Any Way the Wind Blows (Simon Snow #3)(16)

He steps back. “I thought…”

BAZ

I thought I was being patient.

I thought he was getting better.

I thought we were in love …

… though he’s never said so.

“I like you,” he said once. “I like this.” But that was before. When he still had magic.

And then he told me I was all he had left to lose. I thought that meant that he wouldn’t let me go. But maybe Snow was trying to tell me his plans: You’re all I have left to lose, and eventually I will.

I take another step away from him. I’d been reaching for him. His broad shoulders, his freckled chest. It isn’t fair of him to say these things with his heart so naked. It makes them seem true.

I thought we had the sort of love that you can’t set down or walk away from. An undying fire. The love you hear about in the old stories.

No one told Simon Snow the old stories.

(Fuck, he’s already saved the princess and walked away from her. Maybe I’m one more unwanted prize.)

I take another step back. And another. Snow’s wings drop a bit. He’s looking down at the floor, rubbing the back of his neck. His chest is pale— cream and gold and pink—but his arms are still sun-kissed from those days in the back of Shepard’s truck. It’s only been a week.

No.

I step forward. His head jerks up.

“You can’t just decide that you’re done with me,” I say. “That’s not what we are.”

Snow looks even more confused, even angrier, than before. “I can’t decide I’m done? I have to pretend that I’m happy like this—sitting at home waiting for you to spell my wings away?”

“Shut up about the wings! You don’t have to keep the wings!”

“I’m not! I’m having them off tomorrow!”

“Wait, tomorrow?” His wings …

Snow lurches towards me. He points at my face. “I’m done, Baz—I’m done playing dungeons and dragons with you lot. I’m done with, fucking, spells. And prophecies. Werewolves and vampires. I’m just a person. An ordinary bloke.”

“How can you say that? You were the most powerful magi—”

His wings flare out. “Was! I was all that. Not anymore. It’s like I’ve been living in a museum— ‘Here’s Simon Snow. We thought he was the Chosen One for a few years. Gave himself a tail. Look at the state of him.’ I’ve got to let all that go, I have to figure out what comes next!”

“That’s what we’ve been doing! We’re figuring it out together.”

He rolls his eyes and shrugs his wings. It’s all one gesture. “I know what’s next for you and Penny—magic! It’s always more magic.”

“You keep talking about magic,” I say. “I’m talking about us. ”

“It’s all the same thing!”

“I don’t care about magic!” I do care, I care passionately. But I’d give my magic to the Humdrum to fix this.

“That’s a lie,” Simon says.

I pull my wand out of my sleeve and hold both ends. “I’ll break it, Snow. I don’t care. I don’t need it. Not like I—”

“You’re not breaking your wand. ” He tries to yank the thing out of my hands, but he ends up pulling me closer.

My face hangs over his. I’ve been yelling. I’ve been angry. But now I’m just … “Please,” I say, so quietly. “Please, Simon. Don’t do this.”

SIMON

His hair is brushing against my forehead. We’re both holding on to his ivory wand. The fight’s gone out of him, and that’s no good, because fighting is all I can manage right now.

“Baz…” I whisper.

He presses his forehead to mine. “Don’t do this. Don’t do this to me, love.”

“I have to.”

His head is rocking against mine, from side to side. “No, Simon. No. We can’t come apart like this. We’re not made of pieces that come apart.”

“Baz—”

“You can’t just give up on this. On me. Don’t you know what we have?

It’s the sort of thing people dream about. They make potions to steal it.” He pulls his wand against his chest. He pulls me with it.

“I know,” I say.

And I do. I know.

I know I’ll never love anyone like I love Baz. I know he’s the love of my life. Of all my lives. The Mage believed in reincarnation. Of a thousand lives stacked on top of each other. “Some lives we squander,” he said. “And some we seize.”

This was my life to find love. The truest love. The biggest.

But it isn’t my life to have it.

I’m too … broken. I don’t know how to be close to people. I don’t know how to be quiet. When Baz gets like this with me … When he hands me his heart, I don’t know how to hold it. I want to scream. I want to run. Maybe it’s part of what the Mage did to me. He said he got me wrong, that I was a cracked vessel. I can’t hold on to anything good.

“Baz…” I’m still whispering. “I can’t be with you.”

“Because of magic?” His voice breaks on the last word.