“He protected us these past five days by helping keep the enforcers off us and not turning us in,” Twino adds, gentler than the rest. “Counts for something.”
My skin is still warm from the way Kaelis held me. His scent is still fresh. The gentleness of his voice fills my ears.He’s not what you think,I wish I could say to them. But I’m not quite sure they’re ready to hear me defending Kaelis.
“There’s something else,” Gregor says, mostly to Twino and Ren, in the wake of my silence. “The Worldkeepers are willing to let us take the oaths and join them…” He quickly recounts what happened with Vaduin.
There’s a long pause when he finishes. I regard Twino and Ren thoughtfully. Their expressions are vastly different at this news than Gregor’s was. Ren rubs his eyes. Twino shifts uncomfortably.
“We’re too tired to decide anything tonight,” I say with a note of finality. “Today has been—”
“Forever,” Ren finishes for me. “Today has felt like a fucking eternity. And you’re right, I’m exhausted.”
“We’ll reconvene about this tomorrow, after we’ve slept on it.” I glance to Gregor, making sure he won’t object. He doesn’t.
After a brief but satisfying dinner supplied by the Worldkeepers, we settle into our respective corners. Twino and Ren are by the lantern. Gregor by the door, instinctively keeping guard. There are some blankets, but cold stones are our pillows. Still, it’s somehow warmer than Halazar.
I return to Arina’s side, settling on the floor next to her pallet.We’re still here,my heart beats quietly. We’re not whole, not even close.
But we’re here.
Leaning against the wall, I watch her face as the lamplight slowly dies and search for any sign of the girl she used to be. Any hint that she might still be in there.
“I will keep you safe, no matter what it takes,” I vow one final time before sleep claims me.
Yet, even as I say the words, I wonder if it’s a promise I can keep. The world seems intent on tearing all I love from me. I’m not sure how many more losses I can survive.
Chapter 16
The night is heavy and the air thick as I slink through the dark, forgotten passageways beneath Arcana Academy. These corridors are crumbling from disuse and coated in a thick sheen of dust. Moonlight sneaks through the shattered panes of grime-coated windows that overlook the sea in faint and fractured beams that quickly fade.
My breathing seems to echo back to me like a warning that this is a place in which no life is meant to tread.
Deeper and deeper I go into the bedrock, drawn by an unseen force. One that has my chest squeezing tighter with every step.
Come. The word slips between my ears like silk.
Come. Another voice, layered over the first. Deeper and far more familiar. I know that voice.Come to me.
Kaelis.The name rises to the forefront of my mind as a shiver races up my spine. I glance over my shoulder, half expecting him to be there. But he’s not. He wasn’t here the first time I traversed these warded pathways. He isn’t now.
My footing falters and my balance slips. I grab blindly for the wall, butmy hand closes around nothing but air. The shadows surge, swallowing me whole.
I plummet into a void. But the darkness isn’t empty—it’s alive. Shifting, reaching, cradling me. My landing is impossibly gentle. The moment my shoes make contact with the floor, silvery flames ignite in twin braziers flanking doors ahead. They illuminate ornate reliefs on the doors’ surface. At a glance, the carved symbols seem chaotic—a jumble of layered and overlapping tarot glyphs—but then their pattern clicks into focus.
Unlike the last time I was here, no cards are necessary to open the doors. As if recognizing me, the doors part on their own. No…perhaps recognizing not me, but instead the voice that’s summoned me here. The one that’s still looming at my side, disembodied yet present.
Come.
The word crashes upon my mind like an ominous roll of thunder. Before I can react, the air around me stirs violently. Something—no, someone—snatches my wrist. The cold, invisible fingers wrench me forward, and my feet barely touch the ground as the world fragments into a blur. Light, fire, acid, bones, and the sweet, peaty smell of death all tangle together, and I find myself standing before another set of closed doors.
The temperature drops, and my breath curls in the air. Spectral vines slither from the darkness and uncoil across the floor like living smoke. They wrap around my right arm, their phantom thorns sinking into my flesh—all pain but no blood. The sensation is simultaneously searing and numbing.
White rosebuds dot the vines like stars blooming in the night sky. Their delicate petals gleam with arcane radiance. My attention is pulled from them as the heavy doors creak like old bones.
A figure stands just beyond, barely visible in the half-light of the faintly glowing vines and rippling like a mirage—like the light and shadow of an Ace of Swords. The figure shifts, and I catch glimpses of familiar features: The sharp line of a jaw, a sweep of hair that is the same shade as midnight. And eyes like voids.
“Kaelis?” My voice is a rasp. Though something tells me I could scream and this place would swallow the sound like it never existed.
The response comes in a breath against my ear. Warm and impossibly close, even though he still stands before me.Clara.
