Chapter 3 Between the Pages #2
“Remember Ryan’s party junior year?” His voice dropped into something softer, almost nostalgic. “That was fun. You were so nervous, it was cute. We should hang out again. For real this time.”
“I didn’t want to kiss you,” I snapped, stopping dead. My cheeks burned. That kiss had been an ambush. He’d cornered me in a hallway, his hands on my waist, his mouth on mine, before I could process what was happening. He’d pulled away laughing when I’d frozen, and called it “adorable.”
Xavier’s grin widened as if he found my anger entertaining. “Come on, don’t be like that. You didn’t exactly push me away.”
My stomach twisted.
“I’m just saying, we’d be good together.” He stepped closer, close enough I could smell his cologne. “You need someone who gets you. Someone who can handle—” His eyes traveled over me slowly, lingering just long enough to make me cringe. “—everything.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” I hissed, backing up.
“I know enough.” His voice stayed light, as though we were just having a conversation. He reached out like he might touch my arm. “I know you’re still the same girl who needs someone looking out for her.”
My body reacted on instinct, my pulse spiking and nausea roiling in my gut, intimately familiar with this pattern.
“Back. Off.”
Luz’s voice cut through like a blade.
She appeared at my right, stiletto dangling like a weapon. Amy materialized on my left, keys laced between her knuckles.
Xavier’s annoyed gaze flicked between them. He didn’t look intimidated, only inconvenienced.
“Relax,” he said, holding up his hands. “I was just being friendly. No harm done.”
“Friendly is asking how someone’s doing,” Amy hissed. “Friendly isn’t dragging up trauma and using dead nicknames to hit on them.”
Anger flickered across Xavier’s face, his jaw tightening before a calm mask slid into place.
He laughed dismissively. “Jesus. Can’t even talk to someone without the feminist brigade showing up.” He backed away. “Whatever. Have fun with your guard dogs, Bubble Girl.”
He tossed a wink over his shoulder and walked off.
I let out a shaky breath, relief flooding through me.
“Are you okay?” Luz asked, sliding her shoe back on.
“Yeah,” I said, though my voice shook. “I hate that he still makes me feel seventeen and powerless.”
“You’re not powerless,” Amy stated, keys still glittering. “And next time, we won’t give him a chance to back away.”
Luz slipped her arm through mine. “Come on, mamacita. You need tea and relaxation.”
I wanted to tell them about the book, the dreams, the way Professor Ward looked at me. But the words stuck in my throat.
We headed toward the student center together. But even surrounded by my best friends, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had shifted.
The book in my bag felt heavier with every step.
By the time I made it back to my dorm, my arms ached, and my mind spun. Luz had dragged Amy and me to dinner. Her treat, because “nobody faces down douchebags on an empty stomach.” But I’d barely tasted the food.
All I could think about was the book.
Luz and Amy eventually headed out to their study group. The room was finally quiet.
I curled up on my bed and opened the tome, spine groaning. The scent of dust and something metallic, like old coins, wafted up.
An illustration greeted me: the shadowed woman in a field of brittle flowers, gaze fixed on the cloaked figure at the horizon’s edge.
But this time, I could read more.
The name of the Goddess continued to elude me, my eyes refusing to see it. There were illustrations scattered throughout, primitive but beautiful. A woman with vines in her hair. A crown of bone and petals. A black river with her standing on the shore, one foot in water, one on land.
On one page near the center, I found a faint coin-shaped impression. The inscription beneath read:
“Those who carry the coin shall walk the river’s shore and return to the place between life and death. But beware; memory without grounding invites madness.”
My fingers traced the impression, feeling the ghost of weight that was no longer there.
The depression under my fingertips grew warm. Then hot. Heat radiated up my palm, spreading through my wrist, my arm, until my whole body burned with it. Everything fell away into warmth and earth and—
The ground beneath me was blackened earth. Warm like something alive and breathing. My bare feet sank into soil that felt ancient.
The field stretched endlessly in both directions.
On one side, wildflowers erupted in impossible colors, violets that glowed, roses the color of fresh blood, something golden that I had no name for.
On the other side, the land was gutted and gray, littered with brittle stems and delicate white fragments that might have been bone.
Every breath felt shared, as if the atmosphere itself were alive and watching. A low hum threaded through the world; not sound, but a vibration I felt in my bones.
I looked down.
My hands—not my hands, too slender, skin warmer gold—were streaked with soil. Petals clung to my palms, as they’d grown there, stems curling and rooting. My nails were rimmed with earth.
I knew this place the way you know your own skeleton.
A voice crossed the field.
“Kore.”
The name struck like a bell inside my chest. My knees wanted to give out under the weight of it, but I stayed standing.
Because I knew that voice too.
I turned.
A figure stood at the crest of a hill across the divide, the place where bloom met rot.
His robes bled into the landscape, shadows made manifest. I couldn’t see his face beneath the hood, but my chest ached with recognition.
My pulse stuttered, then steadied, matching a rhythm I couldn’t hear but felt in every vein.
My gown shifted around me. The fabric was impossible: silk shimmering with dawn light and midnight both. It moved without wind, alive.
The flowers nearest my feet shivered and began to twist inward, petals darkening to ash. The ground cracked beneath me; not breaking, but opening, as something primordial stirred awake.
The figure raised his hand.
“Kore.”
The air between us tasted like split pomegranate; sweet enough to drown in, bitter enough to choke on. Copper and overripe fruit. River water and crushed flowers. My lungs pulled it in greedily, like I’d been suffocating my whole life and just found air.
He was suddenly in front of me now.
The space between us crackled. I could feel his presence like winter pressing against glass. My mind skittered away from the details, but I could make out sharp cheekbones, storm colored eyes, a mouth that knew sorrow and stubbornness in equal measure.
Beautiful and devastating.
Mine.
His hand was still raised in offering.
“Come home,” he said, and his voice was desperate, breaking on the edges. “Come home.”
I reached for him—
I jerked upright in bed, gasping, my heart thundering.
The room was dark except for faint blue streetlights through the blinds. My sheets were twisted around my legs. The book lay on the floor, pages bent, shadow stretching oddly across the carpet.
I pressed my hands against my eyes, but the afterimage of the field of life and death clung stubbornly to my eyelids.
Kore.
The name echoed in my skull.
My whole body was trembling like I’d been running for miles.
I took a breath, then another. Counted backward from ten as Reenie taught me.
Just a dream. You fell asleep reading.
Except it hadn’t felt like a dream.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, needing to move. My feet hit the floor, and I froze.
There was soil under my toenails. Black earth, still damp.
No.
My pulse kicked into overdrive. I looked down at my hands. Clean, but when I turned them over, caught in the creases of my palm was a single violet petal, the same impossible color from the dream.
No, no, no, no—
This wasn’t possible. Dreams didn’t leave physical evidence. Dreams didn’t—
My breath came faster, chest tightening. The room felt too small, the walls pressing in.
I noticed something then, poking out from under my pillow, near where Callista’s book rested, still wide open on the bed.
There was a note underneath it, folded neatly like someone had placed it there while I slept.
But the door was locked; I’d locked it myself. The window was latched. Luz was still out; no one could have come in.
It had to have come from the book. Maybe it had fallen out in my sleep, and I accidentally shoved it under my pillow.
My hands shook as I picked it up. The paper felt fragile, like it might crumble if I squeezed too hard. I unfolded the note with trembling fingers.
Beneath it, in dark red ink, it read:
“She blooms where the dead walk. Seek the river. Seek the truth.”
It was written in a way that made my blood run cold. This was my handwriting. My exact loops and slants.
The petal in my palm began to wither, color draining until it turned to ash between my fingers.
Something inside me cracked open like a seed splitting.