Chapter 19
There was no floor. There was no ceiling. There was only... absence.
I fell, but falling implies direction. It implies gravity. This was more like being unraveled, thread by thread, until there was nothing left to hold my shape.
I floated in a space that wasn't black, because black is a color. Black has depth. It has texture. This was the color of a closed eye. The color of a dead frequency. The color of nothing.
"Rhett?"
I tried to scream, but my voice made no sound. The air (was there air?) swallowed the vibration before it could leave my throat. It felt like shouting into a pillow, suffocating and mute.
I kicked out, searching for resistance, for walls, for anything solid.
My foot met nothing.
My hand grasped nothing.
I couldn't feel my arms. I couldn't feel my legs. I couldn't feel the familiar tug of the bond—the warm, crackling golden thread that connected me to Rhett, the cool, liquid silver of Lucien, the sturdy, rooting green of Kai.
For the first time in months, the chorus in my head was silent.
The silence wasn't peaceful. It was deafening. It was a physical weight, pressing against my eardrums, trying to crush me inward.
It's gone, I thought, the words echoing in my own skull, too loud in the quiet. He cut it. He severed the bond.
Panic, cold and sharp, spiked in my chest. It was a physical pain, a jagged shard of ice piercing my lungs. I tried to reach for the magic—the static I had learned to channel, the riverbed Lucien had taught me to be.
Nothing.
It was like trying to breathe in a vacuum. My lungs expanded, but there was no oxygen. My soul reached out, frantic, clawing, but there was no connection to grab onto.
I'm dead, I thought, the realization washing over me with a terrible, paralyzed calm. He killed me. He dropped me into a hole and I died.
But dead people didn't feel cold.
And I was freezing.
It wasn't a winter cold. It wasn't the nip of frost or the bite of wind. It was a deep, bone-settling chill that started in the marrow and worked its way out. It felt less like temperature and more like... loneliness. Absolute, primal loneliness.
This is what he is, a voice whispered in my mind. Not my voice. A memory. This is a Null.
I curled into a ball, floating in the nothingness, hugging my knees to my chest. I couldn't feel my skin touching my skin. I was numb. Disconnected.
How long have I been falling?
Time didn't exist here. Minutes stretched into hours. Hours into days. Or maybe it had been seconds. There was no sun to mark the day, no heartbeat to mark the minute.
Just the void.
I started to see things.
At first, it was just flashes. Sparks of color in the gray.
A burst of red—Ivy's dress at the gala.
A flash of gold—Rhett's eyes when he laughed.
A smudge of green—the greenhouse where Kai grew his impossible roses.
I reached for them, desperate for color, for life. But my fingers passed through them like smoke.
"Please," I whispered, my lips moving without sound. "Please, don't leave me."
The colors swirled, twisting into shapes.
I saw my mother. Not as I remembered her, tired and worn, but young. Laughing. She was holding a baby—me?—and pointing at a storm.
Look, Lina. The lightning isn't scary. It's just the sky dancing.
"Mom?"
The image dissolved into static.
Then I saw Rhett. He was standing with his back to me, shirtless, the moonlight gleaning off his scars. I reached out to touch his shoulder, to feel the heat of his skin.
Rhett.
He turned. But he didn't have a face. Just a smooth, blank expanse of skin where his eyes and mouth should be.
You're empty, Lina, the Faceless Rhett said. His voice sounded like grinding stones. You were always empty.
"No," I whimpered, squeezing my eyes shut. "That's not real. That's not him."
Are you sure? whispered a voice that sounded like Lucien's, but colder. Crueler. What are you without us? A broken circuit? A failed experiment?
I saw myself. I was standing in a mirror, but my reflection was fading. My hands were turning transparent. My heart was a black hole in my chest, sucking everything in.
Just a battery, the reflection sneered. Just a container for other people's power.
"Stop it," I sobbed, the tears feeling hot and strange on my frozen cheeks. "Stop it, stop it, stop it."
I don't know how much time passed after the hallucinations started. It felt like a lifetime. It felt like an eternity of ghosts and whispers.
My body was heavy. So heavy. It would be so easy to just... let go. To stop fighting the cold. To let the gray unravel me completely.
Why struggle? the void whispered. Peace is quiet. Peace is empty.
I drifted. I felt myself thinning, stretching, like butter scraped over too much bread. My memories were getting fuzzy. What color were Rhett's eyes? Gold? Or amber? Or black?
I couldn't remember.
Let go, the void crooned.
I closed my eyes. I relaxed my hands.
Thump-thump.
The sound was faint. Distant. Like a drum beaten underwater.
Thump-thump.
I frowned. What was that?
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
My heart.
It was slow. It was weak. But it was stubborn.
It was the only thing in this entire universe that was making a sound.
I focused on it. I poured all my remaining attention into that rhythm.
I am alive, the beat said. I am here.
I wasn't just a battery. I wasn't just a container. I was a person. I had a heartbeat. I had a history.
I focused on my memories. Not the ghosts the void had shown me. The real ones. The messy, imperfect, beautiful ones.
Rhett laughing in the kitchen, flour on his nose, trying to make pancakes and burning them. The smell of smoke and maple syrup.
Sensory Check: Smell. Burnt sugar. Warm skin.
Kai's hands in the dirt, coaxing a seedling to life, his brow furrowed in concentration. The smell of wet earth and crushed mint.
Sensory Check: Touch. Grit under fingernails. Soft leaves.
Lucien reading poetry by the fire, his voice like smoke, his finger tracing the spine of a book. The smell of old paper and clove cigarettes.
Sensory Check: Sound. The crackle of the fire. The baritone hum of his voice.
Ivy's glitter bombs. The sharp, chemical tingle of ozone.
Amelia's reluctant smile. The taste of bitter coffee.
Arthur's tea. Measuring chamomile with scientific precision.
Marrow could take the magic. He could block the connection. He could trap me in a box of nothing.
But he couldn't take the memory of it.
"You missed a spot," I whispered.
This time, I felt the vibration in my throat. It was tiny. A scratch. But it was there.
"You missed a spot," I said louder.
I wasn't empty. I was full. filled to the brim with them. With love. With loyalty. With the absolute, unshakeable knowledge that I belonged to a pack, and they belonged to me.
And suddenly, with a clarity that cut through the gray like a laser, I realized what this place was.
It wasn't a prison.
I looked at the darkness—really looked at it. It wasn't just empty space. It was active. It was pressing against me, probing, trying to find the cracks in my psyche. It was pulling at the edges of my soul, trying to siphon off the despair, the fear, the hopelessness.
It wasn't a prison.
It was a stomach.
Marrow hadn't just trapped me. He was trying to digest me. He was trying to break down the bonds, to dissolve the connections so he could feed on the raw energy released by the severance.
He was an eater of magic. And I was the meal.
A flash of red-hot anger sparked in my chest. It wasn't the panic from before. It was pure, indignant rage.
"Well," I said to the darkness, my voice gaining strength, echoing in the impossible space. "I hope you have indigestion."
I didn't reach out. I stopped trying to find the bond around me.
I reached in.
I grabbed that feeling—the love, the memory, the absolute stubborn refusal to be alone—and I held it. I concentrated it. I compressed it until it was a diamond-hard point in the center of my chest.
You want energy? I thought, baring my teeth in the dark. You want to eat?
I remembered the Solstice Gala. I remembered the feeling of Rhett's hand on my waist. The feeling of Kai's flower in my hair. The feeling of Lucien's eyes on me.
I remembered the heat of the bond. The electric, terrifying, wonderful current that linked us together.
Here.
I didn't push magic. I pushed Lina.
I pushed my personality. My sarcasm. My chaotic, messy, human heart. My refusal to be a victim. My refusal to be a snack.
The void shuddered.
It wasn't a subtle tremor. It was a convulsion. The gray space rippled like a disturbed pond.
"I am not food!" I screamed, the sound echoing now, bouncing off invisible walls that were suddenly vibrating with tension. "I am the connection! And you cannot eat this!"
I envisioned the bond not as a thread, but as a chain. A heavy, unbreakable anchor chain.
Drop the anchor, I commanded myself.
I slammed my will downward.
Somewhere, far away—or perhaps right next to me, separated by a thin veil of reality—I felt a tug.
It was faint. Like a fishing line twitching.
But it was there.
A golden thread. Frayed, thin, battered by the void, but glowing with a fierce, stubborn light.
Lina!
It wasn't a word. It was a roar. A howl of pure, desperate need.
Rhett.
I'm here! I screamed back, throwing every ounce of my will toward that golden light. Rhett!
Then, a silver thread wrapped around the gold. Cool. Calculating. Sharp.
Hold on, love. We have the scent. We're coming.
Lucien.
Then green. Strong, growing, winding around the others to form a braid.
We have you. Don't let go. Root down.
Kai.
The darkness swirled, angry now. The "stomach" was reacting to the foreign object. It tried to crush me, to smother the light I was generating. The cold intensified, biting, stinging.
But it was too late. I had found the signal.
I wasn't floating anymore. I was heavy. I was solid.
I was an anchor. And three very powerful ships were pulling on the chain.
The void groaned. It sounded like tearing metal.
"Wait," I whispered, an idea forming in the chaos.
If I was an anchor... and they were pulling with the strength of a frantic Triad...
And Marrow was the void...
"They're not just pulling me out," I realized with a terrifying thrill.
The geometry of the spell shifted in my mind. Marrow was connected to this space. He was this space.
"They're pulling him in."
I grinned in the dark. It was the same smile Rhett gave before a fight. The same smile Lucien gave before a checkmate.
"Hey, Dean!" I shouted, spreading my arms wide, becoming a lightning rod for the bond. "Company's coming!"
I grabbed the braid of gold, silver, and green. I didn't just hold it; I yanked it.
PULL! I screamed to my mates.
And they pulled.
The void cracked. A hairline fracture of blinding white light appeared in the nothingness.
Then another. Then another. Spiderwebbing cracks of reality shattering the illusion.
And then, with the sound of a thousand windows breaking at once, the world broke open.
Light—real, messy, beautiful light—flooded in. The smell of ozone. The smell of sweat. The smell of wolf.
And the scream of a Null realizing he had bitten off more than he could chew.