Corinthe turned away from the body, fighting the urge to gag. She wanted to cry, as she had seen humans do—to sob, to scream—but nothing would come.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Forgive me. I’m sorry.”
Her Guardian was gone forever. Lucas was lost in another world where the chances of finding him were next to impossible.
It had all been for nothing.
The years of exile, her job as an Executor, the chance to go back to Pyralis.
The walls began to shake again as a low rumble worked its way up to the ceiling. Corinthe stood unsteadily. The ground swayed and she stumbled forward, bracing herself in the doorway. Behind her, another section of the wall collapsed, burying Miranda under a pile of stones.
It was a struggle to remain upright. The stairs seemed so far away. The shelf where Miranda kept her potions rattled fiercely, and bottles slid off one by one, crashing to the ground. The lights overhead flickered and then went out, burying Corinthe in darkness.
Then, for several seconds, everything went still and perfectly silent, except for the gushing of the tub, which was still spitting water.
A thunderous crack sounded, rolling across the ground, up the walls, and into the ceiling. The earth bucked, and an entire section of roof collapsed in a deafening roar, missing her by only feet. Dust blasted her face, and she turned away, coughing.
When she opened her eyes, hazy light filled the room. So much dust sifted down from above it was as though it had begun to snow. Debris was everywhere, and Corinthe saw that a huge hole had opened to the sky above her.
Not since the first day of her exile had Corinthe felt so alone, so lost. She ached all over. Weakness made it hard to stand. She could feel the venom and its sluggish movement through her veins. How long had it been since she had been stung?
Surely she was almost out of time.
She was so tired.
Maybe she would curl up here. Sleep for a bit. She had no fight in her left. But as she sank to her knees, a touch of blue caught her eye. Half buried in the rubble was the painting she loved so dearly—miraculously intact. She grabbed the frame and gingerly stood it on edge, shaking it a few times to dislodge the dirt.
She couldn’t believe it had remained undamaged. It was a sign. It had to be.
The children in the painting were still there, holding each other’s hands, looking away from the garden.
The sight broke Corinthe’s heart.
The simplicity of it. The sense of possibility.
The love.
She knew, suddenly, what she had to do.
18
Luc’s skin felt as if it were about to peel off.
He crawled blindly through a world of fire—flames roaring so loudly he could hardly think. The smell of burning singed his nostrils, made him gag. There were no pathways here, no signs pointing to a way out. Just heat and light and smoke and pain, forked tongues of orange and yellow.
And blue. His heart leapt. On his left burned a giant flame that was different from the others. A yellow finger of fire burned at its center, but the outer flame was all blue.
The opposite of a normal flame.
Before he could change his mind, Luc flung himself into the flame’s center. Searing heat ripped at his skin, and he clenched his teeth tightly to keep from screaming. The pain crested, became unbearable.
And then the light, and the heat, blinked out at once.
He found himself out of the Crossroad and in utter darkness, on ground as frigid and hard as concrete. He shivered. Every breath was painful.
Move, his brain commanded. He had to keep moving, even if he had no idea where he was.
He hoped he wouldn’t walk straight off a cliff.
He climbed dizzily to his feet and painstakingly inched his way through the darkness. Terror made him completely disoriented. This was the closest he could imagine to nothingness, to an endless void.
His foot hit something—a rock, maybe? As he moved carefully forward, the darkness seemed to become slightly less dense. There were now gradations of shadow, distinctions in the dark—his eyes were adjusting.
Something large loomed ahead of him. He ran his fingers over the surface, recognizing sharp angles and smooth crevices. It was a boulder, judging by the size of it. He navigated around it, keeping one hand firmly on the cold stone to orient himself. On the other side of the boulder, he heard the faint trickling of water.
Tiny lights flickered in the distance. They looked almost like fireflies. And in the sky, twin crescent moons rose over the mountains to his left.
Despair rose thick and high in his chest. He was back—back in the land of Figments and Figures, at the very edge of the universe.
Back where he had started.
And he knew then, knew for positive and for certain, that he no longer had a prayer of saving Jasmine.
Luc couldn’t control himself any longer. He spun around, kicked at the first thing he saw, sent a rock skittering into the darkness. He was so angry he wanted to punch something. If Corinthe was right, if this had all been fated, he wished he could burn down the whole universe.
Thinking of Corinthe made him feel even worse. He felt a fierce longing for her; it was here, in this very world, that she had pressed up against him in her sleep.
“Why?” he screamed into the darkness. “Why? Why?”
“Shhh,” a low voice said behind him.
Luc whipped around, fumbling for the knife in his pocket. “Who’s there?”
A shadow moved separately from the dark around it. “You looking for the pairing?” it asked in a hushed voice.
“The … what?” Luc asked.
“The gathering,” another voice said.
“I don’t know what you’re—” Before he could finish, a person seized his arm.
“Don’t be afraid,” the first person said. A girl, Luc thought, judging from the whispery voice. Her features were dark. Where she touched him, he felt warm. His anger dissipated; he felt weirdly calm. Maybe he could search out Rhys. Maybe there was hope.
The shadowy shapes led him down an indistinguishable path. They stopped in front of another huge rock. “Here we are.”
“Where … ?” Luc started to ask, but once again, his two guides hushed him.
“It’s okay. I was really confused my first time, too,” said one.
“We missed you,” said the other.
Before Luc could ask what they meant, they had rapped three times on the rock face. It slowly slid off to one side, as though it had been set on tracks, and a set of stone stairs was revealed, dimly lit by lanterns.
As the girl passed in front of him, under the light, Luc stopped. The bottom dropped out of his stomach like on the dip of a roller coaster. It wasn’t a person at all. It was just a shadowy outline, featureless, faceless.
A Figment.
The girl—the thing—realized Luc was no longer behind her. “Come on,” it whispered.
The other person—also a Figment—hovered by his side, as though looking at him curiously.
Luc hesitated. His head was spinning. Figments were supposed to be confined to the Ocean of Shadows. How had these managed to escape?
“What do you mean, you missed me?” Luc said, hedging.
The second Figment put its shadowy, weightless hand on Luc’s arm. “You don’t remember?” it asked.
“We are yours,” the girl Figment said.
“Mine?” Luc’s voice cut through the darkness.
“Your shadows,” they answered simultaneously, then turned and continued down the stairs.
Luc followed them, stunned and unable to speak. As he trailed his shadows, he felt a sense of relief, or victory, even—the way he’d lose the ball on the field and find his way to it again.
As if reading his mind, one of the Figments broke the silence. “We’ll be separated again, after this. …” She motioned down the dark passageway, where the faint sound of music drifted.