Page 94 of Night Fae

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.