Page 60 of The Shadowed Oracle (The Bonded Worlds #1)

That’s what she’d convinced herself of. She’d demanded perfection.

For weeks, she worked at it. Sketching all night, parked under the window and using the streetlight as illumination before the sunrise peeked through.

Sketching until her hand was numb. Drawing until the lead was dull and sharpened down to a nub.

Until she got it right. Until the nightmares were all purged.

Until…

T he door to her room opened, causing Ingrid’s vision to wobble. She tried to call out, to warn her younger self that someone was coming. But she could only watch. Watch as that same violent sister who’d punished her so brutally found her and her drawings. Those hideous, demonic drawings.

Young Ingrid didn’t have time to fight back. The woman in black grabbed her by the hair and dragged her away to an isolated room. The room where misbehaved children were taken. Yelled at. Scolded. Called names.

Ingrid was sinful, the woman said. Possessed. Evil.

Stop!

STOP!

Adult Ingrid struggled to watch the memory from her disembodied eyes. A tear welled, but when she went to wipe it, she realized her hand wasn’t there with her, and the tears were not only in another time, but another world, as if her life ran sideways through space.

She was only able to witness the buried memory as if it were happening all over again.

Watching, as amidst that dark recollection, a light finally shone in.

Like an angel, she descended upon the scene and put a stop to all of it.

Francesca, her black ribbon tied in a perfect bow around her single braid.

She acted like a shield for Ingrid, taking all the blame.

Just a teenage girl, and already saintlier than all those sisters put together.

How could Ingrid have forgotten? She had a name. She had hopes. Plans for her life. Yet, she had sacrificed herself for Ingrid. Accepted the unwarranted beating. Was tossed out of the home and into the streets. Banished from the group home, for Ingrid.

No more. Ingrid begged. I don’t want to see any more.

She wrestled with her mind, with the vision, trying to take back control. Trying to find Dean’s presence nearby to plant herself back into the present.

But the vision didn’t stop there.

Because the story didn’t end there.

The memory of Francesca wasn’t concluded for years.

Ingrid remembered that now. She remembered it all.

When Ingrid had turned fifteen, the same age Francesca was when she was left to fend for herself in the real world, she’d gone looking for her.

After all the dismissive lies from the sisters, all the muted, shameful avoidance from her supervisors, she went looking for answers in the only place she knew where to look.

The library. The index of newspaper clippings. Her only resource.

Body of teen found in Muir Woods identified. Francesca Ortiz, 16.

Ingrid could see the headline so clearly.

Feel how devastated and depleted she was, and had been, slouching in that library chair.

All those years she’d wondered about her friend, all the fantasies she’d had about meeting her one day on the outside, when the two of them were grown up, living the lives they chose. It was all for nothing.

Six months after Francesca had taken the blame for Ingrid, she was dead. Murdered.

And it was all her fault.

No.

I can’t…

I don’t want this…

I can’t take this back…

Please!

Ingrid snapped back into her body.

She blinked rapidly, adjusting to the bright color seeping into her wet and reddened eyes before looking to Dean.

Somehow, in the hour it felt like she’d been gone, he hadn’t even noticed she’d been absent.

He’d missed all the obvious signs of peril she was exhibiting, his hand still wringing the back of his neck, as if time had stopped.

The moment she was whisked away into her vision, all else had seemingly halted.

The sun itself paused mid-air, waiting for the magic Ingrid rode in on to bring her back to the present.

“I’ve been distant,” he said bluntly, suddenly. “I want to apologize for that, too.”

She lifted her hand in protest, to slow him down, to try and tell him what had just happened to her, but all she could manage was a few fingers weakly raised toward him.

“I didn’t want to be away from you. Really. I wanted to be by your side.” His voice was eerily quiet. “I just… I had to stay away. If I got caught, you couldn’t know about what I was doing. I had to keep all of you out of it. Not just you.”

His eyes finally shifted to her, like he was begging for her forgiveness.

She had to have missed something. The splitting headache was dissipating, but she hardly felt realigned in her own body.

Part of her wondered if she was still inside a vision.

That the magic was somehow showing her glimpses of alternate realities. Or snippets of the future.

“What do you mean?” she managed. “I don’t?—"

“I had to.” He cut her off, speaking fast. “I had to lie. Had to keep you out of it.” His lips quivered, struggling to say what came next. “I found the portal. I went deep into the castle, late, that first night. And I found it.”

“But the guards?” Ingrid didn’t realize she’d said it aloud until Dean answered.

“I was cloaked. Thought if there was ever a time to use the spectis weed, it was then. To see if I could go back without having to put all of you through this . ” He made a small gesture to the ship, to the crew on the other side.

“I drugged the guards, and I went through the portal. But what I saw, it wasn’t home.

Not anymore. Not how we remember it. What I saw… ”

The sheer terror on his face made Ingrid wish that the visions hadn’t stopped at all. That this wasn’t real, only a mutation of the haunted memories she’d just reawakened.

“Earth is a shell of itself,” Dean said.

“I thought the portal had some kind of security spell. That maybe Nestor or Ballius had hexed it. Made it so any unauthorized Viator were sent to a place where nothing could survive. But I was wrong. There was no spell, no trick. I was somewhere in South America, whatever country it used to be. Whatever it was before Makkar’s army turned it to ash.

” He sucked in a long breath. “I walked for two hours until I found civilization. Found a phone, but none of the emergency lines Karis set up were working. I couldn’t get through to anyone from our side.

Hopefully, they’ve gone underground. Realistically, they’ve been torn to shreds. ”

Ingrid blurted, “Home? San Bruno? You mean our home?”

Franky.

Her thoughts instantly went to her friend. She hadn’t told him about the threat, hadn’t warned him about Makkar’s army of invisible Wranes and well-disguised world-walkers. She didn’t know how. Didn’t spend the time he deserved to come up with a story, anything to get him into hiding.

“Franky is okay,” Dean said hurriedly. The words acted like a vacuum, cleaning away all the horrid questions lingering on Ingrid’s lips.

“I was able to call him. The States are intact. Not nearly as bad as…” Dean stopped himself, not wanting to linger on the image.

“The conversation was brief, and I couldn’t say much, but he sounded okay. Alarmed, but okay.”

It wouldn’t do. She needed more. A fuller picture. “What do you mean, okay ? Where is he? How the hell did you contact him?"

“He was at a safe house. There aren’t many in the area, so it was easy. Military police are patrolling the streets for survivors in almost every major city and its surroundings. San Francisco. Los Angeles. Chicago.”

“But before,” Ingrid asked. “Before that. What happened?”

“They’ve all lost thousands.”

Thousands.

There was that word again.

Hearing it like this, for the second time to describe human lives, it sent grotesque guilt shooting through her.

She’d been so consumed with her own survival that she’d forgotten to consider what was happening back on Earth. What the entirety of the human race was living like, now that Makkar no longer had any powerful enemies in Ealis keeping him from sending over more of his army.

“We’re two steps behind,” Dean said, defeated.

“Since this started, we’ve been two steps behind.

Makkar was never trying to repeat the crimes of the first Magus.

He was trying to correct them.” An almost imperceptible flash of anger struck him, causing his body to lurch forward.

“He’s making no effort to hide it. No effort to be subtle, or even methodical.

The streets have turned into a warzone.”

Another war. Spanning two worlds, started by one male.

It didn’t compute. Even with all she’d seen, she couldn’t reconcile the two worlds clashing together in such a way.

Thousands, she repeated again in her mind.

Thousands.

“I’m telling you this now because…” Dean stopped again, trying to calm himself.

“Because I want to give you the option again. A real option, not like what Tyla just suggested.” He rounded himself to look at the ship, making sure the foredeck was still empty.

“I know you don’t want to sit idly, but you deserve the option.

To leave. To stop this. Here, right now. ”

Ingrid couldn’t answer—wouldn’t reward it with an answer.

But Dean went on. “We can find a place. Anywhere. In the east. The isolated lands there. Danneslaw. Or keep west until we hit Iberium.” He looked deep into her eyes, and grabbed her hand gently.

“We can have a life. It’ll be hard. We’d always be running, but I can’t imagine it’ll be any worse than what you’ve been through.

We can make it work. If you want to return to the shadows, I will follow you. ”

The lines between Dean’s eyes deepened, his smile heavy but hopeful. He really meant it. Running away together. He was prepared to do it. And for the first time, she was gripped, completely, by Dean’s dedication.

Carve out a piece of the world for myself. That’s what Ingrid had told him. It’s what she’d always desired. To find peace. To create a world of her own. And he was offering it to her, wanted to help her do it.

Her heart went heavy. For a moment, it was like everything around them vanished. He’d given her glimpses of his feelings, what her mere existence meant to him, that she was the “bigger purpose” he could fight for. But here was a blunt proposal, carrying something more personal, more intimate.

To start again. With him. Together.

And in another life, she thought, a simpler life, she would go with him. She wanted to. Knew that with him, she could find that quiet amongst the chaos. She could move on. She could settle in. Enjoy whatever time was allowed for it, no matter how short.

After all, a little stretch of normalcy, of kindness, of love, it would be more than she’d ever had before him.

But not now. She couldn’t. That time had passed.

And that dream, she was realizing, was only ever that—a dream.

An immature prayer conjured by a desperate mind.

The truth was, Ingrid only wanted to escape the cruelty of the world because she hated what she saw in it.

She despised what people did to one another.

And that toxic hatred would never leave her, no matter how far away she fled.

The only remedy was to do something about it.

Her vision, the memory of Francesca and her fate, she understood now why it had come to her. Why her magic had forced it upon her.

While Dean had been finding the courage to tell her about what he saw on Earth, what he’d kept from her, what their enemy had already done to them, some part of her—some supernatural consciousness, perhaps—sensed what she needed to see, and gave her the exact memory to drive her forward.

It was a reminder. A horror story that would fill her with a righteous craving for justice, vengeance, and above all, the dream of a better world.

“No,” Ingrid said simply. “I won’t run. I didn’t ask for this. Didn’t want it. Still don’t want it. But it’s mine. For some reason, I’ve been gifted this… thing. This thing that can make our worlds a little better. And I’d hate myself more than ever if I wasted it.”

Dean grinned knowingly, like he’d expected exactly that answer from her. His cheeks reddened, eyes welled.

Ingrid reached for the tear forming and wiped it away from his eye. “It’s horrifying,” she said. “I know. We are losing. But all this means is that Maradenn is even more important. We have to save Arryn. We need to make a stand, somewhere. Start small, and build our way back up.”

“I know,” Dean said. “And I will be there at your side, every step.”

He reached for her hand, and together they watched the sky brighten. The streaks of orange and blue and purple light painted just over the lush green islands. It was as beautiful as it’d been described to her, pulling her in with surreal vibrance, but she swiveled her gaze back to Dean.

“I’m glad you told me,” she said.

Their eyes aligned, searching each other’s features.

“No more secrets,” he declared.

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

Warmth covered them as the heat from the sun rose, almost pushing them to draw nearer. Ingrid could see every shade of bronze and brown in his eyes. Could feel his breath on her. Could smell the soap he’d brought from Earth, getting stronger and stronger as he leaned in…

“There you fuckers are!”

The booming voice startled them both, driving a wedge between them.

Turning in unison, they saw Raidinn walking up the short staircase to the foredeck. He was shirtless, hair down and wild.

“I’ve just had a little chat with my sister.

And get this, she’s saying that you saw a fucking three-headed snake or something!

” He rubbed at his eyes. “I’ve only just woke up!

Haven’t even had breakfast! And now this!

Come on! Tell me it’s a lie. Tell me Tyla was only winding me up.

Come on, tell me it’s… oh, shit, really!

? A giant three-headed snake!? Fucking hell! ”