79. Everett
Everett
The cave slammed shut.
“Vera!” I lurched for the wall, pounding my fists against it. “Vera!”
Nothing answered me but the thundering of waves rushing through the chamber. Their golden hue lit the entire space, illuminating our grave.
Behind me, Tessa coughed as water climbed up her chest and splashed her face. “She’s gone, Everett. We have to figure out how to get out of here!”
I hit the wall again, hard enough to split my knuckles.
The force reverberated into my injured shoulder, and I nearly buckled under the pain.
Shadows danced at the edge of my vision.
Everything was growing steadily colder, and I knew it wasn’t the water.
Darkness seeped along the fringes of my mind, fingers of shadow tugging me closer to my fate.
“It won’t be long now,” the darkness inside me hissed. “Let go, Illusionist.”
Then I saw the frightened look on Tessa’s face. The wide eyes, the pinched forehead, the shallow breaths as she tried to hold herself together. I no longer cared what happened to me, but I had to get her out of this alive.
Think, Everett. Think.
“Tessa,” I snapped, spinning sluggishly in the deep water. “Can you shift and climb the walls? Find a crack or something?”
She nodded and shifted mid-jump, sailing to the nearest wall in her small cat form.
She scaled to the ceiling and tested all the corners and crevices as quickly as she could, but I knew it was no use.
Mortep had completely sealed us in. The water splashed the top of my chest. It poured from every fracture in the walls, cascading in golden sheets that rose at a terrifying speed.
Another sharp, burning pain lanced through my shoulder. I sucked in a breath, clutching my hand to the throbbing wound. I could feel it traveling lower, steadily inching toward my heart.
Not now. Not yet.
Tessa shifted back into a human and landed with a splash next to me. “Ev, we’ve got to move.”
I pointed at the walls. “There’s nowhere to go.” My illusions were useless here. I couldn’t break stone, I couldn’t trick the waves, I couldn’t—
Pain flared in my shoulder again, worse this time. I wheezed through my teeth, trying to hold back a shout.
“Everett, look…” Tessa’s horrified tone broke off as she stared at my raised arm. My veins had turned pitch black. I ripped open my shirt to find the inky darkness crawling across my chest. Shadows quivered just beneath the skin, some leaking out in little wisps and curling across the golden water.
“Let us in, Illusionist.”
I clenched my jaw, forcing down the voice of the wraith. “I’m fine,” I bit out.
“Stop lying. It’s the infection.” Tessa was usually cool and collected under pressure, but now, her voice broke into a sob. The water was so high on her, she was barely keeping her head above the surface. “It’s going to kill you.”
“I can hold it,” I rasped, even as shadows flew from my lips. The coldness froze my limbs. “I have to hold—”
Water lapped at my neck.
“You’re out of time.”
Tessa swam to the nearest wall and clung to it, frantically looking for any way out. I felt the wraith inside pulling my mind down, down, like a weight dragging my limbs. But as I stared at Tessa and the wall, a memory came back to me.
A shadow wraith slipping through the stone of the crypt like it was nothing. The one at the mausoleum that scratched me had dissolved straight into the solid wall, then reformed on the other side.
I raised my arm above water and gazed at the shadows. They wrapped around my hand and, just for a moment…I let it take over.
My arm disappeared into smoke.
I gasped, reining the wraith back in. I struggled to hold on to myself—my flesh, my blood, my mind—as my hand turned solid once more.
“Tessa, I know what to do,” I said.
“What?”
“A shadow wraith,” I forced out, my voice more gravelly by the second. “It can go through solid objects.”
Realization struck her. “No. Absolutely not. You can’t—”
“We’re out of time.” As I spoke, my breath turned to shadows. “I can let it take me. I can pass through the wall and find a way to get you out.”
“You’re insane!” she shouted above the roaring water. “You don’t even know how it works! You’ll be a wraith, Ev. What if you can’t turn back?”
“I can. For long enough to help you.” I breathed out more shadows. Color disappeared, turning the world into shades of gray and black. “If Vera raises the kingdom. The magic will…” I closed my eyes and shuddered. “Will end it.”
Water surged higher, covering my mouth, but I forced my muscles to relax. Tears filled Tessa’s eyes. “No!” she screamed, reaching toward me with one hand. “Everett!”
The waves swallowed me. Cold, dark, and crushing.
I let go.
Shadows instantly surged forward. They flooded my veins like a second heartbeat, hungry and seeking after being kept at bay for so long.
They unraveled me. My feet slipped to darkness, then my legs, my waist, my chest—all held together by tendrils of shadow.
It was pain, but it was…hollow. Weightless.
Eating away at my bones, my muscles, my magic, until there was nothing left to feel. Nothing to breathe or think or—
You have to get Tessa.
The thought anchored me, keeping a piece of myself intact against the wraith’s hold. My shadow self slunk through the water and to the cave wall. Muscle memory told me to brace for impact, but I slipped right through the stone, as if it were air.
The world snapped into place when I came out the other side. Heat from nearby torches licked at the coldness surrounding me, shocking my senses.
Come on, Everett. Come back.
I fought against the shadowy infection, falling to my knees as I violently coughed up water. My knees…I could feel them again. My body was back, although shadows flickered in and out. “Get up,” I gasped to myself, water trickling from my lips. “Get up!”
Tessa was still inside. I rose and pressed a hand to the solid wall, concentrating on the shadows, and they answered once again. My flesh turned to dark wisps as it sank into the stone.
One more time, I said to the shadow wraith thrashing inside me. Let me return one more time.
Human and wraith merged as one, and I stepped back into the cave. Tessa clung to the wall by her claws, with only about a foot of space left before the entire chamber was submerged.
When she saw me emerge, the color drained from her face. “Ev?” she whispered, eyes wide in horror. “What happened to you?”
Shadows lashed out from my body. She leaned backward as I drew nearer. “Do you trust me?” I tried to say, but it wasn’t my voice. It was the grating, raspy voice of the shadow wraith.
Tessa blinked, then slowly nodded. I floated forward and wrapped my shadow self around her, willing the wraith’s magic to protect her. I drew her against me, fully swathed in darkness, and tugged her to the wall.
With a deep breath, I pulled her through. We melted into solid rock and collapsed to the ground. Tessa sucked in a breath, limbs cold and trembling.
“Ev?” she croaked.
I pushed against the infection with all my might, trying to force the shadows back into my skin. My hands—my real hands—flickered in and out of sight.
“What did you do?” Tessa urged.
I laughed weakly, but the sound was broken. “I got us out.”
Her eyes dropped to my legs, which were still encased in shadows. I couldn’t hold on much longer. The wraith had let me save her, but it was getting stronger by the second.
“No,” she murmured, her expression shifting from fear to grief. “You can’t—”
“Find Vera,” I said, voice thinning. “Don’t—don’t let this be for nothing.”
The shadows climbed higher. I felt myself unraveling again, but this time, I couldn’t stop it.
Tears slipped down Tessa’s cheeks. “Find—Vera,” I rasped again.
My vision went gray as Tessa stumbled down the path, looking back at me one last time.
Everything went numb. The world faded as my body slipped into shadows, turning me into something else.
Something made of darkness. Something that wouldn’t remember her. My Songbird. My…
Shadows around my mind tightened, taking my pain, my rage, my grief, my fear, and collapsing it into one final thought.
Hold on.
Just a little longer.