Page 118 of Swords of Soul and Shadow (Gate Chronicles #3)

FOR A CUPPA

Hallie

HALLIE CRUSHED THE DAISIES BETWEEN her fingers as she sat up.

Deep green grass rolled out before her like a fine carpet, lush and well-cared for.

The color threw her off. Kyvena was still on the outset of spring.

Little patches of brown should’ve been woven into the more vibrant blades. This was somewhere entirely different.

The Myrrai Gate held numerous timelines. Was this one the same? Had she ended up in an entirely different time or world? Was she even still on Yalvara?

Her heart squeezed painfully, and she grabbed her chest. It didn’t matter how beautiful the place she found herself in. The only thing that mattered was getting back to the Catacombs.

She pressed her hands into the ground and wrenched forth her power, thrusting it into the soft, loamy dirt. It came quicker this time—a cruel twist of fate. It’d failed only moments earlier in the Catacombs. “ Kyvena vreali Toro !”

A smoky spark like lightning shot up from the ground and twisted around her hands like yarn, but no Passage appeared. She tried again. And again. And again.

The strand of light thinned each successive attempt, and no Passage appeared.

“No, no, no.” Her lungs were tight. “Please no.”

Don’t panic.

But holy stars, no matter how many times she told herself that, she couldn’t help the dread settling into her bones.

She switched up the words. Maybe those words of power were only good once.

“ Vrali Toro nah Kyvena !” she screamed at her hands. She used a different variation of the word for Passage—and also added a please .

Her power didn’t even bother to react.

Maybe she needed more Zuprium. She wouldn’t find it so close to the surface, but she dug anyway. Dirt and grime and grass collected under her fingernails and in the cracks of her hands. She couldn’t dig far. Not without a shovel.

Her hands, her fingers, even her nails ached with the effort of digging for the metal only to come up empty. She pressed her forehead to the muddy, disturbed ground and screamed in frustration.

She was so lost in her fury and desperation she didn’t hear the footsteps behind her until a voice spoke.

“You’re late.”

Hallie tensed. It didn’t sound like Mr. Gray or Correa.

“Could’ve predicted that. What I didn’t figure was if I ever saw you again, you’d be throwing some sort of hissy fit.” A pair of black boots stepped into her peripheral. “Nor would I have bet you’d be ruining my lawn.” A soft scoff. “Probably why I was always rubbish at cards.”

Hallie’s heart stopped squeezing itself and flew into her throat. She choked on the air she’d breathed in. That voice. That accent. The lazy tilt to each vowel. But it was impossible. Absurd. Unless…unless…

This was what Mr. Gray had meant. It hadn’t been physically painful, nor had her life flashed before her eyes, but somehow death had met her anyway.

Because the only way she would be hearing that exact voice was if she were dead.

She pushed herself to her knees, ignoring her aching limbs, and looked up.

An older teenaged boy stood a few feet from her, a small pile of firewood in his arms. The little woodcutter’s cottage she’d noticed earlier with Fely stood just behind him. The stone bricks were whiter than snow and gleamed in early evening light.

The boy himself was tall and lanky. Too skinny for his height, really, but that wasn’t abnormal for him. His hair was red as fire, and his face was drowning in freckles. His eyes were a burnished bronze and full of mischief, a crooked smile to match.

A gasping sob was her only response. It couldn’t be helped.

Jack hadn’t changed one bit since the day he died.

“Now there ain’t no reason for you to get all upset,” Jack said, setting the wood in his arms onto the manicured grass Hallie hadn’t torn up. “I ain’t mad or nothing.”

The sobs now came quickly. Soon, she was gasping for breath, tears pouring down her cheeks. She clenched her fingers, the dirt clogging further beneath her fingernails.

She’d thought she’d worked through most of the pain, but his presence before her now only ripped out the thread she’d used to sew up her damaged heart.

The pain was sharp and thick, lancing and stinging.

It went as deep as the Josei Ocean and as high as First Earth’s Mount Everest. On one hand, her twin stood before her, his work boots coming closer into her blurred view beyond the salty tears; on the other, somehow, she’d gained her brother back only to lose Kase.

The joy and anguish melded together, and she knew not where one ended and the other began. And at that moment, she didn’t know which was loudest.

“I ain’t about to complain—it’s a little gratifying, if I’m being honest—but I’d reckon I don’t deserve all that blubbering.” Jack squatted down in front of her and held out a hand.

Hallie stared at it for a moment. Before his body had been Burned on the funeral pyre, that particular hand had been buried under the mine beam.

After the mining crew recovered his body, Hallie couldn’t bear to look at the rest of him—only his right hand.

Mangled and flattened. She wouldn’t forget it for as long as she lived.

Now it was whole and clean. No scars. No evidence of the mine collapse that had killed him. Nothing left to remind Hallie that Niels had pulled her away as the beam started falling, leaving Jack behind.

Like she’d been pushed here, leaving Kase behind.

Hallie grabbed his hand, pulling herself up. Her bones rattled with grief and shock. It ached. She clenched her teeth against it, but that only made her shake harder. Jack just raised a brow. It was a look she once would’ve throttled him for—one she hadn’t realized she’d missed.

Her brother pulled her into a hug so crushing that the shakes ceased—not because she willed them to do so, but because he held her so tightly she physically couldn’t manage it. She could finally smell the clean scent of linen that told her Jack was right there even if she didn’t understand why.

That was when the dam broke loose. Sobs wracked her body instead of shakes, and her brother squeezed her harder. “I’ve missed you, Lark.”

Three years. One year of darkness so deep she nearly wasted away. One year of finding the light. One year of hoping the light would keep shining.

And now this.

After a few more moments, she calmed herself enough to pull back and wipe her face with the edge of her sleeve. Kase’s stolen military jacket had a few more knicks and scrapes on it from her recent ordeal. It stood in heavy contrast to Jack’s pristine appearance.

“Is it really you?” Hallie stumbled through the question, her breathing still hitching with the aftermath of all the sobbing.

He gestured for her to follow him as he walked back toward his pile of wood.

“Yeah, yeah, in the flesh—well, not flesh, but—aw, you know what I mean.” She hadn’t the faintest. “Before you start asking a bunch of questions, I can’t answer all two hundred of them I know you got, so keep it to one at a time, will you? ”

Hallie followed him, her boots scuffing on the dirt and well-kept lawn. “Where are we? Am I…”

“Ah-ah! That’s two already! Still don’t listen to a word I say.” Jack stacked a few chunks of firewood into Hallie’s arms and then loaded his own. “Are you dead? Probably. I like to call it Souls Meet, but Gran calls it something foreign.” He nodded toward the cottage behind him. “Come on.”

Hallie nearly tripped as he led her around to the back of the cottage. “Gran?”

Jack led her along the perfectly trimmed hedges that stood tall along the side, and the vesper flowers climbing up a wooden trellis.

They leaned over like little pink and white prayers.

They were her mother’s favorites. She used the petals as a garnish for fancier inn dinners if someone special was visiting for the night.

Otherwise, they weren’t to be bothered, allowed to grow wild along the back fence.

“She’ll be back soon. I sort of messed up one of the last Meetings, and I’ve been relegated to chores around the cottage and watching over the Nether Gate you came through until she deems me punished enough.

” Jack stopped in front of another pile of chopped wood, each one stacked neatly on a pallet before an arched side door.

“She knows no one ever comes through that one. Except you, apparently.”

Hallie set the wood down and ran her hand along the side of the cottage before looking back at him. “That didn’t answer my question at all.”

He picked up a bucket near the door and scooped out a handful of what looked like corn.

He handed it to her. The kernels felt real, just like the daisies and the dirt still under her nails.

But beneath the shock and the fear and the confusion, she felt warmth.

It felt just like her power…but if she was dead, shouldn’t her power be gone? Wouldn’t it be reborn?

If the world hadn’t ended when Mr. Gray had pushed her through the Gate, anyway.

Jack led her around the cottage to the far side, where chickens waited in a little fenced area and a tiny version of the cottage behind them. “I know you. No matter how many answers I throw at’cha, you’ll just ask ten more questions, and Gran can answer them better than I ever could.”

He dug in the bucket and fished out a handful of corn.

He tossed it into the pen. The hens exploded with chatter and dove for the kernels.

“Probably should throw that soon,” he advised, nodding at her hand.

“The ladies like their food, and if you don’t throw it quick like, one of them is liable to peck you through the fence til you do. ”

He threw another handful in, and the hens descended on the food once more. One of the hens, one with feathers the color of the sunset, couldn’t get close enough. Jack tsked at her. “Come here, Anne. You know you gotta be quicker than that.” He gave her a few kernels.