Liah rolled her eyes. “It’s hardly impressive. It’s just the right kind of energy applied at a specific pressure point, exactly as you have just done to banish the Slaugh. Even your human metals have their weaknesses.”
A laugh escaped my throat. “You sound like me.”
“Your lover has said as much on many occasions these past days,” Liah said. “It’s not a compliment.”
I laughed again. “It’s hard to believe that all this time, you were on our side. It would’ve been easier if you’d just said something.”
“I was never on your side. I was only ever on the side of the trees.” Liah’s gaze travelled to the forest, where a crisp breeze shook the branches. For the first time, warmth flickered in her eyes. She held out her stump to me. “Will you come with me?”
Trust another fae?Not bloody likely.
I slipped my fingers around Liah’s forearm. Thick scars crisscrossed her skin, forming a magical symbol that hummed with residual power as I traced its lines. It reminded me of the deep cut along Arthur’s arm, and I squirmed. Beneath my fingers, the scars split open and black tendrils curled out,creeping up her arm and encircling both of us. They felt like ice where they licked my skin.
Liah brought up her other arm. The moonlight glinted off a bone knife clenched in her fist. In slow motion, I watched her swing her arm around and jam the blade into my chest.
I stared down at the handle protruding from between my ribs. Cold crept through my body, radiating out from the blade. I expected there to be pain, but there was none. Just a pleasant, humming numbness.
I tried to cry out, but I couldn’t work my jaw. I tried to free my hand from Liah’s arm but found it quite impossible. Messages from my brain didn’t seem to be reaching my body. A dull roar quaked in my ears, like the rumble of the Slaugh approaching, but from inside my head. My doom marched toward me.
The thought occurred to me that Corbin and now I had a similar appendage.It’s like we’re twins.I burst out laughing. Blood bubbled up in my throat and splattered down my t-shirt as I gasped and chortled at the ludicrous situation.
“Good luck,” Liah said. She placed her hand against my chest and pushed. I toppled backwards, and darkness claimed me before my body hit the ground.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-SEVEN: MAEVE
Iwoke up coughing, my mouth filled with dust. My stomach lurched and I doubled over, hawking up my lungs.
I rubbed at my stinging eyes, struggling to see through the gloom. For a moment I imagined myself to be back at Briarwood, and the villages had returned to raze the place to the ground with me inside. Clouds of dust swirled around me, punctuated by flickering lights, like the campfires Andrew and I used to make out in the desert during our astronomy monitoring sessions.
A dark figure moved through the dust, obscuring the light so it was a silhouette in the gloom. A strong hand reached down and hauled me to my feet.
“Maeve?” Corbin’s velvet voice caressed my ears. His hand on mine was warm, living flesh.
“Corbin… I… you…”
He stifled my words with his mouth, claiming me in a deep kiss. I clung to him and drank in the warmth of his embrace, the softness of his tongue against mine, and the scent of old leather and parchment rolling off him. Everything about him was exactly as he always was.Alive. But how?—
Something tugged against my abdomen, causing a bolt of pain to shoot through me. Corbin’s eyes widened. He pulledaway, his mouth dropping open in horror. His hand flew to the knife handle sticking out of his side.
I looked down, shocked to see a similar handle poking out of my chest. The memories flooded back to me, along with a dull pain in my chest, as though I’d run into the corner of a piece of furniture. I remembered the black tendrils crawling from Liah’s wound and encircling my arm. I remembered Liah holding my hand and thrusting the knife between my ribs.
Corbin’s jaw set. He strode forward and yanked the handle. A knife blade slid out of my chest with a gurgling noise, like water going down the sink. I closed my eyes, expecting blood to gush from the wound and the pain to finally hit, but the dull ache of the wound never changed. I barely felt a thing.
I blinked, staring down at my chest. The knife was back inside me.
“It wasn’t supposed to go like this! You weren’t supposed to die to come after me!” Corbin yelled, shaking my shoulders so hard my head jerked back. “Bloody hell, Maeve, why do you have to be so stubborn? Why couldn’t you have just accepted the dreams?”
“Liah brought me here,” I whispered. “You mean the dreams were…”
“You’re a dream walker, Maeve. You should know by now you don’t have an ordinary subconscious.” Corbin crushed me against his chest, his knife handle scraping my side while mine bent out to the side. “If I didn’t love you so much I swear I would kill you myself, but it looks like Liah’s done that for me. I told her to help you find me, but I meant in yourdreams.She could have put you to sleep and?—”
“Well, I’m here now.” My fingers clasped around the metal object around his neck. “The guys and I have just figured out about the ampulla and the mysteries of Lazarus. They’re puttingthe pieces together. We defeated the Slaugh, and now they’ll bring us back.”
“They’d better act quickly,” Corbin gestured down the dark hallway, like a guide about to give a tour. “Because if what I’ve seen comes to pass, we could end up stuck here, and the Slaugh is going to be the least of our worries.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
