Page 50 of Evermore (The Never Sky #3)

Paesha

D eath had a new name today, and it was Ezra.

The tip of his arrow was a whisper away from taking my life and his eyes, once full of love, burned with the resolve to end me.

My hands trembled, and I pressed them against my chest where the arrow should have been.

Mortality had brushed against me like an icy wind, and somehow I was still breathing.

Before I could process what had happened, golden light poured from Thorne’s skin, weaving magic through the air like threads through silk.

With a sound like tearing fabric, he ripped a hole in the world that echoed across the empty streets of Stirling.

Power rippled outward in waves, distorting the air until it split open, revealing absolute darkness beyond.

I didn’t know if he’d been to the Forgotten before, whatever that place was, but he’d certainly known how to open the door, when Alastor didn’t.

Which told me only one thing. The Forgotten was a prison, and Reverius Hawthorne Noctus was the warden.

In books I’d read, the protagonist would claim the void between worlds tasted like lightning and smelled of broken promises.

As Thorne’s power tore reality apart before me, I discovered they were wrong.

It tasted like vengeance and smelled like everything that had ever been lost. My own fear gave name to those new scents.

“You can stay,” Thorne whispered, his voice softer than I’d ever heard it.

His eyes found mine, no longer the hard, calculating gaze he showed the world, but something vulnerable, almost pleading.

His fingers reached for mine, but he hesitated.

“Last chance. Once we cross that threshold, everything changes. I believe the Forgotten is a place that consumes. We could lose ourselves entirely. Lose each other. Lose every memory that makes us who we are.”

He’s lying. He can never forget and we won’t let you either.

“Ezra…” I said, my voice hollow, unable to let go of those past moments. “He just…”

“Yes.” Thorne’s eyes darkened. “And he failed.”

“But he tried to kill me. I could be dead right now.” My voice broke, the reality of it washing over me again.

“This is the cycle,” Thorne said, his hand finally closing the distance to mine, his touch warm and solid against my trembling fingers. For a moment, the mask fell completely, and I saw raw fear in his eyes, fear for me or of me, I wasn’t sure.

I felt the pressure in the back of my throat. The one that warned me tears weren’t far behind. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying hard to forget the man I’d known and loved for years, because as much as Thorne would like this moment when we were finally alone to be about him, it simply wasn’t.

“He didn’t even blink,” I whispered, forcing my heart to let go of the way I mourned him. “I gave him so much of myself. And he let go of that arrow.”

This wasn’t safe. These thoughts. These words. I didn’t want the emotions that came with them. I didn’t want the reality of being the Hunted. I had a mission. A goal. And Ezra wasn’t part of that.

“He will try again, Paesha. You need to understand that and be careful.”

I put a hundred walls up around the man I used to love in my mind. No more thoughts of him. I wouldn’t survive dwelling on the past. Instead, I looked to Thorne. Finally. Fully. Forcing the conversation away from his brother. “Are you afraid?”

He hesitated, something devastating and raw crossing his face before he masked it.

“For you, perhaps, but you could stay. You could hide away,” he said softly, almost pleading.

“Let me do this alone. I’ll find Irri and free you from Alastor, no matter what happens to me.

” His thumb traced circles on my palm, the gentle touch at odds with the tension in his shoulders.

“Go back to Quill, to your family. Let me do this one thing right.”

For a moment, for one heartbeat, I saw past the god to the man. The way his eyes held mine felt like a last desperate reach for something real, something true between us. As if he was offering me not just a choice, but a chance at redemption for us both.

He lies , the voices hissed in unison, rising like a tide of serpents in my mind. Always lies.

Stop this , Winter hissed.

Make him suffer , another whispered.

Do not be a fool , Sylvie commanded.

Their fury drowned out my own doubts, my own fears, and something else, something that felt dangerously like regret.

I squeezed his hand, letting the vulnerability he needed to see shine through the cracks in my armor.

“We go together. We leave together.” The lie tasted like ashes on my tongue. “No more running.”

The look that crossed his face then, a mixture of resignation and heartbreak so profound it stole my breath, was gone so quickly I almost convinced myself I’d imagined it. He couldn’t have known. If he knew I planned to find a way without him, he wouldn’t have committed to go.

Without another word, we stepped through the tear in reality. The sound it made as it sealed behind us sent ice through my veins.

“Can you reopen it?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted quietly, removing his glasses as this new reality settled around us. “I’m guessing nothing works quite the same here, but that’s the hope. Otherwise, I’ve taken you away from your ward for eternity. And that’s a truth I cannot bear.”

At least he was being honest about this sadness. He might not admit it, but that came from fear too. Perhaps the god of gods and a thousand names was more human than he’d ever let himself believe. Or he was a really good pretender, playing the role of someone who cared. Likely the latter.

The Forgotten was a nightmare manifested.

Towers of twisted black stone rose into a starless void above, their surfaces creeping with shadows that had weight and substance.

The ground was neither solid nor liquid.

It shifted and rippled with each step, as if we walked on the skin of some vast, sleeping beast.

Between the towers, paths wound like open wounds through the darkness. The air whispered of the damned. Fragments of forgotten souls drifted past like ash, their faces contorted in eternal screams.

I spoke before thinking. Before the mask could be firmly in place. “How did this place come to be?”

“It happened by accident,” Thorne said quietly, his eyes fixed on the darkness.

“When I first became the Keeper, I didn’t understand the weight of what I was.

Every beginning demands an ending. Every memory preserved requires something to be forgotten.

Balance, always balance. The first time I needed to make something cease to exist in memory, I thought I was simply removing it from reality.

But things don’t simply disappear. All those forgotten things, those lost moments, those ended stories, they had to go somewhere.

I didn’t realize what was happening until I imprisoned my first god.

Everything that had been forgotten, everything that had been broken, it all gathered here.

A realm that exists in the spaces between memory and oblivion.

A prison built from everything that reality needed to forget. ”

“Great. Not ominous at all,” I said, hesitant to walk forward.

“No one has ever returned from here.” His voice dropped to barely a whisper. “I have no idea what we’re getting ourselves into.”

“Can’t be worse than dungeon torture, forced marriage and one-sided magical bargains. I think I’ll manage.”

My Remnants poured across the shifting ground. They twisted through the shadows, trying to anchor themselves to anything that felt real. But nothing here was truly real, it was all echoes and pieces of things that had been forgotten by time and people and apparently even gods.

The darkness pressed closer as Thorne caught my wrist, turning me to face him. His touch was gentle but insistent, like everything about him, a contradiction I’d never quite understood. “The last time we were alone…”

I hadn’t thought about it. Refused to remember his fingers on my skin. The way he’d settled between my thighs, the way he’d looked at me that night. “I should have told you everything then.”

“Stop. We don’t need to do this.”

His fingers tightened. “Yes, we do. We absolutely fucking do. I can feel the way you pull back. I can see the question in your eyes. I know you don’t trust me.”

“And why should I? If you broke my arm right now and apologized for it, would my arm be healed?” I bit back at him, knowing I was giving myself away.

“I would never?—”

“I watched you,” I shouted. “You killed me. Some game between you and Ezra, one life after another, you’ve been killing me.

The voices…” I plunged my hands into my hair pulling as the Remnants swirled around me and voices of my past lives, all of them whispered one over the top of the other so I couldn’t hear a thing, couldn’t think straight enough to string thoughts together.

I love you, too.

I will protect you.

I will break you.

Burn the realms.

Let them fall.

Dance with me.

Trust me.

We loved him too, Huntress. Sylvie crooned. All of us loved him. And he broke us. We are what’s left of everything he broke because we were too weak to say no to him. We will be your strength. Put your mask on.

I felt myself sinking into the shifting ground more than saw it beyond the shadows that were building and building. I needed control. I needed absolute control. But I wasn’t stronger than Sylvie. I could feel her smile in my mind. Could see her pushing me further into the pit of madness.

“Enough,” I heard him roar outside the wall.

Had I spoken aloud? Repeated them? I did that sometimes.

“Fight back, Paesha. Find yourself in there and fight it. Remember me. I’ve never been the one to kill you. It’s always been him. You die in my arms every fucking time, but not at my hands. Remember.” His voice broke. “Please.”