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I have no answer, so I switch tactics. “We need to⁠—”

“No,” he interrupts with a slash of his hand. “I am done listening to your schemes. I knew I should’ve taken Astoria’s statue immediately, but I listened to you instead. All you’ve had me do is wait and waste time. I am done with it, Valen. I am done.”

Prickling frustration crawls up my insides, filling the empty vastness of my soul. My lips curl as I growl, “There was no way in the darkest recesses of the Tapestry that you were going to succeed in stealing Astoria from Alasdair in the state you were in. I saved your life, magician. You should stop accusing me of setting us up for failure and thank me instead.”

He laughs, low and cruel. I would be proud, but he says, “And you fucked me nice and good for your payment.”

My tongue clicks. “Actually, you begged⁠—”

“It doesn’t matter, Valen!” he roars. “Tor is gone because we wasted time!”

I sigh. This is going nowhere fast. “I understand you’re upset and frustrated, but we don’t know if the statue is at the Archweaver estate.”

“Of course it’s there.”

I glare. “Forgive me, I must’ve missed when you found a map with a big red X marking where in the estate it is.”

“Her father wants her dead. Her brother trapped her. He would’ve taken her as a prize.”

I chew on this thought, but it still doesn’t quite click in place. I rub my temple as my head throbs. Why can’t this ever be easy? I turn and begin leading the way back to the platform. I need a stiff drink from the Bauer cellars to continue this argument.

“If you’re right—and I doubt you are—then Atticus would display the statue for all to see, like he did with Viola. It shouldn’t be hard to confirm. Perhaps I can reach out to some contacts to check if they’ve heard or seen anything.”

The silence that follows has me stopping. I turn to face him. Lucas hasn’t moved, the fog nearly obscuring him. He could be one of the specters for all I know.

I feel the accusation in Lucas’ gaze.

A pressure builds in my chest and skull. I rub my temples, trying to ease the discomfort while saying, “I understand that you love her, but we will die if we face the Archweaver.”

Lucas steps back, and a chill ripples over me. My fingers against my temples rub harder and harder. I shut my eyes, but I cannot shut my ears to Lucas’ words. “What happened to ‘our’ beloved? What happened to trying to get her to run away with you and abandon me? I know you’re upset with her, but⁠—”

I can’t keep doing this. I can’t hold it in. The words explode from me, cutting him off as I bellow, “My mother left. My sister left. I stayed to save my father from Astoria’s curse, and now he’s dead. I’ve failed them all, and now I’ll fail again. Don’t you see? I can’t save her, Lucas!”

An ice-cold wave flashes down me, and I step back with wide-eyed panic. Those words were never supposed to escape. I haven’t even comprehended them, and now they’re out there, hanging between the two of us for Lucas to witness. The few feet between Lucas and I might as well be miles.

If he says Astoria sending him to me was a mistake, I will break apart. There will be nowhere lower for me to go. I pant, raking my hands through my hair, and quickly say, “When I chose her, my father started the civil war he was trying to prevent just to save me. He died for it. I know you don’t want to hear it, but Astoria has been running from a fate that cannot be stopped and the more we try to help her, the worse it will become.”

Lucas’ lips thin, but there’s a kindness in his gaze that has me flinching away. “I know, and I won’t stop trying to help her. I don’t care what she’s done, Valen. I won’t ever stop trying.” He shifts his weight with a sigh and combs back his hair before continuing, “Look, I know you want me to return to the Bauer estate with you because you need the comfort, but it’s a bad idea. The estate is the first place the Archweaver is going to look for you. We cannot go back. We need to run, but I am not leaving without her.”

He’s right, and it nearly kills me to admit it even to myself. But despite that, I cannot stop the slack-jawed stare I give him. His devotion to his cause to save Astoria is so familiar and yet so foreign to me. How have I changed so much in such a short amount of time?

I gaze at him like he holds all the answers to my darkest fears. My voice is small, barely a whisper when I ask, “How do you remain so steadfast in your love for her?”

He steps closer, and he’s so calm that I shiver as his words sink into me. “I know it’s hard to see because you’re in so much pain, but Astoria fought all her life for the right to exist. You of all people should know. You saw the way they treated her. Abused her. Underestimated her.”

I try to look away, but he holds me, forces me to keep looking at him when he continues, “She is not perfect. She is a survivor. And I love her so fucking much that I can see past the horrible things she’s done to see the pain that she struggles with. She doesn’t know how to react without the raw terror of fight or flight because everything in her life has been a life-or-death situation.”

Lucas’ breath trembles, and his expression turns strained. “Tor and I… we’re similar in some ways. We both had to do horrible things as children so that we could live to adulthood. I did not love my father, Valen. I will never regret killing him. The only difference between Astoria and me is that it was easier for me to face my abuser because I knew he was going to kill my mother. And I succeeded. Astoria tried to kill her father and failed. She was wrong to attack Alasdair, but I can understand why she did. She truly thought she had no other way to stop the monster in her life.”

Astoria, starved, dehydrated, and weak, on the Archweaver’s office floor appears in my mind’s eye. Blood dripping from under the iron muzzle, the skin around peeling away from days of wear. She couldn’t sit up. She couldn’t fight back. And I had been so powerless to free her.

I’d rather die under that thing than be under you again.

Regret and shame hit me hard, and I have no walls of self-preservation left to stop it.

Lucas continues in a soft tone. “I know it’s hard to see, but your father made the choices that led to his demise. He damned a young girl to either a horrid death, ripped apart by her threads, or being stripped of all her powers and locked away as a pet to be bred from. Then he chose to let the Archweaver kill Viola.”

His words sink deeply into me. The pain and the suffering in my soul surge, but this time from the horrors of what I’ve lost sight of. It leaves my eyes burning and my skin too tight.