“Don’t you want to know whyI’mhere?”
“I know why.” He drops his voice to a whisper despite the empty passages. “Zandrite wants to kill you for your essence so he can return to the Immortal Realm.”
“How do you know about that?” I match his low voice.
His eyes roll to the side as he considers his response. “Because I only exist in your head, according to you.”
Then this imaginary boy walks right up to me and wraps those thin arms around my waist, the side of his face pressed into my belly, and hugs me so tightly it hurts my soul. The feeling is so foreign, I don’t know how my mind conjured it.
He pulls away and smiles up at me. “Let’s go. Where’s Milo?”
“He’s not here. And how do you know Milo?” I follow him out of the room and down the passage. “Where are you going?”
“To find Eli. He’s the first one.”
“Of course, my mind thinks you met him last year.” I roll my eyes at my own thoughts and further succumb to insanity with a sigh. “The first one for what?”
“The first one we find.” He walks surprisingly fast for his short legs, his feet squelching in the mud with each step.
“This is crazy.” I throw my arms down. “I can’t follow a child that doesn’t exist into passages I’ve never seen.”
What’s wrong with me? I want to believe, if for no other reason than to not be alone. But anyone who smiles, who hugs, whose presence is a comfort—they’re more likely to be my own attempt at company, a fictional friend… someone I can kill off when my own mind turns on me.
“Trust me, this is the way.” He tugs me along.
“I don’t trust anyone. Especially not myself.”
He pivots, stopping short in front of me, hands on his hips. “You’re worse than you said.”
“What? When?”
“Nothing. Come on.” With a final pull, Atom hurls me around a corner.
I trip over a body.
Catching myself much too late, I whirl back. “Eli!”
He lies face up, head lolled to the side, eyes open. Wet curls stickto his light brown skin, now shaded blue, as if starved for oxygen. As if he’d drowned. I kneel next to him, my hands landing on his chest. My fingers tremor as I skim over his smooth skin, cold as night.
“Give him a minute.” Atom waves a hand dismissively.
“I don’t understand. You can’t die.” I grab Eli’s jaw and point his face at me. “You hear me, you beautiful asshole? You don’t get to leave me. You said you couldn’t die, so wake the fuck up before I tack your balls onto the wall to admire before I fall asleep at night!”
“He’s not sleeping. He can’t.” Atom shakes the water from his shaggy hair, utterly unperturbed.
Breathing is impossible, as if I were back underwater, as if his last breath led to mine. I collapse over his chest, my hair blanketing him. And I cry. Because no matter how many times he’s told me he can’t die, and even after watching Kelter slit his throat, acceptance of such a concept is inconceivable when his body lies before me. Motionless. Breathless.
But his heart…? Could it truly stop while mine beats on? I wipe away tears and position my ear over his chest. And there, under brown skin, beneath bone and cartilage… is nothing. I focus on rousing the magic in me, the pain, and put my hands back on his chest. I shove down. All my might. All my heart. So his will beat again. Still nothing. So I pound my fist down onto his ribcage with that same call for pain.
He roars, his hand yanking the hair on the back of my head, then speaks in his usual teasing tone as though nothing had happened. “Wouldn’t you rather admire the feel of my balls slapping against your—”
“Child!” I yell to cut off Eli as I lift my head from his chest and free my hair.
He hitches one brow upward, a questionable reaction to the announcement of a non-existent child.
“You weren’t breathing. Your heart stopped. What… how… I don’t—”
“No,” he says, so firmly that I jolt back and sit on my feet.
