And then his hands released their grip.

He slumped to the ground.

I grabbed his arms, his shoulders, trying to lift him back up. The light was pooling around us once more, but this time it seemed to be spreading outward, away. Pulsing out in ribbons and waves. Leaving him.

He was reversing it. Sending the light of the Circle back.

But the light was what had made him, I thought frantically.

He would die without it.

“No!” Desperately, I reached out once more. But I was no longer connected to the Circle. I’d given the last of its light to him. I couldn’t call it back. I clutched at Gideon, wrapping my arms around him, holding him against me, trying to stop him. “You can’t,” I said.

“You gave the Circle to me,” he said, still smiling weakly. “It’s mine to give back.”

The light flooded away from him, out across the streets, the buildings, pushing back the gray of the sky and the harsh red glare of the stars.

“But I’m saving you,” I said.

His lips curved up in that crooked grin of his. “Maybe we’ll meet again.”

The last of the light fell away. I turned my face toward the horizon, where I could see it ripple beneath the blue, the faint glimmer of light of the Circle, throwing back the Beneath. The decay had vanished. There were no whispers, no low rasping hiss. The air was warm, untouched by rot. But Gideon was no longer there to breathe it. I rocked backward, closing my eyes.

That was how they found me a few minutes later, my arms still wrapped around Gideon, clutching his body against me.

Gideon was laid to rest on a sunny afternoon, beneath a sky so blue and clear it hurt to look at. He would have liked that, I thought; he wouldn’t have wanted rain.

His official cause of death had been heart failure. Mom and Leon had taken me from Gideon before his body had been found, so that there needn’t be explanations—but I wished there were some explanation I could offer. At the service, I sat on the pew with my own hands folded in my lap, listening to voices that didn’t connect. I felt distant, outside of myself. I could only think how strange it was to be there, in that big room that smelled of flowers and polished wood, noticing little details and not being able to point them out to him. I’d found myself searching the room, scanning faces. Remembering, finally, that he was there, at the front of the room. The dark wooden casket.

At his wake the night before, his casket had been open. His body had looked so cold, not like Gideon at all, but a statue carved in his image. I’d stood there a long time, trying to find some trace of him. Then I’d slipped an envelope in beside him, next to the pillow that cushioned his head. Within it, I’d folded the piece of paper with his name on it. Gideon David Belmonte. One soul.

“I kept this safe,” I told him. “But you should probably take it with you.”

Tink stood beside me at the cemetery, crying silently. I wasn’t crying. I hadn’t cried since the second I’d felt him leave. If I started crying now, I doubted I’d ever be able to stop.

When the casket was lowered, I looked at the open ground that surrounded it, the neatly tended grass. He had died human, I thought. The Beneath hadn’t been able to claim him. He belonged to the earth now, to the soil and everything that was bright and growing.

I spent the following days in a numb fog, walking and speaking, eating when I was reminded to. My sleep was dark and dreamless. My Knowing seemed to have been shut off. For a time I sensed nothing from anyone, and then when I did it was only noise on the periphery, like static or the distant buzzing of bees. I wondered, vaguely, if that should alarm me, that maybe the power was gone for good, that my frequencies had been permanently disconnected and all my perceptions would remain just out of hearing; but I couldn’t work up the effort to care.

Leon did what he could to comfort me. In spite of who Gideon had been, in spite of what he’d done—he knew that Gideon had been important to me. At night he’d leave his apartment and come lie beside me as I fell asleep, not kissing or touching, just there. He was usually gone by the time I awoke, but sometimes I’d open my eyes to find his head on the pillow near me, his breathing even. Then I’d take his hand and feel his fingers curl around mine, and just stay, watching him sleep.

Tink had officially joined the Guardians—who were once again being led by Mr. Alvarez—though she would still be in training with Camille. “I figure, since I survived literal hell on earth, a few Harrowers shouldn’t scare me,” she told me one night, sitting beside me on my porch steps while the thick heat rose around us, July steadily slipping into August. Above us, the stars were blinking through the glow of the city, and not a single one was red.

“We never did come up with a costume for you,” I said, smiling faintly.

“I don’t need a costume.”

“You could borrow one of Mom’s hoodies.”

“Did you miss the part where I just said I don’t need a costume?”

“If you say so.”

She smiled back at me—then bit her lip, looking down at her feet. “It’s going to be really weird, going back to school.”

Without Gideon, she meant. I’d been trying not to think about that. I just nodded, resting my arms on my knees, and watched the insects gather around the porch light. School was a month away, and I was measuring time in days. Seven days since the warm afternoon at the cemetery, since Gideon had been lowered into the earth in that bright casket covered in roses.

Eight.

Twelve.

Then, two weeks after Gideon’s funeral, Mom told me we had a visit to make. If I wanted to.

My father had flown in that morning.

“If you’re not ready, if you want to wait, we’ll wait,” she said.

We were in the kitchen, where the early sunlight crisscrossed the table. I didn’t respond at first. Before, I wouldn’t have hesitated. I’d wanted to know my father, even when I’d known it wasn’t possible—that the person he’d been was locked away, and whatever emotions he had were unable to reach the surface. But now he was awake and unsealed, and I felt like I was the sleepwalker.

“How long is he staying?” I asked.

“A few weeks, for now. He’ll be taking some time to figure things out.”

According to Esther, I assumed; I knew Mom hadn’t spoken to my father yet, either. Esther was continuing her efforts to get Mom to succeed her as leader of the Kin. The decision to evacuate the Kin had saved lives, Esther claimed—and when Mom had replied that anyone would’ve made the decision, Esther just said the point was not what anyone would have done, but what Mom actually did.

I glanced up at Mom. “You’re not going to dump Mickey, are you?”

She snorted, and then set about eating her own pancakes until she saw that I was frowning. “Oh, that was a serious question?” She sighed, stretching backward in her chair. It took a moment before she began speaking. “I’ll always love Adrian. I told you that. But I’m a different person than I was back then. And even unsealed, so is Adrian. Mickey is the man I want to be with. That hasn’t changed.”

“But you’re going to go see him, too, right?”

“When you’re ready.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

Three days later, we met my father in the St. Croix house. Esther had greeted us at the door and walked with us up the stairs, reminding us that my father was still adjusting, and the process would be ongoing for some time yet. But she was clearly thrilled. She looked happier—and healthier—than I’d ever seen her, and before she turned to let us enter the room, she actually hugged me.