He loops my hair around his hand again, tightening his grasp so that his knuckles press into the back of my head. “Now I know how you’ll fix me. The kid didn’t make it up.” I shake my head frantically, and every tree swings their branches. Sypher shrieks from a limb high above. I try to find him, but Eli snaps my face back to his with my hair. “You’ll get Zandrite’s essence and repair my immortality. I’ll be me again. Like before my father died.”
The whole forest lands on my chest. Over Eli’s shoulder, faces are now discernable, resolute and infuriated, resigned to violence. “How could I?”
“You’re a demigod. You can kill him. I won’t let the bastard hurt you.”
I glance at the raw wood to my left and right, the split tree, the linesindicating the years. I did that. I make two fists against his cheeks, my rings pressing into my fingers with the tightness. “How did you know? That doesn’t mean I can kill him.”
“I hear everything.”
Of course he does. He can hear through floors and walls. He probably knew my father was Malachite before I did.
His calmness is so potent it rouses rage that pulses behind my fingertips. “But that wasn’t my confession.”
“They’re here,” I say, despite the obviousness, my voice hushed.
“It’s over, Hollow,” a man in a gray jumpsuit says from off to my left, twenty feet away. Wet, dark hair hangs in his eyes. “You can’t come after the source of the elixir and get away with it.”
I drop my fists from Eli’s face and whisper, “Confess… because I’m about to die.”
Chapter 43
EVER
Eli’s murmur reaches my ear. My brain. My heart. Every inch of me at once. “I didn’t kill your mother for you.”
The man in gray runs forward and lunges for me, armed with a knife and a club, a snarl uglying up his face.
“Wait!” I holler. My hand flies up, palm out.
But that doesn’t stop him.
Not a chance.
It’s the root that stabs up through the earth, into his stomach then out his back with a revolting, flesh-ripping sound. Hailstones fly. It lifts him into the air. The hundreds of Vaile surrounding us take a collective step back. Probably bumping into hundreds more. And thousands behind them. The man’s hair flicks back and forth across his forehead as his body jerks, his legs kicking the air and flailing.
I watch it all out of the corner of my eye, never letting Eli free from my stare, and not quite able to deny that was my doing. “Say the words,” I plead. “Don’t tell me what you didn’t do. Tell me what I did.”
“You already know.”
“I don’t. I’ve lost my mind. I fell apart over the death of someone who never existed! Okay? There’s something wrong with me. I’d rather kill off parts of myself than face my own feelings.”
The Vaile regain their courage. A woman shouts, “What do Vaile do? What would the Centress want?”
Thousands chant in response, the same rhythmic pattern, the same words as the children back at the village school months ago. The sound ricochets off trees and sails through the afternoon.“Preserve the magicof our land!”
“At what cost?” dozens yell.
“At any cost at your command!”the mass answers, fists punching the air.
I rip off one of my rings and shove it in front of Eli’s face. “Do you see this? Do you see what I’m holding?”
A muscle ripples in his jaw, right beneath his scar. His lightness caresses my cheek with a warm breeze, and his darkness strikes my tongue with the tang of blood. “No.”
It’s one thing for a voice in my head to claim I made Cam up, but to know that no one held my hand as I braved each new home, that I never received a piece of advice from someone who cared, that every single ring meant to remind me I wasn’t alone was a lieIconstructed. Because I wasthatalone. To know all that is utter destruction within.
“You can’t see it because I imagined it! I can’t trust my own mind. How am I supposed to choose what matters to me if I don’t know what’s real?”
His firm hand lands on my lower back and pulls me into him with a rough tug. “Iam real. I showed you. Is that not enough?”
