Chapter 7
Seven
The gate to the estate is unexpectedly closed. Unease threads through me as I slow the Benz to turn off the road.
With only the briefest of stops for fuel, food, and the occasional quick nap, I’ve driven straight through the night, reaching the California border and crossing into Cascadia just after dawn.
Needing no more than my name to navigate the border, and even with the universe clearly lending me speed, it still took me another six hours to get up the coast. It’s midday now as I climb out of the Benz to open the gate, leaving the vehicle running.
I’m surprised but pleased that I’ve made it all this way unimpeded.
I had considered cutting down into Newport, but decided that the estate was more likely to be where I would find all the people I desperately want to lay eyes on again.
The energy of the intersection point grabs me, trying to pull me forward. Exhausted from the long drive, I stumble, reaching for the gate latch.
The front fields are overgrown with unruly grasses and wildflowers, including blue cornflowers and purple larkspur. The scent of the sea filters through to me on the breeze, though I’m too far away to hear the crashing of the surf.
An utterly relieved smile swamps my face as I flip the latch and push open the gate with an almost heady anticipation.
Essence shifts around my shoulders. The oddly metallic taste of pure fury floods my mouth. Then Muta is wrapped around my neck and attempting to strangle me.
I croak out a shout, stumbling again. The extraordinarily pissed-off bushmaster hisses in my ear, spiny tail vibrating.
I reach to grab him, already struggling to breathe.
He fucking bites me.
It hurts. Searing pinpoints of pain radiate through my wrist. But that’s actually not the reason he shouldn’t do that.
“Stop. Muta, stop,” I say, trying to stay calm as I gasp for air. “I’m sorry … he almost killed you the first time —”
Too late. Energy from the intersection point lashes out, wraps around Muta, and rips him off me. I stumble forward, going down on my knees on the gravel drive and barely catching myself on my hands.
The bushmaster is suspended over the fence, hanging in midair and writhing in what appears to be significant pain.
The intersection point is apparently just as pissed as the death god is.
“Stop!” I cry again. Scrambling to my feet, I bolt around the partially open gate, desperate to get beyond the property boundary.
More essence, more intense energy grabs for me. Ignoring it, I reach up for Muta, but I’m not tall enough to touch him.
“Give him to me,” I demand. “Now!”
The intersection point releases Muta. He falls into my outstretched hands. I catch him awkwardly, cradling him to my chest.
“Listen,” I say, trying to be calm, soothing. “You know that —”
Muta doesn’t give me a chance to offer up any further explanation. Essence writhes over his bushmaster form, and then he’s cinched — just a little too snugly — around my wrist and forearm in his alternate form. Bands of gold-and-brown topaz are now framed around the raw, puffy snake bite.
I’m panting a little, but in frustration more than anything else. Muta has never bitten me, not once in all the time we’ve been together. I start to cross back toward the still-running car — but the intersection point has other ideas.
Thick ropes of power twine around me, momentarily holding me in place. I could push against it, force it to release me, but I don’t. Instead, I try to open myself up to it, reminded of when I first claimed it, though this isn’t the same feeling.
It’s almost as if the energy anchored deep within the earth here is seeking … assurance. Did it lose all connection with me while I was behind Bellamy’s blood runes etched in my aunt’s blood? But the estate didn’t revert to being in stasis …
Energy coalesces around my dormant amulet. I tug it free of my T-shirt, holding the gold-encased pink diamond in my palm. It begins to glow as the intersection point replenishes it, quickly growing so bright that I have to look away.
That’s when I realize I can’t feel anyone else on the property. Not a single other person with essence in their blood.
I open my senses further. I can feel other life forms … mice, rabbits, a few owls … but no people.
Where is everyone?
The destruction at the secondary border crossing in the Federation comes back to me. The smoldering ruins of the outpost, the presence of that antithesis of essence that the Cataclysm wields, and residual essence from my three mates …
Did … did I miss them there?
I reach for the bond anchored in my chest. It’s still there.
I would know, wouldn’t I? If Rought had died?
But … I don’t have that connection to Rath or Reck.
And the Outcast would take Precious if something happened to her brothers.
Even if she didn’t want to go, I’m not certain the intersection point could stop him.
Just as it couldn’t stop Oso from snapping my neck all those years ago.
I dash back to the car, barely getting the door closed before I’m speeding up the long drive.
The house comes into view. No lights on in any of the windows. Coda’s trailer is still tucked behind the barn. There is no way the awry tech would voluntarily …
The door to the trailer is hanging open.
I slam the car into park, remembering to shut off the engine before I fling my door open and run for the trailer.
The universe reaches out for the first time in hours, yanking me toward the house. I stumble to a stop.
A terrible knowing aches through me as I pivot. As I look all the way up to the tower.
My chest constricts. Maybe I don’t want to know … maybe I just need a moment to absorb everything that’s happened, all the other revelations …
But the universe isn’t done with me yet.
At its behest, I leave the car behind. I leave the mystery of Coda’s trailer. I walk up to the house, up the few steps to the patio. The front door opens to my touch.
The house closes around me, feeling utterly empty. Dust tops all the dark-wood wainscoting and the stair rails.
The knowing — though it feels more like a walk of doom — ghosts around my feet as I climb the stairs to the second floor. Bedroom doors hang open. The bed is unmade in Presh’s room, clothing strewn around. I walk all the way down the hall, then up the spiral staircase.
Then I’m standing before the tall armoire in the office tower.
I know before I reach for it that it will open for me. I know that whatever was hidden from me, hidden within the armoire by my aunt, will be just as devastating as everything else has been. All the mysteries of Disa’s past coming to light. All the ramifications of her choices for my own life.
I know, because what is hidden within, what I could always feel on the top shelf, belongs to me. Yet it’s also no longer mine.
It’s possible that the armoire was sealed to me because Disa’s essence hadn’t completely returned to the aether, but I suspect it’s more than that. It feels as if this is my last trial. My final tribulation.
The last of the tasks set by the universe between me and the future, the present, that I so desperately want to be mine. All the things I had to do before I could go home.
Because home was never the estate at all, but rather the people I want to love, want to experience life with.
Finding my aunt and releasing her vessel into the aether, then destroying the compound. Getting the children, including Cal and Jewels’s unborn baby, to relative safety. Allowing Isaiah to heal me of a wound that would likely not have been treatable by any other means. Not quickly, at least.
And now … whatever this is … whatever is hidden from me in the armoire.
The knowing falls away, leaving me to my own choices.
But I already know, don’t I?
I have no idea how Disa did it, or why she made that terrible choice for me, for herself. But I know she did.
I press my hand against the armoire where a handle should be. The doors depress under my hand, then spring back. Like a touch latch, though it’s clearly essence wrought.
I remove my hand, and the doors slowly fall open.
Three objects sit on an inner shelf, just a little higher than eye height.
At first glance, they appear to be large handblown glass urns, though I can’t see lids on any of them.
Thick threads of essence appear to be captured within the glass of each object — or rather, the threads are the glass, shifting as if reacting to my presence.
Iridescent, almost otherworldly, the object in the middle is composed of threads of burnished gold. The object on the left is shaped of dark amber strands. And …. on the right … opalescent green coils around a red so dark it’s almost black.
Ignoring all the other objects within the armoire, including a stack of books that I assume must be my aunt’s missing journals, I reach for what I already know is going to hurt the most.
The green-and-red glass urn that is neither glass nor an urn is nearly weightless in my hands as I tug it off the shelf. The energy stored within churns under my touch, as if wanting to be released, to be utilized.
I don’t want to look at it closely.
I don’t really want to know.
But I gaze within it nonetheless, because it’s not a handblown glass container at all.
It’s my missing soul bonds.
My severed soul bonds.
Taken from me by the Conduit, my aunt. Sections of my soul, my destiny — as Zaya, not the Conduit — torn from me, then somehow coiled up and displayed on a fucking shelf for me to eventually find.
I sob. Pure grief is torn from me as if my ribs have been cracked, my chest ripped open, and my bloody, beating heart wrenched from within. Held in my aunt’s palm, presumably to protect me. In her mind, at least. Even as she destroyed the future I might have had.