“Nobody run from him,” Ivy called to the others. “His instincts take over. Everybody just… walk away slowly.”
A woman made a hurt noise. At first, Ivy thought it was somebody who had been injured. Then the noise turned into a yell, and Ivy twisted to see Fawn Archton—the quiet, freckled wife whose husband had been torn to shreds when he tried to run from Zax—swinging a sword at Zax’s head.
Zax caught her arm easily. And still Fawn fought, her cheeks wet with tears and blood as she struggled against him.
Zax looked at Ivy expectantly. “Can I take this one as a wife?”
“No,” Vale croaked.
“Aw,” Zax repeated. He released Fawn, who had to be restrained by several members of the Circle before she could be persuaded to drop the sword.
Ivy wanted to tell her she was sorry. Fawn was a new addition to the Circle and had been almost kind to Ivy at times. Ivy had the feeling that her life before the Circle was tough. From what Ivy had seen, her husband only made it tougher. But other than the Circle, he was all she had.
Vale staggered. Ivy braced herself, but Vale did not fall again. He leaned against a tree, his pale blue skin streaming with sweat.
“Almost there,” Ivy urged. “Come on. Right there, can you see it?”
Vale growled weakly. He sagged, almost falling to his knees.
Ivy tugged on his antlers. She could hear people murmuring behind her, but she paid them no attention. They could do what they wished. She had a void to save.
After a slow, halting walk where both of them almost fell numerous times, Vale collapsed into the remnants of the circle he had been summoned into weeks ago. The stone slab sat in front of them, but Ivy ignored it. She had bigger things to do than reminisce over meeting the love of her life when he was dying in front of her.
“Good,” Ivy cried. “That’s great! Almost there. Now we just need to get back home. Can you do that, my love?”
Vale sucked in a breath. It was thin and ragged, his eyes glowing dimmer with each passing second.
Ivy choked back tears and fumbled for the antidote vial. She uncorked it with shaking fingers and poured a tiny trickle into the dirt, hoping with all her heart she didn’t just doom the void by wasting a drop.
“Just concentrate,” she told him as she shoved the cork back in. “Focus on your void. You have to get back, right? You have to take care of it. There’s so much you haven’t shown me yet!”
She shook him. Vale didn’t move, his fading eyes trained blearily on her.
Ivy’s stomach sank. Vale was clearly using all his strength to keep himself awake. How was he meant to get them back to the void?
“Okay,” Ivy whispered. “All on me, then.”
She closed her teary eyes and laid her hands in the dirt. The void’s magic was still in her, even if it was weak. She focused, straining desperately for the magic she had felt when she was communing with the plants that tangled around her uncle.
Just find a crack in the void, she reminded herself.Find it and yank.
The dullest flicker lit up in the back of her head. Joy, so small she could hardly sense it. The void was happy to welcome them back.
Ivy grabbed it and pulled.
The faraway murmur of the Circle vanished. A sickly crackling replaced it, and Ivy opened her eyes to a horrible sight.
The sky was white and shattered. The bone-bushes lay limp, and trees crumbled. They were lying in the remnants of the silver pool, which was so dry that the dirt cracked under their weight.
Ivy climbed out of the hole and pulled desperately on Vale’s antlers. “Hey! We’re back, come on!”
Vale did not move. He was lying with the lower half of his body in the hole, the rest of him resting in the dirt. His green eyes fixed on her, the fires so faint that a spike of fear shot through Ivy’s heart.
“It’s okay,” she managed. She pulled the vial out again, scrabbling at the cork with shaking hands. “I’m going to fix this, okay? I’m going to pour this in, and everything’s going to be fine. You just watch.”
She turned the vial into the hole. It trickled into the dirt, pooling around Vale’s clawed feet.
Ivy watched desperately. The liquid did not glow, or turn green, or anything that she had been hoping for. It just lay there on top of the dirt, not sinking in.
