When someone’s life depends on it.
Shoving Meredy firmly to the back of my mind, I turn to the small writing desk in the far corner of the room and pick up a quill and parchment from a tray. “Before we go, I’ll tell Jax and Simeon where we’re headed. Just in case.”
A short while later, we breeze past several stunned guards and out the back gates of Abethell Castle, with Lysander bounding ahead.
“We have to go through a gate to the Deadlands,” I murmur, glancing at Meredy through the inky darkness that’s settled over the grounds. Clouds have rolled in since our earlier target practice, blotting out the stars.
I offer Meredy my hand, much as I’m afraid of what her touch might make me feel. “You’ll have to hold on to me, because you can’t—”
“See it,” she finishes for me, taking my hand. “Evander trusted you. That means I trust you, too.” As we jump into the gate, just a short leap off the ground, she mutters, “Besides, if you screw this up, I’ll tell Lysander he can snack on you.”
It takes Meredy a few moments to get her bearings inside the tunnel. Brushing dirt off her clothes, she keeps her head carefully turned to the lichen-covered wall, like she doesn’t want me to see her face. Somehow, she commanded Lysander to leap through the gate after us without uttering a word, and now she keeps him by her side in the tunnel without the use of a chain. It seems she can’t stop him from snarling and pacing around us, though.
I wonder if he’s remembering the last time we were here.
Meredy takes my hand again as we hurry down the tunnel. Her fingers burn where they clutch mine, and I wish I could let go, but I don’t want her getting lost. The Deadlands have ways of calling to anyone living, luring them into forgetting why they’d ever want to return to the other world. The world where they belong.
For Meredy, it’ll probably be Firiel who appears to lure her into staying.
But no matter what we encounter, I’m going to keep Meredy alive. I can’t lose her, not after how much trouble I went through to save her the first time. Not after we’ve finally started talking about Evander, sharing memories to keep him with us. Not after... well, everything she’s become to me.
“Lysander’s found something.” Meredy squeezes my elbow, jarring me back to the present.
“Which way?” I demand, putting a hand on my sword.
The bear gazes straight ahead, at one of the Deadlands’ many gardens. I take a step toward it, but Meredy holds me back, her hand turning cold in mine.
“She’s nowhere near here,” she says in a dreamy, distant voice not quite like her own. Her face is completely blank. A shiver runs through me as I realize Lysander’s eyes are glowing a vivid green, identical to hers. Somehow, she’s searching his thoughts in a way I’ve never seen before.
“Then we’d better start running,” I murmur. Now that we’re in the Deadlands, there could be Shades nearby. Or the very man I’d like to catch by surprise.
“No.” To my relief, Meredy sounds more like herself. She meets my gaze, then nods to Lysander. “Riding will be much faster.”
Every necromancer should see the Deadlands on the back of a grizzly, I decide as I settle myself on Lysander’s warm bulk. The view is different somehow. Sharper, with every twisted tree and every moonflower seeming to jump out at me, vying for my attention.
Meredy sits in front of me, and at her urging, I wrap my arms around her waist.
My heart taps out its excitement against my ribs, and there’s nothing I can do—save for letting go of Meredy’s soft curves or tucking my nose into my shirt so I don’t have to breathe her subtle vanilla scent that makes my head spin—to slow it down.
I just hope she can’t feel the faint pounding against her back, or hear the slight quickening of my breath.
Lysander picks up speed, and I grip Meredy tighter. He seems to be following the meander of a dark and icy river. As the water rushes past in a blur, my thoughts turn to Master Cymbre.
The day she first came to see me at Death’s convent, her face was less lined and her fiery hair had no trace of gray.
She wanted to be a mentor, not a mother, but I was ten years old and I didn’t know the difference. We both learned a lot that first year, as she tried to pass on her knowledge of the Dead while I tried on her clothes and lip rouge and begged to sleep in her bed.
Wind chills the tips of my ears as Lysander carries us through a grove of trees that have dropped their silver leaves.
I asked Master Cymbre about the seasons in the Deadlands once. I think I was twelve. She couldn’t explain why there weren’t any, she said, any better than her mentor could when she’d askedthe very same thing. But she still knew a lot more than I did, and I never stopped relying on her to answer my impossible questions.
Why the moon turns blood-red sometimes.
Why we can’t look upon the Dead without them turning into Shades.
Why Simeon doesn’t like kissing girls, only boys, but I like both.
Why love hurts when it’s the thing we live for. The thing some people search their entire lives for. The thing some people die for.
