Chapter 64
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
MICAH
The world came back to me in stages. Shadows first, then shape and color and detail. I was standing in a forest, my eyes blinking open, my head spinning. Heat dissipated off my skin, red embers drifting into the sky.
Dakota crashed into me, burying her face in my chest, shaking and sobbing and grabbing onto me for dear life.
What is happening?
“You’re okay,” I forced myself to say through the pain invading my withered lungs, through the sheer panic making my thoughts race.
My voice was rough, and I tried to clear my throat.
All my muscles ached, all my veins burned, and I could barely keep myself upright through the disorientation. “I’ve got you now.”
“Micah,” she cried, her tears warm on her cheek pressed to my skin, her small hands holding my back.
“Masters,” I murmured, trying to hide the way my throat was closing. I held the back of her head, felt her soft hair on my palm.
All my thoughts were disjointed, like I was missing all the connecting pieces, and I couldn’t figure out what’d just happened to me.
I was alive again, somehow. Dakota had somehow dragged me back into the world.
And I was terrified because I had no clue what that meant, or what my life would be like now.
“Are you okay?” Dakota asked, turning her head to look up at me, her chin wobbling and her eyes full of tears. I just nodded and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, ignoring the trembling in my fingers.
She needs me.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Are you okay?”
“No.”
“Come here.”
I managed to shift my eyes and look down at my arms wrapped around her. My veins were black, snaking under my skin, webbed like a sinister spiderweb over my forearms and hands. Without looking, I knew the rest of my body looked the same. I could feel it.
When I’d burned all the neon out of my blood, it’d blackened my veins.
Every inch of me hurt, and there was a weakness in my body I’d never felt before.
I looked around, taking in all the trees surrounding us. There was moss under my feet, damp with rain, and more droplets sprinkling on my shoulders and the top of my head. The air was thick in my tired lungs, heavy and settling, the neon content too low to help me now.
My eyes landed on another figure through the dark trees. He was walking away from us, and I wasn’t strong or lucid enough to feel for his emotions, but I didn’t need my aspect to see the shaking of his shoulders.
Ash.
Dakota was saying something else now, but it was difficult to focus on her voice through the muffled sensation in my head.
I turned my head down so she could see I was still here, even though I was terrified and exposed and no longer functioning at the capacity I wanted to.
I still had her. There were so many gaps in my memories, so many pieces missing from my brain, but I could remember all of her.
The longer I stood here, the more I felt it.
Dakota Masters.
Sitting in the back of my classroom by the windows, eyes turned towards the sky, shoulders rounded so she’d take up less space. Head bent over the table while she neatly circled answers on her exams. Slender fingers typing beauty into the technicality of a lab report.
Uncertainty shining in her beautiful green irises when I asked her to work in my lab.
Trembling fingers. Blue pen strokes. Long hair tucked behind her ear.
Hours and hours of work in isolation.
Just us.
Just me, learning the world again through her eyes.
Just her, learning to believe in herself through mine.
I take care of you.
“Micah,” she repeated, hands pressing to my cheeks.
“Masters,” I mumbled, the shape of the word so familiar in my mouth that my eyes stung. I tried to blink back my tears faster than they could form. How long have I been away from this world? How am I back here now? Why?
“I love you,” Dakota said, stretching up on her tiptoes to brush her lips over mine.
She was different and it was taking me too long to figure out why.
Panic strung across my chest like barbed wire.
The longer I stood here, the more my mind started to race.
Thoughts were coming back to me, too quickly and too slowly at the same time.
It was too much for me to comprehend in my state but not enough to me to be caught up with her.
Her eyes were glossed over with concern. I didn’t like that look.
I need a second.
Give me a second.
I didn’t let go of her, though. I love you. Yes, I love you.
“I love you,” I finally managed to say, the words breaking on my lips.
She was so perfect and I wished I could snap back into the person I’d been before. The magnitude of my panic only seemed to be increasing as my mind woke up further. I hated feeling the way I did right now. Uncertain, disoriented, out of control. Why is Mason so far away?
I needed to sit down.
“I saved you,” Dakota said. She looked so tentatively hopeful and proud of herself.
“How’d you do that?” I questioned. The lump in my throat grew.
“You turned me into an angel, and now I’m Sigeian, like you.”
“Oh, right,” I was breathing unevenly. My legs wobbled.
“I kept trying for months to bring you back here. I don’t really know how I did it.” Tears slid down her perfect cheeks. Why isn’t Mason here? I glimpsed him sitting on a rock near the cliff edge through the trees.
“You did?” I couldn’t remember anything that’d happened since I’d slipped away into that darkness.
“I tried to. Can you walk?”
“I don’t think so,” I panted, suddenly realizing how much I was leaning on her. She was supporting most of my weight now. When did she get this strong?
“Wait here.”
She transferred my weight to the trunk of a tree, then left in the direction of Mason. I noticed I wasn’t wearing anything, and yes, my entire body was covered with the black veins. Obvious lines of onyx tracing patterns below my skin, still smoldering.
I couldn’t keep myself upright, even with the tree, so I sank to my knees on the ground. More rain pattered down around me, hitting pine branches and dripping onto my shoulders, rolling down my skin.
Everything hurt.
It hurt and hurt and hurt.
I wasn’t supposed to be here now.
My memories slowly appeared back in my brain, a slideshow of moments.
Fighting with Dakota in my truck. Pulling over and letting her get out.
Watching her walk away. Watching her get hit by the truck.
Pressing my mouth to hers and exhaling. Mason’s arms wrapping around her body while she coughed and gasped.
Weakness pulling me beneath the waves. The flick of my thumb on the lighter before the world went dark.
Relief.
I hadn’t been afraid.
As I sealed my mouth over hers and tears welled in my eyes, her blood covering my hands, so warm and human, I felt relief.
Because it was finally over.
And it’d meant something.
My life had meaning, had purpose. For that one fleeting moment, I had everything I’d ever wanted.
In my hands, they were both safe. I could save her. I could protect him. I could keep them both alive. All the weight on my shoulders had finally lifted.
And now…
Now, I was weaker than I’d ever been.
Crouched on the ground, gritting my teeth, heart slamming so hard on my ribs that I thought it would burst, black veins mapping the entirety of my skin. I should’ve been able to sense Dakota as a Sigeian, but I couldn’t. Both her mind and Mason’s mind were elusive to me. I couldn’t reach them.
There weren’t any memories from the moment I died until now. There wasn’t anything.
Just a void.
I’d completely ceased to exist. There was no afterlife for angels.
Dakota was back, standing in front of me, Mason beside her. I looked up at them both, but Mason wouldn’t meet my stare. His eyes were red, faintly glistening.
“We can take you home and it will all be okay,” Dakota said, her voice still wobbling a little bit.
“How long has it been? Or—”
“Nine months. It’s September now.”
I swallowed, my throat dry and aching, tears welling up in my eyes.
“Nine months? I was gone for nine months?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
There was only one thing I could think about. One terrible thought that stood out among the rest as something so important…something I might’ve missed…
“Did you graduate?” I asked, my voice barely audible.
Dakota was quiet, so I looked up again. Her face was all twisted up like she was trying really hard not to sob, her teeth digging into her lower lip to keep all her sadness inside, big tears rolling down her cheeks.
She finally nodded.
It gutted me.
It fucking gutted me.
She graduated, and I wasn’t there. I didn’t get to see it.
I held my arms out and she dropped down, crawling onto my lap and burying her face in the curve of my neck, her whole body trembling.
“I’m so fucking proud of you,” I said hugging her tightly, wrapping my body around hers, holding her safe against my chest. Maybe I was pretending this hug was to comfort her, but I needed it more.
I needed to feel her like this. She was alive and she was safe.
My throat felt prickly, thorns wrapping around me. “I knew you could do it, Masters.”
She sobbed louder, clinging to me, her hair soft under my palm.
“I wish you were there so much,” she cried. “It was horrible.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, my voice breaking as I choked up. Even if I was here now, I could never get that day back. How much else have I missed?
“We can talk about it later,” she said, sniffling, wiping her eyes even as the tears kept coming, her chest spasming with little suppressed sobs. “I want to make sure you are safe at home.”
“I’m okay, baby girl. I’m here now. Okay?
” I murmured, sounding a lot more confident than I felt.
I honestly wanted to break down, for more reasons than I could count.
Not here, not now. My head was still reeling, my thoughts racing fast enough to make me dizzy, but I didn’t want to lose my shit in this forest. I could be strong for Dakota.
Strong enough not to let her down now, after she’d somehow brought me back from the dead.
“Okay,” she whispered. Miracle girl.
Dakota and Mason both helped me walk through the forest to Mason’s car where I laid down in the backseat. It reminded me of when we’d killed Aamon. That felt like a lifetime ago. Two lifetimes ago.
My stomach was turning by the time we pulled up at my house.
Dakota grasped my hand, a surge of coldness engulfing me, taking me by surprise.
She’d made both of us invisible.
I was grateful for it, because I knew I wasn’t able to do it, and walking outside while unclothed and covered in black veining wasn’t a good idea—even if it was mostly dark now.
Mason helped me stumble inside, not letting me collapse on the couch the way I wanted to, and instead half-carrying me up the stairs to my bedroom.
He shrugged my arm off his shoulders, my body weight sagging onto the mattress.
The only thing I could think about was how Dakota’s scent was on my pillows.