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The Voices in My Head

Meren

The sneering voices of Eidolon’s Shadows inside me are nothing new, but they get louder the rare times I can hear Reven. The only reason they haven’t killed me is because of a sand nymph’s curse.

“Reven?” I call out to him again.

He was just here with me. His voice was muted, muffled, coming in fits and spurts, but he was here , stealing my breath and filling the hole where my heart is supposed to be.

“Did he go away again?” one of the Shadows taunts.

Reven used to say that the Shadows craved me. I can’t say I’ve felt much of that now that I carry them, but I think that curse might be why, that link between me and the king. Maybe they felt it, too. That, or the bond made long ago between Eidolon and the ancestress I am a reincarnation of.

It doesn’t stop them from being assholes, though.

“Is he still looking for that book?” Yet another snorts a derisive laugh. “He’ll never find it.”

Another slides through my mind. “You can’t hear him, can you, love?”

Their voices and my own guilt grate like sand against my insides, because the Shadows sound like him. Like Reven. They make it hard to listen for the only voice I want to hear. He’s alone, trapped inside a monster. I promised I’d free him, only I haven’t figured out how.

Yet , damn it . I’m not giving up.

I swallow back the bubble of panic threatening to expand inside me and try to sift through the noise in my head, to feel him.

Tabra slips her hand into mine and I flinch at the physical contact that yanks me out of my head and back into the real world where I’m standing in front of a glass portal I just made, getting ready to go to yet another place that’s off-limits.

No longer bony and frail, Tabra has fully recovered from being possessed by a ghost of Eidolon faster than anyone thought possible. “The Shadows again?” she asks quietly.

“I’m fine.”

No use telling her things she can’t do anything about. I don’t tell any of my friends about hearing Reven sometimes, thanks to our bond I think, only to keep losing him again. It would only make them worry for too many reasons to count.

Tabra’s lips tug down slightly as she glances behind her at the others—my best friend Cain and his sister Pella, Hakan who never leaves Pella’s side, my bodyguard Horus, Reven’s second-in-command Vos, Tziah who is essentially Vos’s little sister, and Bene, one of the Devourers, shrunk to the size of a raven and perched on Tziah’s shoulder.

Our friends. Family, really, even if not by blood. They are all waiting to follow me from the beaches of Mariana’s abandoned Isle of Caerror—our most recent hiding place—through a portal I made into the dominion of Savanah.

They share a look among themselves. They share a lot of looks they think I don’t notice these days.

“What about you?” I ask my sister. “Are you okay?” I inspect her face, then her hands, but there is no purple glow. Tabra may have regained her strength, but her power has been giving her problems. Turning on without her meaning to, getting out of control.

She smiles. “I’m fine.”

We’re both using that phrase a lot lately. Neither of us points that out.

I scan the group. “Everyone ready?”

My friends’ postures change, weapons at the ready. It’s the way we go through every portal these days.

Before, when they came to Savanah to ask Queen Wynega about the amulet here, she was already waiting for them at the portal. Hopefully that’s true this time. It would make our passage easier. But just in case, we’re prepared for anything.

“You sure about this?” I ask Hakan one last time.

He refused to join the others on the previous trip to this dominion, though he’s never said why.

“I’m sure,” he says.

I place my palm against the glass, still slightly warm against my skin from having just forged it before Reven interrupted. Picturing the destination in my mind, I will my power into my creation, and after only a moment of nothing, the opaque glass changes, goes clear, and then, like throwing open a window, shows us the temple of Savanah.

No one is waiting on the other side to greet us…or kill us. That we can see.

I let loose a silent breath.

Hakan is through first. Since he’s from this dominion, we’re hoping that helps us if we encounter anyone on the way out. Quietly, the rest of us follow him into the temple.

As Cain passes me to go through, he squeezes my shoulder. A silent reminder that he’s here if I need him. That he’ll always be here. A small swell of affection leaves behind the only warmth I feel these days.

I’m the last to enter. Rather than simply close the portals, I shatter the one I made without affecting the one on this side. After all, we can’t be leaving portals around for anyone who comes across them to use willy-nilly. The last time I did, Omma used it to find me, and I can’t guarantee only allies would come through.

“You’re getting better at that,” Pella says from behind me.

“I should be by now.” I’ve been portalling us all over the goddess-damned world, from dominion to dominion, keeping us just out of reach of those hunting us.

“No guards,” Vos comments, his lavender eyes dead serious in the dark of his face, no spark of his usual irreverence in them. He’s in warrior mode today.

“Your people are too trusting,” Cain tells Hakan as he checks carefully around a corner.

“Maybe,” Hakan says. “This way.”

He leads us through chamber after winding chamber. This temple is made up of a series of halls and rooms. The carvings and glyphs here are more intricate than the ones in the obsidian-and-gold temple in Aryd. The doorways are formed into swirls and lacy lattices. Even the floors are etched. And all of it, every single speck, has been carved out of one single, massive stone.

Rather than build their temple up, Savanahans chose to build down. Hakan told us it’s because they wanted to keep their cities and temples hidden from those who would harm them, and in the flat, grassy plains of this dominion, a tall structure would stand out like a beacon. Here, hiding means going underground, so they tunneled into the rock buried deep under the fertile soil.

What I don’t like is that it’s empty. We should see someone. An acolyte. A priestess. Someone come to give an offering to their goddess.

This can’t be simple luck. I don’t have luck like that.

It takes a while until finally I spot a doorway up ahead, squared off and showing what I think is the dark sky, but the closer we get I can see it’s actually more rock. A chilly wind blows through the passage and over my skin and I shiver, but not because of the cold. Every instinct is telling me something is wrong.

This place feels like a tomb.

We’re not ten steps out of the temple before, with no warning, a stark, jagged burning splinters through my mind. I pitch forward as darkness steals my vision, every part of me focused inward, although I’m still lucid.

This isn’t coming from me. It’s coming from…

“Meren! Please—”

Reven.

Panic rises with the pain. What’s happening? Is he hurt? The stabbing heat spreads from my head, lower to my chest, then to my heart, and from there outward until every part of me is in agony. I bite my lip to keep from screaming.

Then, as fast as it started, it’s gone. No pain. No heat.

No Reven.

Heart slamming into my ribs, I blink rapidly, coming back to myself, to Tziah kneeling in front of me, her frosted black eyes wide with concern. I’m breathing like I sprinted twenty leagues, the harshness of it loud in my ears. Then the cold breeze blows over me and my entire body shudders. Or maybe that’s shock.

“Meren?” Tabra’s hand is on my back, I think.

The panic grows. What in the seventh hell just happened? Before now, when Reven came to me, it was softly, gently. And when he’s disappeared on me, he just goes. But this…this was like he was cleaved away. Did Eidolon discover our connection?

“Meren?” Cain’s voice now, more urgent. His hand brackets my face, trying to make me look at him. “Talk to me.”

“I’m—” I suck in sharply. “Give me a minute.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “Talk to me. Please.” I will Reven to come back, return to me, to feel him—the solid presence of him, his strength, his unwavering love.

One of the assholes in my head pipes up. “Such a shame.”

“I wonder what Eidolon did to him,” another Shadow says, cruel laughter curling through his voice. “Maybe you’ll never hear him again.”

“Never,” the rest all take up the chant with glee. I’m pretty sure one cackles.

By now the panic is flaying my insides. Something is wrong. Really wrong. The Shadows are pleased. What do they know that I don’t? Or are they just trying to make me think they know something?

I try to filter through the noise in my head. “Reven?”

Please answer me. Please be there.

“We can’t just sit here, Mer,” Vos warns.

“I told you not to call her that,” Cain bites out. He claims that nickname is his alone to use. “Mer, c’mon,” he says more quietly. “You have to give us something. You’re scaring me.”

I press my palms to my eyes, fighting with myself. Vos is right. We don’t have time for me to lose it or wait around while I try to reach Reven. We’re too vulnerable, and what we’re about to do needs my full attention.

Forcing myself upright, my eyes still closed, I rock a little on my feet. “I’m sorry,” I whisper into the void between me and my bondmate, praying he hears me. “I love you.”

Then, deliberately, I burrow into the numb inside me that has been my only refuge the way a child might hide under blankets. It’s the only way I’ve found that can shut the Shadows up. It makes it harder to feel or hear Reven. But they seem to feed off my emotions…so I try my best to give them none.

It helps to picture a little scenario in my head. An image of a rope dangling over a deep, dark well, and the Shadows climb up it to get to me. Until I use one of the knives I always have hidden on me and cut it.

I sever that metaphorical rope now, ruthlessly severing my own emotions.

“Don’t—” the Shadows collectively protest. But the sound of it fades as they drop back down the well, disappearing into the same numbness where I bury my feelings. No more heart-pounding hope. No more stomach-twisting fear. Definitely no more ache of indescribable loss.

All that’s left is me…without him.