Page 31 of Night Fae (Monsters of Veridia #3)

Malik nodded and hurried to the iron doors, finding them surprisingly light despite their imposing appearance. Beyond lay a circular chamber with a pool of absolute darkness at its center—a darkness that seemed to swallow the blue torchlight.

The pull in his chest intensified to an almost painful degree as he approached the edge of the pool. The shadow path sensed him, rippling like disturbed water.

"Remember," Leon said from the doorway, "find the thread that connects you to Zev and don't let go, no matter what the paths show you."

Malik nodded, watching the darkness pulse beneath him. "If I don't make it back?—"

"Save the heroic speeches for when you return," Leon cut him off. "The paths feed on drama."

Despite everything, Malik almost smiled. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and stepped forward into nothingness.

Cold enveloped him. The darkness wasn't empty. It pressed against him, hungry and alive. Malik fought the instinct to struggle, focusing instead on the tugging he felt in his chest, the invisible thread connecting him to Zev.

The darkness gave way reluctantly, like wading through tar. Shapes formed at the edges of his vision. They were indistinct at first, then clearer. The shadow paths were creating a scene around him, pulling it from his memories.

A road materialized beneath his feet. Rain slicked the asphalt, headlights cutting through the darkness.

It was an all-too-familiar scene. The mountain highway where his family had died.

He was in the backseat of his parents' car, his twin sister Maya beside him, arguing about something trivial. He couldn't remember what now, but they'd been so angry at each other. Up front, his mother turned around.

"Will you two please stop? Your father is trying to concentrate in this rain."

But Malik knew what was coming.

And there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

"It's not real," Malik told himself, even as the memory enveloped him with perfect clarity—the song playing on the radio, the smell of his mother's perfume, the way his father drummed his fingers against the steering wheel.

The crash happened in slow motion. The scream of tires. The sickening crunch of metal. The world spinning. Malik's voice rose in warning, but the words died in his throat. He'd lived this moment too many times in his nightmares to believe he could change it.

As he lay trapped in the wreckage, his family turned to him, their bodies broken, faces bloodied, but eyes clear and accusing.

"You lived," his sister said. "Why just you?"

"I didn't choose this," Malik whispered.

"You're choosing it now," his mother said, reaching for him with a hand bent at an impossible angle. "Choosing him over us."

"That's not true."

"Then stay," his father urged. "Stay with us. We can be together again."

Shadows pressed in around Malik.

Were they trying to feed on his grief, his guilt?

How many times had he secretly wished he'd died with his family? How many nights had he lain awake, wondering why he'd been spared when they hadn't?

But Zev's face flashed in his mind—not the cold, controlled assassin, but the vulnerable man who had held him in the darkness, who had sacrificed his freedom to protect Malik.

"I'm sorry," Malik told his family, tears streaming down his face. "I loved you. I still love you. But I have to keep going." He looked at his sister. "I did everything I could. And I've punished myself enough."

The illusion wavered. Maya's face flickered like a bad transmission.

"I survived for a reason," Malik continued, finding strength in his own words. "And part of that reason is waiting for me."

He pulled himself out of the wreckage, fighting through the tendrils that tried to hold him back. The metal of the car dissolved until Malik found himself kneeling in darkness, alone.

He got up and kept moving.

The cold closed around him, deeper this time. The thread connecting him to Zev pulled him forward, but the paths had not given up feeding on him yet.

The scene shifted around him.

Something colder than the darkness cut into Malik's arms.

Chains.

Suddenly he was kneeling on the floor with Zev standing over him, holding a blade.

"Choose," Lord Darius said from somewhere behind Zev. "Your loyalty to the Court, or your human pet."

Zev's face was blank, eyes cold and empty as he raised the blade.

"This isn't real either," Malik said firmly, though his heart raced. "Zev would never hurt me."

"Wouldn't he?" the shadow-Zev asked, his voice unnervingly familiar. "You've known me for what—weeks? What makes you think you matter more than my family?"

"Because you risked everything to protect me," Malik answered. "You killed for me, even though it broke something inside you."

"And now you've seen what I truly am," shadow-Zev continued, pressing the blade against Malik's throat. "A killer. A monster. Did you really believe I could care for someone like you?"

Malik swallowed, feeling the cold edge against his skin. "This isn't you talking. The real Zev is trapped in the Fields, caught in his own nightmare."

"And if you free me?" shadow-Zev asked, leaning closer. "What then? Do you think I'll fall into your arms, grateful and loving? I will never love you as I loved Rhys. Never."

The words cut deeper than any blade, striking at Malik's deepest fear. But this was a trap.

This was the shadow path trying to exploit his doubts.

Would Zev ever truly love him?

"Maybe not," Malik admitted, doing his damnedest to keep his voice steady. "But that doesn't matter now. I'm not saving him to make him love me. I'm saving him because he deserves to be free, because no one deserves to be trapped in their grief forever."

The shadow-Zev faltered, the blade wavering.

"And even if he never feels for me what he felt for Rhys," Malik pushed on, "that doesn't make what we have any less real. Different doesn't mean less."

The vision shattered around him, dissolving back into darkness. The connection in Malik's chest burned brighter now, almost painfully strong. He was getting closer.

"I reject your illusions," he said out loud, and then he repeated his words like a mantra as he kept going.

The paths no longer felt like they were fighting him; instead, they seemed to bend around him, guiding him deeper.

The darkness gradually lightened to a misty gray. Malik sensed he was nearing the Fields of Memories. The pull in his chest had become almost painful again, but in a different way—not draining, but urgent.

I'm coming, Zev. Hold on.

The mist parted, revealing the silver-grass clearing he'd seen in his vision. The ancient gnarled tree loomed ahead, and beneath it stood Zev and the false Rhys, surrounded by shadow tendrils that had nearly consumed Zev completely.

Time to fight for what was real.