“Addie, are you in here?” Clara’s voice materializes from the shadows.
I could almost cry from relief. Beneath me, the floor is cold, almost damp, and I crawl across it toward Clara.
“Yes, it’s me. Do you have Rascal?”
There is a low groan and then a yelp when my hand brushes against something wet. Warm fur. Floppy ears. I throw my arms around his neck, burying my face in the hellhound’s coat.
“Good boy,” I whisper. “The best boy.”
He answers with a swift lick of my cheek.
“Adelaide, I can’t see anything.”
It is funny, in thick darkness, what is seen and unseen. What is known and unknown. I try not to think what could be surrounding us.
“Reach out your hand,” I say, brushing my fingers through the darkness. They land against something. Something cold, almost human.
I pull back, hand stinging, but when I lift it before my eyes, I can make out nothing. The blackness so dense it tastes of iron.
“Was that your hand?” The words are slow when they spill from my mouth.
Clara’s answer is quick. “No.”
My stomach flips.
“It’s mine.”
A scream curdles at the back of my throat, replaced by a single name. “Bram?”
I am answered with laughter so familiar it makes me ache.
“What’s left.” His voice is cracked and splintered, a dry husk. But it is stillhim.
I hear scuffling, Clara coming closer through the darkness. “Did you sayBram? Damnit, I can’t see a bloody thing.”
My fingers go to my pocket, where the bitterbloom blossoms and the bell and bead lie. Quickly, I fish them out and lay the little plant against my palm. If Mother could use it to do evil, I can use it for good. I close my eyes, search for the rapid beating of my heart, the reminder—
A-live, a-live, a-live.
Something like honey spills from my hand, a drip of light so gold it might be stolen from Ithrandril Himself. And maybe it is. Maybe that is what makes me different from both my parents. Touched by Ithrandril and Erybrus alike.
Clara gasps while the light grows, weaves itself around my hand and up my arm, until even the darkest corners of the room we lie in are alight with the glow leaking from the bell. I look up, my chest contracting.
Bram is slumped against the nearest wall, hands limp in his lap, head lolling to the side. His skin is so gray it might be made of paper, and the amber glow of his eyes is all but gone. His chest heaves, breath coming shallow and dry. I scramble across the stone and dirt, reaching toward him, and that’s when I see it.
The place where Ransom’s blade carved Bram like some hunter’s prey.
His shirt lies open, ribs and flesh exposed beneath. Where healthy pink should be, all is dry and ashen. Tears prick the corners of my eyes. My fingers brush the fabric of his shirt. He sucks in air, putrid lungs pressing against skin.
“Don’t,” he rasped.
“Bram.” I reach forward. “You have to let me help you.”
I almost cry out when his hand wraps around my wrist. “I can’t let you. Not now. You shouldn’t have come. Ransom—”
“Stop being a noble idiot. I can help.”
I study his face for any signs that might betray his words, but there are none. He is as set as stone. And in the end, that is what breaks me. That the man I love—trulylove—would give himself up for me to breathe life again.
