Eleos tensed, watching the vines scrape his skin. “I have no faith in the Maiden.” He said harshly.
The nobleman’s sage-green eyes landed on me. “What happens next depends on you.”
I flinched, touching my head. Had he spoken into my mind?
The hand Seth had curled behind his back flexed, and blood poured from his palm, gathering into a jagged blade. His eyes focused on the nobleman’s neck as his fingers grasped the blade’s handle.
Percy noticed Seth’s actions and shot to his feet. “I’ll walk into the Empty. It’s not like I haven’t spent enough time around it already.”
“Percy,” Seth hissed. “There’s no need. We can-”
“What? Start a fight and let the Empty spawn under our feet?” Percy snapped. “The moment one of you strikes, we’re all dead.”
“You don’t know that-”
“But I’m not willing to risk it.” Percy stared at the nobleman. “You said something good would come of it. Let’s see what, then.”
“Good lad.” The nobleman commended, nodding for him to go.
Brushing himself off, Percy stood and took a step toward the Empty. Both Seth and Eleos lunged for him, trying to pull him back.
Splintering sorrow like I’d never felt tore through my heart, and my world darkened as my vision saw only streaming tears and tearing agony. My knees hit the dirt as the will to continue on fled my body. Haunting music sang through the air, like the sound of a wailing mother turned to song.
Eleos and Seth crumpled under Percy’s spell. Pressing my hands into the dirt, I tried to regain my mind, shaking off the music he’d forced upon me. My vision steadied, and I raised my head. The nobleman watched me intently. His vines parted, allowing a man wearing a white tunic to pass by, his colorful patchwork sash flapping in the breeze.
Percy walked toward the dark, towards an inevitable, instantaneous end.
The pain of my wounds vanished. A newfound strength surged through my limbs, and I stumbled to my feet, taking two uncertain steps before finding my stride. I paid no mind to wherethe nobleman’s deadly vines blocked my way, not caring if they tore me open.
But they receded in my wake, shrinking away to allow me past. So little space separated us from the Empty. Merely a few strides. I reached for Percy, but I was too late.
One step separated Percy from the bounds of the Empty. He glanced over his shoulder at me as he took his final step.
Aching nostalgia filled my breast, like a siren song calling me home.
“Percy!” I shouted, throwing myself across the distance between him. My fingers caught on his shirt as I clumsily tackled him.
The surprise of my weight threw him to the ground. He landed on his back noiselessly, and I collapsed atop him, fingers ripping through fabric.
The sensation in my breast ceased. Air fled my lungs, and sound could not reach my ears. Raising my head, I stared into the great void, the endless canyon that dove miles below the earth into a still sea.
A sea that rested quietly below me, so still it appeared like glass. Glass that did not reflect anything above it, a stagnant pool that could have been boundless as the ocean or thin as a sheet. Only a thin red halo, shining around the Empty’s borders, pierced the fathomless dark.
Percy sat upright, grabbing my arm, eyes widened in shock.
Nothing separated us from the fall into death. The edge of the Empty’s canyon was behind us, a steep tumble unto death, but we did not fall. Something held our weight, barely visible, like a film of transparent thread. It looked like we simply floated in a great void, leagues above the sea.
We wereinsidethe Empty.
My head pounded. Everything hurt. I felt like the twine that made up my bones was coming unwound, and my skin was being torn off, piece by piece. Writhing in agony, I doubled over, fingernails digging into my palms.
Percy’s dull gray eyes brightened. Staggering to his feet, he wrapped his arms around my waist and threw us both back toward the cliff.
Everything flooded back in an instant. Sound, breath, life. I gasped as I struck dirt and heard the heavy thud as Percy landed beside me.
“Aethra!” Eleos’ voice rang sharply in my mind.
Bloody thorns still surrounded the men, though they’d found their feet. Seth’s intense gaze caught my eye first; he gaped at me with abject horror, a stark contrast to the euphoria I could feel radiating from the masked nobleman’s eyes.
