Chapter 74
The runes ignite.
I tear my hands through my hair, heart rupturing at the sight of Raeve drenched in the silver light oozing from the active runes, clawing at her chest like she’s trying to peel back her skin and rip out bits of herself.
Ahvi shuffles back and hugs his knees, eyes wet and wide. “I’m so sorry,” he repeats, rocking, peering at Raeve knotted on the ground.
“Not your—fault,” she bites out between full-body convulsions, each teeth-gritted jolt a storm striking me in the sternum with a rage of lightning bolts.
She finally loosens.
Chest heaving, she begins to untangle from the knot of her twisted limbs. “Count your … daes, you … serpent bitch,” she mutters, then plants her hands on the ground and shoves up, all the softness ripped from her face, replaced with a mask of cold, deadly rage.
She clears her throat, swiping the dirt from her cloak as she straightens, squares her shoulders, then slits her gaze at the ring of runes casting her face in a silver sheen. “It’s not working.” She cracks her neck one way. The other. “I don’t feel anything.”
“You will …”
Ahvi’s soft words echo through the tunnel like a haunt.
Tense silence slips by while we wait.
I hunt every movement; note every blink, every lip twitch, every breath of motion, finding nothing out of the ordinary while she crosses her arms and taps her foot on the ground.
I frown, still watching Raeve as I turn my head in Ahvi’s direction. “Are you sure—”
Raeve’s breath hitches. She squeezes her eyes shut and drops her chin to her chest, the fall of her loose hair hiding most of her face.
With a snarl, she snaps up her hood and whips around, giving me her back. And though the action is swift, something about her hands needles me. Like they’re not hers at all, but akin to spindly branches clawing at the mist.
Skeletal.
Ahvi meets my gaze. The briefest glance, but all the confirmation I need that I’m not going mad.
Jaw clenched, I charge forward, circling Raeve in the effort to look her in the eyes again. But with each step I take, she turns a little more, keeping her face shielded from my sight.
“Raeve.”
“Sire.”
“Why are you hiding.”
“It doesn’t count as a question if your voice doesn’t hitch at the end,” she says, voice rougher than usual. “Meaning I’m not obliged to answer.”
I grind my back molars, still chasing her as she continues to turn, keeping her face just out of view. Something that feels morbidly poetic.
“Why are you hiding?” I try again, prepared to give it to her in three other languages if she fucking asks for it.
She wobbles, then buckles in unison with my heart. All the breath punches from my lungs as her knee strikes the ground, one emaciated hand slamming down to steady herself, looking like a web of bones splayed across the stone.
My entire body twitches forward—a knee-jerk reaction I couldn’t stifle if I tried—but Ahvi’s hand latching on to mine halts me from lurching past that ring of runes and pulling her into my arms. I hadn’t even seen him move.
“No,” he rushes. “You can’t. The runes might get angry and stretch things they shouldn’t.”
Creators.
Helpless, I watch, trembling with the need to hold her tight. Protect her. An urge that only exacerbates when she, too, begins to shake.
Blood dribbles from somewhere within her hood and splats on the ground, making me feel like a frayed thread. “Raeve, speak to me,” I grind out. “Give me something.”
The rugged desperation in my voice bounces off the tunnel’s walls.
“I’m”—cough-cough—“fine. Feel free to”—wheeze—“take a wander and enjoy the sights.”
An icy wind gusts down from above. Carries an eddy of snow that congeals into the shape of a feminine face and long, billowy hair.
The apparition tightens her lips and attacks Raeve with a blast of wind that shears back her hood.
My heart pumps needles deep into my skin as I scour her hollowed cheeks and twiglike neck; so emaciated that even a Shade-borne predator would struggle to find anything to pick at.
Blood slicks her cracked lips, her skin so translucent that every vein is a blue, bulging track I can see too well, her sunken eyes bearing none of the crisp color they usually strike with.
Like a waif sipped and sipped and fucking sipped until only the scraps were left.
She looks at me from between limp strands of black, a desperate, vulnerable ache in her gaze that fucking flays me.
Her fingers curl into the pale hood, yanking. A feeble attempt to tug it forward that offers me a jarring view of her hands—now boasting big, weepy welts. Like frostbite. Or—
Burns.
She tugs the hood again, trying to cover up.
“There’s no point,” I say with my entire chest. “Moonbeam, please. Put your energy into breathing.”
She opens her mouth to speak, but then her eyes widen and she jerks, folding. Like someone just booted her in the gut. More blood spills from her graying lips and dribbles down her chin.
Splits my heart in two.
She binds her arm around her middle. “That’ll be the”—cough—“stab wound.”
My knees give way, striking stone, gaze dropped to where her hand is fisted into the folds of her cloak, like she’s trying to claw the petals closed on a ruddy flower.
Blood squelches between her fingers, turning her white cloak red and sodden as it seeps and seeps—
Too much.
She’s losing too much.
My thoughts are confirmed when I look at her throat. Watch that thick vein that feeds up just below her ear work its way through slow, uneven beats, each one a heavy stomp to my chest.
I watch with bated breath for the next … the next … the next … feeling more powerless than I ever have. Helpless to fix this. Caught in one of my soul-destroying slumber-terrors, unable to claw free.
And still … the blood continues to pour.
Panic floods me.
I look at Ahvi, now kneeling by the Book of Voyd, feather in hand, tipped with that sparkly substance he used to paint the runes surrounding the ancient tome. “Do it!”
“I can’t!” he blasts, wide eyes flicking from Raeve to me and back again. “She’s still got a ways to go.”
“But she’s almost dead.”
He winces.
Raeve groans.
I snarl. Realize she waited until the final fucking moment to drip her blood into Sereme’s vial. Probably just before she was about to draw her final breath.
“You stubborn female.”
“Not the … right … time,” she wheezes, easing back so both legs are folded beneath her. The moment she finds balance, her head wobbles, eyes rolling. She blinks tight, then pops her lids wide open, battling to stay awake.
All the while, I battle not to unclench my fists, claw my hands into the ground, and rip the fucking world apart.
The runes sputter like a dying star, losing all their shine. I don’t wait for permission to lurch forward and pull her close, groaning at the feel of her. All bones and nothing else, her breaths plagued with a deathly gurgle.
A sadistic haunt. The perfect weapon shaped to slit my chest and flip me inside out.
A flick of Ahvi’s feather completes the ring of runes surrounding the book, causing them to take on the same luminosity as the others lost. When Avi looks up, I notice there’s no color left in his cheeks or lips or fucking anywhere.
His blood. He said he wouldn’t miss it.
He lied.
“Ahviiii—”
“You have to willingly put your blood on the book,” he says to Raeve, ignoring my heated growl—its residue still blazing my throat. “You have to want to live.”
The entire world seems to still as she looks at me, meeting my stare with startling precision. She draws a long, gurgled breath, lifts her bloody hand, and rasps, “I … do.”
Two small words have never held so much power. Have never felt so monumentally groundbreaking.
She slaps the book.
A force of glacial light explodes from the runes in a pulsing rage, blinding me. Sinks through my skin and bones, weaves through my marrow, and makes my lungs feel solid.
Until it stops.
With Raeve still held tight against me, I blink away the glare, trying to make out the shape of things.
Raeve’s head has lolled to the side … her eyes closed … mouth open …
My heart caves in on itself.
“No—”
Ahvi crumples sideways.
I punch my hand out in time to cradle his head before it strikes the stone, frantically feeling for both their pulses. Finding Ahvi’s.
Not Raeve’s.
“Moonbeam …” I shake her, smooth the hair from her face. “Wake up.”
Nothing.
I give her a jolt. “Raeve?”
Not a twitch.
Panic mauls through the contents of my chest cavity.
I pull her face to mine, kiss the spots where her dimples sleep. Press my ear to her chest.
Shake her … hard.
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. Doesn’t open her eyes and look at me or crack a smile and slit me with her words. Doesn’t do anything but lay slumped against me, limp just like Mah was when I wove her arms around her newborn daughter and pretended she hadn’t left us both.
“WAKE UP!”
The world tunnels, time stretching as something inside me tears through—so fucking slow I feel every fiber give way …
Give up.
A languid death that starts in the very core of my being, works its way out, and spreads like a plague.
I realize I’m screaming, crushing her close, as though I can make her whole again—
A thump in her chest. Weak … barely there … yet it feels like a punch. So hard and sturdy I’m certain it happened.
Certain it was real.
Please be real …
I guard my breath, face dug into the crook of her neck while I wait and hope to hear another, begging the Creators to make … this … real.
I’ll do anything.
Please—
Bud-ump. Bud-ump. Bud-ump. Bud-ump. Bud-ump. Bud-ump—
My face bunches.
I lean back just enough to cradle Raeve’s cheek, swiping my thumb over the swell of it; less gaunt than it was. Slowly plumping back to her regular, healthy form, coloring with life.
“You’re here.” I kiss the cold tip of her nose. The smooth skin between her brows. “You’re okay—”
Something pinches my shoulder.
Bulder’s song disappears so fast I immediately know I’ve been pinned.