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He took Roman down with him as he fell. Into open air?—

Straight into the pit.

5

The In-Between

Darien braced himself for impact,but it never came.

Instead, he and Roman were airborne—caught in a vortex of wind and water, lightning flashing without pause.

Darien tried to reach for Roman, but he couldn’t control his limbs. He couldn’t feel his body, his face. Couldn’t evenscream.

A rush of shadow came out of nowhere, and suddenly everything went dark. Quiet. A womb full of nothing.

This is it,Darien thought, preparing for the worst. All he could hear, all he could feel, was his heartbeat. Nothing else existed.

But then?—

In the space of one dizzying second, he was launched back to life, a flood of freezing liquid crashing around him as he came to at the base of a waterfall, banging his knees against mossy rocks.

He staggered away from the cascade with a ragged inhale. Roman appeared a moment later, spitting up a mouthful of water as he half-crawled, half-walked away from the tiered falls, the pond shallow enough to stand in.

Darien’s head whirled as he tried to make sense of where they were—of what the hell just happened.

The first conclusion he drew was that this wasn’t Spirit Terra. He could still breathe, still see… If they’d traveled to the Void, not only would they have stopped breathing instantly, but they also wouldn’t have been able to see. That was promising.

“Roman,” Darien panted as his cousin sloshed up to his side. The black sword slipped from Darien’s hand, dropping into the pool with aplash.He braced his hands on his knees, coughing so hard his chest burned, his eyes flooding with tears that dripped off his cheeks. “You alright?” This pond they were in was manmade—dug into the ground by landscapers, the small waterfall behind them also manmade.

“I think…,” Roman gritted out, clutching his gut, “I’m going to be sick.” He barely got the last word out before he was scrambling up the muddy bank and throwing up the meager contents of his stomach.

Darien stood there awhile in the water. Bleeding and shaking from the cold. He wasn’t as dizzy as before, his stomach settling, but his arm still hurt like a son of a bitch.

“You going to live?” he called to Roman, his breaths puffing in the air. He bent to pick up the sword and briefly dipped his other hand in too, the bitter temperature numbing the pain.

Roman coughed and spat. Once. Twice. “We’ll see,” he panted. His face was pallid, his eyes red from hours of trying to see in the dark. He shoved off his knees, tipping his head back to look at the sky. Murmured, “Holy shit,” and walked out onto a paved road.

Darien splashed up the bank and followed him in sopping boots, suit dripping.

They stood side by side, taking in their surroundings in disbelief.

Holy shitwas right.

Yveswich was under siege. The Void was devouring the city in a colossal wave of thick, pitch black shadow. It ballooned uptoward the darkened sky and just kept going, spreading in every direction. Thunder rumbled and cracked, and way off in the distance, in other parts of the city, helicopters flew. Looking for survivors, no doubt.

Although the sky was entirely dark, that massive cloud slowly suffocating everything it touched, this place where they stood…it was lighter here. Not daylight, but half-light, like the sky just before dawn.

They were in a residential area. A treed street with a dog park and perfectly constructed waterfalls.

Now that they were above ground, Darien felt hope swell in his chest. Out here, they stood a greater chance at finding the others. Out here, he felt like he actually had a shot at getting out of this city and back to the woman he loved.

I’m coming, baby,Darien thought, wishing Loren—wherever she was—could hear him.I’m coming. Hold on.

Darien swept the icy beads off his numb face. “What does that say?” He gestured to a street sign with a throbbing, shaking hand.

Roman squinted. “Larkin Street.” His brow creased, gold eyes meeting Darien’s. “We’re in East Montgomery. South of the Control Tower.”

Darien didn’t doubt his cousin—not when Roman knew the city as well as Darien knew Angelthene. But?—