…and the ground gave way.
Fuuuck!
We plummeted—cool air brushing past.
I grabbed hold of Mela’s arm, flung her around, twisting us both.
And took the brunt of the fall.
I slammed onto hard, jagged stone, the impact driving the breath from me, as Mela’s body bounced on top of mine. Dizzying, blinding-white agony hazed out my vision.
It might have been hours, minutes, seconds later when I came too, I had no idea, but my mother’s legacy had already knitted together torn flesh and fractured bone.
Mela groaned, pushing off me to rise. She twisted her torso from side to side, rotated her shoulder, and winced.
Slowly unfolding, I stretched my limbs and shook the dust out of my hair.
There was fire in Mela’s gaze as it landed on me.
I arched a brow. “You can’t keep this bottled in, Mela.” I should know. My guilt and self-loathing and misplaced hate had consumed me.
She scowled as she shifted away. I got it—I’d been there too, lashing out at whoever was closest. Her heavy boots scuffed through debris, and the headlamp’s beam glanced over the edge of something long and lean and mottled.
Mela flexed a hand, rubbing her blood-crusted knuckles. She gave me a sly look as she spoke with mock compassion. “I see the pain you’re in. I know you well enough to read you, Graysen Crowther. So don’t make out like a shrink and expect me to break down and pour my heart out when you can’t do the same.”
Her vitriol had me taking an abrupt step back. I knew I’d been closed off too… Gods,we were a right pair.
But this wasn’t about me. It was about her obsession with self-destruction. I tried once more. “It’ll end up destroying you. Just talk to me.”
She flung her arms open wide. Her loud voice, honed with fury, crashed against the hewn walls. “There’s nothing to talk about. Elyse is dead!”
“She’s not—”
“Don’t you get it?Elyse…”— and she suddenly choked on her name—“is dead!”Her bottom lip wobbled, and her eyes shimmered with tears as her expression collapsed into heartache. A sob clawed its way from her throat.
Her knees buckled.
I grabbed hold of Mela before she hit rock, and I drew her down gently to the cold floor, holding her as she cried, her fingers tightly fisting my vest. “She’s dead, Gray.”
She sobbed against my chest, and her heartache soaked into my armor. “I didn’t know…” she whispered, her voice breaking, “I didn’t know she was a fire-torch. I couldn’t get to her in time.”
I quietly sighed. “No one knew. There was nothing you could have done.”
We sat in the darkness, while I held her trembling body in my arms as she sobbed and sniffled and clung to me. Both of us adrift with no one but each other. And, as always, my thoughts returned to Nelle.
Fear, as chilling and murky as mist-shrouded moors, seeped into my gut.
The longer I’d been gone, digging around here in the labyrinth of tunnels, the more those filaments of magic connecting us both frayed. Nelle was drawing away, becoming distant—I could barely feel her. I didn’t know if it was because of what I’d done, how I’d ruined what had existed between us, or if it was due to being so far underground. She was all I could think of down here in endless gloom. The days were mixed up with the nights, and time itself had ceased to exist. I kept being reminded of what Nelle had shared with me outside the tithe prison, what it would have been like for a terrified seven-year-old trapped within pitch-black darkness.
Besides Nelle, there was only one other person who had taken up residence in my mind—Sirro. It was Sirro’s last words he’d imparted, almost like a challenge.
So, what will you do, Graysen Crowther? What choice will you make?
Yet again, it was another strange occurrence. Sirro had given me a name, Yezekael, and nothing further. The first person I naturally asked was my father. And the name shifted something in his violet eyes and made them darken to almost black. He’d grown silent and still as death. The mention of Yezekael had shattered his composure and left behind conflict and confusion.
What is Sirro up to?
My father explained Yezekael was a name he’d not heard in a long time. A lesser creature that haunted the ancientHemmlok Forest that the Deniaud, Szarvas, and Lyon estates shared between them. When my father first met our mother, she worked as a servant for the Deniauds. He described Yezekael as a winged creature that liked to steal things and dealt in secrets and information, bartering on behalf of other creatures with the Horned Gods. He’d gone quiet in reflection, not sharing much about those earlier days, but he’d given me enough to go on. What it had done to offend Sirro, I had no fucking idea.
