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.
“Come on. I’ll race you.” Evander shoots me a grin, then nods to the gate. “Loser buys the winner sweets for a month.” When I don’t move, he adds in a whisper, “You’re faster than me. I’d take the wager.”
I shake my head and look away, not wanting him to see my tears.
“All right, then.”
Evander springs to his feet. He dashes toward the gate, his face pinched with concentration, his unruly dark bangs obscuring his jewel-blue eyes. I can’t help but watch, holding my breath as he sticks one foot through the low gate. Master Cymbre hides her expression behind her hand, but I spot a flicker of a smile.
Evander’s leg disappears up to the ankle, then the knee. “It doesn’t hurt! I’m all right!” he shouts, grinning.
He starts to pull back, to return to us, but leaning into the gate threw him off-balance. He flails his arms as he disappears into the blue light completely, stealing my breath.
I leap up. Three swift bounds and I’m through the gate, landing right on top of Evander on the other side. We’re in a damp tunnel that’s not so different from the tunnels in our world.
“Did it hurt?” he whispers through the dark. “Is this place as awful as you imagined?”
I shrug. All I knew in the moment Evander disappeared was that I had to go after him, no matter the cost.
Not even the Deadlands could be awful with him by my side. My partner.
*
“Evander?” I mumble, surprising myself with how groggy I sound.
“No, sweet sister,” Simeon answers, a hitch in his voice, as I open my eyes and blink the grit from them. His face becomes clearer, from his messy hair to his waxy skin and his eyes rimmed with red.
There’s an open book in his lap, its pages crumpled, the ink running in places.
“You look like shit,” I blurt, putting a hand to my aching head without bothering to try sitting up. My whole body aches, and I don’t think it’s up for the challenge. “Rough night?” My mouth is dry, and I have to pause to lick my lips. “Where are we?”
I gaze around the plain but soothing room. The afternoon sun streams through the window, bathing bland portraits of lemon blossoms and cypress trees on all four walls and a wilting vase of flowers on the table opposite the bed in warm light.
We’re in the palace, in the healers’ wing.
“Where is he? Where’s Evander?”
I grip Simeon by his tunic and shake him so hard, his book slips to the floor. He gently pries away my shaking fingers. “I’m so sorry, Sparrow,” he says, his voice hoarse. “We couldn’t save him.”
The noise that escapes me is like the last breath of the dying. Pain burns through me, swallowing me up, like the yawning blackness of the Deadlands ravine.
Evander’s dying scream rings in my ears as the healer’s room shimmers before my eyes, becoming darker, sunless as the place where I last saw Evander’s body. The stink of the Shade’s flesh fills my nostrils. Its breath washes over me, ready to devour me as I lie helpless, watching the shell that was Evander, foolishly begging it to move.
My scream startles a bird from the windowsill.
“Shhhh, Sparrow.” Simeon touches my shoulder, and I fight to stop screaming. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He stretches out beside me, the way we used to sleep in our shared bed at the convent, and repeats the words until my scream becomes a whimper.
Danial sweeps into the room carrying a tray. His eyes are more bloodshot than Simeon’s. “We’re going to make you better,” he says, “which is what Evander would want.” He sounds defeated. “That’s all we can do.”
“Don’t talk about him like he’s dead!” I shout, my voice breaking over the words.
Danial bows his head. “Of course. My mistake.” He sets his tray down on a high table and begins pouring a dazzling blue liquid into a glass.
Simeon holds me against him, and I put my hands over his, clinging to them.
“I hurt, Si.” I sound like a child, but I can’t make myself stop any more than I can stop my body from shaking. “I can’t take it. I can’t.”
Danial strides to my bedside, smoothing back my hair and holding the glass of blue drink to my lips. “I’ve healed all your wounds, Sparrow. The only pain you feel is in here.” He taps his head, his kohl-lined eyes glistening. “I can’t heal the mind—no mage can. But this should help. Drink up.”
“What is it?” I manage.
“A tonic to soothe the nerves.”
Even through the haze of pain, I remember that the usual calming tonic is gray and smokes at the surface. “Are you sure?”
Danial almost smiles at that. “This one is stronger than those we normally give. It’ll help. Trust me.”
Somehow, between sobbing breaths, I drain the glass. It tastes like the small, hard green apples the Sisters of Death sometimes use in their pies. I close my eyes when Danial takes away the glass, suddenly exhausted.
I don’t want to scream anymore. I don’t want to do much of anything. I can only think of Evander, the Deadlands, and the Shade, but almost like an outsider. I know I should be hurting, but the pain can’t sink its hooks as deep into me as it did moments before I drank the potion.