Page 32

CHAPTER 32

Darkness I Feel

L ying at the Gate, I floated through the currents, into the empty nothingness that always greeted me for a few breaths before Ruhaven emerged. Months ago, it would have taken minutes for my mind to merge with Nereida’s, to feel the flow of energy through her and the awareness spread to my limbs, yet now she slid on like a second skin.

But this time, when I opened my eyes, I was not in Ruhaven.

I knew it instinctually—maybe Nereida’s own thoughts had rolled into me, but I could feel it too. This was not another part of Ruhaven, not the wild avalanche of forests or the twisted mountains that grew like a lattice wall, nor some other part of that world I hadn’t discovered.

The ground pop-popped under my heels as I walked through a land that was too bright, like sun blazing off icy roads in the morning. And the smell was wrong too—like burned lemons and alcohol.

The world stretched for miles under the blinding light, reminding me of the prairies in western Canada I’d never seen but truckers told stories about. How it felt to drive over days of flat landscapes until the Rocky Mountains were a mirage that never seemed any closer.

Head back, and for once in as much awe as myself, Nereida’s gaze soared over the impossible ice that cracked and fizzled where gears should have turned.

Even after everything I’d seen in Ruhaven, watching the slow roll of ice across the sky was breathtaking.

Then she lowered her chin, and I saw the ground was…glass.

Fields and fields of broken—no, not glass, mirrors. Thousands of them .

Her head whipped to the left, the right, ears quirking as she stepped around a stalagmite at least twenty meters thick to our left. My feet pleaded with us to return to the soft, pearly stones of Ruhaven. I winced, glanced down, and nearly jumped at my broken reflection glimmering in a thousand shards.

Shattered. Cold. Sharp.

But then she yanked her eyes up again and ducked under the opening of a cave dripping with gunpowder-green jelly. It clung to the rigid walls of the interior tunnel and puddled on the floor so that our bare feet made a bloody sticking sound when she walked.

Inside, the deep thumps of settling ice and the drip-drip-drip of melting glaciers blended into a disturbing harmony. A few centimeters beneath the walls, bluish veins pulsed with beads of light at uneven frequencies.

Was this Drachaut? Had we made it at last? But then where were James, Essie, Kazie?

I ducked a row of pearly ice drops strung like necklaces from the ceiling, following the tunnel until it opened into a dome-shaped cavern with a window at its center so a perfect circle of light was painted upon the floor. It was even colder inside the cavern, except that wasn’t quite the right word. She didn’t feel temperature, not in the way I did, but instead the air was either thicker or thinner, and in the cave, the particles spread out so each passed individually through my nose.

Nereida scented the air, and more bitter lemon assaulted me. Hopefully, she’d find whatever she was looking for and leave.

We passed under the beam of light, paused, sniffed again.

My blades slid out of their sheaths, the sharp glide a familiar tickle along the underside of my forearm. But this wasn’t for some practice session with the Azekiel or a dance between her and James, because for the first time, I felt something from Nereida I’d never experienced before.

Fear.

It curdled in her blood, froze limbs that should have been loose for fighting, not the stiff and jittery movements of an amateur.

The chamber echoed with our heavy breathing, slower than a human’s, but far too fast for Nereida. She only sounded like this when she was with Sahn. And where was he?

We surveyed the cavern. Five tunnels led out of the chamber, each pulsing with a different color vein.

I spun toward the orange tunnel a second before a stalactite plummeted in front of our nose. The wind of it had every silver jelly hair rising on my neck before it shattered on the ground.

Lowering to a crouch, she raised identical swords whose iron blades glistened under the golden light. Listened. Waited.

And then I heard it too.

Footsteps, growing louder with each moment, splashing through melted ice. The orange veins of the tunnel pulsed rapidly in time with the noise.

Nereida backed up a step, hands shaking.

Shaking —but she was never afraid, never nervous.

I braced automatically, in her body, in her mind, preparing for whatever had her blood running cold, what would be—by the growing noise—barreling through to us any minute.

Boom. Boom. Boom .

Nereida raised her swords, crossing them in an X , the sound like nails on a blackboard.

Boom. Boom. Boom

It had to be right there, right at the entrance to the pulsing tunnel where the footsteps became deafening, and the veiny lights had whipped into such a frenzy, there was almost no pause between each flicker, so the gateway glowed fiery orange.

Where was it? Where was it?

The sound pounded past the entrance, gaining speed. It should have been twenty feet from us, fifteen, ten…

My heartrate skyrocketed as Nereida swiped at thin air. Invisible . The damn thing was invisible.

The footsteps stopped, disappeared.

The cave descended into a chorus of dripping glaciers and Nereida’s heavy breathing. She made an effort to steady it, but I could feel the panic choking her lungs, could see it in the blades that shook in her outstretched hands.

Something hot whispered across our neck.

She spun with her swords, plunged the left into invisible space, but I felt the tear of muscle, the thud of bone reverberating up the blade.

The thing howled, sending stalactites crashing around us.

And then it flickered into existence.

Diamond eyes pierced the night in a creature that should never exist. Bottled-blue scales rippled in waves over a muscled body that towered above Nereida. She yanked her sword out, stumbled back, and watched blue blood drip from the wound, staining the cloth hitched over his hips.

It pulled its gums back, exposing two rows of perfect teeth.

Then it struck.

Pain exploded in my wrist. The sword clattered from my grip, lodging tip down in the glass with a crack . Blood as silver and thick as my hair leaked from my arm before Nereida clutched it to her chest.

The demon heaved a rough laugh, circling us. She raised the remaining sword, holding it in a shaky fist, but the monster disappeared again so there was nothing to fight, nothing to attack.

Feet away, its growl rumbled through the cavern. Nereida glanced over our shoulder, eyeing the distance between her and the tunnel we’d entered.

Before she could make a move, it grabbed our throat. She raised her arm, slicing the remaining sword where the eyes had briefly hovered, but he knocked it away.

And hurled us backward.

A forest of broken ice smashed my cheekbone. My elbow collided at the same time, wrenching it from its socket, my back tearing open with painful awareness.

I grabbed a shard of glass as I bared my teeth, incisors digging into my bottom lip.

Nereida had no Mark, hadn’t found her spirit, and this shard wouldn’t do anything.

Glass broke a foot from my sprawled leg. I tasted the creature’s breath before I felt it, rancid vinegar that stung each nostril and curled my lip.

It could kill me and I wouldn’t even see it.

But something else pulled at me.

A tingling awareness spread from the base of my neck to my tailbone—a command that could seize my body with a strength stronger than Nereida.

Bryn.

Relief made my knees weak. Yes, bring me home, please .

His call drifted down my spine, fusing my bones, melting my blood, zinging my pulse into slow submission until I would be weightless enough to float from the memory. I closed my eyes at the soft pleasure, loosened my hold on Nereida, and waited to drift into the dark space before Naruka.

But something pulled back, fighting him. Fighting us.

I started sinking into Nereida again, feeling her broken leg and bleeding cheek, the dislocated shoulder that caused her pulse to pound around her armpit.

Then Nereida sniffed the air, head whipping left and right, scenting him.

Sahn.

Feathers flashing, he burst through the tunnel we’d entered with a growl that hurt my ears. Dark wings swept out and bumped into both ends of the cavern. His golden hair glistened under the single ray of light still illuminating the cavern as his gaze turned to me.

For a brief moment, when his eyes latched on to Nereida, a punch of recognition rolled through me. Then it was gone.

Bryn’s call echoed along my spine again.

Light fingers grazed my skin, stroking, but that was all. There was no zinging pull, no lifting from the Gate that should have dragged me out of here.

Maybe I had to try harder.

I focused, reaching for the thread that dangled from the void, but it disappeared before I could grab on. The awareness in my spine loosened, died.

Nereida rose on shaky legs, and before Sahn could reach her, she stabbed out—striking true.

The demon flickered into existence, letting out a piercing howl at the blade wedged in its left side. Nereida yanked it back, causing cold, blue liquid to spurt from between his ribs and over our arm, before the dragon-like demon turned, its invisibility gone, and sprinted out one of the cave’s tunnels.

Her labored breathing filled the silence before we dropped the blade, our knees giving way.

Then Sahn was there, smoky wings spread wide and blocking out even the sliver of light. In the darkness, his eyes spun like the rings of Saturn, the streak of freckles over his nose and cheeks nearly glowing. But his brow furrowed, two sparkling eyebrows pulling together as he inspected my shoulder, my cheek.

Every time I saw him was a tiny miracle .

The thought struck me out of nowhere.

He was hers, Nereida’s, not just a lover or boyfriend or temporary fling. Not a man from L’Ardoise or a high school sweetheart. Not a sticky-fingered boy from the cinema. But as much a part of her as the hand he carefully inspected.

He drew our fingers together, and a tiny trail of wispy light spiraled up my arm—his Mark, his protection. Healing me like he had after the Tether broke.

My heart throbbed for him.

His eyes, those beautiful, exotic planets, latched on to mine as he looked at her—no, looked at me . Past Nereida, through her mind and the memories and the translucent skin, through her silvery blood and every cell and fiber that made up her being, to the human posing as her.

To me.

I wilted under his gaze. He’d know—even in the memories, he’d know. There wasn’t a part of Nereida he didn’t see, didn’t feel, and though Sahn might have died centuries ago, this piece of him had remained.

The figment of memory was alive enough to know the truth.

But in that moment, with his irises burning a familiar fire, with the thread of gold whirling between us, god, how I wanted to be this woman.

Then his eyes winked out.

The world winked out.

And I was nothing.

No, no, I was in nothing, flung into the place between worlds like Sahn’s very memory had commanded it. He wouldn’t want me to inhabit Nereida, even as a dream.

In my Prayama, I inhaled a chilly breath, crossed my arms. I couldn’t see him or anything else in this place that was all my own, a sensory-deprivation chamber if it wasn’t for the vague trickle of water.

Not even my feet made a sound as I stepped through the darkness, searching for an exit that would only come when Bryn anchored me. But that might be minutes or hours from now. I’d never made it to this place without someone dragging me into it, someone who was ready to pull me the rest of the way.

I sucked in another cold breath. Who knew how time passed while Bryn was enjoying the warm lakes of Ruhaven, or those fairy women as Tye had once teased.

But no, he’d been lying about that, hadn’t he? Bryn had a mate and he wouldn’t be with anyone else. That was one of the few laws I’d learned.

Was she kind? Pretty? Did her features look more humanoid than Nereida’s? Was he attracted to her?

Stupid questions.

But he wasn’t supposed to be with anyone here either, and yet he’d asked me to dinner.

Pondering it, I plodded through darkness, almost grateful for the cold because at least I could feel something .

Why couldn’t I have seen a kitchen overflowing with stews and dirty dishes like James did? Instead, I got miles of darkness. Not even an ominous door like Tye told me he once saw, or Kazie’s world in black and white.

For me—nothing.

I was more scared of water than the night, of wooden roller coasters and parties with thirty or more people, but not this. So what did Ruhaven have to—

Then I stopped.

What if this was the Fall ? What if I hadn’t been thrown out of Nereida’s body and anchored to this place, but she’d… died?

My pulse skittered up my invisible legs. That would make sense. It’d make complete sense. Because there’d been no anchoring call, no Bryn to latch on to—besides that brief moment when I’d thought…but no, it hadn’t been—and then I’d appeared here.

Because she’d died in Ruhaven?

Yet Bryn had said I’d hear something before the memories ended. Why hadn’t I asked him what it sounded like? Maybe I’d heard it without realizing.

But I didn’t want to make the Fall, didn’t want to give up my life for Nereida, to be reborn again in Ruhaven. I’d be nothing, I wouldn’t be me, it’d be like I never existed.

Who’s to say Ruhaven would even want me?

She’d flip through my life and see a woman who’d been Willow’s doppelg?nger, clinging to her for every scrap of life.

Even in death, I’d stolen her memories.

Sahn had known, I’d seen it in his eyes—he’d looked right into my soul and seen me . An imposter.

What if Ruhaven had already made her decision? She could have seen, judged, and exiled me to this space.

Forever.

Cold fear choked the air from my lungs. There was nothing here, nothing, and soon I would be the same.

I sank to my knees as the truth of it bowled into me. This would be my punishment.

No, no, no.

This was some impossible horror—to be stuck here indefinitely, to live in nothing . A punishment for taking Nereida’s memories.

Would anyone come?

Could Bryn even reach me if Ruhaven didn’t allow it? What if I never slept, never even got that moment of reprieve? Or what if Bryn did come, but the minutes passed like months—or years?

No!

I slapped myself. Hard.

But my arm passed through where my face should have been, the momentum dragging me into a ground that didn’t exist either.

I made the same mistake again when I tried to fidget with my braid. To touch something . But there was nothing, nothing but me and…and…

What was that?

My head snapped up, and I nearly wept at the pain of the whiplash.

But there was something here. Not Bryn, not an anchor lifting me out, but a—a light?

I forced my shaking legs under me, stood, squinted.

A light—though its flicker was as faint as a distant star. I took a deep breath, then started toward it.

The thing immediately grew brighter. But it might have been more a ribbon, swimming in nothingness, wiggling in the air.

I started running.

My feet made no sound, air didn’t pass by my ears faster, my lungs didn’t pant for breath.

Feet away, the light shone bright but showed no water, no ground, no end to the room. The only thing it revealed…was me.

Naked, shivering, but alive. Existing. Not nothing.

I barely recognized myself under its golden glow. It smoothed out my scars, shimmered over my skin so I veritably sparkled. And I could feel it. Not the warmth of L’Ardoise’s sun but a tingling peppermint sensation.

Was it some other inhabitant?

Stretching out a hand, I murmured at the thing, my voice an embarrassing plea for it to come near, not to leave me here. The tips of my fingers lit up like moonbeams as I held my breath. Just a little more…

It winked out.

No, wait! I’ll—

And burst to life on my toes. I yelped, jumping back as it flickered rapidly, almost like it was laughing.

It was sentient. Another creature like me, lost here.

I started to bend down, to coax it to stay, but it swam circles like a fish in a coy pond. Not wanting to scare it off, I straightened again, watching it through blinking eyes, praying that it stayed, that my body remained as alive as it felt.

So I stood perfectly still, and wherever its light touched, my body flashed into existence.

When it nestled at my feet, I was a pair of ankles with no legs and no belly.

What kind of creature was this? Something from Ruhaven? Or some animal that lived in this dark pit?

Then it slid over my toes, warming them a humming degree, so much that I actually sighed into the dark. And I heard it this time.

The light laughed again in that quick flicker, then dissolved into golden moonlight to lay glittering at my feet.

Friendly. Comforting.

Slowly, it started to rise, like fog off a lake in the early morning when the distant shore is nearly invisible and the water a perfect mirror.

My knees knocked together as it licked up the insides of my thighs, revealing each freckle and the muscles I’d earned from lugging wood and tools and coils of heavy wire.

It swirled playfully around my hips, tickling my stomach. I still had a faint tan line from last August when Tye wanted to spend every weekend at Port Michaud beach. Its touch became like the sun back then, a hot feather drawn sensuously across my body.

I must be losing my mind.

But grateful for the warmth, I uncrossed my arms, letting them dangle loosely at my sides. In answer, its silky touch brushed my fingertips before whispering soft kisses onto my palms.

I sucked in blissfully cold, sweet air, the first breath after a fresh snow when the wind tickles your nostrils, but it’s pure and clean and intoxicating for a brief moment.

Maybe this was the Fall, and Ruhaven had accepted me after all.

The light brushed my belly button before sliding up my torso, causing me to vibrate with embarrassing anticipation. My nipples tightened to painful points, my breasts grew heavy, but it only brushed the underside of them before pressing a light kiss, like dappled sunlight, to the space between.

I nearly sighed when it moved on. Maybe I did, because it laughed again in that flickering tempo.

What if this was my spirit? Nereida might have one that James didn’t know about. It had to be. I’d never been touched so intimately. Not by Tye. Not by any man I’d been with in L’Ardoise. Not even by Sahn.

James had said my spirit could be anything. I could pluck a substance off the table of elements, suck it from the air, or extract an emotion.

Whatever it was—my spirit, some apparition in this space—gave a gentle tug on my hair that had my head falling back.

I sighed as snowflakes melted over my eyelids, my cheeks, my tingling lips, the tips of my ears, my throat, until my whole body was a buzzing hive of awareness.

I think I was floating away from the trickling water, up and up and up. I was a balloon a child had released into the sky with no cares, no worries.

And no thoughts but the endless freedom above.

I sat up on a gulping inhale.

Cold whipped my neck and shoulders as soon as the blanket fell away. But I was alive. Alive. Not Fallen with the others. No Token had been buried for me, no plaque sat waiting in the woods for a future Ruhaven to stumble upon it and wonder.

I pressed a hand to my trembling lips. What was that thing ?

Bryn would know. He always knew.

But when I twisted to ask him, I found him still asleep in the Gate, with his palm facing the sky that was now empty without mine.

Had I anchored myself? Finally?

I grinned and patted my forehead, finding it and my cheeks hot and sweaty from whatever lightning worm had found its way into my room.

Above me, the wax pooled in the glass lantern that swayed in a lazy pendulum. Crows, robins, and magpies filled the woods with squeaky chirping and rustled leaves when they snuck from branch to branch.

It was nice to sit here, to see him like this, so calm and unaware. Younger, somehow, with the tight planes of his face all relaxed.

I reached toward him and smoothed back the stray hairs clinging to eyelashes that sparkled with the dying light over Kerry’s hills.

Should I anchor him? No, no, he might want to stay in longer, but…

Bending an elbow, I lowered to the ground beside him, shifted closer, my body loose and sleepy like I’d had sex with Sahn instead of letting myself be caressed by light.

I glanced at the cane lying by his side. This was his first time in the Gate after the incident outside An Béal Bocht—what if it’d drained him? What if the anchoring worked differently? Or—or what if he stayed in the Gate longer on purpose, like he had when James exiled him?

Worried now, I slid my hand into his, felt his fingers flex in response, strong, solid, that connection that ran straight through my core.

“Bryn?” I whispered in his ear.

Strays of glittering blond hair fluttered in the quickening winds as the sun struggled to stay above the hills. Even these pink and orange hues seemed to love him, coloring his angular nose and cheeks, flushing his skin. Light always found him wherever he was.

His eyelashes wavered in the breeze but didn’t blink open.

I repeated his name again, squeezed his hand harder. He was probably fine, probably just wanted to stay in longer.

Closing my eyes, I pressed my palm to his cheek, fingers grazing the roughness there, feeling for the connection we needed to bring each other home. How had I ever thought an alarm clock could do this? Ludicrous. It was too intimate for anything but a friend, lover, brother.

Bryn was there, somewhere in Ruhaven, drifting, waiting for me. I slid my hand down his cheek, his neck, over his chest until I found his heart pumping steadily against my palm.

I let myself sink into it, into him, under the current of the Gate that wavered like the surface of a vast ocean, feeling the cold leach into my skin as I pushed through the veil of that world.

A faint golden light pulsed once, twice, barely visible beneath the sea’s currents. I swam toward it. None of this was real, not the feeling of icy water over my skin or the pressing darkness, nothing except the light. Except Bryn.

Arm extended, I stretched toward the gold, piercing the comfort of my own mind and reaching—

Pop.

A sharp sticking sound echoed in my ear a moment before the sea faded, the dark disappeared, and I stood in…an apartment?

I spun around at a burst of laughter.

Two women passed outside a window with the blind drawn to half-mast. Not an apartment, but some tiny cottage with unevenly whitewashed walls and a box of purple flowers—pansies? Tulips? James would know—on the windowsill. Wood popped in a fireplace opposite a lumpy, straw-stuffed couch. But the cushions arranged in various blues and purples all read a bit fussy, as did the matching glass vase over the stove, and the straw rug on a sloping, stone floor.

Then, I heard something that dragged up a thousand memories, of the hours spent listening to Willow play the same chords, practice the same song.

I turned slowly.

And stared.

The piano was a rich streak of bronze against the rigid bone white of the cottage, the only warmth in the accents of cool blues. But it was not Willow playing it.

Bryn hunched over the upright, fingers flying, his hands managing a scale I’d always struggled with, the chords thundering in the tiny cottage. Could he play in real life? Or was it only possible in this dream?

When my gaze landed on his neck, he straightened. Shifted.

Unyielding blue eyes collided with mine.

“Hello, Rowan.”

My heart beat as loud as the swaying metronome on the piano. “Bryn?”

The pedal snapped up and the notes died on a humming melody as he rose unaccompanied. It was strange seeing him without the cane he used every day, as much a part of him as the light he drew like a magnet.

So this was his place between worlds, and I knew that if I were to open the porthole door behind me, I’d see the cusp of Oslo’s port .

I scanned the pieces of his life scattered in the old cottage—the stones glued in a frame behind him, the model boat in the tiny kitchenette, the blackboard with a list of to-dos written in handwriting that wasn’t his. There was none of his artwork, his sketches of Ruhaven.

I met his guarded eyes again. “This is your Prayama?”

“It is.”

I didn’t know what I’d expected, but… “I came back without you, without an anchor, or I guess I anchored myself. Then I saw you there. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t stuck.”

He tucked his hands in his pockets. “Rowan, you did not anchor yourself. I did.”

“No, you tried to anchor me,” I said absently, unable to stop myself from inspecting every inch of what his life had been, perhaps a bit desperate for some piece of him he’d never revealed. “But I couldn’t answer you. I was in a cavern and— Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

I itched to look around, to climb the twisted iron staircase that led to the loft, to see how he lived and what books sat beside his nightstand. Why did he need this place if he could anchor himself? Was it rude to look around?

“Rowan, that was me calling you,” he said softly.

I stepped toward the magazine tented on the couch, but this wasn’t one of the “Ten Steps of Drawing a Nose” I’d seen him reading before. It was a guide on fall fashion—mint green was in this year. “I know, but I couldn’t answer,” I explained, glancing over my shoulder as I reached for the magazine.

“No, not in the cave. In the darkness, in your Prayama ,” he said, then added with a quirk of his lips, “I was the light.”

Why would Bryn be reading a book on— Wait, what?

I stared at him. “Sorry, what did you say?”

The quirk melted. “The light, Rowan. I was the light.”

The magazine fell from my fingertips. The light? Not the light ? Wait…

But the truth was written in his burning, golden eyes.

Oh god, I was stupid.

Light. His Mark was light .

He’d been the sparkling ribbon twirling on the ground that I’d let stroke me, caress me, kiss me while I purred like a depraved fool. I should have remembered, I should have known. Even in this imaginary room, my face swelled with heat.

It wasn’t supposed to be real. It certainly wasn’t supposed to be Bryn. I’d been naked and he’d—he’d— That’d been his touch.

Or maybe, maybe it’d just been in my head, and it hadn’t been real.

He swayed elegant fingers over the keys, caressing the dust on their ivory tops. “Rowan, I think it is time we return now.”