I found Gideon huddled in the alley. He sat against the wall of the building, his arms wrapped around his knees. His head was bowed. All around him, the light of the Circle was pulsing out, glowing hotter with every step I took toward him. It waved in the air in warm colors, soft and rippling, like Gideon was surrounded by the northern lights.

With every step I felt the hum of the connection between us. The Astral Circle, bound to us both.

He looked up as I approached, staring at me with Verrick’s eyes. “I was waiting for you,” he said. “It said you would come to open the Circle.”

It. The Beneath. Though there were no Harrowers near us, I felt its presence. It was everywhere, lurking, pressing near. I felt its stare in the gray, swollen sky above us. Each star was an eye, keeping close, careful watch. That cold, baleful red, up in the infinite dark beyond.

I maintained my distance, a few steps from Gideon. There was dirt on his face, and a streak of blood that slashed down the front of his shirt. Mr. Alvarez’s, maybe. Gideon didn’t appear to be injured. The wound on his knuckles had scabbed over. He looked very young sitting there, his hair tangled, his knees clutched against him. There was a rent in his jeans. His shoelaces were untied.

“Is that why you’re here?” he asked, looking up at me. “To open the Circle?”

“To cut your connection to it,” I said. I swallowed, feeling other words there in my chest. I had come to kill him. I didn’t say it, but it seemed that Gideon could hear it anyway, in the thickness of my voice, maybe, or in the way I held back. I closed my eyes briefly. “I saw what happened. You couldn’t hurt Tink.”

“I chose not to.”

“Because you remember her. Because you know she’s your friend. She wanted—she asked me to thank you.”

“Don’t lie. You didn’t come here out of friendship.”

I didn’t speak. I wanted to step forward and reach out toward him and tell him he was wrong. I wanted to remind him of memories we’d built between us: of baseball games and barbecues; of winter mornings; of long, sleepy hours spent together. And I wanted to shout at him. I wanted to grab him and scream that he was Gideon, not Verrick, that he had a family, worried and waiting. But he was right. I hadn’t come out of friendship. I had come out of need. I had come because this was the moment that every moment before had been leading toward, the completion of the pattern that had been woven seventeen years ago.

“I came because we’re bound,” I said. “We always have been. We can figure this out, okay? We just need to think. Just—help me think.”

“Cut my connection to the Circle,” he scoffed. His speech seemed to shift with every word, every syllable. Now he was Verrick; now Gideon; now both. “That’s what Iris told you? It’s not a connection, Audrey. The Circle is part of me. It made me what I am. It’s what allows my lungs to inflate and my heart to pump. Its power. The light that I took from it. You’ll have to unmake me if you want the light back. You’ll have to rip it right out.”

And that would kill him. Just as Iris had said.

“There has to be some other way,” I said.

He jumped to his feet, and with quick strides stood before me, grabbing my shoulders and letting his hands turn to talons. I felt them slice into me, breaking the skin.

“Perhaps I’ll just kill you,” he said.

“You won’t. You’re Gideon,” I replied. “And Gideon would never hurt me.”

“That’s what you want me to be. It’s not what I am.”

“That’s what you wanted to be,” I countered. “You wanted to be Kin.”

“You’re wasting time. If you want the light, you’ll have to take it. Do what you came here for.” His grip tightened painfully.

I told myself not to hesitate. I told myself that the city was dying all around us, that every second the Beneath was taking hold. Even now the people I loved were fighting, maybe dying.

But I loved Gideon, too. And love changed the rules.

I thought of Brooke Oliver, hunched in her house, afraid. Dying so that the Kin would be safe. I don’t know that the right choice was made, I heard Esther say. I do know that it was the same choice we have made throughout history, and that it is a choice we’re sure to make again.

I looked at Verrick. His eyes met mine. He didn’t release his hold on me. I could feel my blood oozing out, steaming in the icy air. But though the anger that wrapped him was still present, below it I sensed something else—a weariness, deeper than his rage, more potent than his hate.

He was going to let me kill him.

He wanted me to kill him.

He wanted to heal the corruption inside him, Shane had told me once, to leave the Beneath behind forever.…

My lips parted.

“You wanted to leave the Beneath behind,” I said.

He sneered at me. “Wouldn’t you?”

That was it, I thought.

It wasn’t his connection to the Circle that needed to be severed. It was his connection to the Beneath.

He needed to not be a Harrower.

He needed to be human. To be Kin, like he’d wanted all along.

The Old Race had done it. They’d crossed over. They’d taken human form, and then they’d left the rest of their power behind in the Circles. The Circles they’d built from their blood.

And the Circle itself had altered Verrick. It had made him into Gideon.

It just hadn’t finished the process.

I had done it before—I had released the Circle’s power. And now I would do the opposite. I would take it. But I wouldn’t keep it.

If the Circle’s power was what Gideon needed in order to be human, I would give it to him. All of it.

The Circle would die, but once the connection was severed, the Beneath would sleep again. And Gideon would live.

Slowly, I detached his hands from my arms, holding them in my own—those talons dripping with my blood, digging into my skin. His eyes met mine. I saw into them, into the ancient dark that moved behind them, into the wrath and corruption that ate at him. I saw the faces of the Guardians he’d killed, their bodies broken, their final sighs escaping. But I saw Gideon as well, a flicker, a hint of warmth within the chill.

I felt the connection to the Circle, a quiet burn. I reached out with instinct, with intuition, just as I had that night six months ago.

“What are you doing?” Gideon gasped.

“Just trust me,” I said.

Light gathered around us, rippling, rising, so bright I couldn’t see anything beyond Gideon’s face. With everything in me, I willed the light into him. With Knowing, with the speeding of my pulse and the fear that clenched my heart, with each breath I exhaled, with the last hope I held.

The light burned away the air between us. It seared my skin. Panic kicked into me, telling me that I was on fire, that those were real flames crawling up my flesh; the Circle was melting away my bones, and in another moment I’d be nothing but ash, blown away and lost in the swirling gray sky above us. But the moment passed, and then the light was shining and clean, and it didn’t burn at all, it was just light. It guttered, fading, as it wrapped about Gideon.

I felt my connection to the Circle break.

Verrick’s wrath began to recede. His rage abated. That malice that wormed within him was charred into cinders, nothing more than dust. The grief was soothed, the hunger fed.

He fell to his knees, and I fell with him.

His hands were still in mine. Warm, human hands now, not claws. When he looked up at me, his brown eyes were rich and clear. Gideon’s eyes. I couldn’t see the Beneath. The connection was severed. His corruption was healed.

He smiled at me.

I smiled back.

Knowing surged into me, quick impressions, memories we channeled between us: the day we’d met, the sunny classroom and the sound of footsteps, the opening door. Camping trips we’d taken, out in the country where the sky was thick with stars. I saw other images that lingered in his mind—the soar of a baseball overhead, the bright glossy sheen of Brooke’s hair. He was Gideon again, I thought. Just Gideon. My Gideon.