My lids flipped open, and I found that no one was even holding me. Remo stood at the entrance of my stone chamber, eyes gleaming wildly.
Another hard tremor dynamited the ground.
Great Gejaiwe,someone was here? Was it to get us out? I vaulted to my feet, adrenaline hemorrhaging through me. I lunged toward Remo, then past him. We took off running down the center aisle just as Kiera and Quinn emerged bleary-eyed, spears in hand.
Soon, they were running alongside us. And then Cruz was there, kicking up sand next to Remo. The only one missing was Kingston. He was probably hiding, sensing the death bells tolling for him, because if we were on our way home, he’d be judged and executed, this time by my father.
When we burst through the tree line, thick smoke clogged the sky and shards of metal and glass already littered the sand. A groan rose from beneath a curved sheet of metal. I ran toward it and heaved it up.
My grip faltered, and the piece of metal, which had shielded the new arrival, flipped over and seesawed at my bare feet. Shock spooled in my chest, and a gasp filled my mouth. I dropped to my knees, my hands scrabbling over the prostrate body.
“Giya? Giya!” A thin cut along her cheekbone wept blood. “Giya?” My voice rattled with shock.
Her lashes fluttered, and then her beautiful, gray eyes alighted on me, and her trembling lips parted around my name. She rose onto her forearms, and then she was sitting, and we were hugging. And although I should’ve been horrified by what it meant that she was here, I was too damn happy that she’d come.
I smoothed out her long brown hair, the locks so crusted with salt and tangled they almost resembled Kiera’s dreads.
“Great Gejaiwe, Amara, I thought I’d never find you.” Her torso hardened suddenly, and she pushed me away. “Wait. Am I dead? Is that why—”
I smiled, a wobbly smile so full of emotion my body shook even though the world around us had finally stilled. “You’re not dead. I promise.” I combed back a lock of hair that stuck to her weeping cut. “This is the final cell. It’s why the train exploded.”
Shock rippled over her drawn face. Even though she had never been pale a day in her life, her skin became bone-white.
“Giya, how did you find this place?”
“Josh. He commed me. Asked if I had any news from you.” She gulped in air. “We didn’t know what had happened to you. We thought . . . we thought Gregor made Remo kidnap you and destroy both your Infinities, so we couldn’t track you, but Gregor . . . he said . . . he said he never ordered his grandson to do that. He said that if Remo took you . . . it wasn’t on his orders.” Again she gulped in air.
I rubbed the spot between her shoulder blades, trying to soothe her. “Does anyone know you’re here?”
“Sook.” Her lower lip rose over her upper one the way it always did when her heart was about to break. “B-but thatbagwadecided to follow me inside.” She shuddered.
“He’s here?” I swung my gaze around the mishmash of sand and train parts, looking for another body, but located none. Had he died on impact? Was he waking in the field of mud?
“Oh, Amara . . .” Tears tracked down her cheeks, thinning her blood. “He didn’t make it. He . . .” She choked, then let out a heart-shattering wail.
My blood became ice. “He ate the apple?” My tone sounded clinical.
She sniffled, then squeaked, “The apple?” She palmed her cheeks, making a mess of the blood. “No. He’s allergic to apples. Thepistrigot him.”
A smile knocked into my mouth, soon turning into an irrepressible giggle.
“A giant, three-headed—Why are you laughing? He’s dead, Amara. Sook is dead.”
“No, he’s not.” I tried to calm down. Really, I did, but my nerves were so shot that I couldn’t get a handle on them. “And I’m laughing because I’m never going to let Sook live down the fact that he got munched on by a shark.”
She frowned, her eyebrows almost colliding over her smooth forehead. “I saw him turn into smoke!”
“When you die in this place, you resuscitate. Interminably. Trust me. Been there, done that, came back.” I sobered up. “Unless you eat the apple. Then . . .” My gaze rose to the loose circle of cell mates. Kingston was still not among them.
Giya cranked her neck, finally noticing we weren’t alone. Her lips pressed into a tight line at the sight of Remo. At the sight of Cruz, though, they parted extra-wide. She whipped around and gaped at me, her gray eyes cartoonishly large in spite of her eyelids being puffy from crying. “Did I just see . . .? Am I . . .? Is that . . .?”
“Cruz Vega?” I supplied.
Her jaw unhinged farther. “Are you kidding?” she hissed.
“Nope.”
“Is he real?”
