The ice-blue light, that’s now as small as the scrawl on Electra’s nape moves, not in bursts but in long, slow rolls, like water.
I’ve witnessed my fair share of extraordinary things, but this is something else. Something incredibly humbling.
“I’m sorry for having been willing to destroy you.”
Two new glyphs cut through the dark air above my head. I have to strain my neck to read them. Well, not read…seethem.
They wink out of existence before I can commit their shape to memory.
I glance back at the smaller ones, which haven’t vanished. When they begin to flash again, I reach out. The winking stops. Stealing a deep lungful of air, I graze the stone.
Heat scorches my fingertips like I’ve just grabbed a pan from under the broiler without an oven mitt. I jerk my arm back, but a force impales my palm to the hot, humming stone.
Cold sweat beads along my brow while fire streaks through my veins, hot enough to weld sinews.
Why did I ever think apologizing for my wrongdoings could absolve me of them?
Too little too late.
I look up at the cut-out of light above, willing the brightness to fill with Electra’s face.
Just one more time.
Just so I can carry her striking stare to the beyond.
But she doesn’t appear.
No one does.
Chapter 65
Electra
“Go.” Tarian’s rough voice makes my heart jump.
But only my heart. The rest of me doesn’t move.
“Electra, Gaea says you can come see her now.”
I twist around to make sure I’m not imagining Tarian’s voice.
His lips shift over more words. “She says she’s done.”
“Done with what?”
“I don’t know. She just told me that you can enter.”
Please don’t let it be to pick up Reeve’s corpse. Please, please, please.
I stand slowly, my bones feeling like they’ve fused together from how long I’ve knelt on the ground. Though my black sweatpants are covered in sand, I don’t bother sweeping them.
For a long heartbeat, I don’t move. I just stand there, peering at the hole in the earth, my pulse swooshing, propelling the blood through my veins at a dizzying speed.
Scenario after scenario unfolds through my mind. There’s always blood. Always cracked lenses. Always unseeing eyes.
I steel my spine and ball my fingers, then take a single, tentative step. When the earth doesn’t throw me down, I take another. And another.
Too soon…not soon enough…I reach the entrance and—and…
