Chapter Eighteen #3
Cosmo nodded to the shaking, crying boy in line with the others waiting to be Culled and a sickening feeling punched me in the gut.
“This is barbaric,” Milo spat.
Nascha didn't scold her grandson for the outburst. In fact, she appeared to agree with him.
“You've defiled this most holy ceremony, Cosmo,” she said then, her tone lower than I'd ever heard it, thick with warning.
The patriarch of House Viper’s eyes flashed at her challenge. He raised his chin, bristling.
“The gods cannot be kept waiting, Nascha,” he intoned. “Perhaps if you'd come quicker to your own summons, such a tragedy might have been avoided. But I arrived first and dealt with the issue. I don’t imagine any of the Culled will refuse to do their part now.”
No. They wouldn’t.
And I watched as they walked through the swirling abyss, one after another, none of them even daring a look back at the friends and family they left behind, the ones pushed back to the walls of the Deck, kept away from them in their final moments by Cosmo’s vicious brutality.
The boy whose brother had been murdered to force him into service of the gods looked back only once, at his mother now weeping in another woman’s arms, and at his brother’s lifeless body bleeding into the stones of the home he would never see again.
Then he stepped through the darkness and was no more.
I watched as a grieving mother lost two sons. I watched as Myrine closed her eyes and said nothing, did nothing, but stand at her father’s side. I watched Milo seethe with anger I hadn’t known the bubbly young scholar to be capable of.
When they were gone, when it was over, Milo stepped toward Cosmo, fury in his gaze.
But his grandmother stopped him with a hand on his arm and a nearly imperceptible shake of her ancient head.
I felt my strength wavering then and I could do no more than fall to my knees on the hard cobblestone before flickering back into existence.
I screamed when the magic ripped me back to the tunnel but, when I hit the dark stones of the Underground again and bent forward, weeping, it wasn’t for the pain.
“What is it?” Zya asked at once, already rushing forward to help me up. “What happened?”
“I—I didn’t see—” I tried. “They—”
“I knew it!” another familiar voice shouted from behind us.
We turned to see a small group of shadows making their way toward us in the dark. Four of them to be exact. I sighed when I recognized the shapes, the voice.
“I knew you couldn’t stop this madness,” Darius called out again.
“Darius, please,” I started, too exhausted to argue, too emotionally drained to have it out with him yet again. “You don’t understand—”
“No, you don’t understand! Why can’t you accept this, Adrian? Why can’t you deal with being here? Why do you insist upon doing this to yourself? You’re tearing yourself apart trying to get back to a place you can’t possibly reach.”
“Darius.”
“I can’t do this anymore, Adrian! I can’t be worried about you all the time, wondering if you’re down here in the dark alone, desperate and throwing yourself into that barrier again and again. I can’t—”
A loud boom interrupted him. The whole tunnel shook, pebbles raining down from the ceiling, cracks spider-webbing across the walls and floors.
Zya cried out, raising her arms above her head to shield herself from the falling debris, and dove to the shaking ground.
I remained on my feet but hissed in pain as a large boulder slammed into my right shoulder.
Then, without warning, the ceiling fell upon us.
I heard Roxy scream, listened to a crunching sound I hoped desperately were the rocks, and watched as Zya scrambled away from the worst of it on bloody hands and knees.
It was done in moments, the dust clearing already as we choked against it, waving our hands in front of our faces in an effort to breathe. I wiped a hand on my forehead but it came away covered in dirt and grime.
“Zya?” I called out, my voice weak in the settling dust.
“Here,” she called back from a dark corner nearby. “I’m here. I’m okay.”
I nodded, unable to respond as I began to choke again on the dust.
“Adrian!” someone was screaming frantically.
I raised my gaze, trying to peer through the haze, but couldn’t see anything beyond the pile of rubble between Zya and I and the rest of them.
“Adrian, it’s Darius! He’s—help! We need help!”
I launched into action, scrambling over the rocks to get to the other side.
I heard Zya following a moment later, stumbling and cursing in the dark.
On the other side, Kane and Roxy were already on their knees, digging through the stones, pulling them up and away from one area in the center.
Hugh was holding a clearly broken leg nearby, hissing in pain as he inspected the damage. Darius was…where was Darius?
“Where is he?” I screamed, falling to my knees beside them.
I saw it then; a hand. It protruded from the rock, from wrist up, and it was twitching, still moving.
“Darius,” I screamed before frantically joining Roxy and Kane in pulling rock from around him.
“Oh gods,” I heard Zya mutter a moment before she fell to her knees as well.
We all dug through the rocks as fast as we could. I used every Blessing I had. Speed, strength, enhanced senses. I gripped his wrist and felt his heartbeat through my healing ability. It was still there but fading.
Then Kane moved a smaller rock and a whole host of larger ones came tumbling toward us, piling even more weight on top of where Darius lay buried beneath the stone.
Roxy screamed and lurched away before she was crushed herself.
Kane and Zya cursed, coughing through the dust the new rockfall had caused.
“Stop!” I screamed. “Stop it, you’re killing him!”
Everyone stopped. I reached out to his wrist and felt his pulse again. Even weaker.
“No,” I muttered, tears streaming through the dirt on my cheeks.
Behind me, Roxy began to weep softly, turning into her brother who closed his eyes and led them both away from the scene.
Zya just stood nearby, eyes wide and fingers flexing, waiting to jump into action at my command.
But what could we do? Moving the rocks could crush him. Not moving them would suffocate him.
“No, no, no,” I said because it was all I could say. “Darius, no. Please don’t do this. I can’t lose you again. I can’t. I can’t.”
Roxy’s weeping grew louder. I was sobbing now, my whole body shaking.
I had to do something. I couldn’t just sit here and let him die.
I had to do something. I had to save him.
I could save him. I had all my Blessings, I had my immortal life, I had my training.
But I couldn’t think. I didn’t know what to do.
I stared down at my hands, willing them to do something, to help.
Then I gripped his wrist, surged into him with all the healing power I could manage.
His heart beat stronger for a moment but then it began to fade again and no amount of infusion of my Blessing could bring it back.
I let out a sob and his fingers wrapped around mine.
I stared at our joined hands, listening to Roxy wailing behind me, Kane’s whispered attempts of comfort, Zya’s harsh breathing, and Hugh’s sniffling.
“Please,” I begged gods I knew were too cruel to hear me, to care. “Please. Please. Please!”
I screamed, slamming my fist into the rock beneath my knees.
There was another rumble and the others flinched, preparing for another rockfall, but it never came. Because the rumble wasn’t coming from the tunnel. It was coming from me.
A cloud of inky black darkness burst from my chest, streaming out like smoke to cover the entirety of the tunnel around us in a darkness so thick even I couldn’t see through it with my enhanced senses.
The force of it blew everything away from me. The shadows that had come from within me made contact with the rocks and sent them all skittering away into the dark. Only my hand, holding Darius’, kept him from being tossed along with them.
Zya screamed but dug her nails into a crack in the wall to keep from being tossed aside as well.
Zane and Roxy dove to Hugh and the three of them hunkered down behind me, waiting for the blow to cease.
I watched, in awe, as the shadows crept upward toward the ceiling above, snaking through the cracks and making them wider.
I gasped, pulling Darius toward me and throwing myself over him in protection as the ceiling fell a second time, the stone above us and to our right crumbling away.
I closed my eyes, waiting for the rumbling to end, shielding Darius from the worst of it as stones bounced off my strength-enhanced back.
I hissed at the impact but grit my teeth and held firm over my best friend.
I felt the shadows receding a moment later. They seeped back into me, filling my chest with a strange, cool sensation as they did. I gasped as I glanced down to watch them disappear back within me. I had the strangest sensation, in that moment, that I was whole.
“Gods,” Zya cursed again and I realized then I was no longer the only one who could see.
Lifting my chin, I blinked against the glaring sunlight now streaming into the tunnel from where the walls had been before. Now, they were gone.
The rocks from the ceiling, from the walls, had all tumbled away entirely to reveal the daylight beyond.
There was a hole only a few feet across and a few feet high, atop a mountain of piled up rock before it.
The others gaped at it, stunned. Then I heard the crunch of stone under a boot and someone was kneeling down to peer through the opening from the other side.
Roxy gasped, scrambling into her stunned brother’s arms.
The stranger eyed us all in turn, gaze sweeping from Roxy, Kane, and Hugh in the corner to where Zya stood behind me, and finally to where I was hunched over Darius at the base of the stone.
His eyes met mine, a brilliant shade of blue so cerulean I knew I'd never seen anything like them before. His full lips quirked into a frown as his gaze fell to my injured friend in my arms, the friend I hadn’t yet been brave enough to assess.
Silver hair fell forward in a curtain of smooth silk as he leaned forward and reached out a hand.
Blinking, I took it.