Page 75

Letting go of her hand, he nearly flung it away from him.

“Aiden said that I might start seeing things if I didn’t pull back.” Skye squeezed his eyes shut, pressing a hand against the ache in his chest. “The battle at the canyon, the stress of losing you, the lack of sleep—that’s what this is. It’s just my mind trying to cope, making up stories more palatable than the truth. I probably heard something when I was drunk and passing by the Swap that night. The dream was just a coincidence. The blue lights were just a hallucination, the dark finally getting to me, and thenyou…” The laugh that came out of him sounded hysterical, even to his own ears. “I mean… look at you. Look at that dress!”

Taly glanced down, picking at her skirts. “What’s wrong with my dress?”

“You’d never wear it. That’s what’s wrong with it. That dress is a product of my own imagination. I had a dream where we were dancing, and this entire conversation…” He shook his head, taking a shuddering breath. “This is just me torturing myself.”

Skye let his head hit the wall, half tempted to give in to the insanity. There were more shades and more fighting waiting for him, more decisions to be made. But maybe… maybe this was where he stopped. Maybe this was where his story ended, alone and in the dark with the ghost of a woman he had failed to save.

“I know it’s hard.” Her throat bobbed. Her own eyes glistened. “And I’m sorry to say that things are going to get a lot worse before they begin to get better. The problem you’re facing…” She paused, letting out a soft sound of frustration as she considered her words.

“All your life,” she said carefully, “everything has followed a logical path. The next step was clear, the answers were easy, and when they weren’t, you had someone telling you what to do. This time, though—what seems right will be wrong, what’s wrong will be right, and you’re going to have to decide for yourself which is which. You’re going to have to evolve. You have to start seeing the world in intersects and angles instead of just straight lines.”

Standing, Taly offered him a hand.

But he just stared blankly, unable to muster the energy to take it, to make himself stand. She offered him hope, but… Taly would never say these things. She was more likely to kick him than offer him words of encouragement. This was just his subconscious telling him what he wanted to hear.

With a sigh, she let her hand drop. “If what you need is proof, I can offer that.”

Skye’s eyes snapped to hers. His heart began to pound, even if he was still reluctant to seize that spark of hope.

“Back at my room at the tavern,” she said, “there’s a loose board underneath the bed. Go there and take what’s inside. Tell me then if you think I’m real or not.”

Taly dipped down so that their eyes were at the same level—him kneeling on the ground, back against the wall, and her leaning over him.

“Don’t give up, Em. This is not our last chapter. You will see me again.”

And then she kissed him—soft as a whisper. His eyes drifted closed.

When he opened them, she was gone.

Chapter 16

-An excerpt from the Essential Fey Survival Guide

Rule #2: If you happen upon a time mage’s journal, do not retrieve it. It has not been misplaced.

There was a black suit spread out on the bed, freshly pressed and waiting.

Skye wasn’t sure how long he had been staring at it.

They had finally cleared out the tunnels, and the first thing he had done when he had been released was shower. The water had been hot and strong, and he had stood there in a daze, watching as the grime of the past week spiraled down the drain, streaks of black against the white porcelain.

But now that he was clean, standing with a towel around his waist in his darkened bedroomon the top floor of the Castaros’ townhouse, there was that suit to deal with. Sarina must have laid it out while he was in the washroom. Or maybe he just hadn’t noticed it when he trudged past the first time, peeling off his armor as he went.

It was black. The shirt, the pants, the coat… Mourning colors.

Because Taly was gone. Dead.

And even though they were living in a world gone mad, fighting an enemy that had no name and no face, there were still customs that needed to be observed. The family would dress in black, and the curtains would remain drawn—not because the dead demanded it but because the living needed something to give order to their pain. Some sort of structure on which to mount their suffering so that they could move forward.

So that they could forget.

Skye let the towel drop. He almost reached for the shirt—then stopped.

If what you need is proof, I can offer that.

He shook his head at the memory. He hadn’t gone to the tavern, if only because going would feed into the illusion. Everything he had seen and heard down in those tunnels—it wasn’t real. He knew that. Just like he knew that if he put on those clothes, those colors, it would be admitting an end. It would be the start of a goodbye he’d never wanted to say, and was he really ready for that? If there was even a whisper of a chance, no matter how impossible it might seem, why wouldn’t he grab it?