I didn’t care.

After only a few steps, Lydia collapsed and I blinked, jarred out of my own shock. Tod and I knelt next to her. She was still breathing. She still had a pulse. But her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving.

“We have to go,” Tod said, sliding one arm behind her shoulders to pick her up. “They’ll cross over as soon as they get the blades out and heal.”

“No, they won’t,” Thane said, and I jumped, startled, to find him behind us. “I cleaned out their stockpile, during your convenient distraction.”

“Their stockpile?”

“The restored souls. I took them all. Including mine.” He took off his glasses, and I was oddly relieved to see that he had both pupils and irises again. “Can’t have them coming after me, now can I? And the restored souls will fetch one hell of a price somewhere else. Anywhere else.”

Before I could demand that he turn the souls over to the proper authority, his gaze fell to Lydia, lying motionless on the ground. “I couldn’t get hers, though.”

“What? Her soul? Where is it?”

“In the Nether. Here. Everywhere. She was syphoning Emma’s pain when Emma died, and part of her soul went with Emma’s.”

“Part?” I wrapped my hand around the heart hanging against my sternum. It was unnaturally warm.

“The rest dissipated.”

“So she’s…empty?” Tod said, staring at Lydia, and his hand curled around mine, around the amphora, like he would help me protect it.

Thane nodded. “I’ve only seen that a couple of times—a living body with no soul. She’ll be dead in minutes.”

“If she doesn’t get a soul…” Tod said, his gaze holding mine. Challenging it. There was a choice to be made, and I had to make it.

I nodded. I understood.

I could save Emma. Part of her, anyway. And I could save part of Lydia. Nothing would be the same. But at least life wouldgo on. I owed it to them both to try.

Nash laid Emma on the ground next to Lydia.

I closed my eyes, but I could still see them in my head and I could feel everyone watching me. Sophie was still sniffling, clutching Luca’s arm. Nash held Emma’s limp hand. Tod was waiting, and he was ready, too. Once I withdrew Em’s soul from the amphora, I’d need a male bean sidhe to help guide it into another body.

I sang out to Emma’s soul, and when it came out of the amphora, Tod helped me guide it into Lydia’s body. Then we waited.

At first, nothing happened, and I didn’t know whether to be horrified or relieved by the thought that I’d done it wrong. That Emma’s suffering would end with her life.

Then Lydia opened her eyes. They weren’t blue, like they should have been. They were brown. Emma-brown.

“Kaylee?” Emma said with Lydia’s voice, blinking those familiar brown eyes at me. “What happened? Where are we?” She sat up, and everyone moved back to give her space. “Why do I sound weird? Why am I so pale?” she demanded, staring at Lydia’s forearm, stretched out in front of her.

“I couldn’t save you,” I whispered, and those four words held more shame than I’d known I could feel. I’d promised I wouldn’t let her die. Then I’d failed her. “This was the best I could do. But I swear on my afterlife that they’ll pay, Em. All three of them.”

Avari wanted my soul, but he was going to get a hell of a lot more than that. He was going to get pain. And loss. And justice. He was going to get vengeance in kind for every soul he’d stolen. For every friend he’d taken from me. This time I would feed from his pain, and with any luck, it would hurt worse knowing that he’d put into motion his own downfall.

Avari had woken me up and given my afterlife purpose. He’d awakened my rage.

Emma had given me reason to use it.