Chapter 16
The night is heavy and the air thick as I slink through the dark, forgotten passageways beneath Arcana Academy.
These corridors are crumbling from disuse and coated in a thick sheen of dust. Moonlight sneaks through the shattered panes of grime-coated windows that overlook the sea in faint and fractured beams that quickly fade.
My breathing seems to echo back to me like a warning that this is a place in which no life is meant to tread.
Deeper and deeper I go into the bedrock, drawn by an unseen force. One that has my chest squeezing tighter with every step.
Come. The word slips between my ears like silk.
Come. Another voice, layered over the first. Deeper and far more familiar. I know that voice. Come to me.
Kaelis. The name rises to the forefront of my mind as a shiver races up my spine. I glance over my shoulder, half expecting him to be there. But he’s not. He wasn’t here the first time I traversed these warded pathways. He isn’t now.
My footing falters and my balance slips. I grab blindly for the wall, but my hand closes around nothing but air. The shadows surge, swallowing me whole.
I plummet into a void. But the darkness isn’t empty—it’s alive.
Shifting, reaching, cradling me. My landing is impossibly gentle.
The moment my shoes make contact with the floor, silvery flames ignite in twin braziers flanking doors ahead.
They illuminate ornate reliefs on the doors’ surface.
At a glance, the carved symbols seem chaotic—a jumble of layered and overlapping tarot glyphs—but then their pattern clicks into focus.
Unlike the last time I was here, no cards are necessary to open the doors. As if recognizing me, the doors part on their own. No…perhaps recognizing not me, but instead the voice that’s summoned me here. The one that’s still looming at my side, disembodied yet present.
Come.
The word crashes upon my mind like an ominous roll of thunder.
Before I can react, the air around me stirs violently.
Something—no, someone—snatches my wrist. The cold, invisible fingers wrench me forward, and my feet barely touch the ground as the world fragments into a blur.
Light, fire, acid, bones, and the sweet, peaty smell of death all tangle together, and I find myself standing before another set of closed doors.
The temperature drops, and my breath curls in the air. Spectral vines slither from the darkness and uncoil across the floor like living smoke. They wrap around my right arm, their phantom thorns sinking into my flesh—all pain but no blood. The sensation is simultaneously searing and numbing.
White rosebuds dot the vines like stars blooming in the night sky. Their delicate petals gleam with arcane radiance. My attention is pulled from them as the heavy doors creak like old bones.
A figure stands just beyond, barely visible in the half-light of the faintly glowing vines and rippling like a mirage—like the light and shadow of an Ace of Swords.
The figure shifts, and I catch glimpses of familiar features: The sharp line of a jaw, a sweep of hair that is the same shade as midnight. And eyes like voids.
“Kaelis?” My voice is a rasp. Though something tells me I could scream and this place would swallow the sound like it never existed.
The response comes in a breath against my ear. Warm and impossibly close, even though he still stands before me. Clara.
My name is strained upon his tongue. His voice is so heavy with yearning that it nearly cracks.
My knees weaken as the shadows grow longer, and unseen hands wrap themselves around my waist. I barely manage a gasp as the hands—his hands—glide over my shirt and then slip underneath the fabric.
With touch alone they set my skin ablaze.
Destiny’s design…
Nothing is real but his touch. The light of the roses has faded, and the eternal void envelops me. A vast expanse that demands surrender. Desire wells within me as yet more hands run over my calves, up my thighs, and land on my sex with a touch that makes my breath catch.
Clara, my Clara…
His voice is everywhere and nowhere, inside my head, pressed against my lips. There is nowhere the invisible hands don’t reach now. They caress me with a reverence that makes me ache. That draws a moan as they ease away every pain I carry.
“Kaelis,” I breathe, yearning—desperate to touch him.
Soon, this man, my destiny, promises. I feel lips brush against my neck, my collarbone, lower and lower. Soon…
“Clara?” A new voice jolts me awake.
I lurch forward as if I’d been slapped. Twino catches me so I don’t tumble into Arina, his hands steady on my shoulders. Concern is etched deep into his furrowed brow above his spectacles.
“Are you all right? You were making sounds in your sleep.” He glances away, and I nearly perish at the thought of what “sounds” I might have been making given where that dream ended.
“I’m fine.” I get control of my breathing by pressing a palm to my brow. A thin sheen of sweat covers my forehead. For a second, my focus is on my right forearm. The same forearm that the roses wrapped themselves around in my dream.
“A nightmare?” Twino asks. I hope it looks that way.
“Something like that…” I check Arina, but her still form shows no sign of movement. The blankets are still exactly as I’d settled them on her. Luckily, I didn’t disturb her.
With a hand at the back of her neck, Twino tilts her head and slowly pours a draught between her barely parted lips.
The liquid is thin and pale and smells faintly of herbs.
I almost ask if Jura was the one to make it, and my whole chest nearly collapses in on itself with a fresh wave of guilt and grief.
“What’s that?” I manage.
“It’s mostly liquid food,” Twino explains. “They’re hoping that with enough sustenance in her, she’ll begin to rouse.”
My first instinct is not to trust anything from anyone when it comes to my sister. But harming Arina wouldn’t be wise of them…not when they want my help so desperately. If I can’t trust a man, I know I can always trust his sense of self-preservation.
We both hold our breath as Arina murmurs faintly when he pulls away. But nothing. Twino sighs and returns the stopper back to the bottle.
“So…” I start. “Are you working with the Worldkeepers, then? That’s your choice?”
Twino pauses, the empty bottle still in his hands. He sets it down carefully. Every movement is as purposeful as the next word he chooses. “No.”
“No?” I can’t say I’m surprised, given his reaction to Gregor last night. But there’s a finality in his voice that catches me off guard. A sound that prompts me to ask, “Then it’s on to rebuilding the Starcrossed Club?”
“No,” he repeats, and as he brings his pained eyes to me, my stomach drops.
“I’m tired, Clara. I am not even old, but I feel as if I’ve lived a thousand lives.
I’m tired of revolutions, of schemes and heists, of waking up and wondering if it’s my last day to be alive and pretending I don’t care. Pretending I’m not afraid.”
I stare at him, struggling to process what he’s saying. What it means for all of us, for everything we’ve built together. “Twino…”
He takes my hand in both of his, meeting my gaze.
For a moment, all I see is his younger self across the table from me in the original Starcrossed Club, ready and eager for our next mission.
But that man is gone. In a blink, I see the man he is now staring back at me.
I haven’t looked at him this closely in too long… he does look well past his years.
“I will always, always be your friend, Clara. I am not turning my back on you; but I can’t keep going on as we have been.”
“I understand.” I smile, even though fresh tears sting my eyes. Because I do understand. I wish I could turn my back on it all sometimes, too. I wish Arina and I would’ve left through the tunnels and taken our chances with the desert and the border of Oricalis when we had the chance as girls.
Twino’s eyes shift. “I should say, we’re done.”
I follow his gaze. Ren has poked his head around the curtain. He steps toward Twino and me.
“You’re sure?” I ask Ren, already knowing the answer but needing to hear it anyway. If Twino’s mind is made up, then Ren’s is, too. They’ve been together long enough that they will move as one.
“I don’t want to die in some forgotten sewer,” Ren says solemnly.
I look away, knowing exactly what he means.
Like Jura…The words hang between us, heavy as the shackles around the wrists of Marked Arcanists sent to the mills.
Ren crouches with a tired smile. “I don’t blame you, Clara.
But what happened to Jura…it gave us some clarity.
We’re not immortal. You might be the luckiest woman I’ve ever met, but even you don’t always get out unscathed.
And if you can’t, how could the rest of us think we had a shot? ”
“All we have is this life,” Twino says quietly.
“And we want to start enjoying it, not just living it. Not spending good years looking over our shoulders or waiting for the next knife in the dark. We know what you and Gregor said about the World erasing memories, and we’re all right with it.
We’ll take whatever future comes to enjoy this present in our own way. ”
I suck in a breath and nod slowly. I want to beg them to stay. Want to scream that I need them. That my luck is only as good as the people around me. That I just lost Jura, and I can’t lose them now, too. That we’re stronger together, and they can’t just give up on everything we’ve fought for.
But I simply nod. And then nod again, eyes pressed closed as I will tears not to fall. I can understand their choice. More than that, I respect it. They are choosing their own fate—making their own world.
As I will make mine.
I pull Twino in for a tight embrace. Then do the same for Ren. “Please, keep yourselves safe.”
Ren studies me as we pull apart. “We’re not the ones to worry over here. What about you, Clara? What will be left of you if you keep on this path?”
What will be left of me? The question hits deeper than expected. I’m barely holding myself together physically and emotionally. Every crack is plastered over with fury and a raw determination that borders on insanity.
“There will be enough of me to meet a new world.” And that’s all that matters. Before either of them can follow up with another question, I stand and say, “Vaduin will want to hear of our decisions. I must begin preparing to return to the academy.”