Chapter 64 Reeve
Reeve
I’m in freefall, and then I’m not.
And then I’m landing, not face-first but feet-first, like some invisible wind is blowing against my body and tilting it upright.
When the soles of my high-tops—which Electra restored and returned to me—kiss the stone, the air rushes out of me.
I’m in the mine.
Inside…
My chest clenches as I draw in a deep lungful. The cool air is sharp with minerals that tickle my lips and tongue. When the itch creeps from my palate to my throat to my bloodstream, I understand it isn’t the humid stone I taste, but the magic within it.
What will it do to me?
What will…Gaea do to me?
Slowly, I turn in place, taking in the rugged gray walls rising so high that the cave’s mouth looks no bigger than a pothole. The sky beyond is blindingly bright. Blindingly empty.
No one is looking down at me.
No one is calling out to me.
Where’s Electra? What happened to her? She’d been running toward me, screaming my name. Hadn’t she?
The others must’ve wrangled her back with their magic or arms. I tell myself that they’re her family. That they’ll take care of her.
Still, I whisper into the thick obscurity, “Please keep Electra Serran safe. And my friend Quinn Hayes also.”
I know I haven’t died, because I’ve been there, experienced that. Though there’s darkness, there’s no peaceful nothingness down here. The air is rife with an energy that stings my skin and blood.
Tarian discovered the mine the year his mother died three decades ago. Which means he was a toddler when he fell in. I can’t imagine how terrified he must have been, considering how unsettled I feel.
But that could also be a byproduct of my guilt. I may feel repentant, but repentance doesn’t absolve guilt; it merely forces you to face it.
A flicker sparks in the wall ahead, spreading in slow ripples until the stone shimmers a glacial blue.
I squeeze my eyes shut. When my lids lift again, the glow has spread, threading through the stone in deliberate lines and coils that are too precise to be random—like a pattern…or a glyph.
Yes…glyphs.
“I don’t know your language,” I say, keeping my tone mellow to avoid brash echoes.
The walls go dark. Have I offended the mine?
When light surges to my left, I twist toward it. A vertical line of glyphs is lit up.
“I don’t understand—”
The glyphs flash.
I swallow, bite my lip.
Another flash.
I feel like the mine is trying to tell me something, but what?
The glyphs shrink but stop blinking. My eyes squeeze into a squint that I ease by taking a step forward.
The glyphs shrink again. I take another step forward. They dwindle in size once more.
“Okay… You want me to move closer.” I lick my lips, my pulse strengthening. “Right?”
What if I’m misinterpreting all of this and she wants me to back up?
The glyphs shrink once more, dropping to the width of my fist. I linger there, undecided. When they start to flash again, I don’t stop walking until I’ve reached the wall.
The ice-blue light, that’s now as small as the scrawl on Electra’s nape moves, not in bursts but in long, slow rolls, like water.
I’ve witnessed my fair share of extraordinary things, but this is something else. Something incredibly humbling.
“I’m sorry for having been willing to destroy you.”
Two new glyphs cut through the dark air above my head. I have to strain my neck to read them. Well, not read…see them.
They wink out of existence before I can commit their shape to memory.
I glance back at the smaller ones, which haven’t vanished. When they begin to flash again, I reach out. The winking stops. Stealing a deep lungful of air, I graze the stone.
Heat scorches my fingertips like I’ve just grabbed a pan from under the broiler without an oven mitt. I jerk my arm back, but a force impales my palm to the hot, humming stone.
Cold sweat beads along my brow while fire streaks through my veins, hot enough to weld sinews.
Why did I ever think apologizing for my wrongdoings could absolve me of them?
Too little too late.
I look up at the cut-out of light above, willing the brightness to fill with Electra’s face.
Just one more time.
Just so I can carry her striking stare to the beyond.
But she doesn’t appear.
No one does.