Maybe it would be.
“You think I’m a dream,” Isobel said, “that I’m dead. But Varen, I’m not.”
“You always say that,” he murmured, eyes tracing her face, stopping at her lips. “Always. Just before you die.”
“I won’t this time,” she said. “Wait and see. I’m still here, aren’t I?”
“Sometimes I do it without meaning to,” Varen continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. “Other times, on purpose. Just to get rid of you. To get you out of my sight. Out of my head for one moment. Every time, though—and it doesn’t matter where we are”—lifting a hand, he touched her cheek, his cold fingers trailing electricity in their wake—“what we’re doing. I’m always the one who does it.”
“Varen, look at me.” She seized his hand and, squeezing, pressed it over her scar. “How can I be a dream? This scar. My dress. It’s real. And your jacket, how did I get it? Remember the petals in the courtyard? The blue sky? And on the street. That was me too. I sent you back, but only because I had to. Because it was real. And Varen, we are real. I am here. For you. And . . . it’s time to go home now.”
“The worst is when I get close, like this,” he went on, and leaning down, he brought his lips almost to hers. “When I try to kiss you.”
Isobel didn’t attempt to speak again. Her gaze fell to that small silver loop, and gripping his hand harder, she willed him to continue, to move in and press his lips to hers so that she could show him just how real she was.
“I don’t try that anymore, though,” he whispered, pulling back.
Though she attempted to keep his hand, Varen pried free and turned away, leaving her only the view of that horrible, white, spread-winged raven.
Pins and needles played over her skin each place he’d touched her.
“If you really believe I’m a dream, like all the others,” she said, watching him as he drew to a halt at the opposite end of Mr. Swanson’s desk, “then change me. Go ahead. Try.”
It was a risk. She knew that. But at this point, what wasn’t? Especially when she could sense she was failing. Again. Her window of time with him was closing fast. He would shut her out once more, and that would be it.
“Try,” she pressed, “and you’ll see it won’t work. Then you’ll—”
He moved quickly, snatching the black stapler from Mr. Swanson’s desk. At first, Isobel thought he might throw it at her. Instead, his arm swung out, and he aimed the item straight at her—but now the stapler become something else entirely.
Varen pressed his thumb down on the hammer of the sleek handgun, cocking it. The weapon made a sharp cracking sound like the splintering of bone.
Isobel’s voice, her breath, her comprehension, everything jarred to a halt inside her, and her renewed terror gave way to a single thought. That the black hole of the gun’s barrel exactly matched the soulless centers of his eyes.
“That . . . that isn’t real,” Isobel whispered, lips scarcely moving.
He swiveled his arm toward the windows and fired. Isobel jolted as one deafening bang after another rang out, bullets shattering glass.
Varen returned the gun to point at her. “It’s at least as real as you are.”
She clamped her mouth shut, setting her jaw.
He wanted a fight, she thought. He craved contention. His self-hatred had become a drug, an addiction he needed to feed. His lone source of perverse comfort in this forsaken realm.
Isobel’s soul ached for him with that notion. He had given up on himself as well as her. But knowing that also provided her with a scrap of strength—kept her from fracturing into a thousand pieces as she faced him—because at least it gave her somewhere to start.
Remind us of who we are, Pinfeathers had said.
“This . . . this isn’t you,” Isobel whispered, rolling the Noc’s words over and over in her head and choosing her own carefully. This time there could be no going back, no try again after the game over, if he pulled that trigger. “You aren’t like this.”
Varen held himself as steady as he held the gun. Seconds ticked by, each one more unbearable than the last. Then, finally, relaxing his arm, he tilted the gun upward.
But the reprieve didn’t last.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said, nestling the muzzle of the gun under his chin. “Care to find out?”
“Varen, stop it,” Isobel snapped, her own anger spiking, mixing with the panic she could no longer restrain. She dared not make even a slight movement toward him, though. Not now that he held them both in the thrall of his black erraticism.
