I count my steps, ten total, before Evander’s voice reaches me.
“Try to feel your way along the walls,” he calls as the blackness presses closer around me. “And remember tobreathe, Sparrow. I’m right behind—”
His words are cut short by a jagged, guttural scream.
I whirl around, gazing upward to the ravine’s entrance.
Silhouetted against the twilight, Evander dangles in the air, a large, bony hand plunged right through his middle. Scarlet seeps from the wound, and as my head spins, as I fight not to fall to my knees at the sight, something makes the shrill whistle we heard before.
Now I understand. The giant Shade was baiting us. Hunting us, when we thought we were hunting it.
Somehow, I cram my whistle into my mouth with a shaking hand and blow into it with as much breath as I can muster. My stomach drops to the ravine floor far below as Evander’s eyes turn glassy and the creature pulls its hand free, carelessly dropping him and then picking him up again as if he’s a toy that doesn’t quite hold its interest.
He’s so still, I’m afraid he’s not breathing.
Please, by Vaia’s grace, let him be breathing.
I force my shaking legs to run back up the short stretch of rocky path I descended, closing the distance between the Shade and me. The monster lifts Evander’s limp arm to tear it off, and I take aim, throwing my vial of liquid fire right at its chest. But it easily swats the potion away like a bug. A cloud of blue flames explodes in a patch of white flowers.
The Shade is momentarily distracted, so I try again. Drawing my blade, gazing into the pitch-dark holes where its eyes should be, I slice clean through one of the monster’s arms, freeing Evander from its grip. Black liquid spatters my face and chest. It reeks like spoiled fish and burns my skin.
The Shade’s growl echoes through the mountains as it picks me up with its remaining arm and squeezes me so hard my sword drops from my limp hand. I twist in the monster’s grasp, trying to get a look at Evander, but the Shade’s strength is overpowering, squashing what little air is left in my lungs. It easily stands twice my height—the largest Shade I’ve ever seen.
The monster carries me toward a field, angling me so I’m able to turn my head and see him. Evander. Or what was Evander. My heart rattles sickly in my chest as his broken body shimmers beneath my gaze. His open, staring eyes reflect the twilight, and it’s then I realize there’s nothing of the one I love left in there. No hope for a healer’s magic. Nothing I can say, no one I can bribe, or punch, or kill to get him back.
The monster flexes its bony hands, tearing into my skin. White-hot lightning flashes behind my eyes, and blood—my blood—sprays a crimson arc on a bed of lilies. They shouldn’t behere. They mean beauty, in a world where nothing will ever be beautiful again.
I collapse, watching my blood pool around me as the Shade crouches near my face. The few tendrils of greasy black hair still clinging to its skull brush my cheek as it sniffs my head. I don’t struggle. I don’t care. My life, it doesn’t matter anymore. Not now. Not without Evander.
The Shade unhinges its jaw wide enough to fit my head in its mouth, revealing its pointed teeth and blackened tongue. But before those teeth can snap my head from my neck, the monster snarls almost reluctantly at something in the distance, and bounds off into the darkness.
IX
Voices circle above me. Beside me. Over and under and around again, a baffling current of sound I can’t trace.
“Danial’s on his way!” Simeon declares breathlessly.
Footsteps pound down a corridor.
“She’s dying. We should’ve stayed together!” Jax roars, followed by a sound like wood splintering. I don’t have to open my eyes to know he’s put his fist through a wall.
A door bangs open, and suddenly someone’s touching my head, my waist. Their fingers are sticky. Warmth rushes over me like someone’s dunked me in a bucket of hot water.
“She’s going to make it,” Danial says, his voice taut as a bowstring.
“How do you know?” Simeon sniffles and draws a shaky, wet breath.
Another wave of heat crashes into me.
Then comes pain all over, like a thousand knives being plunged into my skin at once without mercy.
Finally comes surrender. Welcome nothingness.
***
“I can’t do it. I’m not going.”
I’m ten years old again, and Evander and Master Cymbre watch with mingled surprise and worry as I flop down in the cool summer grass, bathed in the bluish light of a gate to the Deadlands. This will be our first time entering the spirit world, and I’m more afraid than I’ve ever been. I don’t want to let go of the firm ground that cradles me, the wind that combs my hair, or the stars that make silver freckles on Evander’s cheeks as he kneels beside me. I don’t know what the Deadlands hold, and I don’t care, because this is the world I love.
