Beyond the Between

by Anna Webb

  “Because of my Gift for the past.”

  “Yes, together, we breached the power of time itself. For a long time, I’d been terrified of the things I saw, thinking I was cursed somehow. But you helped me come to terms with my Gift, and I started to look forward to seeing you. Though I knew that we’d never truly meet.”

  “I need to know it all,” Allyra whispered, her breath choking in her throat. “Please don’t leave anything out.”

  Alex settled deeper into the couch and nodded. Then, with his lilting storyteller’s voice, he started to speak.

  “You already know that my parents were killed by Revenants, consumed until nothing but a husk was left behind. They were well loved amongst the Gifted, and their deaths lit a fuse on something that had been simmering silently for a long time. The call went out demanding that the Council do something, that no more lives should ever be lost again to the Revenant threat. I was swept along by that call, carried by my own anger and grief.

  “So, we prepared and planned—for one massive offense into the Between. Every Elemental alive at the time volunteered to go, and though other Gifted wanted to be a part of it, I refused, believing that their ability to only see their own Element within the Between would make them more of a liability than help.

  “The day arrived, and at the last minute, you appeared and took me and Mandla into the Tunnels. I couldn’t quite explain it, but I knew then that it was the right thing to do. And from that room, we entered the Between through the Fever Tree Gate to Sanctuary Hill. My brother Thomas led another group of Elementals through the Redwood Gate from the Terra Great College, and similar groups entered from each of the other Great Colleges. Our plan was to enter from different points and to sweep through the Between, killing any Revenant we came upon until we met up at the Source itself.

  “Any trip into the Between takes at least two people, one to stay behind to protect the Gate and another to go deeper into the Between. This is why The Five Finals is won by a pair. I left Mandla at Sanctuary Hill and started to make my way toward the Source.

  “Almost immediately, I knew something was wrong. It was too quiet. There were no Revenants. My heart sank. I started to run toward my brother at the Redwood Gate.”

  Alex’s voice was tight. Rough. The pain in the memory had lost none of its power over time. “By the time I arrived, chaos had erupted. It had been a coordinated attack. My brother and his group of Elementals had been ambushed by a large horde of Revenants. They were fighting hard, giving everything they had, but they were being overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. I realized that it was a trap—that we’d never truly understood just how many Revenants lay hidden within the Between.

  “I joined the fight, but it was too late. I watched ten Elementals die in that moment, including my brother Thomas. I nearly lost my mind—grief and madness took hold of me. I fought my way blindly through the Revenants and managed to make my way to his side before he died. Thomas begged for the Tigers to come to me. As he took his last breath, the Tigers slid onto my arm.

  “When I looked up once more, I was surrounded by nothing but death. More Revenants were bearing down on me, an Ancient amongst them. I ran. I was a step too slow, and the Ancient delivered the wound to my side. I knew I was dying, but as the Elemental High Master, it was my duty to warn the Gifted. I had to get back to Mandla. I was desperate. I ran for the Walking Forest, knowing that the Revenants wouldn’t follow me through.

  “I made it through, leaving a trail of blood amongst the silver trees. Five more Revenants were waiting on the other side. I was weak by then, but I made it to Sanctuary Hill. I screamed for Mandla to go, to warn what remained of the Council. But he chose to stay with me. He pulled the Gate closed and killed the Revenants chasing me.”

  Alex paused, his eyes closed, grief overtaking him for the moment. Allyra placed her hand gently over his, allowing the walls around her mind to drop momentarily, letting her sympathy to flow through the bond that joined them. Alex looked up with a wry smile and continued.

  “If not for Mandla’s loyalty, I would’ve been dead. The truth was, every one of the five Elementals tasked with protecting the Gates chose to stay and fight with their partners rather than run. Loyalty ran deep, but we lost them all that day.

  “Mandla and I were the only survivors, and we were trapped within the Between. The first few years we waited at the Gates, for the annual ritual of Gifted arriving to renew the Source. After ten years, we realized that they weren’t coming anymore. After twenty years, Mandla started to lose hope, and he grew angrier and angrier, believing that you had betrayed us, leaving our bodies in a place that no one could find. He started to believe that no one came, because they simply didn’t know we were still alive.

  “The fierceness of his belief made me question my decisions. I started to lose hope, and I began to contemplate the idea of death. Because, after all, what could I do from the Between? My visions had become a mass of twisted destruction, filled with darkness that I couldn’t bear to see anymore.

  “It was in that desperate moment of darkness, when hope had abandoned me, that I saw my last vision of you. You were stumbling into the Between, scared and confused. I realized you would die without me. Linked to that vision of you were others—a delicate strand of time where the future might still be saved. I knew I had to live. I had to live so that you would.”

  Their eyes met then, loaded with emotion and the weight of the connection they shared. Destiny, fate, whatever name it went by—in that moment, she believed it.

  Alex looked away and broke the connection. He picked up his story once more. “I shared my vision with Mandla, and for all that he had been through, still he trusted me. And, for a while it gave him strength. It was something to believe in. But in time, even that wore away, like the sharp edges of rock under the constant flow of a river. He began to lose his mind, little by little, day by day. Until he was nothing more than a shadow of what he once was.

  “I’d lost my best friend, but still I held on. Every time I wavered, I clung to the vision of you. I survived because of you. I might have saved your life that day in the Between, but you had saved mine long before that.”

  A tear ran down her face. Their lives—so intertwined. He had seen her, even before she had existed. They were connected, across and beyond time.

  Alex sighed wearily, “There’s not much else to say. I knew that we had been betrayed, that the deaths of the thirty-one Elementals were the result of a coordinated attack. The Revenants had known we were coming, it meant that someone had divulged our plans to them. But I never knew who, or how. At least not until today.”

  Allyra looked up sharply. “What do you mean?”

  Alex glanced at her, a wry smile on his lips and an inscrutable look in his eyes. “I don’t belong in this time. My time has passed. Generations have lived and died during the time I’ve been trapped in the Between. So, when I woke up today, I didn’t expect to recognize anyone. Yet, somehow, I recognized two.

  “The body the Ancient wore was that of my uncle Marcus. He was my mother’s older brother, an Inferno who never quite lived up to the expectations of his family. In childhood, my mother outshone him in every way, and in adulthood, he turned to drink. He was a waster, a weak man with a weak mind that would’ve been easy for the Ancient to overcome. He gave his mind to the Ancient, but it wasn’t he that betrayed us. He wasn’t privy to our plan. It was the other person I recognized who’d revealed our plans, who truly betrayed us.”

  “Who?” Allyra asked, her voice barely a whisper. A glimmer of the answer had already worked its way into her mind. Ice coated her heart, making every heartbeat feel stilted and heavy.

  “The man who was fighting beside you.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. “Jason?” she choked out.

  Alex watched her carefully. “He means something to you,” he said quietly.

  It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes, no… I don’t know,” she stammered, unsure of h
er own emotions. She’d believed that Jason had betrayed her to Marcus, but he’d saved her in the end, sacrificing himself in the process. “He’s my partner—in The Five Finals.”

  Alex nodded, accepting her answer. “You call him Jason, but when I knew him, I called him Mattie. He was my younger brother.”

  She couldn’t breathe.

  “My younger brother was a happy child, but he lived with the weight of expectation. Thomas and I were both Elementals, as were my parents. Everyone expected that Mattie would be too. At first, it appeared that he would become even more powerful than either Thomas or myself. By the time he was six, Mattie could already control the Fire Element, and as time passed, he became ever more skilled and powerful. But no other Element ever manifested. That, in itself, wasn’t unusual—it often happens that one Element manifests before the others. However, on the night of Mattie’s Joining Ceremony, he was declared an Inferno, and everything changed.

  “Mattie became withdrawn and secretive, drawn into the darkness by the weight of disappointed expectations. He began to spend time with my uncle Marcus. We were blind to it, but I know now that the Ancient slowly corrupted him, playing on his ambitions and desires, until my brother chose to betray his entire family.”

  Allyra fisted her hands, clenching her fingers so tightly that her nails bit into the soft flesh of her palms. “I don’t know what to believe in anymore,” she whispered. “Jason tried to kill me in the Final Trial of the Elemental Trials, but since then, he’s saved me time and time again. And through it all, he kept my secret—the fact that I was an Elemental.”

  “Kept your secret or just waited for the perfect opportunity to use it again you?” Alex’s expression was hard and unyielding. “My brother can’t be trusted. Don’t be fooled by his lies. Remember, he betrayed his whole family, played us all for fools, leading us all to our deaths.”

  “He let me go in the end.”

  “Doing one thing right does not undo all the harm he’s done in the past.”

  Allyra got to her feet, restless and unable to stay still. Her mind was a mass of tangled thoughts and emotions. “Maybe not,” she admitted reluctantly.

  Alex’s blue eyes froze, light dancing off shards of ice. “Everything Mattie does is to serve his own purposes. Every word, every gesture, is deliberate and calculated.”

  Anger blossomed into life within her. It grew and grew until her body could no longer contain it. It bubbled over like lava breaking through the surface of the Earth. “I’m tired of being a pawn in this game,” she spat out. “I’m tired of being manipulated and used.”

  Her rage turned to something much more dangerous—hate. The lava surging through her veins cooled, turning her heart to stone—black and hard.

  A silver thread, Alex had once called her. She was the silver thread tied to a future that didn’t contain death and destruction. A bubble of cynical laughter threatened to burst from her lips at the thought. She wasn’t silver, far from it. She was the wave of darkness that left nothing but death in its wake. It was time her enemies felt the power of her grief.

  Her breaths turned ragged. Each one seemed to burn through her lungs, like acid eating through metal. “I’m tired of it. I’m tired of losing the people I love. It’s time that Marcus and everyone with him feel the sharp edge of my hate. I want them to feel my pain, multiplied tenfold.”

  She turned abruptly to Alex, unable to hide the weight of her grief. “Will you stand with me?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

  Alex got to his feet and made his way to her. He stood quietly beside her, both looking out over the barren countryside. Turning to her, his blue eyes deeper and more enigmatic than the deepest fathoms of the ocean, he nodded. “Can’t you feel it?” he asked quietly, so close now his breath lifted a few strands of her hair. “We are a confluence, Allyra. Whatever you do, wherever you are, I will always be by your side.”

  Epilogue – Jason

  The walls were thick. Black granite with seams of iron and lead. Thick, but not thick enough. The sounds of torture were a form of torture themselves—shrill screams that Jason couldn’t escape. Each one worming its way into the deepest reaches of his mind.

  Jason rotated his neck, trying to work out a knot that had taken up permanent residence in his spine. It creaked, releasing some tension but none of the pain. A hollow bark of laughter escaped his lips. What did he expect? Pain and discomfort were a part of his existence now. They would be his loyal companions to the end.

  His arms were strung up above his head, unnaturally stretching out his body until his toes barely touched the ground. Jason tried to shift his weight from one foot to the other, but his body sagged with exhaustion, nearly yanking his shoulders from their sockets. The iron restraints around his wrists bit into his flesh as feeling started to return to his numb muscles, sending them into screaming spasms and rewarding him with new agony.

  He had lived in the body of a twenty-year-old for a long time now. Never aging. Never growing weak. It was the ill-begotten prize of his betrayal. But today, he felt every year, hour, and minute of his one hundred and seventy-odd years.

  Black spots exploded in his vision and he wobbled. Fever was raging through his body, his skin coated by a layer of cold sweat. He alternated violently between feeling unbearably hot and bone-chillingly cold. Sweating and shivering in equal measure. With every breath, the Revenant poison moved closer to his heart. And this time, Allyra wasn’t here to save him.

  Allyra.

  He hoped she was safe. That she had escaped. That she’d live a happy life.

  In a life filled with the wrong decisions, Jason was sure that he’d finally made the right one—for her.

  It was probably the last decision he’d ever make in his life. He was dying. His fever-drenched mind had conjured a physical manifestation of Death. A dark, hooded creature, crouching in the corner, waiting to take him. He ought to be terrified, but Jason found that he welcomed it. He embraced it. In death, he would no longer be able to hurt anyone again. He would never hurt her again. A hundred and seventy years, and he finally understood what it meant to care for someone more than himself. In Allyra, he had finally found a moment of selflessness. A moment of real grace.

  The wall in front of him seemed to move, making him wonder if it was yet another figment of his fevered mind. Eventually, he realized that it was disappearing into a doorway. Jason clenched his jaw and tried to stand up a little straighter.

  The outline of someone appeared in the doorway, though his vision faltered, and he struggled to make out the details. Slowly, she came into focus. Short red hair and pixie-green eyes. Eva.

  “What do you want, Eva?” Jason said, his voice weak and hoarse with disuse. “Or should I call you by your real name?”

  It was barely a taunt, but he was proud of it. It was proof that he wasn’t broken. That he couldn’t be shattered, no matter the torture they subjected him to.

  “Eva’s fine,” she replied smoothly.

  “What do you want?” he asked again.

  Eva leaned against the wall and crossed her arms. She shook her head sadly.

  Sadly.

  Jason wanted to laugh. He really was losing his mind—Eva wasn’t capable of such emotion.

  “Why are you doing this, Mattie?” she asked.

  “Don’t call me that,” Jason snapped back.

  “Mattie?” Eva questioned innocently, “It’s your name, isn’t it? The one your family called you. Your mother and father. Your brothers.”

  Jason gritted his teeth but stayed silent.

  “So really—why are you doing this, Mattie?” Eva asked again. “Your stubborn silence changes nothing. This is no more than a momentary setback. And all this pain? It really doesn’t become you. I hate seeing all this beauty broken and twisted by agony.”

  She straightened and closed the distance between them, her movements graceful and fairy light. She ran the tips of her fingers down the side of his face, barely touching his skin before brus
hing the palm of her hand against his chest, pushing lower and lower down his body until her hand rested between his legs.

  He shivered involuntarily, the memory of years and years of desperate longing fighting to the surface of his mind. She smiled smugly at his reaction, her green eyes flashing like a cat’s.

  “I see your body still remembers,” she whispered against his ear. “This doesn’t have to end, Mattie. We can still be together. Just tell him what he needs to know and you can have me once more. I know you still love me—that you’ve always loved me.”

  Jason let out a bark of sarcastic laughter, the force of it sending a shot of pain through his chest. “Love? It that what it was?” He shook his head. “No, I think a terrible mistake would be a more apt description.”

  A flash of anger crossed Eva’s face, marring her effortless beauty. “Don’t lie, Mattie,” she said tightly, “it’s unbecoming.”

  “I’m not lying,” Jason replied, his voice stronger now. “I was young and stupid, and your beauty blinded me. You were a wildfire—greedy and hungry, burning and consuming everything before it. I was caught up in it, in you. But there’s nothing left in me to burn anymore. The funny thing is—it’s finally allowed me to see you for what you really are. A scared little girl, terrified that people will never notice her, much less love her.”

  Eva punched him, the hollow sound of it echoing from the stone walls. His ribs cracked under the unnatural force of her blow. He doubled over, coughing and spluttering. Blood filled his mouth, thick and bitter. He spat it to the ground, drops of it hitting her shoes.

  “Shut up,” Eva hissed angrily. “You have no idea what I am.”

  Jason laughed again, blood gurgling up his throat. “Except I know exactly what you are. Maybe I’m the only person who’ll ever know. And face it, Eva—you can live a hundred lifetimes, and you will still be the girl a man is blinded by. Aroused by. But never the one he truly loves.”

  Eva joined in his laughter, but hers was an ugly, bitter sound. “And I suppose you think that Allyra is the one you truly love?” she asked. “And that your silence now will somehow buy her love.”