I am no place and everywhere all at once, walking hand in hand with Eve through a vista that never changes, never darkens, never fades, a sky painted at twilight. Just as it should be.
“Not anymore.” Her voice is warm and musical, even as it fills with regret.
“Always, Vee,” I say, adamant. “It’s you and me, remember?” Until we die like the stars in a glorious blaze. Together. Always together. That last part isn’t up for debate.
“The world had other plans for us, Ez,” she whispers into the silence, and that’s when I realize that she’s as blurred as the scenery around us, that I can no longer see her as clearly as I used to, I can only remember—but at the same time, I can’t actually remember the exact shade of her eyes, or the exact shape of her smile, or the exact pitch of her laughter.
“Well, then I don’t want to live in that world.” I cling to her memory the way a drowning man would a raft, like it might somehow sharpen her edges. “I don’t want to live without you.” And this might be the very first time I’ve admitted it out loud. All year, I’ve been racing towards this moment, searching for it, hoping for it, dousing the ache for it with drink.
So then why, now that I’m here, does it suddenly lack the feel of truth?
“I think you may have found yourself again, Ez,” Eve says, as though reading my mind. “You always did need a purpose—watching out for us, it wasn’t just what you did, it was part of who you are. A part you forgot, for a little while, but it never went away. All you needed was to get your hope back.”
“I don’t want hope, Vee—I wantyou.”
“I’m right here.” She places a hand to my heart, and despite the blur of her features, her touch is real and solid, a comfort and a surprise. “The shadows can’t shatter love, Ezzo, no matter how hard they try. Nothing can ever change it. Nothing andno one. And being happy again won’t change it, either; our story will always remain ours.” She’s fading faster now, waning, disappearing before my eyes.
But I don’t want her to go.
I want us to stay in this in-between forever, frozen in time.
Except I also want to go back to the court chamber; I want to help Cemmy and Chase make it out of that room alive.
I want to live to see Novi again, and Lyria, and Magdalena.
And more than anything else, I want to ensure that Raya survives the night.
Raya. Gods, just thinking her name ties my stomach in knots. I saw the vision the future sent her—I don’t know how I saw it, but I did; I felt the inevitability in it—the need, the longing—and now all I feel is guilt. Because how can I be here, with Eve, and even think about another girl? How can I ever allow myself to replace her?
“Don’t question the good things when they come, Ez.” Eve’s ghost merely smiles the dazzling smile that I remember. “The only future I want for you is the best. I want you to live because you can and because you deserve to—and I want you to love because you deserve that, as well. Even if you choose to love aShade,” she says. Then with a force I’m not expecting, she pitches me back into the Gray.
*
The ringing in my ears is deafening, the pain in my head blinding, and the chaos raging around me a disorienting rattle to the brain.
Colors help me, what did I miss?The court chamber is alight with activity, though the tenor of the fear inside it has changed. There’s still screaming but also screamed instructions, a frantic scrum of bodies, cries of relief, along with Shades in various states of consciousness, freed from their tables and stumbling like newborn deer. I see Akari, holding up a trembling Saleen; Cemmy, working to rid a sobbing initiate of his needle; Chase, on one knee in the center of the chamber, his jaw set with concentration and his arms braced wide against the air, a terrified group of kids gathered behind him.
He’s casting.That realization dawns a split second before it’s joined by the rush ofwhysbubbling up in my veins.
The void is gone.
Oh, shit.All at once, I grow wise to the hungry storm of shadows, no longer cracked and wilting, but livid, and vengeful, and biting furiously at my shield.At Chase’s shield.I quickly shake off the last of the fuzziness and take over the cast, relieving him of the burden of having to keep me from shattering, as well.
He’s really doing it, though.Projecting his In-Between like an Emerald, using the stolen power he drained.
From Alara.
I shudder as that reality pummels me with its full weight.
You’ll have to take her color. I don’t know why I’m so surprised when I’m the one who told him to do it in the first place, begged him to do it, in fact, even as his answering signs turned sharper and a disbelieving anger soured his face.You know I can’t do that—it’ll kill her, he’d clipped. But thanks to me, Alara was dying anyway, and since the choice was between doing the unthinkable or letting the unthinkablehappen, it was no longer a question ofif, butwhen, and Alara’s last act in this world was to help us stop her brother from destroying the Gray.
She let Chase take her color.
Just as she told me Adriel’s weakness, how to throw him off-balance so that I could rip the knife from her heart and stick it through his.
A void is still a man, after all—when you stab him, he bleeds. Dies.
Except you didn’t get that far.That much I remember clear as day, getting close but not close enough—so if Adriel’s gone, he must have been bested by someone else. Though if Chase was busy draining Alara and Cemmy’s job was to save Saleen, then who—?
