Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Iknew his face.
I saw it in dreams when I finally found rest, only to watch familiar silver hair and rich, charismatic eyes materialize out of the gloom now. Onyx stood in front of me wearing a plain black shirt and trousers, his hands in his pockets.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he called it out, unabashed grin, a hint of the devil in his voice.
I ran. Jumped.
Airborne.
Weightless until Onyx caught me.
This hurt more than I’d thought it would, I decided on the spot. Because he’d been an almost. A friend in my heart and something between guide and mentor and the potential to be more if Mike hadn’t existed.
Onyx had sacrificed himself for me.
Now he spun me off my feet and crushed my chest to his, his palm cradling the back of my head.
“Word spread pretty quickly about the Warrior of EverRose arriving in the Summerlands,” he laughed into my hair. “Thought I’d come check it out, and found you instead.”
“Why are you still here?” The question blurted out of me. “I thought—”
He laughed with abandon, wide and open, before he set me on my feet. “I’m sorry? I’m not sure what you want me to say.” His grin stretched, something I hadn’t seen nearly enough in my life. “It figures the first thing you’d say was a demand.”
I smacked him playfully. “It’s not a demand, it’s surprise. I thought you would have moved on by now. You had…things to do. You told me you were looking forward to reincarnation, but here you are.”
“Goals to accomplish, a life to live?” he teased. “I know.”
And the guilt returned as sharp and as fresh as the day it took root inside of me.
“I should have reincarnated before the gate closed. I was already in the city,” he said.
The hits kept coming. Because of my magic.
We held tight to each other. Movement behind us announced my parents but whatever they saw, they quietly ducked back inside their love nest.
Onyx tilted his head and reacquainted himself with the story of my face. “I was preparing to move on. But I took a walk, one last time to enjoy this body. Uninjured, unmaimed like my living form. I thought it would be a good send-off to make peace with things.”
“One last time.” My mouth formed the words but mine held none of the acceptance that Onyx’s had. Only the sorrow. “I’m sorry.”
He nudged me into a walk with his shoulder. Mom and Dad stayed behind while Onyx and I crept out into the night. Beyond the plateau, the walled city shone like a memory that refused to fade.
Carved into the steep bones of the mountain ridge, pale towers climbed skyward in fragile defiance, each spire tapered. Stone the color of moonlight clung to the cliffs, terraces and narrow streets winding upward in quiet devotion.
Water slipped in silver threads down the rock face and gathered in mirrored pools reflecting the sky in a color trapped between dusk and dawn.
“I know, it’s impressive. It certainly caught me by surprise when I first arrived,” Onyx said.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
He snorted. “It’s even more impressive inside.”
“And you’re sure the gate is shut? There are no other ways into the city?”
“This isn’t a keep to storm, Tavi. It’s one of the last cities of the Summerlands. The Aether protect it and all are welcome.” Onyx shrugged but the simple gesture held none of his father’s scorn.
“So the wall stands,” I muttered.
It circled the city in a vast seamless and snowy white. It held the city, guarding something either too sacred or too powerful to be left uncontained.
From afar, the wall had gleamed with a smooth surface untouched by time and unbroken by any siege. The closer we walked, the easier it was to mark the gate as well as carved decorations like misty branches.
“Tents started appearing when the gate snapped shut,” Onyx explained as he guided me onto a graveled path leading up toward the city. “I’m not sure if the Aether are doing it or not, but the Summerlands cares for the souls who pass through.”
I spared a glance behind us. We’d climbed higher than I’d thought but time apparently passed differently here.
“And when a Fae is truly ready, they step into the temple,” Onyx finished.
The air warmed here but not heavy, touched with the scent of soft blooming things that didn’t exist in any of Faerie’s forests.
“How different would this place be with laughter drifting from those high courtyards,” I mused, craning my neck higher.
I imagined the inhabitants like distant reflections, all luminous and unburdened, ghosts gently fading at their edges.
Onyx reached back to help me over the next part of the path. Or maybe so he wouldn’t leave me behind. We climbed toward the wall without haste.
“Pretty different,” he agreed. “The halls are quiet now. When I first arrived there was music. It kinda lingered even when no one played. We weren’t told where to go or given any orders. The mountains decide the path and our souls follow. There are no doors there. Only light.”
I shivered and Onyx moved closer on instinct, his skin like a furnace when he slid his hands into mine. He stared straight ahead. “If you do one thing for me, Tavi, then please stop beating yourself up about this. It was my choice.”
“You should never have had to make it in the first place. You put yourself back into the Abyss for me after you said you’d never—”
“I know,” he interrupted. “Again, my choice. I did what I knew I had to do. And it worked out.”
I grimaced. “If you call being dead worked out.”
“We’re here, aren’t we?” He shook his head and a lock of platinum hair fell over his eyes. “Anyway, I was outside the city when the alarms went off. Before I could return, the gate had slammed shut and locked. Nobody has come out or moved on since.”
“All these people…”
“Fae pass in Faerie and beyond every day. Mortal world or not, they end up coming through the in-between and into the Summerlands. Except now the walled city is shut and no one can move on even if they want to. Don’t get me wrong, some souls prefer to take their time and linger. But I’m not one of them.”
His gaze hardened.
He still had things to accomplish and should have moved on by now. The revenge on his father might have had to pass hands with Onyx’s death, but it didn’t stop any of the fierce, lingering desires for things he’d missed out on.
Onyx glanced sideways at me with another carefree grin tugging at his lips. “Don’t tell me you came all this way to save little ol’ me. My ego is big enough.”
“You and my parents, I guess. Everyone. You’re all trapped because of me.”
“No one would change a thing. You know that.”
“Sure, you say that now, but if you’d had to wait a hundred years to pass on? A thousand? It would be different.”
“But I didn’t have to wait and neither did anyone else. You’re here even though you shouldn’t be.”
He fought against a scowl, and I understood the direction of his thoughts, the trauma of his mind.
“Yeah, your, ah, your father.” My fingers lifted to graze the skin of my neck but there was no longer a scar there.
“Glass shard in the heart. Poetic if you think about it. Especially considering he’d forced a mate bond on me. You missed out on all the fun.”
Onyx stopped walking.
When I glanced his way, I half expected to see him shift. He always made the change look effortless. We’d shared the same inherent power of Transfiguration, allowing us to shift our forms beyond our wolf or halfling warrior form.
It was the reason Bronwen changed into a crow. Or why I’d gotten trapped as several inanimate objects before.
“It’s fine,” I assured him quickly. “I’m here, aren’t I? And I’ve got my powers unlocked, all sides of me.”
I caught Onyx up on the process to unlock said powers, and the terrible disasters I had to rectify as a result. This was one of them.
When I finished the story I punctuated it with a lame shrug. “I’m sorry for ruining your plans to move on.”
Onyx grabbed my hand, turning my palm over and sketching the lines of fate and heart. For a beat, no one spoke. “It’s okay. I promise. I’m thrilled to see you one more time. And if we are stuck here, I can’t imagine anyone else I’d rather be stuck with.”
I considered the words, mulling them over and spending too much time on the white space in between.
Onyx kept tracing, understanding my moods and quicksilver changes, and never let go of my hand. The space between us warmed.
I was dead. For good. And if I couldn’t figure out how to save the city, then at least I could be with Onyx.
I could let the potential that always existed between us, if Fate had taken another route, grow into something here in the Summerlands. Could see, just see, what might come of it.
Even as the thought grew, I pushed it aside.
I’m going to fix this.
And he was going to move on the way he deserved to. Apparently I’d move on as well.
The concept spiked my terror and froze my blood. “Will you take me to the city gate?”
Pulling my hand free broke the spell. But no judgment or harshness could exist in a place like this, and certainly not between us. Not with Onyx whole and healed.
His grin might not grow to its full potential but when he smiled at me, the last knot in my chest unwound. “Come on. Let’s get into a little trouble.”
We fell into step beside each other, walking the perimeter of the wall, the smooth surface of pure white stone close enough to reach out and touch. And suddenly a massive double iron gate speared up from the stone.
“Here we are. The main entrance. Well, the only entrance. This gate has always stood open, if you believe the guides. No one knows why it shut, and no one has had contact with the Aether since.” Onyx stopped, lifting his gaze to catch the ghostly outline of the highest city spires.
But there had been no storm here. No flood. No mudslide or cyclone or lightning.
I stared up and up alongside him, at the shut gate with no chains to hold it fast. Intricate floral designs curled the iron into a large-scale picture we were too close to recognize.
“I have no idea what I’m supposed to do,” I admitted.
“What have you done before?”
“Generally? Gotten myself as close to death as possible without actually succeeding but saved a bunch of people. But those were elementals. The storms were natural occurrences. What is spirit? Elementally speaking?”
“There’s no true agreed-upon definition,” he replied. “Spirit is all around us. It’s the power of the soul across the races, the energy binding us all together—human, shifter, Fae. Everything in between.”
Onyx tested the gate but the metal refused to budge. He might as well try to move the mountain.
“It’s the life force in the trees, the peace in nature. It’s the matter that makes up everything and nothing. It connects all of the known universe and probably the unknown, too.”
Everything and nothing, the energy of the world, the connection. Except energy didn’t feel like quite the right term. Neither did vibration.
“So…it’s faith,” I said at last.
Onyx chuckled. “Yeah. Kinda like faith.”
I stepped up to the massive gate and rested my palms on the iron. The Fae Academy for Halflings had a gate like this one but on a much smaller spectrum. That one had opened for anyone with a need.
I closed my eyes. Why would the Summerlands not have a wooden gate? Something earthier, more welcoming than metal?
When I opened my eyes, the gate had transformed. My palms rested on a smooth whorl of wood, the design spreading out like petals on a flower.
A grin stretched my lips.
“Huh.” The small sound of surprise vibrated through Onyx’s chest. “Look at that. Someone really has grown into their magic.”
He didn’t offer to help. We both know this was something for me to handle alone. I steeled myself and breathed.
Please, Faerie. Help me get inside. Help me find a way to get these souls to the afterlife they deserve. Help me give the Aether their freedom back if they’re trapped inside like these souls are trapped outside.
It was nothing fancy, no sanctified prayer to a goddess. It was an honest plea for help without trappings or formality.
I know you’re listening. Help a girl out. I could use it.
No awkwardness.
I can’t do this alone. But I have faith in you. Just like you’ve had faith in me this whole time. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? When we had our talk? You wanted belief.
She’d spoken about faith, about the incorporeal nature of her existence because the people of Faerie lost their faith in her. And in themselves.
The war tugged people apart and put them on opposite sides even without a literal wall. There was no difference between them except whatever they made of it.
Blood flowed, hearts beat, people loved and lost no matter what court they hailed from. We all wanted the same thing in the end—happiness for our loved ones.
I’d changed the gate from metal to wood. Now, maybe, Faerie and I could coax it to open.
I kept my eyes open this time and stared hard enough to watch a spark burst into the air above my hands and transform into a glow. But it didn’t actually start at my fingertips.
The glow began in my chest, right at the heart of the fierce love I carried, the one thing Dorian and Kendrick and the rest couldn’t stifle. Then it rippled through my body, spreading the glow until my whole body lit up like a firefly on a summer night.
Onyx stood there, a silent guard, prepared to step in if necessary. But it wasn’t.
Unlike the last four obstacles, this one inflicted no pain. It wasn’t a struggle to the end and a fight to stay alive. It wasn’t going to kill me—because I was already dead.
Strength suffused muscles and limbs, loosening them instead of knotting them tight. A powerful serenity spread through me. Relaxation. Peace. More than I’d ever felt in my life. It went beyond the sensation of everything happening at the right time, at me being in the right place.
This was the care I had for my friends, for my family, for Mike, but amplified. I had become light and positive energy and joy. It filled me to the brim and overflowed.
Onyx stifled a gasp when the glow spread through the gate. I reached for him and our fingers fumbled together. We glowed together. Golden-white light arced across designs of vines and flowers and trees from top to bottom.
The moment they were engulfed completely, the gate swung open, silent and solemn.