“Trust me, Mixing doesn’t feel much different than home ec.”

“You touch it,” David continued, as though she hadn’t spoken, and Laurel closed her mouth and let him talk. Clearly he needed to get it out. “And this surge of power just pours into you. And it doesn’t go away as long as you’re touching the sword.”

Laurel thought of the World Tree and wondered if it was similar to that.

“And it’s the most incredible rush in the world and you can’t help but believe that . . . that you can do anything.” He looked down at his hands, clenched in his lap. “But even the unbeatable sword can’t give me what I really want.”

He hesitated, and Laurel knew what was coming next.

“We’re not getting back together, are we?”

Laurel looked down at her feet and shook her head.

She saw his face fall, but he said nothing.

“I wish,” Laurel began tentatively, “I wish there was a way that no one could get hurt in all this. And I hate that I’m the one who has to do it.”

“I think it’s better to know, though,” David said.

“I didn’t know,” Laurel said. “Not for sure. Not until I almost lost him.”

“Well, staring death in the face does tend to put things in perspective,” David said, leaning back against the wall.

“David,” Laurel said, trying to find the right words. “I don’t want you to think you did anything wrong, or that you weren’t good enough. You were the perfect boyfriend. Always. You would have done anything for me, and I knew that.”

David maintained his pose, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“And I don’t know,” Laurel continued, “if this is making things better or worse, but you have to know how much I loved you – how much I needed you. You were the best thing that could have ever happened to me in high school. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“Thanks for that,” David said, sounding sincere. “And – it’s not like I didn’t see it coming. I mean, I hoped it wouldn’t, but . . .”

Laurel looked away.

“I think Tam’s the only person in the world who could love you as much as I do,” David said grudgingly.

Laurel nodded, but remained silent.

“So will you stay here with him?”

“No,” Laurel said firmly, and David looked up in surprise. “I don’t belong here, David. Not yet. Maybe someday. If – when Yasmine becomes Queen, she’ll need me, but for now, what Avalon really needs is someone in the human world, just like Jamison said. Someone to remind them how great humans really are. How great you are,” she added. “And I intend to do that.”

“Laurel?”

There was an edge of desperation in his voice, a deep sorrow she knew she had put there. “Yeah?”

He was quiet for a long time and Laurel wondered if he had changed his mind when he blurted, “We could have made it. If it hadn’t been for . . . for him, we would have had the real thing. Our whole lives. I truly believe that.”

Laurel smiled sadly. “Me too.” She threw herself into David’s arms, pressing her cheek against his warm chest, the same way she’d hugged him countless times before. But there was something more in it, this time, as he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her back. And she knew, despite the fact that she would probably see him every day from now through graduation, that this was goodbye.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “For everything.”

A movement caught the corner of her eye; he was far away, but she knew him in an instant. Tamani was struggling up the pathway on his own, hardly able to put one foot in front of the other. Even as she watched he stumbled and barely caught himself.

Laurel gasped and was on her feet in an instant. “I have to go help him,” she said.

David met her eyes and held her gaze for several seconds before he looked down and nodded. “Go,” he said. “He needs you.”

“David?” Laurel said. “Sometimes . . .” She tried to remember how Chelsea had explained it to her once. “Sometimes we’re so busy looking at one thing, one . . . person . . . that we can’t see anything else. Maybe – maybe it’s time for you to open your eyes and look around.”

That message delivered, Laurel whirled and headed for Tamani without a backwards glance.

“Tamani!” Laurel called, running to him.

He looked up and for a second Laurel saw joy in his eyes. But then darkness clouded his expression. He blinked and looked down at the ground, running his fingers through his hair almost nervously.

Laurel tucked herself beneath his good arm, wanting to chide him for trying to do so much. Beneath her fingertips Laurel could feel no trace of Klea’s virulent toxin, which was encouraging, but his wounds were grievous enough on their own. “Are you all right?”

He shook his head and his eyes looked haunted in a way she had never seen before. Yesterday she had been peripherally aware that he was pushing his emotions aside to accomplish the tasks before him. But here, with no one around but Laurel, with no lives to save, he had let all his defences go and allowed himself to really feel. And it showed. “No,” he said, his voice shaking. “I’m not all right. And I don’t think I’m going to be all right for a long time. But I’ll live,” he added after a brief pause.

“Sit,” Laurel said, pulling him off the path to a patch of grass where a large pine shaded them from not only the rising sun, but prying eyes. For just a moment, she wanted him all to herself. “Where’s Chelsea?”