CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
EMMERY
Emmery had kissed Dez’s forehead one last time, draped her cloak over him, and left Aera curled up with Brennen. The note she’d written him sat at his bedside and waited for him. Then she’d taken off for the Whispering Spring.
Overhead, dawn broke the sky in a blood-orange haze like it had when Dez was taken. It seemed fitting: that was how it ended and this is how it would begin.
As the pulse of magic from the spring beat in her veins, she dismissed Juno and navigated the tangle of thorns and golden flowers blanketing the ground. When the spring came into view, she stalked to the edge and glared into its black abyss, her heart in her throat.
She could practically see Dez pinching his nose and hear him saying, Really, angel? I leave you for a single moment and you found yourself in this rampant ocean of trouble? And without me? But this is how it had to be.
Her flame lit her up like a star as she torched the ice. The second she dove, the ice closed over her head and sealed her in. Panic seized her limbs as the spring whirled like a tidepool. Though she clawed for the surface, it sucked her in. For a gravityless second, she fell.
Pain clanged through her body as she struck obsidian ice. Black water soaked her hair and clothes. It smelled like Dez’s magic, but sharper. Sinister.
She glanced around the dark cavern. Thick and unforgiving, black ice coated the walls and radiated power like she’d never felt before. She sparked her flame to her fingertip. The ice reflected her face back in a series of mirrors that stretched on for eternity. Her pulse throbbed in her throat.
Squinting, she peered into the dark and found a wall of ice with a shadowed figure enclosed within. She traced her finger along the symbol carved into it. A cavae. This was what she’d come for.
She’d heard the legends and stories, entered his domain, stolen from his place of worship, and she stood there because of Dez’s memory and Reize’s claim that he resided in that very spot.
With her hand pressed to the ice, she whispered his name with both terror and desperation.
“Say it again, love,” the silken voice answered. He spoke softly, but a bit groggy, like he’d just woken and—
Gods, he sounded like Dez. His accent was thicker, tone colder, and the way he said love shook something loose inside her.
“I’ve come to make a bargain,” she replied, her voice weak.
“I think you will find my offer more than fair.” For a tense moment, he paused. “Tell me what it is you desire.”
Emmery gritted her teeth as tears threatened to spill. “I want—I need Destonne back. I want his life, his shadow, his soul, his memories, his magic. I want all of it returned to him. I want him healthy and alive and free.”
Only a distant dripping disturbed the heavy silence.
Could she truly have Dez again? Hold him, kiss him, have him without the thorns?
So she could give him all the love that still lived in her chest?
All the love he deserved but she never had the chance to give.
Her palms sweat as she awaited his answer, her heart pounding against her ribs.
“The spring has agreed,” he drawled, “but two favours of equal value are required.”
Her breath stuttered. Just like that he’d agreed. It was too easy. “What’s the cost?” she asked, her voice hesitant.
Droning silence devoured the room. Surely he would ask for the moon and the stars and the entire universe placed into his impatient hand. She waited on bated breath and feared this bargain would end right there.
“Release me.” Those two words wormed under her skin. “And after you melt away this blasted ice,” he said and the air grew thin, “you are mine.”
Her stomach plummeted, and her legs shook like the ground caved beneath her. “What does that mean?” she spat. “What does being yours entail?”
“A delightful number of things. But we can discuss such details later.” He chuckled, deep and wicked. “These are my terms.”
“Bring him back and I’ll melt this ice for you.” Her heart splintered in desperation and defeat. “But you will never have me. I’ll never be yours.”
He hummed, a devious, manipulative sound. “Fine. I shall send you back.”
Shoulders tense, she leaned into the ice and begged it to bend to her will, but it remained as rigid as his terms. She traced the bond etched into her skin in Dez’s beautiful handwriting, then peered at her reflection in the ice.
She looked as battered as her insides felt: throat bruised, eyes bloodshot, hair a knotted mess.
Her wild, desperate eyes stared back at her. No part of her doubted they would find their way back to each other. She knew it deep in her marrow. Dez would rip the world in two to find her. Her frantic mind refused to even consider the consequences of melting the ice. Freeing this being—
All she could think of was Dez.
“W-wait,” she stuttered.
“Yes?” His voice stirred the black hollow pit in her soul.
“If I do this”—she swallowed down the bile burning her throat—“if I free you, you have to promise you’ll bring Destonne back. No catches or tricks. Restore his soul and bring him back to me.”
“No tricks,” he said. “No catches. Free me and become mine. But do know, I do not share. Though I will bring your Destonne back, he will never have you.”
Her heart raced too fast to think, each pound a knock to her head. What other choice did she have?
His words echoed through her head, I would do anything. I would be anything you needed. I would be your friend. Your confidant. Your strength. Your heart. Your soul. Your love.
And for him, she would do anything, too. She would sacrifice and trade her freedom, even if it surfaced the fear Nathaniel once crippled her with.
Because she couldn’t live in a world where he didn’t exist either.
“We have a deal,” she murmured, her lips numb.
Emmery drew her dagger from her thigh sheath and gripped it in her sweaty hand. She cut into her palm and slammed her hand against the ice.
In a mocking lilt, he said, “Say the words.”
Well rehearsed, she said, “It will be done, so it shall be.”
He echoed the phrase.
The moment the words resounded in her mind, a vice tightened around her throat, and she staggered back, clawing at its invisible hold.
Her flesh burned and burned, like fire, like lava, like searing hot coals poured down her gullet.
She smeared blood across her neck, tried to scream, but the leash cinched tighter.
She gasped for air and her eyes bulged. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t fucking breathe—
Then, all at once, it stopped.
She nearly collapsed as her chest heaved, her need for air seemingly insatiable and unending. In her reflection she caught the elaborate dips carved the perimeter of her neck, in a series of deep, deep scars. Disbelieving, she blinked, but there it remained.
A collar. It was a fucking collar. An interlocking series of cavaes.
“What did you—what did you do?” she panted. Panic bled into her voice.
“Come now, don’t be dramatic. I must say, that scar is quite fetching on you,” he mused. “My part is done. Now yours.”
“How do I know you kept your word?” she snapped, her throat a raw, raging fire. She burrowed into the bond, but found only shadows and none of Dez’s sunlight. His absence ate away at her.
In the ice, an image appeared.
It was Dez. He lay in his bed, alone, pale as death.
His eyes fluttered open and he gasped, his hand clutched to his chest as if his soul was knocked back into him.
She wanted to weep and fall to the ground at the sight of his green eyes.
His beautiful crimson vestige swelled, no thorns remained, and he held her cloak in his hand, his brows narrowed—
The image vanished and left a hole in her chest. Because that may be the very last time she ever saw him. Then the hollow filled with desperate anger.
Rage and despair flooded her as she called her flame. She roared as she fed her fire into this damn cavern until the whole fucking thing reduced to a puddle. Panting, she surveyed the opening where the ice had once stood.
A man stepped out of the shadows, his hands tucked into the pockets of his black trousers. The light from her flame illuminated his shirtless body.
Her mouth grew dry.
A gorgeous vestige swathed him, the same colour as Destonne’s. His tanned torso appeared sculpted from marble, and in the center of his chest a large black cavae swam beneath his skin like her Shadowheart. Their pactum mirrored around his neck.
Long dark lashes framed his crimson eyes, the unmistakable hue of blood.
The same eyes that had haunted her dreams. Midnight black hair tapered at his shoulders, half of it gathered in a loose knot behind his head.
He flashed a smile of blindingly white teeth and her heart imploded.
Then a violent tug in her chest nearly sent her to her knees.
“I don’t believe we have been formally introduced,” he purred, his voice even more intoxicating aloud.
A tremor ran through her body as he took her hand and pressed it to his lips.
Her skin scorched where he touched her. “My name is Deimos of the Hollow, second son of Zyphira of Karynthia, born of blood and ice, known traitor of the Fallen, and Soulsealer and servant of the Whispering Spring,” he drawled and his eyes glinted with promise. “But you may know me better as Shade.”
Deimos blinked, once, twice, and on the third—
His eyes shifted to the unmistakable green of Destonne’s.
Her jaw fell slack and her world stopped spinning. She teetered where she stood, her hand still in his but she couldn’t pull herself away, seemingly dumbstruck, all her words stolen.
“It was too easy impersonating the sorry sap, though far too many nights he beat me to you,” he mused. “His efforts are commendable.”
Deimos caught her stricken look and added, “Surely you deduced when you fell into bed with my shadow that shadowshifting is an ease for us. Though it pained me to watch you touch that boy.” He spat the word, as if Dez hadn’t lived a century like herself.
He released her and clasped his hands behind his back.
His muscles rippled in his chest. “It seems implexus bonds truly are more powerful than any force. Because here you are. Mine once again.”
She swallowed past the lump in her throat. None of this made sense. Every fragment of this was a warped puzzle piece and though she hammered them into place, they wouldn’t fit. “I don’t understand,” she breathed.
Deimos’s grin stole her breath, the beauty only a god could hold within it. “Everything I did was to keep you safe. From this world. From this fate. From him. Everything had to unfold as it did so we could be together.”
Speech abandoned her again as she crumbled to pieces.
Deimos grasped her wrist and yanked her to him.
His gaze mimicked the relentless hunger of wolves hunting prey, and yet, her body reacted to his touch.
Her back arched into him, even as her hands struck his chest to brace herself.
They fit perfectly, like two pieces of a whole, split down the middle.
“How I have missed you,” he whispered. His eyes softened, his face all perfect angles and flawless lines. “Welcome back to the Hollow, dearest Kahlia, my love.”