Chapter Twenty-One
‘No!’ Elara whispered as she forced her eyes open against the blinding light and looked wildly around.
‘Enzo?’ she asked, her voice high as she waded in the water. His presence had been faint, nothing but light, but she’d had time to tie the tether to him—she was convinced of it. She looked down at her shaking hands. The tether was gone.
Oh gods. Oh gods. No, she couldn’t have lost him. Elara refused to believe it, stumbling away from the river.
‘Enzo?’ she cried, running back through the forest and to the small clearing by her dream’s entrance, praying his soul had simply wandered there, waiting at the door for her. But it was empty, quiet.
‘Wake up, Elara. Wake up,’ she screamed, sobbing as she pressed her palm to the indigo door, pushing it open. She yanked on her own tether, feeling her way blindly back into her real body, her eyes clouded with tears, and woke up viciously.
Elara fell forwards, clutching her stomach, Enzo’s tether gone, only her snakestone in her hand. The sound that tore from her throat was not human.
‘No,’ she wailed as she fell to the floor, Eli’s dark room suffocating her. ‘Please, gods, no,’ she begged, her mouth contorted in agony as she pressed her forehead to the floor.
‘Elara,’ she heard Eli say, voice filled with alarm as he grabbed her shoulders. She pulled away from him. Saw a haze of blonde hair in front of her, faintly registering Merissa was there too.
‘I will trade anything, anything. Bring him back, bring him back, bring him back,’ she screamed to the room.
‘Bring him back,’ she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut.
Suddenly, the stitches holding the seams of her together—that one hope in the darkness: that she would wake Enzo, would accept no other outcome—split.
‘El,’ she heard Merissa sob.
‘Bringhimback, bringhimback, bringhimback, please, please, please.’ She shook, repeating the words over and over as she curled up on the ground, hair plastered to her face as pain racked her body.
‘Elara.’ Eli’s voice was firm. ‘What happened?’
She ignored him. ‘Please,’ she whispered to the floor. ‘I have nothing left.’
The door slammed open, and Elara didn’t even deign to look up, wails shaking her body. An animalistic keening forced its way out of her throat.
She heard the figure stop, breathing heavily, but saw Eli and Merissa still.
‘Elara,’ Leo finally said, breathless. ‘Come outside.’
‘What?’ Elara whispered, her voice cracked. ‘No. It didn’t work.’ A sob choked her as she squeezed her eyes shut. ‘He’s gone. I was too late.’
Elara felt arms lift her up and pull her out of the room. She tried to kick and push them away; she didn’t want to be touched.
She heard Leo curse, tightening his grip, while Eli took her other arm, so she had no option but to stop resisting. She gave up, slumping against them until they were in the hallway. Sheer pain burned through her, rendering her immobile as she was hauled out.
They tugged her through the dark atrium, Leo pulling the door in front of them open so the others spilled out on to the gravel drive. Elara stumbled, Eli righting her. And then she clamped her eyes shut, the light blindingly bright.
‘Open your eyes, Elara,’ Merissa whispered, and it sounded like joy in her voice, not despair.
Elara did, squinting against the brightness awash upon the ground, her gaze catching on her friends, all staring at something behind her, transfixed, eyes shielded by their hands.
She registered distant screams and cries carrying all the way from the city.
She craned her neck, shielding her own eyes as she saw it: the reason there was uproar in Castor.
The sky was on fire.
A great, burning orange ball was rising higher and higher, so much brighter and fiercer than the Light itself, the sky behind it bursting into fragments of every colour of the rainbow.
She heard Eli laugh behind her, clapping. Felt Merissa wrap her arms around her, muttering prayers and blessings as she wept. And finally, Leo turned to her, his eyes filled with tears as he whispered, ‘He’s awake.’