“I’ll steer.”
A laugh pushed through her lips. “Okay, no. You’re making this really awkward right now. And this is my mother’s dress. I’m not doing whatever it is you’re thinking in my mother’s dress.”
Gripping the back of my neck, I looked at her for a moment. I couldn’t believe what I’d just asked of her.Back into it?I rolled my head back.
“Fuck, I’m sorry.” I massaged my temples, fell back against the wall. “You’re right. I don’t even know what I was thinking.” I’d become desperate, but I needed to get through this gate. I needed to get to those books.
I dropped my head back against the wall looking at her as she looked around the dark for something her gaze could land on. “If you only understood the lengths I’d go for you, Fallon,” I told her, watching her from only feet away. Fallon’s head moved to the sound of my voice, and she was looking right into my eyes. I almost wondered if she could see me in the dark too.
She stayed silent, and I wanted to reach out and touch her. And then my mouth was moving. I couldn’t stop it. “It happened slowly and then all at once for me, you know,” I blurted, my back falling against the stone wall of the tunnel. “The way I feel about you, it runs deep—an unheard of deep, blue thing. So blue, it’s black. Like an ocean beneath an ocean on top of another ocean. Where you don’t know which way is up or down. No shallows, no bottom. That’s how deep, and it scares me sometimes. But then you’re there too, and we’re floating together in that deep place. And it’s peaceful there … quiet.” I’d lost myself in her eyes, and I hadn’t realized the rest of me stood paralyzed. I cleared my throat. “It’s strange when we’re together. Like a hurt so good type of strange.”
Fallon whispered, “Isn’t that the point of us?” A slow smile curved her lips, and she bit her bottom lip to stifle it. “Julian, if you keep thinking someone else needs to provoke you to trigger something, you’ll never be able to do anything on your own.” I opened my mouth, then closed it when she continued, “How could you need anyone else to unlock something that’s already inside you? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t know any other way,” I admitted. “This is how it has always been.”
“I call bullshit.”
My brow spiked in the air. “Bullshit?”
“Yeah, I’ve seen what you’re capable of, and still, you let everyone control you,” she leaned forward, slapped her palms together as she said, “Stop. Letting. Them. Control. You.”
I smirked. “Did you just one-clap-syllable me?”
A door creaked closed, and both our heads snapped to the sound. They were here. We were running out of time.
“Julian,” she whispered, finding my hand in the dark. “It’s already inside you. It’s you. You were the one who was able to pull yourself out. You fought against the darkness every time. You got yourself here. You climbed and clawed and are so much stronger than you give yourself credit for. You don’t need anyone. It’s always been you. Only you. You can do this.”
Me?I thought of all her words.Me.
I nodded. I kicked off the wall. I dragged in a breath. I wrapped both hands around the steel bars. I felt Fallon beside me. I heard the march of footsteps in the distance. Both our heartbeats pulsed in my ears. Fallon’s words echoed in my mind. And something didn’t feel right.
Then it made sense.
It wasn’t me.
She was wrong. I wasn’t the one who pulled me out, she was. I’d only fought against the darkness because of her. She got me here. She climbed and clawed her way inside me, making me stronger than I ever thought to believe. I did need someone. I needed her. It had always been her. Only her.
We could do this. Together.
I grabbed her arm and pulled her in front of me, caged her between my arms. Her shoes dropped to the ground, and I covered her fingers with mine, and, together, we grasped the bars.
The steps were growing closer, and I squeezed my eyes shut. The sudden pain of realizing I could lose her surged through my blood—the agony like a raging riptide splashing against my bones. My fists tightened around hers, and I hunched over, my front against her back, my head beside hers, training my thoughts on the two heartbeats that were becoming one.
One solid beat.
Each thump vibrated my core and waved like an electrical current through me. And then we were surrounded by silver light. Everything was slow motion. So slow that time stopped. The heartbeat was a heavy, solid beat, drawn out like a bass. A bubble around us locked us in this halted time.
A force snapped, and we were plunged forward to the other side.
I toppled over Fallon to the ground. It took me a moment to gather myself. I rolled off her with a grunt onto my back. My leg jolted in an electric spasm. My thoughts were all over the place, and panic coiled around me in a tight fist.Fallon.
I popped up to my feet and pushed a blanket of white hair from her face. “Fallon, hey. Are you okay?” My head cocked to the side, trying to piece together what just happened. The steel gate was still intact, and we were on the other side. We went through steel bars. It didn’t make sense. “Fallon?!”
She gasped for air and moved her arms out from under her, blinked her eyes open. I helped her to her feet. “You okay?”
“What happened?”
I laughed, still amazed. We went through steel bars. “I have no idea, but we don’t have time to figure that out. We have to move.” I scooped her up in my arms, knowing she wouldn’t be able to run in the dress, and sprinted the rest of the way to Sacred Sea’s chamber.
