Chapter 42
EVER
Was now really the time for that?” Milo stands two trees away, arms crossed and head ticked to the side. His brows arch halfway up his forehead.
“It always is.” Eli adjusts himself, as if to add to his point.
“I had to hold everyone back while waiting to make sure you were done,” Milo says. “You’re not the only ones out here, you know. Most of Sonnet is determined to find the Centress and track us down. They’re loyal to her.”
Eli glances at me. “I doubt they’ll find her.”
I shrug. Who knows where my mother’s body ended up after the flood.
“You guys can come over now,” Milo calls over his shoulder, and Kaleida, Sypher and Maverick J. appear. “He put his dick away.”
“The kid,” Kaleida hisses as Atom steps out from behind Maverick J.’s orange vest.
“He’s got one too,” Milo counters with a smile.
“Yeah, but I don’t piss in front of people,” Atom says, wrinkling his nose at Eli. “And I don’t need a helper either.”
Milo erupts with uncontained laughter.
“Who raised this kid?” I ask.
“Nobody raises kids in Sonnet. They go to school and learn how to deal with pain. And inflict it.” Milo’s own words kill his laughter.
“Oh my gods. We are the worst people to be watching a child,” Kaleida says.
“What happened to the tree?” Sypher asks, studying the destruction.
“I took her so hard she split a tree in half when she came,” Eli says simply. “Want me to see if she can do it again? Plenty of trees around here.”
“Enough,” Kaleida scolds as she releases Atom’s ears after clapping her hands over them only a couple of seconds too late.
Faint thuds sound in the distance. I try to place which direction they come from, but they’re all around us. “What is that?”
“Footsteps,” Eli says. “All the Vaile from the village are coming, and there’s a lot of them and a few of us.” He turns to me. “And that burst of light from you will lead them straight here.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” I ask. “With your hearing, you would have heard them coming from miles away. Same with Milo’s footsteps.” I gesture to the group. “All of their footsteps.”
He lifts a resigned shoulder and drops it loosely. “I did. The Vaile already surrounded us completely long ago. I heard them coming from every side, a full circle. There was no point in running. Any direction we go means facing them.”
“That’s a problem!” Kaleida trills. “The entire village is about to surround us, we have nowhere to go, you knew it and that is what you were doing?” She waves her hand at Eli and me.
Eli stares at her. “Yes.”
She returns a frigid glare. “What’s the plan for not dying?”
Eli catches my gaze and holds it, eyes blazing. “Never will stop them.”
My jaw hangs loose before I gather my wits. “I may be a serious threat to the trees whenever you’re around, but do you actually expect me to split people in half too? I don’t even have shoes on.” As if shoes would make a difference.
“Shit,” Sypher says, tugging on his jumpsuit collar as if it were suddenly hard to breathe. “I’m climbing a tree.”
“I’m not waiting down here.” Maverick J. follows Sypher in search of a climbable tree.
“Take him with you,” Milo instructs, pushing Atom in their direction. Atom whips around and shoots him the kind of glare I try so hard to pull off and never quite manage to. Milo approaches Eli and me, his brow creased slightly in thought, his boyish face hardened with worry. “Ever.”
I go for the last ring on my pointer, wheeling it around my antsy finger. “What?”
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Of course she does,” Eli says.
My blood cells solidify. “Not a fucking clue.”
Milo exhales, long and slow, and rubs his hands together. I expect flames to spark from his palms. “With all my heart, I believe in you.”
I’m not ready for those words, for someone to think I’m capable, to treat me as though I’m worthy of being believed in. I can’t breathe. My heart is stuck in my airway, expanding at an alarming rate.
Milo pivots a smidge to face Eli and extends a hand, resting it on his chest. “With all my mind, I think you’re insane. Just because you’re blinded by love doesn’t mean we should stand around waiting for her to figure out what to do.”
Eli’s tone is sharper than a blade. “This is not about love. I see everything I need to.”
I glance his way, but he doesn’t let our eyes make contact. He made it clear where we stand, both willing to use the other’s body without feeling. Except I do feel. Lots of things I shouldn’t, but he’s right—it’s not love.
Milo swallows what must be all of his courage. “Then I’ll stand by your side.”
Eli plants his hand firmly on the side of Milo’s neck, a dark contrast to his pale skin. His unspoken words ring loud and clear. And I’ll protect you.
But he can’t promise that. “This is stupid. Why would anyone trust me? I have no control over any of it yet!” I snap, torn between their loyalty and the insanity of it all.
The felled tree cracks again behind me, each side splitting in two.
And I pretend we’re not facing an attack, that it’s not on me to achieve control when I can’t even keep a bedroom clean. Or plan more than an hour in advance.
But reality is cruel. And persistent. The drumming of footsteps is nearly on top of us. Minutes away. The soles of our feet soak up the vibrations.
Kaleida joins us, her shoulders rolling back as she speaks, a regal look about her, and a tightness in her neck that makes me think she’s struggling not to glance at the freshly fractured wood.
“Did I ever tell you the story of a woman braving magic and villains in an unknown realm? How she brought down its deceitful leader with her bare hands? How she opened her heart against all odds and—”
“And it was smashed to bits?” I feel my face contort, pulling tight in all the wrong spots, my sinuses burning. Tears sabotage any chance of appearing tough. I know she’s trying to help, but that’s not how it went. Hail pelts the ground, an angry beating.
Her lashes flutter, a closed-mouth smile holding her face in place until she speaks, so calmly that my brain buzzes.
“And found, to her surprise, others opening their hearts to her.” She reaches out and squeezes my pinky finger and turns to Eli.
“I’ll take your other side, if we’re doing the standing thing. ”
Eli only nods, but his eyes say all he can’t, soft and knowing, speckled green and gold.
Milo covers his head, trying to block the building speed and size of the ice pellets, gaining as fast as my self-control unravels.
“Eli, get us out of here! I’m not meant to do this,” I cry, the hail emphasizing with a sudden surge. I’m exhausted from threat after threat, from being asked to do and be more than ever before. My mind hasn’t had time to catch up with every change and revelation.
Eli grabs my ear and pulls me close, the heat of his breath like inhaling a drug.
“Don’t tell me you believe in nothing then pull that destiny shit.
The only thing we’re ever meant to do in any moment is be, until our last, when all life asks of us is to cease to exist as we are.
No bigger plan depicts our future. Not even the gods can mess with meaning.
They can kill, give life, construct a whole world if they want, but we choose every godsdamn moment, and Never, I’m choosing this.
” He hauls me all the way into him, my chest colliding with his.
I hold on tight to his cold sides. My ear stings with the friction of his twisting fingers.
“Choosing our slaughter? What’s the point of existence if my life is constantly threatened? If not by a god who buries me alive or a mother who’d rather stab me than get to know me, then by my own mind!”
“There is no point! You have to make it.” His other hand wraps over the side of my face, enveloping my cheek and jaw and gripping tight. “Every minute of every day. You choose what matters to you, and if it’s nothing but one more breath to get you to the next moment, then that’s a choice.”
My tears splash over his hand. How many millions of times did he breathe himself through to the next moment because he had no choice but to keep on living? Because the escape of death wasn’t even an option. I hold his wrists. “You’re asking too much of me too fast.”
He looks side to side, wordlessly sending Kaleida and Milo skittering backward to give him space. “I have a confession.”
Hailstones smack my skull and bounce off my knuckles. They triple in size, whacking everything in sight. “Your timing is abysmal.”
He releases my ear and bunches the hair above the nape of my neck into his fist, an edge to his voice. “You can do this, and you have to, because I still need you to fix me.”
My shoulders droop with guilt, and the hail slows to a patter. “I know, but I don’t know how to fix your immortality either.”
“I do.” His voice is impossibly low, his words undisputable.
“How?” It’s more a breath than a question. The wind whooshes around us, the rumble of approaching voices louder and louder.
“Zandrite has essence inside him too.”
The first line of Vaile is visible in the distance. I beg my panic to take the form of composure, of bravery and quick thinking—things I’ve never mastered. “Right. From Ametrine.”
“Yeah. I didn’t think of it before. I didn’t plan on going back to the Underbroke.” He chews on his lip, assessing my response. “But only another god can kill him to get it.”
I swallow. Nope. Do not say another word.
He loops my hair around his hand again, tightening his grasp so that his knuckles press into the back of my head.
“Now I know how you’ll fix me. The kid didn’t make it up.
” I shake my head frantically, and every tree swings their branches.
Sypher shrieks from a limb high above. I try to find him, but Eli snaps my face back to his with my hair.
“You’ll get Zandrite’s essence and repair my immortality.
I’ll be me again. Like before my father died. ”
The whole forest lands on my chest. Over Eli’s shoulder, faces are now discernable, resolute and infuriated, resigned to violence. “How could I?”
“You’re a demigod. You can kill him. I won’t let the bastard hurt you.”
I glance at the raw wood to my left and right, the split tree, the lines indicating the years. I did that. I make two fists against his cheeks, my rings pressing into my fingers with the tightness. “How did you know? That doesn’t mean I can kill him.”
“I hear everything.”
Of course he does. He can hear through floors and walls. He probably knew my father was Malachite before I did.
His calmness is so potent it rouses rage that pulses behind my fingertips. “But that wasn’t my confession.”
“They’re here,” I say, despite the obviousness, my voice hushed.
“It’s over, Hollow,” a man in a gray jumpsuit says from off to my left, twenty feet away. Wet, dark hair hangs in his eyes. “You can’t come after the source of the elixir and get away with it.”
I drop my fists from Eli’s face and whisper, “Confess… because I’m about to die.”