My eyes flutter open, and I let out a loud gasp. They feel gritty like I had purposefully washed my corneas in sand. I struggle with the effort to see. Everything looks blurry and distorted. I blink hard, trying to see past the grime. I reach for Pierce, but my hands come up empty.
“Where is he?” I mumble, noticing a blurry Lukas whose dark and distorted features look devastated as he bleeds all over his shirt. My voice doesn’t even sound like mine, instead it sounds like I threw rocks into my voice box, making it gravelly and almost demonic. I feel a dampness seep into my torn-up clothes, causing me to shiver in the cold air.
I bring my hands up to my head. My arms feel like they’re not even attached to me. I know I’m making them move, but I feel like I’m not in my own body. The sensation sends a jolt of panic through me. I swipe at my eyes and feel my flesh as a sharp pain washes over me.
Where was Pierce?
My thoughts slowly connect.
The cave. The headmaster. The gun.
Oh God.
Pierce.
A stab of grief slices through my heart.
“We need to go, Salem.” His voice sounds so familiar and yet it’s all wrong. He isn’t Pierce, though his face is cut from the same cloth.
I manage to sit up- sand coats my skin and my feet burn where the saltwater laps at them. I remember how I trekked here bare foot as rocks scrapped up my flesh. The cuts ache with the mixture of blood and salt.
“No.” I cry out as Lukas yanks on my arm. Fresh tears stream down my face as the world swims around me. “We need to get him out!”
“Salem, there’s nothing we can do.”
I spent my whole life being told what I could and couldn’t do, and I’d be damned if I would listen to the voices of doubt.
“Fucking watch me.” I retort, stomping off towards the debris, my feet crying out in agony as I struggle to stay upright. I raise my arm searching for that well inside of me. I’d felt it during the football game, and once again when I pressed my hand to the wall, but instead of being met with a soft thrum of power I feel nothing.
Screaming with my hand outstretched over the rubble, I sway on my feet trying to not pass out again as I dig within myself. Pierce needed me and I wasn’t leaving until we got him out of here. I dig into that well of power within myself, trying to find even a kernel of the magic that I’d felt earlier.
Nothing, nothing, fucking nothing.Where the fuck was it?
I let out a cry of despair. “Pierce!” I call out, but I hear nothing but the sound of ocean meeting rock.
My legs crumple beneath me, knees hitting rock mixed with sand as the ocean laps at the shore.
He couldn’t be gone. He was just here. His hand was in mine! Tears trek down my face as I feel utterly mortal. We didn’t get enough time. I stare over the piles of rubble in disbelief. “Pierce!” I cry out one more time.
Lukas comes up behind me, urgently pulling me away from a toppling rock. It misses us by a few feet.
I look around us and realize that we’re still in the lip of the cave, and it’s rapidly collapsing. He manages to pry me away. We climb to higher ground, up and out of the cave as the entire thing folds in on itself.
ChapterFour
LUKAS
SONG: BEFORE YOU GO BY LEWIS CAPALDI
Terror winds its way around my throat as blood drips from the gaping wound on my arm. The bullet left a searing pain that encompasses my entire limb as I manage to wrench Salem away from the rubble. She fights me the whole way, raising her arm at the pile of rocks that entombs my twin.
Salem lets out a blood-curdling scream for Pierce. His name wrenches from her cracked lips as the wind picks up around us before she collapses onto her knees.
Looking down at what was once a massive cave, I know there’s no way he could have survived. My already battered heart shatters at the knowledge. I feel tears streak down my muddied face as my world tilts on its axis.
“Salem, he’s gone.” The words barely escape my throat, biting with each syllable I manage to utter.
“We need to go.” I urge, feeling like I could pass out at any moment.
