“No, Lila!”

I keep walking, ignoring the voice in my ear. “I’m not helping you anymore.”

“Lila! Lila, I need your help! Lila, don’t make me . . .”

I pause.

“Lila, please. Please help me, I am begging you, just one more chance . . .”

I turn back to the doorway. “No, Lucien, you’ve had your chances, and wasted them. I’m done helping you.”

Lucien is slumped on the other side of the barrier, smoky and indistinct as ever. I think of the solidity of their hand in mine in that moment, that one moment when I thought I could let them through. That just once, I could show compassion to another being and it wouldn’t backfire.

I’d been wrong.

So wrong.

“Lila, you can’t leave me like this,” Lucien begs. It feels earnest, the desperation and fear woven into their voice. But then, the rest did too. And now I know them for what they are—a lying snake. Well, I’d known that from the beginning. I had just believed that they would prove different than the stories said, that this one would be kinder, truer, more honest.

“I’m sorry, Lucien,” I say. “You’ll find someone else to help you, I’m sure. There are many gullible witches in the world, after all.”

“No, Lila, you don’t understand—”

I stalk back toward them. “What don’t I understand, Lucien? Your greedy, deceptive heart? You’re as much a villain as I was taught, perhaps worse.”

“I know.”

I stand still, stunned. “What?”

“I know what I am. I tried for so long to be something else, something not so twisted and rootless. I tried to craft a moral compass. But it all falls apart in the face of true desperation. No, I won’t find someone else to help me. In a matter of hours there won’t be a need, because this place where I’m trapped will have dissolved, and me with it. I didn’t mean to manipulate you, Lila. I swear on all the stars in your sky which I have never seen and have never needed to see. Old habits die hard, I suppose. This was my last chance at survival, and, fearing that when it came down to it you wouldn’t help me, I acted on instinct.” There is what feels like real regret in their voice, more poignant than I’ve heard from them in the past, even when they were spinning their tale of tragedy to lure me in.

“This is impossible,” I murmur, and turn away again, thinking. They had betrayed my trust. Again and again over the past weeks they had lied to me, spun tales and half-truths to get me on their side, and like the hopelessly compassionate person I am, I had been drawn in by their stories of betrayal and grief, up to the point where I had been willing to pull them through from their realm to mine. They had been lying to me before. They could be lying again now. As much as I want to walk away and forget about them, I know that if I do, their face will haunt me forever.

If I take their hand again, the barriers between our minds will drop. Lucien will be able to read my thoughts, and I will be able to read theirs. My compassionate heart won’t let me walk away.

I turn back to them, closing the distance between me and the doorway. “Give me your hand.”