“Tout ça c’est ma faute!”Julien screamed.It’s all my fault.
“No!” Cinn said. “Don’t say that.”
Julien continued to sob in his arms.
Pressing his face against Julien’s back, Cinn squeezed his eyes shut, inwardly demanding to Béatrice that it was time to leave.
She agreed. Julien’s warm body faded from his grasp, and Cinn felt its loss like a tooth.
Cinn had lost Julien, but he’d lost Béatrice, too. He felt her drift out of him, leaving him empty. Sightless, he drifted through an eternity of time and space. Everything was fluid, formless, a boundless expanse of intangible whispers he couldn’t quite grip on to.
Then, wetness.
Wetness under his face, his hands, his body. He reached out to grab a handful of sand. He’d washed ashore, somewhere. A dark beach, lit only by starlight.
He stood up, instantly dry, and strode towards Béatrice, sitting alone on a rock. Just them this time, then. Behind her rose a towering cliff, its sharp edges jagged.
She was crying, knees drawn up, head in her lap.
“Hey,” Cinn said, touching her shoulder. There was no response, and a jolt of anxiety shot through him—what if she couldn’t see him now? He studied her. An adult now, far taller, and with even longer golden hair. “Béatrice. Listen. We might not have much time. Julien has sent me.”
At the mention of Julien’s name, her breath hitched, but she didn’t pull her head up, only continued with her soft sniffles. Sighing, Cinn threw himself down on the sand next to her, facing the ocean. Its smooth waves gently lapped the beach, its expansive depths reflecting the blanket of stars above.
Stars.
He twisted, reaching up to cup her head with two hands.“Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light. I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night,” he recited.
A gasp. Béatrice’s muscles tensed. And then, she lifted her head up to face him.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
“A friend of Julien’s. And Darcy’s, and Elliot’s.”
A single tear trickled down her cheek. “I miss them so much. It’s cold here. And lonely.”
“They miss you too,” he croaked. “Have you just been… here the whole time?”
A faraway look entered her eyes as she stared at the sea. “I’ve been… lots of places.”
He felt the tiniest tug within him, the smallest signal that his time here was drawing to a close. “I need to ask you some questions, Béatrice. Julien believes that your death wasn’t an accident.” Béatrice did knowshe was dead, yes? Cinn tensed, but no reaction came. “He wants to find out if you know anything that might help him. Help us.”
Béatrice said nothing for a long time, and Cinn itched with impatience. But then, from under her patchwork jumper, she brought out her locket. “It was this,” she said, gripping it tight in her fist.
“Your locket? How?”
“Something was wrong with it that day.” She opened her hand to show him the metal oval, turning the side adorned with the moon and stars over to the back, the metal charred black and warped. Just like he’d always seen it. “I was up in the mountain. Trying to find survivors.” Cinn frowned, recalling the hazy details of the aid mission she was on. “I found one of those… dark creatures up there. It… it—” She cut herself off with a choke.
“An umbraphage?” he said. This was new information, as far as he could remember.
“I started channelling and that’s when it happened. The locket… did something to me.” Her face crumpled. “I’m sorry. I’m finding it hard to remember.”
“Take your time,” he said, even though they had only moments left, he was sure of it.
“It was like it was taking all my power and amplifying it. But it was too much. Then, I was floating. Then, I was… burning,” she whispered, horrified, looking down at her arms as if she could see phantom flames still licking her skin.
“What was wrong with your locket? Do you know?”
She shook her head.
