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“It got crunchy. I left it behind,” Eli says and collects my underwear scrap from the tree. He brings it to his face, inhaling my scent, then stuffs it in a pocket. The pieces of my bra follow.

“Crunchy?You’re disgusting.”

He gives me a cocky smile along with a spare shirt and pants from his pack. They reek of stale dampness. Then it’s a rush of yanking wet clothes over my sticky body. I stuff my treasures in a pocket before we take off toward the castle.

Reaching the river again, we stand at the edge of an alternate bridge, my heart already trying to flee its cage. Eli doesn’t ask, doesn’t speak or hesitate. He simply lifts me into his arms and carries me across. I rest my head on his chest and tuck my fingers into the neck of his shirt, holding tight until he plops me down on the other side, safely past the mist and rapids, and we continue on.

Even so soon after our escape amid the coffee trees, after being dismantled and put back together by him, my mind starts stirring. I don’t know what just happened with him—what I think of it, what I want. I can’t attach a meaning to it, only a sense of belonging that I’ve never felt before.

A lost piece of me wants to feel more, to feel the very things I try to protect myself from, but the miniature fortress erected around my heart holds me back. With all the walls that he’s knocked down,thoseseem indestructible, as if an external force reaches inside my chest and holds them in place. I can’t let him in all the way…even if I want to.

He healed something in me, though. Brought back the part of me I lost at the falls—the last buried remnant of my hope and trust, so suffocatingly deep it had shriveled to merely a shadow of a concept. I have it back, but I don’t know where to put it. What desire is worth the risk of hope? And how can I trust him again when I don’t trust myself?

I can’t.

But he’s the only one who knows about my visions, and he’s not running away.

I see his two sides—his lightness and darkness and everything beneath and behind and in between—and I accept it all.

I jog to keep up with his panicked pace, my mind shifting to the castle. Faster and faster we go, only stopping when a vision hits, when I die, crushed by the heavy trunks of fallen trees. Eli takes me in with those consuming eyes of his and presses on when I return—no pity, no judgment.

I slam one foot down after the other on the mushy undergrowth of the woods, my boots sticking to the mud and peeling away with loudsmacks. I force my stride to lengthen, my thighs burning, until I match Eli’s rhythm at his side. He reaches down between us, not slowing, not looking my way, and takes my hand in his. Hesitant fingers lace through mine in an awkward tangle. I almost reach for his ear in return.

And we run, the towering trees zooming by. I’m aware of everything I see—and don’t see. Every blink, once unnoticeable, now has me searching the shadows, reaching through darkness,believing.

Chapter

Fifty-One

Where we expect the pointed roof of the house to jut into the sky, dust lingers in its place. Carved wood dominates the pile of rubble—shelves upon shelves, slices of walls, beams and floorboards tossed together and topped with mangled silver pipes, cracked stone basins and ripped sofa cushions. A golden spiral staircase gleams through the dust—twisted, cracked, buried in chunks of wall and the occasional chair leg.

Trinkets and gadgets and everyday things litter the ground, Calderan items from before the Separation—candle holders and cast-iron pans, ceramic jugs and metal teapots. And rising from the remnants of the house is a soft whimper of defeat.

His home. His home for thousands of lifetimes, held together by the oldest magic. Destroyed.

I did this.

Eyes like dark crystals, he looks over the heaping pile, his memories, his pasts, then snaps back to no emotion. “Where is everyone?”

We run to the hatchway doors, finding them splayed open. Debris blankets the stairs. My heart is raw as I take the steps two at a time. Earth spills through the broken slabs of stone of the caved-in walls and pipe-covered ceiling, hanging low, angled, bearing the weight of the fallen house. Cracked doors lay flat on the floor, torn down by the collapse of their frames.

Eli surveys the wreckage, his shoulders stiff, jaw tight. Only his feet move, shuffling in a circle beyond the bottom of the staircase until he stops with his back to me, staring across the room at the desolated cell I slept in for weeks. The bars bend and twist like the blitzer’s cage after I’d had my way with it. I step forward until I reach him, my fingers working up his shoulder, then higher. And I tug on his ear. His muscles tense at my touch, but minutes pass before he turns, looking down at my teary face.

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

He lowers his head, nearing me with scouring eyes and a hard-angled jaw, his dark aura closing in, his scent stronger, imaginary blood pooling in my mouth. Then he kisses my forehead, so softly it hurts, and turns his back to me once more. I peek around him, following his gaze to the one thing left intact: that hideous brown couch. A leaf-shaped note waits on the lumpy cushion. Eli wades through the destruction, plucks the note from the couch and reads it aloud.

Dearest Everielle,

It looks like I’ve missed you. I’ll be waiting for you at the Ring.

Fortunately, I have plenty of company, including your delightful Kelter.

Mother

Eli’s eyes go straight from the note to me. “Everielle?”

“Don’t ask.” His brows rise, but there’s nothing more to say. I was given a name too soft, too elegant to live up to—at least on the outside. “She has Kelter. And your friends.” I choke on the surge of dread rising in me.