Chapter 50
After hours of cautious travel, we ascend to the surface. The air changes first carrying the faintest bite of frost like a warning brushed on my lips.
I gave myself the remainder of our trek to grieve for the old mercenary who damned my soul, with the promise that once the sunlit skies caressed my cheeks, I’d leave him behind.
So, I shed silent tears, and when we climbed the steps and greeted the evening light, I whispered one last goodbye without a glance back.
Finnick is nothing but memory now. Like so many others in my life. My mother, my father, Yaris, Finnick. Each is a notch in my bones, a permanent reminder that life in this fucked up world, is fleeting.
My only twisted hope for the old man is that he found his way back to the wife he spoke of in glimpses. Even now, a piece of me hates that grief takes root for a man who broke me long before I ever learned to mourn him.
Nothing but a crisp, snow-packed silence hangs thick around us, like someone’s muffled our world in cotton.
The vacant storehouse offers empty soot-covered space and discarded mining relics.
Axes and picks lean haphazardly against the perimeter walls, gathering rust and dust. Helmets and tool belts linger in a discarded pile by the door, like the miners were so eager to escape the demons underground they didn’t bother hanging their equipment up one last time.
“The border is just over the bend,” Saphine says, directing a hand toward a wooded trailhead. “The outpost won’t be guarded.”
“And how are you so sure?” Jace asks. I haven’t offered him so much as a glance over my shoulder. Even one look threatens the dam I’ve built around myself. There’s too much at stake right now to waste the breath.
Maybe when this is over, we’ll pour ourselves a glass of wine, settle into his study, and talk through my truths. Seated beside one another, sharing our secrets. My chest heaves at the thought, like it’s caging something volatile. Rage, heartbreak, confusion? Maybe a lethal concoction of all three.
“Shift change is at sunset. Besides, Finnick and those couriers very well could have slaughtered them for all we know,” she says plainly. “Only one way to be certain, though.”
The four of us draw our weapons and follow the winding path. Mangled vines claw at my legs, as the brush thickens. My boots sink into ankle high muck as the ground softens to marsh. Add rot-scented mud to the list of things now squirming between my toes.
I’m looking forward to a hot bath and the comfort of my bedchamber’s familiar sheets. Just a little further and we’ll be back on friendly ground. Somehow I don’t think the pulse in my throat will subside, though. It hammers like a drum, steady and insistent.
“Nova.” Jace’s tone is a quiet plea in the dying light. “Talk to me.”
I don’t respond. My shoulders tense, my neck cramps, and the start of a migraine seeds itself between my eyes. Every step ahead is heavier than the last.
“Please, starling.” His cool fingers brush against the palm at my side, but I rip it away.
“I can’t right now. Let’s just focus on the mission.” I choke on the bile caught in my throat. The words he once offered me are hot iron on my tongue.
Jace’s jaw muscle ticks, but he seals his lips shut. For the first time, in maybe his entire life, he’s followed a direct order. Tenebris would be proud.
The trees thin as we approach the ridge, their branches skeletal against a bruised, grey sky. Twilight drags into long shadows between trunks, stretching them like claws over the frosty ground.
The border wall juts from the earth ahead, half-buried in frost and moss, forming a crooked impasse of granite slabs.
Just as Saphine suspected, not a guard is in sight. There’s nothing, in fact. Just a hollow stillness, carved out from the air, like the earth paused mid-breath and forgot how to exhale.
Saphine slows beside me. “Something’s wrong…”
Isra’s fingers clench around the hilt of his raised blade.
“Do you feel that?” he murmurs to Jace. “It’s too quiet.”
I swallow hard. He’s right. The utter silence of the border sends a shiver of caution through me. The hair on my arms pricks on high alert and primal fight or flight coils tight in my chest.
Jace nods and scans the brush. There’s not a rustle, nor a whisper of life.
My stomach plummets to my boots. I know this feeling, and judging by Jace’s furrowed brow, he does, too.
His fear strikes right through me, unlocking something deep in my core.
It’s exactly as the lurker den felt. The complete stop of life, of nature, of time.
“Lurkers…” I whisper.
“What did you say?” Saphine nocks an arrow.
“The reason we’ve been searching for the guardian rider. Remember when I said there were far greater threats than Ashar’s crimes?” Jace’s eyes narrow on her. “Well, it seems you’re about to meet them.”
Saphine’s posture straightens, but she doesn’t shy from the threat. Instead, she rears her head like a bull ready to charge. I guess she’s braver than me, since I’m cowering in my boots. Perhaps that’s why she’s the guardian rider—amongst many other infuriating reasons.
“But the ward…” I sweep my eyes into the dark crossing station.
“It’s never failed this far out of Shadow.” Jace takes the lead and plunges through the doorway.
Half expecting to meet the nightmarish creatures, I keep my defensive stance and follow him through. In silence, we creep down the hall to the main office. The tightness in my chest refuses to release, even when a vacant desk and unlit hearth greets us.
“A fire should be lit at least, even with the watch change. This place looks like it’s been abandoned for years…not minutes.” Saphine’s voice is steadier than mine, but even she can’t hide the unease stitching through her words.
A brittle chill licks at the back of my neck. I tighten my grip on my shortsword, though it does nothing to steady the tremor in my fingertips. It’s colder inside than out, and a shiver I can’t shake off slithers down my spine.
Isra prowls toward the far door, shoulders squared, and bracing for impact.
“Something is seriously fucked up here.” He runs a finger over the doorframe. “Do you feel the drop in the air? It’s like it’s bending.”
Bending.
Fuck, that’s one way to describe the pressure gliding over my skin like a sharp, icy talon.
Jace glances back at me. “This isn’t just a fracture in the ward,” he whispers.
My pulse stutters. “What do you mean?”
He lifts a hand to listen for something…or someone.
The lantern resting on the central desk is lit and I flick the glass enclosure. The flame stays pin-straight. “The flames…they’re just as the fountain is back home.”
“Someone needs to tell me what we’re dealing with here.” Saphine bites her lip.
“We don’t know where they’ve come from, but they’re beyond your worst fucking nightmare.” My voice is barely audible as I continue. “They devour everything until all that’s left is…”
The only word accurate enough to describe the lurker’s influence on our world is hollow—a shell of a land left paralyzed.
A low groan ripples through the air and vibrates under my skin.
Isra backs up to us, blade raised high.
“Fuck, we need to move,” Jace says.
Then, the room warps. The air thickens, syrupy and wrong.
A papery silhouette appears where a shadow shouldn’t be, tall and brittle, limbs too long, face void of features.
My breath snags on pure, instinctive terror.
Freezing like prey in the eyes of a predator, my muscles remember that face before my mind does.
Jace steps in front of me, his arm drawn protectively around my waist. My chest flutters when his thumb brushes my hip.
With a rasping inhale, the lurker’s outline crawls on gangly limbs out of sight. Is it…toying with us? Its movements feel deliberate like it’s herding us into its snare.
“Yeah, let’s get the fuck out of here.” Isra takes Saphine’s hand and bolts for the door. I nod, but my legs refuse to move, like time itself clings to me—thick and viscid.
Those voidless black eyes come back to me in spouts of memory.
The cosmic truth in its gaze, black sludge pouring down its petrified skin.
The shredding sound of skin. The groans and wails of the others.
My lungs burst, but I can’t breathe. I’m trapped in the memory, pinned somewhere between terror and panic.
“Nova,” Jace urges. “Starling, look at me.”
I force my eyes to his and the world blurs at the edges.
“Stay with me.” He cups my jaw, steady but gentle, like he’s afraid I’ll splinter under his touch. The subtle octave panic in his voice cuts through the fog long enough for my next breath to claw its way in.
Behind him, the hallway shudders.
Jace’s fingers slide to the back of my neck. “Move, Nova.” Not a request, a solid, dagger-sharp command.
Then I hear it. The low, sickly moans of many. My stomach lodges in my throat.
We’re so fucked.
The air dips again, heavy and slow. Without a beat, Jace pulls me into his chest, hooking his arms under my knees. I tuck into the crook of his neck and we fly to the door.
His warmth is a betrayal of its own—comfort in a moment I should feel nothing but terror. My chest flurries with contradictions. Even amidst the unknown, he feels safe, grounding.
Fuck, he feels like home.
What a dangerous thought to have when we’re actively running for our lives.
When the frosted air hits me, I scan our surroundings. The marshy landscape, now glazed in shadows, welcomes us like an old friend. At least we’ve made it over the border, but with demons nipping at our heels, the relief is short-lived.
“Tenebris and Sera will meet us at the tree line. They’re two minutes out,” Jace says. “Once we get high enough they can’t reach us, remember, Nova? We’re almost there.”
“How the fuck did the ward break?” If the ward is down, then no one is safe. The whole damned continent could be infested with these things by now. Fuck, we need to move and fast. There’s no time for a warring body and mind, or earth-shattering terror.
There’s no time to be a fucking baby.
I swallow the raging, paralyzing fear as best I can and lock in, becoming the monster Finnick taught me to be.
“I don’t know, but we need to get Saphine to the egg. Once the guardian bond sets into place, hopefully these things will crawl back to wherever they came from,” he says, his breath ragged.
The tree line is so close, three hundred feet or so from our position. We can make it. We’re nearly there. We just need to keep moving, keep running.
We can make it.
No, we will make it. There’s no option outside of survival.
Jace’s boots skid through the muck and we screech to a halt.
“Fuck…” he growls.
Panic shreds my vocal cords when a lurker crawls into view—its limbs bending at inhuman angles. Vertebrae snap one by one as it forces itself upright. Then there’s another. Then another. And another.
The creatures pour from each sliver of shadow in the woods to our left, and flank us slowly until we’re surrounded. There’s too many to count, just a sea of greyish, papery flesh separating us from safety.
Jace sets me on the ground, his chest heaving. “Get to the marsh. Tenebris and Sera will be there.”
“You’re a fool if you think I’m leaving you.” Terror anchors me, but so does something I haven’t yet allowed myself to name…something like love.
“Nova, please just do as I say.” He brushes his thumb over my cheek. The plea in his tone slices me open, it’s the first crack I’ve heard in his armor, and gods above it hurts to hear it right now.
Tears flood behind my eyes. “There are too many of them, Jace. You can’t take them all yourself.”
“Go, starling.”
The creatures twitch their heads in unison, the cracked folds of flesh over their eyes wrinkling with delight. One steps forward, maybe the leader of the group, and outreaches his sinewy arms toward us. Bile floods up my throat when it unleashes a dying, demonic howl from its shrouded mouth.
“I’m not fucking leaving,” I say.
Jace slams his lips against mine with an urgency that threatens to steal the ground from under me.
Every unspoken thing between us collides with the terror that this could be the last breath he takes from me.
His mouth moves in a frantic tempo, like he’s devouring every bite he can manage.
His tongue finds mine, as if I’m his last meal on earth.
The kiss is fire in a world gone cold—reckless, devastating, and heartbreakingly final.
“I didn’t know how much you’d mean to me when we met. I didn’t know…”
My heart shatters into a thousand pieces. “Please Jace, don’t fucking do this. Don’t do this!”
“I’ll see you tonight.” He smoothes back my hair. “Isra, protect her.”
“Don’t do this! No! NO!”
“I’m sorry, starling,” Jace whispers.
Isra’s arms wrap around my waist. Then, he runs.
“No, no, not again. I swear to Astora, Isra, if you don’t put me down!” I sob, fists slamming on his chest.
Jace’s growl behind us draws in the lurkers. They creep and crawl on broken limbs, swarming him like flies to carrion. I watch him disappear under a sea of wriggling grey skin and nightmarish howls.
Tears blur on my lashes as I thrash and punch and kick at Isra’s hold. “Put me down! Put me down! Put me down!”
“I can’t…” is all Isra says.
“I will never forgive you for this.” The sobs break my voice, shrill and panicked. “I will hate you for this.”
“Hate me, fight me, never speak to me again…at least you’ll be alive. Jace’s order was clear. Protect you.”
“I hate you! I hate you!” The cries pour from me and my body ignites in trembles. “Put me down! We can’t leave him!”
Isra grunts as I throw my fist into his side, but his pace never lags. He barrels for the tree line as the lurkers yip and chitter with delight. Bones crunch, bodies thud, muscle shreds. The creatures just keep coming. Where one ends another begins as they trickle from the trees.
There are too many. Even for him.
A roar cuts through the evening light, one both fierce and waning. Only then do I squeeze my eyes shut, and offer a prayer to the gods who have forsaken me so many times before.
He will live, because he holds my heart.
He will live, because I’ve given him no other choice.
He will live, because without him…I can’t.
Every step away is worse than peeling skin from bone, but I repeat the mantra again and again until I’ve convinced myself I believe it.