Jesstin batted a hand. “I don’t care what you do with him. But someone needs to go to Nightwood and tell Esme what’s happened to Elloven so she doesn’t spend the rest of her life waiting for her daughter to come home.”
Sesto gripped the chair and peered into the eventide through bleary eyes. He was so, so tired and so cursed sad, but neither of those things mattered just then. “Time for us to get a move on, isn’t it?”
“Before I lose my spine.” Jesstin reached a hand down. “You’ve been my friend through the darkest times, Ses. Never judged me. Always ready for anything. But the real reason I need you to leave here as soon as you can is that it’s time for you to find the damned light. I need to know Sesto Loken is ready to find his own joy and stop being pulled down into my shadows with me.”
“Jess—”
“Just say you hear me. We’ll leave it there.”
Sesto’s response caught in his throat. “You know I do.”
Jesstin pumped the air with his fist. “Now or fucking never.”
Chapter 2
Crossing the Desidero
Jesstin was prepared for intense planning, at least a few setbacks, even complete failure, but at no point did he fathom it would be as simple as just walking into the netherworld.
Except it wasn’t simple, not for anyone else. Ryquin wouldn’t have gone to so much damned trouble otherwise.
Elloven would still be alive.
He’d spent only a few moments on good-byes. He and Sesto had already come to a place of understanding, and Jesstin was damn proud of himself for coughing out some semi-charitable gibberish for the pathetic Considine, especially after what he’d done to her in the sept minutes before she was murdered.
Bigger problems awaited him. He was going where no living person had ever been, at least none who had returned to tell the tale, and, despite this apparent impossibility, he was going to charge in there like he owned the place, track down Mon or another member of his arrogant posse, demand the answers they’d denied him in the labyrinth, and force them to take him to Elloven, and then if he could, he’d help them. He’d never open a damn thing for Ryquin though. He didn’t even tell Sesto that part because he couldn’t be sure others wouldn’t rip it from his thoughts. If Ryquin even suspected Jesstin wasn’t going to help him, Lexsea would surely do something to Elloven’s preserved body. Sesto wouldn’t make it out of Rivenholde.
You know what to do, mate. Jesstin’s final message to Sesto in the garden had departed with him as he stepped through the undulation where the worlds were only gently fastened. In the next step, the shimmer evaporated in a sharp hiss, leaving Rivenholde behind.
I did it. I actually fucking did?—
An alluring orange hue put a swift end to his hubris. The unyielding illumination was a punch of disorientation after the perpetual darkness of Rivenholde, and it had to be at least ten times the sun’s vibrance. He peered behind the shield of his arm, which didn’t help much, but it allowed him a closer look. Shades of saffron threaded through the sky, but also silver and violet, traces of chartreuse. But the light was everywhere, not only on all sides and above but at his back.
Below was the soft, uneven support of sunbathed sand, sparkling like the grains of the shore at that sleepy village just south of Briarhaven, where he’d spent one of the few holidays from his childhood that hadn’t been erased from his memory.
Gentle waves lapped close to his boots. The indigo water was as dark as the sky at midnight. The tide arrived without foam or crests, and when he looked out across the water, while he couldn’t see to the other side, it was enough to determine the current was moving parallel to the shore, not against.
A river then, if they had rivers.
More people arrived, appearing as suddenly as he had, milling about on the long stretch of shore. Their tentative scrutiny mimicked his: squinting at the sky, trying to make sense of the water. Some serenely took in their new surroundings. Others were jittery and indignant, like they’d been ripped from life suddenly and were determined to finish their thought. Most, though, stumbled around in confusion. Jesstin recognized one, an esguard of Rivenholde who had survived the massacre with grievous wounds but must have later succumbed to them.
Another group joined, but they were different. A dim orange light spread from the center of their chests, just below the hollows of their necks. One by one, the newcomers paired with what Jesstin had started thinking of as the newly dead. The people with the pulsing necklaces took the hands of the newly dead and led them down the shore toward a massive gate that was remarkably out of place.
The metal edifice was free-standing, crumbling in parts from the reddish rust along the tips of delicate curls. Some of the bars were missing or bent. Other pieces of the deteriorating gold-plated iron were still bright and glitzy, reflecting the unnatural light.
Large and strange as it was, it led nowhere except more shore, more water.
Jesstin approached, moving sideways down the sand, but watched to see what the other dead and their escorts did. Everything from there forward would be new. Even Daire knew less than Jesstin did.
But when the others stepped through, they didn’t emerge on the other side. They didn’t emerge anywhere that he could see. Jesstin rushed up to the gate, but an intense, nauseating force shunted him back. Annoyed, he charged again and was bounced into the sand. When he tried another tactic, reaching instead for the long, winding handles, they also rejected him.
Jesstin pushed off the sand for another round when someone stepped in his path.
“You wouldn’t be the first to try, but will you be the first to succeed?”
He looked up and into the face of exactly the person he needed to see.
“You took your leisure,” Mon said. “Did the necromancers not explain what time of day is safe?”
