by Lanie Bross
She tried to picture before, but all she could see was what he had become: a shadow of his former glorious self. Rhys. The Unseen Ones had taken everything from him—her Rhys, who had once turned back time to save her life.
They had crippled him, exiled him, taken his power.
Miranda wanted revenge.
“You destroyed Aetern. And you destroyed something else, something much closer to your own heart.” Tess knelt down and pushed the hair from Miranda’s eyes in an almost motherly gesture. “A part of your heart, actually.”
Miranda struggled away from Tess’s touch. It took all her effort to push to her feet, where she stood, weaving unsteadily. “What are you talking about?”
“You killed Rhys. He was your Other. Now you’re dying,” Tess said simply.
Miranda tried to laugh. The effort sent fresh spasms of pain through her body. “Rhys died because he tried to use the tunnels again.”
Tess shook her head. “His soul was in the book that Luc fed to the guardian of the flame. When you destroyed Aetern, you destroyed everything in it. Everything, Miranda.”
“No.” Miranda’s entire body shook. Despite the heat, she was cold. So cold. Rhys’s soul was supposed to live on in the Library of the Dead. But now it was gone forever. It couldn’t end this way, not after everything she had done.
“It’s over, Mira,” Tess said softly. There was true regret in her eyes.
“It will never be over,” Miranda gasped. A new shaft of pain nearly split her in half and she went down to her knees. She dug her fingertips into the sand, trying to find any sign of life in herself, something she could use to regain control. But there was nothing—no energy, no life, no hope in this arid world where her one true love had died.
She lay on the sand gasping for air, but none would enter her lungs. Hot tears ran down her face, and the dry sand devoured them as soon as they fell. She felt as if she were being pulled completely inside out.
She had always pictured her death as a glorious explosion of a sun in some faraway galaxy, fast and furious and brilliant. Not like this. Not lying on a dead beach writhing like an animal at the feet of someone she had trusted. Someone she had created.
Miranda could only watch as Tess leaned closer and pressed her lips to her forehead. They felt warm against her cold skin. “I’m sorry,” Tess said. “Goodbye, my friend.”
The heat of the world made Miranda’s eyes sting, and as her gaze grew watery, Tess’s image wavered, and then was gone.
Miranda was left to face her last few moments completely alone.
“What—what happened?” Jas’s brain still felt fuzzy, as if it were wrapped in a blanket. She staggered to her feet. Ford tried to help her, but she pushed him away. He’d killed someone. He’d just killed someone. The boy, the Executor, was lying slack, his eyes open and unseeing. Jas thought she might throw up. “What did you do?”
“Jasmine—” Ford started to reach for her.
Jasmine took two stumbling steps backward. “Stay away from me.”
Then, suddenly, she felt the sharp bite of a blade against her throat.
“Don’t move,” the redheaded Executor said. She was holding the knife in her uninjured hand. The blade trembled slightly, and Jas could feel its vibration against her jaw. She was afraid to swallow. Afraid to breathe, even. The Executor had an arm wrapped around Jasmine’s chest, keeping her immobilized. “You,” she snarled, addressing Ford, “stay here. Don’t follow us, or the girl dies.”
“She’ll die anyway,” Ford said, hands raised, his eyes fixed on Jasmine’s. She was sure he was trying to communicate something to her, but she couldn’t tell what.
“Yes,” the Executor spat. “But if you try to make trouble, I’ll make sure she dies in pain.”
Ford nodded, just barely.
The Executor tightened her hold and dragged Jasmine toward the door. A blast of cool air washed over them when the girl kicked the door open.
Jasmine stumbled as the Executor pulled her across the parking lot, and the knife nicked her skin. She felt a trickle of blood run down her neck and fought back a wave of panic.
“Where are we going?” Jas asked. The girl could have killed her in the room, or in the hallway, or even in the parking lot, so why hadn’t she?
The girl didn’t answer. “Just keep moving,” she said. She pulled Jasmine toward a doorway hidden in the deep shadows of the old barracks building. As they got closer, Jasmine’s skin began to tingle, like tiny electric shocks were hitting her all over.
There was something off about the door. It almost seemed to shimmer. Or was it a trick of the mist curling around it?
“Go,” the Executor said, pushing her toward the door.
Just then, Ford dashed around the corner. Jasmine felt a surge of hope.
“Ford!” she screamed, and felt the blade pierce the flesh under her chin. She elbowed the Executor in the stomach and felt the girl’s grip release slightly.
“No!” Ford’s shout echoed through the fog, but Jasmine barely heard him.
The Executor grabbed Jasmine’s shirt, and Jasmine was yanked off her feet. They were crossing through the door, right through it, and then the world Jasmine knew fell away in a rush of wind.
A gust of wind buffeted Jasmine’s body backward, but the Executor kept her on her feet. Barely. The air came alive with undulating fibers of color, winding and twisting past her, over her, under her. It was as if the whole world had broken apart into a rainbow.
For a split second she forgot about the Executor still gripping her, and thought only about Ford—what would happen to Ford?—forgot even about the blade of a knife at her throat. Her blood was filled with tingling warmth. She was flying. She felt alive, at one with something greater than anything she knew.
Just as quickly, the terror came rushing back. The world didn’t just evaporate. People didn’t step through doorways into other worlds. It was the stuff of movies, of science fiction. Wind howled around them, and Jasmine felt the Executor’s grip loosen. Earlier, she had just wanted to escape. Now she was terrified that the Executor would let go and leave her in this nothing place, with its shifting colors and its formlessness.
Then the Executor’s grip tightened and she wrenched Jasmine sideways. It felt as though they were falling into a bottomless abyss, even though Jas counted only two seconds in her head.
When they hit solid ground, the jolt knocked Jas flat and the Executor temporarily released her hold. Jas had lost her breath. She gasped soundlessly, found her lungs shuttered as a window, useless. Above her was a rose-colored sunset, a sky littered with stars. A sun, a sky, and damp grass beneath her: Jas knew this was her chance to escape.
In the time it took the girl to stand, Jasmine was already sprinting. Her breath came back, finally, along with the hammering of her heart against her ribs. There was a path that led off into a grove of trees, and Jasmine followed it blindly, not daring to look back. She had no idea where she was, but she knew instinctively she was not home. Not in her world. The air was too sweet and all the wrong texture—like a spoonful of honey. The birdsong was different, and the light was wrong, too. It was entirely possible that she was running straight into danger. But the Executor would kill her if she didn’t escape.
Jasmine pushed through the dense foliage, smacking aside huge leaves and flowers the size of dinner plates. Plants she had never seen grew up over her head, interwoven like long fingers, with leaves as wide as her body and large fragrant flowers drooping down like giant bells.
The girl was gaining on her. Jas’s heartbeat felt like a dance track remixed all wrong—too crazy, arrhythmic. Jas was fast, but the girl was faster. Hurling herself into a place of thick growth, ignoring the scratches of branches and thorns, Jasmine crouched behind a heavy wall of green, willing her racing heart to slow down, willing herself to breathe silently.
After only twenty seconds, the Executor darted past, moving so quickly she was practically a blur, her long hair streaming behind her.
As soon as her footsteps faded, Jasmine counted to twenty, then emerged carefully back onto the pathway and ran back the way she had come. There had to be a way out of this place.
The path split forty feet ahead. Jasmine didn’t remember reaching a fork—maybe she hadn’t been paying attention—and went left. After another minute, Jas spotted the shimmering of a river that wound its way across the horizon and reflected all the colors of the sunset sky above them. She knew she had not passed a stream, but a sense of déjà vu swelled up, so swift and fierce that she stumbled. Why did this place suddenly seem so familiar? It tickled the back of her mind, a familiarity in the soft purplish glow, as if she were entering a childhood bedroom.
She took a hesitant step forward, and then another. Some force seemed to be guiding her along, one that she couldn’t resist.
She knew this place. She knew she knew this place. For the first time she noticed that the world around her—the very air—seemed to be vibrating, pulsing to a rhythm that called out to her, made her own heartbeat slow in response.
She heard something then—a disturbance on the wind, a footstep. She had to move. There was a narrow dirt path on her right, half as wide as the one she’d been traveling, winding up toward some distant high point where she could just see a gleam of white. She started running again. Her legs felt strangely numb, sluggish, as though there were weights attached to her ankles. She longed to return to the river, to lie down, to rest.
Then the Executor slammed into her from behind. They both fell to the ground. Jas got a mouthful of grass. She tried to roll the Executor off, but couldn’t. The Executor grabbed both of Jas’s elbows and hauled Jas to her feet.
“Leave me alone!” Jasmine cried. She knew it was hopeless. But maybe someone would hear her and come to her aid. The Executor was gripping her so tightly she left tiny half-moon fingernail marks in Jasmine’s skin. “What is this place?” Jasmine asked. “How did we even get here?”
“You’ve just traveled the Crossroad—here, to Pyralis,” the Executor said, pushing forward. Jasmine wondered why the Executor didn’t just finish her off already.
“Why am I here?”
“Because you took life from the Great Gardens, and now you must pay for it in blood.”
Jasmine dragged her feet, stumbled, leaned back, forced the girl to slow down. “I’ve never been here before,” she argued. “How could I take anything?” It was a lie. She knew she had been here before—could feel it in the humming of her blood. But she had never, ever hurt anyone. She was sure of it.
“Stop whining,” the Executor said, for a moment sounding just like a harried mom leading her toddler around a grocery store. “We’ve wasted enough time already.”
“So you’re just going to kill me, then?” Jasmine’s fear felt out of place, like it might somehow contaminate this world, which was so beautiful, so peaceful and still.
“I’ve told you,” the girl said. “I have no choice.”
Jasmine thought she sounded a little sad. Or maybe she just imagined it.
They stopped in front of a huge iron gate. Beyond it, Jas could see a vast garden with an explosion of colors, many of which Jas had no name for: petals that looked like the tie-dyed shirts she used to love as a kid.
In front of the gate were seven enormous stone statues—they all had a woman’s body, but each face was completely blank except for a crescent where the mouth should be. Jas had the sensation that the statues knew she was there, that they were watching, and as the Executor propelled Jas to the gates, she half expected them to come alive and attack her.
“She has returned,” the Executor said in a loud voice. “Open the gate.”
The gate squeaked open and the Executor dragged Jasmine into the garden.
The perfume that filled Jas’s lungs hit her almost like a drug, like taking that first pull of really strong weed and feeling the world get warm and fuzzy at the edges. She was suddenly filled with a fierce longing—not to escape but to stay, to be left here, alone and in peace.
It terrified her, the connection to this world.
“Please,” Jasmine said in a low voice, giving in to the fear that welled up inside her. “Please. If you let me go, I can pay you. My family will pay you.” Another lie: her family had no money. Her dad was in the hospital. But she was desperate, babbling now.
“That’s not how it works. You took from the Garden. Now you must give back.” The Executor grabbed Jasmine’s hands before she had time to react, then bound her wrists together behind her back with thick green vines. “The nectar from the Flower of Life flows in your veins. It was never meant for you. Your brother crossed a line.”
“What do you know about my brother?”
“Only that he has created chaos across the universe. The Unseen Ones are not happy. He should be careful, or he’ll be next.”
“Next?” Jas asked, but she already knew. They would pursue Luc, too.
The girl was crazy. It was the only explanation. She was certifiably, one hundred percent insane. Maybe all of this was some kind of weird acid trip. Maybe the girl had drugged her.
The girl yanked on Jasmine’s bound wrists, verifying the knots would hold. A stab of pain radiated from Jasmine’s shoulders. When the girl returned to face her, Jas could see that her features were too perfect, like a porcelain doll’s, and her eyes were the color of the sky swirling with storm clouds. Pale light shone against her skin, making it appear lavender.
Jasmine couldn’t tear her gaze away from the knife. Why was a knife so much worse than a gun? At least with a gun she would feel it less. She felt sick. Her knees were liquid, and she didn’t know how much longer she could stand.
“Please.” Jasmine choked on the plea. There was a time only recently when she hadn’t thought she cared about whether she lived or died. But faced with death, Jasmine realized that she very much did care.
She definitely, definitely did not want to die.
And then she felt a break in her mind, a sudden release, like the parting of a dark curtain. And she remembered a beautiful purple sky littered with stars, millions and millions of them. She could hear the gurgling of a stream nearby, saw thousands of tiny orbs bobbing in the current as they swept by. Luc stood over her, his face creased with fear. The ground under her trembled. She had never seen Luc so scared before. She wanted to reach out, to reassure him that she was okay, but she was so weak.
So tired.
Instead she lay on the ground, staring up at the stars, and felt life flowing slowly from her body. But Luc appeared—and brought something thick and sweet to her lips. She had swum through a river and waded past marbles carried by the current.…
Jasmine snapped out of the memory with a muffled cry. Her pulse thumped loudly in her ears. Was that a memory or a hallucination? For a moment, it had felt like she really was dying in that twilight world.
“You can feel it inside, can’t you?” the girl said. It wasn’t really a question. “The way you’ve changed. The way you sense things now.” Jasmine didn’t say anything. She was rigid with fear. The Executor was right. “No wonder you were able to escape us for so long. It’s all because of the flower’s nectar. A flower you were never supposed to have.”
“You’ve made a mistake,” Jasmine said weakly, although she wasn’t sure of that anymore. With her hands bound behind her back, she felt like a prisoner in a movie about pirates, about to walk the plank.
“The Unseen Ones don’t make mistakes,” the girl said with a small frown, as if Jasmine should know better. “Besides, it’s not my decision. Only from your blood can the flower regrow.” She took a step forward and raised the knife. Jasmine wanted to keep her eyes open—she wanted to be brave—but at the last second, she couldn’t.
“Let her go,” a voice said, “or I’ll kill you right here, right now.”
Jasmine’s eyes flew open.
Ford. He’d followed her.
He had one arm wrapped around the Executor’s throat, the blade of a knife pressed
under her chin. His other arm kept her immobilized, pinned, her own knife hanging uselessly at her side. Ford pressed the blade harder against her neck. All he’d have to do was angle it differently and he’d sever a vein. “Drop the knife. Now.”
“It’s her fate,” the girl protested, but she dropped the knife. “You know I only do what I’m tasked with.”
Jasmine began frantically working her wrists together, hoping to loosen her binds. The rope chafed her wrists, left her skin feeling raw and exposed.
“Why were you sent after Jasmine?” Ford demanded. He loosened his grip on the Executor, but not by much. “I know you read from the marbles. So what did you see about Jasmine?”
The girl made a sound in her throat. “It … showed us death. She must be killed in the Gardens. We were told that she had taken something that had to be returned.”
Jas’s wrists ached. Her head was pounding. She knew that Ford was trying to help, but she hated the way that they were talking in codes and puzzles, about reading marbles and something Jas had supposedly stolen. She wanted a straight answer—she wanted to understand.
“What marble?” she said. “What are you talking about?”
They ignored her.
“Told by who?” Ford asked.
The girl hesitated. “The Unseen Ones,” she said quickly, when Ford moved as if to tighten his grip again. “The marble came directly from them.”
Jasmine suddenly remembered the marble she had found in the apartment. “I have a marble,” she blurted out.
Silence. Sudden, shocked silence. Both the Executor and Ford stared at her.
“There’s something inside it. An image of the rotunda. Is that what you’re talking about? I can show you, if you want.” It was too quiet. The Executor had gone white. Jas licked her lips, which were very dry. “You’ll have to untie me.”
“You can see what’s in the marbles?” Ford asked. It felt almost as if he wanted her to deny it.
Jasmine hesitated. She didn’t like the way he was looking at her. Something had changed. “It was just … quick. Like an impression I had. It might have been a trick of the light.”
