I didn't say the words.
I want to be honest about how close it was. It was closer than the platform in the flood, closer than Lucian's warm gold room, closer than anything. I had them in my mouth — take it, please, someone take it — and my father's hand was still open, and it would have been so easy, and Marrow would still be dead but the next one wouldn't have to be, and there is a version of me, a kinder and more tired version, who said them. I have thought about her every day since. I don't think she was weak. I think she was merciful, and I think mercy was exactly the trap, and I think the only reason I'm not her is that I was too gutted, in that moment, to do anything at all.
So I didn't say the words, and I didn't say the other ones either. I just turned, with Marrow's blood on my arms, and I walked off the platform away from both of them, away from my father's open hand and Alaric's split knuckles, and I went down into the dark to be no one's leader for a few hours because I did not have a single thing left to lead with.
I went to the deep gallery, where the water is, and I sat down on the cold stone at the edge of it, and for a long time I did nothing at all.
...
