“Us. The Dreamscape. It wasn’t real.” She collected herself, but he could feel the struggle inside her. She was heartsick. She was miserable with guilt. “This morning, I saw the white doe. I dreamt I was in the garden outside the mansion. I saw the doe and I followed her. Except it wasn’t the doe. It was my mother.”
“Your mother?” Confusion rolled over him, even as the depth of Phaedra’s regret sank cold claws into his heart. “I thought Sindarah was dead.”
“She is. For all that it matters, she is. But she and my father somehow exist in the crystals too. Micah, they want the two missing crystals to be recovered. That’s why we met in the Dreamscape. They needed us to help make that happen.”
“What are you saying? They used us?”
She nodded, looking even more tormented. “There is no soul bond between us. It wasn’t destiny at all. We were never meant to be together.”
He scowled. “I don’t believe that.”
“It’s the truth,” she said softly. “We both sensed it had to be a mistake in the beginning. It turns out it was.”
It felt like a hundred years ago, not a handful of days, when he’d thought of Phaedra with mistrust and suspicion. Yes, he had dismissed the idea of a soul bond with her as some kind of cosmic joke. But now?
Now, she was everything to him.
Now, his life didn’t make any damn sense without her.
Phaedra stared at him for a long moment, her sorrow carving deeper—not only into her, but him as well.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m so, so sorry, Micah.”
She brushed past him and stepped into the jet’s small lavatory and locking the door.
He stood there for a moment, unsure if he had more fury for her parents, the crystals, or the fact that both had not only thrust Phaedra and him together but were now tearing them apart.
He didn’t have long to contemplate it.
The pilot came over the speakers to announce they were on their descent into Kazakhstan. Their ride into the Deadlands—and whatever future awaited Phaedra and him on the other side—was now only minutes away.
CHAPTER 25
It took more than a couple of hours before their feet touched ground in the Siberian interior. The private helicopter transport that dropped them in the taiga under the deep cloak of night had been instructed to wait for their return, no matter how long that might take.
Phaedra knew they had limited time to trek into the Deadlands and get out. If they didn’t run into complications or missteps, the threat of daybreak would eventually force them back to the shelter of the helicopter to attempt their search another time.
She did not want to fail.
Even though her heart yearned for Micah, she was duty-bound as an Atlantean—as her parents’ daughter—to find the crystals and ensure they could never be used against her people or anyone else on this fragile planet they all shared. Her parents had sacrificed everything to create the crystals; now, it was her turn.
She was determined, but a part of her knew only the hurt and shame she felt over Micah having been unwittingly dragged into her parents’ scheme as well.
His bewildered face haunted her, as she trudged through the scorched forest with him and the rest of their team. He’d been as stunned as she was to learn they had been manipulated. As she’d feared, he was angry too.
She had waited for him to tell her it didn’t change how he felt about her, but, of course, it had to matter. If he had loved her, even a little, it was based on a lie. A trick.
Never mind her mother’s noble, if desperate, motivations. She had meddled with destiny and it was Phaedra and Micah who were left paying the price.
“We’re getting close to the area I’d been with my team,” he said, his long-legged pace slowing to a pause ahead of Phaedra and the rest of the search party.
“You’re certain?” Zael asked quietly from beside the others.
With a curt nod, Micah glanced over his shoulder, his gaze lingering on Phaedra. “I would know this godforsaken stretch of woods anywhere.”
So would she. The skeletal, blackened trees, the dry forest bed crunching like brittle bones under her boots . . . the darkness all around them.
She caught herself holding her breath, waiting for the ghostly white doe to appear as it had so unfailingly in her dreams before her tragic first encounter with Micah in this same area of the Deadlands. But she knew the doe wouldn’t appear this time. Not ever again.
