Chapter 31
EVER
I’m sure I’ll break on impact, that my bones must be as weak as my unfed muscles. The fall lasts longer than it should, the mere seconds slowing to a torturous crawl. Too much time to think about the awaiting pain, to fear the unknown.
I remind myself it’s always worse in my head than reality, but they’re on the verge of a tie right now.
I land stomach-first on the back of one of Zandrite’s tunnel runners, flattening my lungs.
I forfeit all my air. It squeals and bucks me off.
I fall to the moist dirt, black claws gouging the ground all around me.
Their vicious movements shear off layers of skin.
Horns jab me in the ribs. I distance myself from my body, leaving pain beyond reach, beyond recognition.
I’m fine.
I watch patches of flesh peel from me like stickers, revealing a beautiful, raw red below. Blood is so familiar to me that it’s calming. But it shouldn’t be. I cover my face. A knee clobbers my stomach, and I fold into myself with a rolling groan, pulling a vision over reality.
The tunnel runners sniff my body, cold, wet noses nudging roughly against me.
Then wet licks that burn through layers of skin.
I scream in agony, but not for long. Their merciless tongues scrape over my cheeks.
My neck. My chest. Until my skin is charred black, so many layers deep that not a sound comes out.
So deep my heart burns to a crisp, its final beat no more than a smoky puff.
A bony blow to my chest pounds the vision from my mind.
I return to finely textured dirt, to harsh grunts and a stench of filth so strong that I gag until my ears pop.
A nose prods at my pocket, a slobbery mouth chomping until it finds what it wants.
The tunnel runner holds my father’s eyeball in its mouth, and I swear it smiles before it bites down on the slippery sphere.
Blood spurts. Then it chews. And swallows.
It ate the only piece of my father I had.
That bastard.
I reach to attack, thinking death by horn may be the only future that awaits me—and that it’s still worth it.
But a whistle captures the creatures’ attention.
Their heads snap back and freeze. Their claws extend, growing longer than fingers.
They latch onto the steep walls of the pit and climb despite the soft earth, as though simply walking up stairs, not a ten-foot wall. The last creature climbs out.
And I’m in. And so far down. The cold earth chills me. So this is my end? I die a slow, cold death of dehydration in a pit. My essence is taken from me. Then I rot.
I. Think. Not.
“Fill it up,” Zandrite yells.
I wait for air to reach my chest again before I can scream. “Furry fucker!”
Moist dirt showers my head, muddy chunks landing at my sides.
Only the tunnel runners’ legs and sharp claws are visible from this angle, kicking the piles into the pit.
I scoop the dirt against the wall, smacking it to pack it flat and create steps out, but it’s too damn soft.
My arm pushes in past my elbow. The more I exhaust my options of getting out, the faster it fills.
I try to keep ahead of it, stomping the dirt to stay at ground level.
I can’t think beyond that. I’m weak, bombarded with urges. It’s too much, too fast, as if the ground dropped into itself and took me with it. Cool dirt surrounds me, trapping my legs. Then my waist. My chest and arms. I’m swallowed up.
But I’d rather reach for pathetic hope than let him be responsible for my death. I will fight until the end.
And as if it were as natural as death to me, I search for roots, for connections, for life, for magic.
I put every breath and beat of my heart into it.
But I sense nothing. I’m alone in the damp, dark earth.
I wrap my arms around the top of my head, blocking my face and creating a pocket of air as the dirt piles in around me.
The dim light is snuffed out. And my courage dwindles as fast as my confidence.
I work the chain in my hand, pulling the stone closer with one tug at a time as I face the truth.
I wanted my necklace with me in case I didn’t make it—not because I’ve always had it, but because I don’t want to die alone.
Which means, maybe, some part of me believes that gods are real.
That Ametrine is real. That I carry her with me everywhere.
And always have. I grip the stone tight, my heart screaming for help.
Took you long enough.
I snort into the darkness, the dirt around me falling away inside my head, the symptoms and urges of linking dampened. How do you manage to make me feel better with four words?
I do know you better than anyone.
The stone heats in my palm. Are you real? I’m not crazy?
Ever, I’m real. I’ve been with you from the start. I can’t see the world around me, but I feel all the emotions. I couldn’t communicate with you because Centress Oreyla had the other half of my stone, but I promise, you’ve never been alone.
Never has my heart shrunk so small and grown so much at once, feeling exposed and cared for—and not knowing what to do with either. You could really feel what I felt? All my life?
Every death. Every rejection. Every fear. The destruction of your trust and hope in people and the world. In yourself. I was there for it all, unable to let you know.
I make two tight fists, one over my pocket that held my father’s eyeball for those short minutes—the closest I’ve ever been to him—the other holding the creator of the world inside it.
Believing and insanity are the same, it seems…
I only had one choice all along. Ametrine owes me nothing, but somehow, my sunken soul falls into her hands. I wasn’t okay.
I know. The plan was for my stone to be whole. Then I could have guided you through everything, told you who you were from the start, who you’d become and what I need from you. I’m so sorry.
Her remorse is surreal, making unused corners of my heart itch. But I have to understand. Where did my essence come from?
The arrival of a new demigod in the Mortal Realm—your birth—broke the rules of nature I had set and cracked my death stone in half.
That was the plan, though, to give away the last of the essence I held.
I had no way to use it. And the stone was already weak.
A fracture had formed from—she pauses then picks up on the next thought without explanation.
Just like I’m talking to you, I spoke with Malachite, your father and my true love.
I sent him to the Mortal Realm with my stone.
It had to be present when you were born so the essence would enter your body.
I made him pick a mother for you and pretend to love her until you were born, but his taste in mortals is atrocious.
I dismiss her story. Or try to. How can I believe that the creator of the world sent my father to the Mortal Realm to choose a woman to bed, only to have me.
To have somewhere to put her essence? That’s not real life.
But I hold on to the idea anyway, my heart clutching the possibility that I wasn’t alone all those years.
You couldn’t have been there for everything.
I was, she says. For every foster parent, for Reggie Junior, for every map left unfinished. I felt everything—your emotions and those of everyone around you.
Then you knew Cam was lying to me. It’s a cold accusation. Every time she left me at another foster home, it was a lie. She knew where I belonged.
Ever. Warning laces her tone. It only makes my thoughts come faster.
You didn’t stop her. You let her keep me from home, from my people and magic? From my fucked-up mother? You let me trust her.
Ever, listen.
No. Too late. How come you let all this happen? It doesn’t matter that she had no control over any of it—she orchestrated my existence.
Her voice wraps around me in delicate tendrils. There’s more to Cam than you think. Or less, depending on how you look at it.
What’s that supposed to mean?
You made Cam.
I made her what? I snap. You think it’s my fault she betrayed me?
You created her in your head. You gave yourself someone to trust, someone to hold your hand through the hard times. You believed she was real so you weren’t alone.
No. My body pulls taut with denial, as well-constructed as a brick wall. She held my hand. She gave me my rings. One for every home that didn’t want me anymore. She was real.
You made up the rings to have a piece of her with you always, a piece of yourself that loved you unconditionally, even when the rest of you couldn’t.
But my rings. I let myself back into reality enough to feel them in the dark, the cold metal caked in dirt. They’re right here, real. Ametrine waits, quiet in my mind as I face the facts.
It can’t be. But Eli’s words as we lay surrounded by coffee trees run laps through my mind, kicking dust in my eyes and forming tears to wash away the lies. What other rings? he had asked.
He couldn’t see them. I sob, the memory hitting hard enough to stop the flow in my veins, to round up every moment of my life and throw it up in doubt. I suck in crumbs of dirt and cough until I taste tears and snot.
Because they don’t exist, she says. And neither did Cam.
What about at the falls? She threw the babies. She tackled me. Sh-she tried to force the elixir down my throat to make me cooperate. My body tries to kick and squirm, but I’m stuck in place with my truths. I killed her.
That was you battling to choose between facing the pain and numbing it. You chose pain over ignorance, then killed a piece of yourself. I felt it. You trusted Eli, and he let you down, so you took the only good you had created for yourself and destroyed that too. You betrayed yourself.
I clutch her stone harder, but it doesn’t help the way I fall apart inside. I grapple with the question I don’t want the answer to. Why would I do that?
Because you care about him, she says, as though it were as simple as that. And if someone hurt you more than he did, if you did something awful too, then you could justify how you felt about him. You could open your heart to someone as dark as you felt inside.
But I can’t let him in. Not all the way. I want to stop at that, especially as the urges edge their way back in with renewed force, but I continue. I don’t love him. Even though I want to… and don’t want to.
That’s not—she sighs—that’s not your fault. You have to ask him about that. And I know you have questions for me, but right now I need you to survive. I need you to escape. I have plans for you.
I tried! I even tried magic.
Get angry, my fierce one.
Her presence wanes, leaving me buried in the darkness. But not quite alone as I mull over her parting comment. What is getting angry going to do? It’s pointless. No one listens. No one cares. It’s a waste of uncontained feelings.
But even as I try to stop the swell of rage, my thoughts stoke its flame. My buried body. My hungry stomach. My bleeding limbs. My burned cheeks. Each contributes to the ire. Even my worn-out heart. It turns toward the fire.
I scream.
And the ground rumbles. Harder and harder. Until it’s shaking. My pocket of air is lost to the shuffle of dirt. It covers my face, my chest. My eyelashes grow heavy with the clumps. I inhale chunks through my nose. And the panic ripping through me is knife-sharp.
The earth around me is as far from stable as possible, much like myself.
And crying isn’t an option. Nor yelling.
And I can’t help but wonder if all those feelings finally found a purpose, if I made this happen, if I can be as destructive on the outside as I am on the inside.
The ground grinds with a final, violent shift, and the bottom drops out.
I fall.
And fall.
Into another room. Dirt lands on top of me, cold and heavy and suffocating.