“Is this even the real you?” I asked, and he sighed again, the corners of his mouth quirking down quickly. Another familiar expression that made my chest hurt.
“Does it matter?” he asked, and I stepped back, my head starting to clear. It had been nice to believe in this for a little while, but I couldn’t keep pretending, no matter how much I wanted to. This was just another distraction, and while I didn’t know how he was doing it, I knew I couldn’t give in anymore.
“Yes,” I said, and now there was a good two feet of space between us. “Because I can’t just walk out of here and pretend I said good-bye to the real you, when actual you is still in here.”
A crease appeared between David’s brows. “Harper, isn’t it better to remember me this way?” he asked, and look, I wanted to say yes. I wanted to kiss him one more time and not have to confront whatever scary things might be waiting for me in this cave.
But that wasn’t who I was, not as a Paladin, not as a person.
“I can’t,” I told him now, and his frown deepened. It seemed like he was shimmering for a second, and I suddenly realized I could see the rock wall of the cave behind him. Through him.
“This is all that’s left of me, Harper,” he said, but his voice was faint. “What’s waiting for you farther on . . . that’s not me anymore.”
My eyes stung with unshed tears. I believed him, that this . . . vision or whatever it was of him was the last, dying remnants of the real David, saying good-bye. Maybe because he loved me, maybe because he didn’t want me stopping the Oracle.
Knowing David, it was probably a little bit of both.
“I can’t,” I said again. And then, firmer, “I won’t.”
With that, I bent to pick up my fallen sword, and then I stepped forward, moving through him as he faded from sight completely.
Head held high, I walked out of the open cave space and toward a narrow fissure in the back wall of the cave. The farther I went, the brighter the passageway got, and for a moment, I wondered if there was a hole in the ceiling, opening up to the sky, like it had in the other chamber. But then I realized that, no, the light wasn’t coming from above, but from out in front of me. And it wasn’t the soft yellow glow of the sun, but the bright, unnatural gold I’d seen spilling out of David’s eyes over and over again. I remembered the way he’d looked in the grips of a vision and tried to tell myself I was prepared for whatever it was I was going to see when I reached the end of this path.
I was wrong.
The narrow passage gave way to another, larger open chamber, so high the ceiling was lost in the gloom despite the light.
David—the real David—sat in the middle of this chamber. His clothes were ragged and dirty, with holes in his T-shirt and in the knees of his jeans. I had a feeling they were the same clothes he’d been wearing the night he left Pine Grove, and for some reason, that made me the saddest of all. What had he been through since that last night? What had happened to him?
“David,” I called, the name echoing around the cave, seeming to lodge in my heart as I said it.
Because it wasn’t David sitting in front of me. Despite the ragged clothes, the hair that still stuck up in weird tufts, the truly terrible footwear, the person in front of me wasn’t the boy I had loved. He was . . . a thing.
An Oracle.
And then his bright eyes turned to me, mouth opening.
For one heartbeat, stupid as it sounds, I thought maybe I was wrong. Maybe he wasn’t as far gone as I’d thought, and he was going call me “Pres,” and things would be okay. That the illusion he’d created was close to the real thing.
Instead, he looked at me with those blinding eyes and intoned, “Paladin.”
Chapter 34
I SWALLOWED HARD, my mouth dry.
“You used to have a different name for me,” I said, my voice sounding thin and tight. “Do you remember that? You called me Pres.”
David—or the thing that had been David—didn’t move, didn’t even give any sense that he’d heard me.
Cold sweat was dripping down my back, but I made myself step a little closer. “Of course, I’m sure there were other things you called me that weren’t nearly as nice, but you usually didn’t say those to my face.”
“Where is the Mage?” David asked, the words echoing, and I bit back a sigh.
“Which one? Ryan or Blythe? We have two, you know, and it’s a total—”
David flung out one hand, a bolt of golden light shooting from his palm and cracking against the rock behind me. Tiny pebbles and dust flew, and I flinched away.
“That’s a new trick,” I said, wishing I didn’t sound so shaky. “Where did you pick that up?”
“You know the Mage I’m speaking of,” David said, and I wondered if we’d spend these last moments like this, talking in circles around each other.
But then maybe these weren’t the last moments. Maybe there was a chance that I could actually find the David still inside him.