“Danial.” I don’t recognize the cracked voice coming out of my mouth as I tug on his shirtsleeve. “I need more of that calming potion. To keep the nightmares at bay.” They aren’t just happening at night, but Danial doesn’t need to know that. He also doesn’t need to know how much they dull my mind, or he might take them away, and then I can’t say what I’ll do with myself.
Danial nods reluctantly. “I’m glad it’s helping.” He hauls me to my feet, keeping an arm securely around my waist. “But if you have any more of these... delusions... let me know, will you, and we’ll find you a different tonic.”
“Right. Sure.” I shrug him off. “I can still stand on my own, see?” There’s that stranger’s voice again.
“Okay,” Danial says softly. He gazes down the hall, like he was headed somewhere, then looks at me again. “Let me help you back to your room, at least.”
I shake my head. “I’m actually going for a walk.”
“Sparrow, please tell me how you’re really—”
Turning my back on him, I continue down the hall, slower than normal but moving just fine without anyone’s help. I pass my room, taking my time as I head toward Evander’s, until I hear Danial’s boots clicking down the hall in the opposite direction.
One twist of the cold doorknob and I’m inside Evander’s empty palace quarters. There’s a wardrobe, a desk and chair, a tall painted vase full of fake and very dusty black poplar branches—their flowers are his favorite, a symbol of courage—and a bed with a basic blue quilt on it. There’s not even a hint of his sandalwood, cut-grass, and leather smell in here. None of his silly drawings or maps scrawled on the bare walls. In all our years together, I thinkwe’ve used this room maybe a handful of times, including after the recent festival.
As my fingers touch the quilt, a memory springs to mind: Me, sitting on this very bed. Evander, facing me, armed with what seemed like an entire closet full of bandages. Patching me up after sparring practice, mending a small cut beneath my eye as I tried to rub ointment on his bruises. We were both too proud to see a healer after Master Cymbre showed us how a real warrior fights.
Shaking my head to clear it, I stagger to the desk and pull open the single drawer there, searching for a distraction.
There’s nothing inside but a dead fly. I don’t know what I thought I’d find. Letters, maybe, which Evander had written to help me through this difficult time. But no one expected this, least of all him.
I sink into the rough wooden chair by the desk. I shouldn’t have come here. This room is as Evander-less as the rest of the world, a world I’m stuck in without him.
So when I turn to face the bed, a tremor of cold runs through me as I meet the midnight-blue eyes of the young man sitting on it. He looks more polished than the Evander I knew, not one dark hair out of place or a hint of stubble on his jaw. He doesn’t say anything, but he appears real enough.
Real or not, I need him.
“Since you’ve been gone, I don’t even feel right in my own skin anymore,” I tell him, breaking the silence. I wonder if he can speak. After a long silence, I go on, “It’s like I’m missing a part, a lung or a kidney, and the rest of me can’t figure out how to work together without that one piece.”
My throat tightens, but I force more words out somehow. “I finally spent the whole night lying beside you, without having to run back to some other bed before sunup so your mother wouldn’t know. It wasn’t like I imagined it would be, though. You were just a cold shell, but I guarded you until it was time to prepare for...”
The fist of grief wrapping around my neck silences me for a moment, and the shadow of Evander on the bed flickers beneath my gaze.
“They’re having your funeral tomorrow,” I continue shakily, “and I’m sorry, but I’ll have to close my eyes when they put your coffin in the ground. It’s too much like saying goodbye. And I can’t do that. I won’t.”
Evander was a necromancer, a cruel little voice in the back of my mind points out.He’s gone, no matter what youthinkyou’re seeing.
I wonder if it’s like Master Cymbre says—that our spirits travel on to whatever comes next, the place beyond the Deadlands where all spirits eventually go. But for all I know, Evander blinked out of existence when the Shade sliced through him.
The shadow Evander on the bed flickers again and disappears.
A low groan escapes my throat.
“You know what else isn’t fair about all this?” I say, my voice hollow in the empty room. “You left Karthia without me, right after you’d decided to stay.”
And I can never follow, on foot or by ship.
I run my hands through my hair, clawing at my scalp, trying to silence the wretched voice in my mind that keeps getting louder.
For the rest of my life, I could journey into the unknown world, small or vast or whatever it may be, and not find a trace of Evander anywhere but in my head.
But the only place I want to go now is the Deadlands, where I like walking the paths. Where I have unfinished business.
“And here’s what hurts worst of all,” I whisper to the empty bed where just nights ago, Evander kissed me until our lips were warm and swollen. “You’ll never hear any of this, because you’ve vanished and I have to carry on alone.”
Without my best friend. Without half of my heart.
“I wish you could tell me where to go from here, Evander.” I slump in the chair. My head feels too heavy to be supported by my body any longer. “Or how to get my heart to stop repeating your name.”
