a month for me to confront Nilam afterward, a year for us to become best friends. Unlike me, he's kept his life simple: do what you like, abandon what you don't. Don't look into the past, and let the sorrows go.

And here we are. The brightest students, bleeding and dying. When did we take a wrong turn?

Still, Nilam has never truly let go of his past, his own sorrows. He's good at pretending he did, but we all are. He's never let go of his parents' mysterious death, and no matter how far his magical experiments went, he never succeeded in solving it. Whoever we're hunting now, whatever magic we're up against, Nilam must see it as his personal vendetta. I should have known he'd risk.

Clasping his shoulder, I try to reach out to his heart, but my thoughts are muddled. It's been too long since I used my scar, and now the powers inside me are chaotic. My mind brushes against Nilam's pulse and falls away, feeble. If I keep pushing my limits, it might only be worse; if I tug too hard or too swift, my magic can bounce off and burn his veins out. Or simply stop his heart. Or Lav's. Or Yaroslava's. And even if I managed it, activating the sigil's magic is as good as flinging the door between the worlds open and inviting the demons Nilam now beholds to the living grounds.

"He needs to drink," Yaroslava says, her voice leached of emotion. "Tea, juice, anything. Water belongs only to the living plain so it'll work as an antidote if the dead magic hasn't soaked into his bones yet."

It itches me to ask why I should trust she's not lying this time, after she's just tried to use my own abilities against me. But I don't. It's in her best interest for Nilam to live, for her to find the murderer and walk away as a free person. And we don't have a better option anyway.

Laverna scurries across the room, the glasses on the bookshelf jingle. "Here." She returns and kneels, bringing her unfinished cocktail to Nilam's mouth. "Drink," she orders. This is what Laverna always knew how to handle--disasters, how to take matters into her own hands and forge the unforgeable. If those matters in question didn't promise any harm to her, of course.

Nilam doesn't drink. Lav curses, dips her finger into the cocktail then and skims her damp fingertip across Nilam's lips. A second tics away. Then Nilam gasps as though ripped out of a nightmare. His eyes come into focus, flicking from me to Lav to the glass, and his hands choose the glass. He downs the drink in a single draught but then spits half of it onto the floor.

"What the fuck is this?" He splutters, grimacing.

"Spiced spinach juice." Lav's lashes flutter in bewilderment. "Why? And some vodka."

"Tastes like a garbage bin went sour. Does Charlie serve this shit at the bar downstairs?" A hint of irony in his voice suggests he's back to being himself.

I sigh in relief, sagging against the wall. "I take it you'll live. What the fuck was that, Nilam?"

Nilam's features grow grim as he puts the empty glass away. He wraps his arms around himself, rubbing his shoulders and inhaling slowly. He's not a person who you can call delicately built, yet he seems so fragile at this moment, so tired of surviving and not living.

"Jasna had a lot on her mind before going all silvery," he says. "Well, she always has, but that day..." He looks up, his troubled gaze finds Yaroslava fidgeting by the door.

I know him well enough to detect the thought yet in his eyes. "That's impossible."

"I know what I saw, Mir."

"Jasna's last memory?"

"Yaroslava."

Shock washes over Yaroslava's face as I turn to her, then fear, then panic. And again she doesn't even try to ask or explain. Without a syllable, she spins around and bolts out of the room, the wooden floor creaking beneath her hurried steps.

"Don't." I stop Laverna who jumps to her feet to follow. "Let her go."

When the echoing of Yaroslava's boots fades, I feel the tension inside me ease, my powers hushing. After all the cruel choices my father has made for me, I'm bleeding now because of my own one. And for what it's worth, it was my choice to bring Yaroslava back. For once, this was what I wanted.

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