CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
EMMERY
Emmery was lost.
Like a mote of ash or dust, she floated in the endless darkness of the Divide. This place that had once been her solace with Shade, now owned her soul and had become her tomb.
She rubbed her hands down her numb arms, desperate to feel something.
Her pain had ebbed, but only a dismal lack of …
everything remained. This vacantness inside her manifested as a new horror, especially as she failed to feed air into her lungs, to touch the magic in her blood.
But her body no longer belonged to her, and her heart beat like a detached, vacant thing.
Hisses sounded from the shadows as she treaded the inky waters, and whatever lurked, tracked her every step, waiting to feast on her. Time meandered and dragged, and when she grew tired and fell to her knees, she laid on the rippling ground and begged it to swallow her whole.
Only when she spotted salvation ahead, a sanctuary from this liquid death, did her heart lodge in her throat and a small cry slip from her.
Emmery sprinted toward the field of noxcore.
As she took her first step onto the soil, the petals yawned open at her presence.
Their humming power fizzled in her blood, and she inhaled it, craving the strength, needing the magic’s nectar to feed her.
She sank to the ground, and reached for a petal, but her hand passed through it like smoke.
A wave of panic crashed over her. The outline of her fingers frayed as Briar’s did when she wielded her shadows too long. Once more, she tried to pick a flower and failed.
“It won’t work,” a familiar voice said.
Her skin prickled as her eyes lifted to find Zyphira seated in all her uncaged glory on a boulder nearly twice her size. She blinked behind her thick spectacles and her foot bobbed as she waited for Emmery’s approach.
Emmery sighed in relief from this infinite loneliness, though it was short-lived since Zyphira never stayed long.
She beckoned Emmery with an outstretched hand. “Let me see you, child.”
Hesitantly, she closed the distance and laid her hand in the Oracle’s warm touch. As Emmery met her strange plum-coloured gaze, it seemed they were both tied to this place, though Zyphira owned the darkness, while it ate Emmery alive.
“Something has happened. Your path has disappeared," Zyphira said. Her words needled into Emmery and tore open an old wound. The Oracle examined the rose pactum, and frowned. “Your task was to find your tethered and follow the prophecy. But I can no longer see the threads. It’s as if they have been stolen.”
Emmery’s stomach twisted and she studied the ground to hide from Zyphira’s disappointed stare. Shame festered inside her. Had what she and Dez done resulted in this? It was only a kiss; a brief moment of weakness. All else she had done in search of Shade.
“I’m following the path,” she said, though her voice wavered. “I retrieved my memories. I’m—I’m so close to finding Shade. I know it. I know I am.”
The Oracle’s eyes narrowed. “Do you truly understand the consequences? Your people will die and magic will cease to exist if you do not find your way to him.” Zyphira released her hand, stood, then strolled with her arms tucked behind her back. “Nothing good can come of that.”
Panic swelled in Emmery’s chest, and she took a shaky breath.
Zyphira continued, “The choices you have made led you astray and your path is blocked. I no longer hold the answers.” She plucked a flower from the garden and extended it to Emmery. “You are on your own for now.”
Emmery shrank away and violently shook her head. The ground seemed to crumble beneath her. “No, no. I need you to guide me. I don’t know what I’m doing. Without you, I’m lost.”
Zyphira stepped forward and pressed the flower into Emmery’s hands. Her khaos flame sparked and reduced the noxcore to ash. Emmery gasped, tried to pull away, but Zyphira held firm.
“Follow your heart, child. It will not lead you astray. But it seems this place is claiming you, and we cannot allow that.” She exhaled onto Emmery’s fading flesh like an icy wind, biting into her blood. “You must return to him whole, with fire in your eyes and heart. Not as you once did.”
There was no time to question, to blink, to breathe, before her existence fell into the whirling depths of unending darkness.
Though the beckoning world waited, Emmery wasn’t ready to wake. Red light speckled her vision, a breeze caressed her cheek, and she crawled to the opposite side of the bed to find warmth still clinging to the sheets.
Her dreams lingered out of reach. Slowly, as consciousness flooded back, she wiggled her toes, fingers, and scrunched her nose.
A foreign sensation, a presence, swam in her blood and loitered in that dark, hollow place inside her that now didn’t feel quite so empty.
But its misshapen edges were different, not of her own creation, though still moulded to fit her soul.
She buried her face in the pillow that smelled of icy mint and—
Home. It smelled like home.
Her eyelids creaked open like a stubborn window.
The last vestiges of sunlight kissed her face, and out the ajar window, the embrace of night lingered only moments away. Like the souls of the Hollow, the dark furniture’s shadows warped and twisted at dusk’s command.
As she studied the familiar burgundy walls, gold accents, patterned rug, and black sheets tangled around her legs, her thoughts whirled like a hurricane.
How had she gotten back to Dez’s bedroom? Or to Asaella at all? She didn’t recall anything beyond—
The air knocked from her lungs as the events slammed back into her: the Hollow, the study, the sabers, the phoenix, and that vial containing the most precious thing in the world.
Answers.
She fumbled with the too-long sleeves on her shirt, still Dez’s but this one clean and—
The vial was gone. Her stomach sank as she examined the slice on her elbow. But Dez had likely taken the vial while she slept, or perhaps he already sought answers for how to inject the memories back into her mind.
With a groan she rolled from her stomach to her side.
When fur brushed her back, she didn’t have time to brace herself before white chaos stole her vision.
Aera flapped her wings like a wild beast, thrashing, and flailing as her horns dug into Emmery’s fingers, all while she slathered her face in kisses.
“Ouch,” Emmery hissed, her thin voice barely a squeak. “Aera!”
The fox yipped and tucked herself under her chin. Those big amber eyes overflowed with the same love that swelled in Emmery’s heart, too.
“I missed you,” she croaked. She scratched between the fox’s eyes. “What sort of trouble did you get up to in my absence, little one?”
Aera’s eyelids fluttered closed and she cooed softly.
Emmery laughed, but the empty sound squeezed from her tight chest.
She studied Destonne’s rumpled side of the bed. “Where did your favourite man go?” she asked softly.
Aera gave her a squinty snaggle-toothed grin.
As Emmery sat up and rested her back against the cool iron headboard, she pressed her palms to her eyes and tried to decipher Zyphira’s cryptic words, her abandonment, and the uncertainty of everything now.
The door swung open and her head snapped up as Destonne plodded in with a mug of tea clutched in his hand. He rubbed his eyes then dragged his hand down his face, too busy studying the ground to see her at first.
But as the door snicked shut, their gazes collided across the room.
His fingers slipped and the mug crashed to the floor. White shards scattered with the hot liquid, as his hand hovered in the air.
He froze.
Emmery stilled.
And Dez’s lips parted with a breath reminiscent of the phantom wind from Deimos’s mausoleum.
He blinked. Blinked again. She studied the shadows nestled beneath his bloodshot eyes, his tangled curls, and the thick coat of stubble on his jaw. But hadn’t he been clean shaven that night at Thirst? Her cheeks heated as she remembered skimming her fingers over his smooth skin.
How long had she been asleep?
Her chest cinched tighter, and Emmery willed her eyes to communicate what her mouth couldn’t.
The tea seeped into his socks, but his attention didn’t waver as if he couldn’t bear to look away. Emotion flickered across his face until she feared he would fall to the floor and shatter alongside the mug.
“Emmery,” he breathed her name like a song. A ballad. Three perfect notes that fell off his tongue with tenderness but also unfettered despair.
Overcome with confusion, she bit down on her trembling bottom lip. Because she couldn't deny seeing him felt like coming home.
His throat worked and Dez slowly stepped across the room until he stopped at the edge of the bed. His hands twitched at his sides.
She shifted to make room for him. He tore off his wet socks and perched himself beside her, though he wouldn’t meet her eyes now. Instead, he stared at her hands as if he wanted to hold them but made no move to do so.
“I like the beard,” she said, the heaviness between them unbearable.
He scrubbed a hand along his jaw and huffed a laugh. “Yeah? Should I keep it?”
His small laugh, though hardly joyous, soothed her soul. Emmery fiddled with the sheet’s hem as she braced herself for the question. And the answers.
“My mind's a bit fuzzy, but I remember everything up until—” She stumbled at the thought. “My Shadowheart.” The two words wheezed out like some forbidden secret.
He stared at his hands. “I carried you to the healing waters, but your vestige was gone. And you wouldn’t wake up.” He rubbed his eyes again. “You were unconscious for three days, but then you stopped—” He swallowed. “You stopped breathing, Emmery.”
Her world spun and she choked, her throat impossibly dry.
Dez retrieved a glass of water from the bedside and handed it to her. As she chugged it, reality sank into her bones. The frigid reality of magical Collapse. “I should be—” she wheezed. “I should be in the ground.”