by Alyson Noel
“Don’t,” he says, his gaze fixed on mine. “Trust me, you’re not ready for that. It’s worse than you can imagine.”
I try to jerk free, but it takes a few attempts to succeed.
“You won’t like what you see,” Axel warns, but I dismiss it with a wave of my hand. Following the set of tracks that lead to my broken, bloodied, but still breathing boyfriend.
twenty-two
Dace
I wake from the dream with bleary eyes, a foggy brain, and the memory of Daire’s sweet scent clinging in a way so insistent, so real, I instinctively roll onto my back and thrust a hand before me in a foolish and desperate attempt to make contact. Trying not to picture myself as I really am—a tortured mind, a wretched body, with five stupid fingers grasping at air—refusing the truth my heart knows too well.
She’s not there.
Never will be.
This is a place of deep fetid darkness and gloom. Home to demons, those who hunt them, and the soulless, like me.
A light as bright as Daire’s has no place here.
Even that strange glowing man was quickly overcome. Took only a matter of minutes to see his radiance permanently snuffed and diminished.
Still, my longing to gaze into her glittering emerald eyes and taste her sweet lips manages to persist. My need far too fervent to be tempered by something as simple as truth, I continue to grasp and pull and yearn until I wear myself out, burrow deeper into the earth, and wait for the dreamstate to claim me again.
twenty-three
Daire
I drop beside the crumpled form, my fingers frantically digging through layers of earth. Clearing his back of debris, I grab hold of his shoulder and try to roll him onto his side, only to have him mumble something incoherent and push me away.
“Dace—please, it’s me!” I cry, trying to make him face me again, but he’s quick to deny me.
“He’s gravely injured and severely traumatized.” Axel’s voice drifts from behind. “He’s been down here too long to believe it’s really you.” His tone is straightforward, containing no hint of smugness, and yet the words manage to grate to no end.
Determined to ignore him, I lean closer, press my lips to Dace’s ear, and urge him to open his eyes and see that it’s me. Only to have my heart sink in despair when he shrinks from my touch and squeezes his eyes tightly shut.
“Either end me or leave me!” he croaks in a voice so damaged, I barely recognize it as his.
“I will never end you. And I have no intention of leaving without you,” I say, managing to force him onto his side until his face is just inches from mine. “Dace, please!” I beg, reaching for the key at my neck and holding it up before him. “You must remember this, I’m sure that you do. I wear it as a symbol of our love and I gave you one to match.” I slip a hand under his bloodstained sweater, hoping his key is still there, that he didn’t lose it on his hellish journey here. Breathing a sigh of relief when I curl my fingers around it and bring it to his face. “Tell me you remember. Tell me you haven’t forgotten the time we spent together.” I press the keys together until they’re perfectly matched, then I lower my lips to his and kiss him until he finally relents and kisses me back.
His lids flutter open. His eyes meet mine. And when I see the emptiness inside, my heart collapses in my chest.
Soulless.
It really is true.
But when he brings a hand to my face, and cups his palm to my cheek, I know that some semblance of Dace has managed to stick.
“I’ve dreamed you so many times,” he says. “How do I know I’m not dreaming now?”
“Because I’m here. This is real. And I would’ve been here earlier but—”
“So I am dead.” His face floods with inexplicable relief. “I finally managed it, and now we can be together for eternity.”
“No!” I shake my head, desperate to refute it. “No one’s dead. We’re both alive. And now I’m going to get you out of here.”
But before I can finish, he’s already turning away. Closing his eyes in denial, he says, “You died. I saw you die. I watched the whole thing.”
“Not the whole thing!” I cry, my throat parched and constricted, but I force the words past. “So much more happened, but we’ll go over it later. For now, I need you to trust me enough to help you get out of here. Okay? Dace?”
He slips from my grip. His consciousness fading, voice drifting, he says, “I’m soulless … no good to you now…”
I try to prop him up, heave him onto my shoulder. But in his unconscious state, it’s like lifting an unwieldy lump of dead weight.
I glance over my shoulder, glaring at Axel as I struggle with Dace. “The least you could do is help,” I say, only to stare incredulously as he remains resolutely in place. “If you had an ounce of decency in you, you would—”
Before I can finish, he says, “It’s not my job to help him.” I sputter in outrage, about to comment on his unbelievable selfishness, when he goes on to say, “I shouldn’t even be here. It’s my job to guide him, no more. But now I’m afraid I’ve overstepped some of my most sacred boundaries.” He shoots me an uncertain look, rakes a hand through his platinum curls, and though I have no idea what he’s getting at, I’m far from amused.
“Listen, Axel,” I say. “Here’s the thing: You either help me lift Dace, or you get the hell out of my way. I have no time for word games, and absolutely no interest in your existential dilemma. With or without you, Dace and I are out of here.”
I pull on Dace’s jacket again, finally getting some traction, when Axel heaves a deep sigh and comes around to Dace’s other side. Easily propping him onto his shoulder, he looks at me and says, “I should probably explain. I’m Dace’s spirit guide.”
twenty-four
Daire
“You?” I stare. The disbelief in my tone is nothing compared to the disbelief I wear on my face. “You’re Dace’s spirit guide?”
Axel nods in almost imperceptible assent. His stride quick and purposeful, his gaze fixed straight ahead.
“And why did you fail to mention this earlier? Why did you save me and not him?” I glare hard at him, but no matter how long I hold the look I can’t get him to return it. “You left him for dead. Left him abandoned and soulless in the dreariest dimension of the Middleworld. You haven’t done a single thing to protect him. So excuse me for being suspicious.”
“My oath was to guide him, not to protect him. There’s a difference.”
I gaze at him wide-eyed. Every word he speaks just makes it worse. “That’s it?” I cry, my hands curling to fists, blood rippling to my cheeks in a combination of anger and frustration. “That’s your defense? You’re going to argue semantics? Is that the best you can do?”
He ignores the outburst and carries on without a word. And when we pass through the vortex, I steel myself for the onslaught of demons, only to watch in disbelief when the few remaining ones take one look at Axel and flee.
“If you are Dace’s spirit guide like you claim,” I say, after we’ve traveled quite a ways, “then why’d you choose me over him?”
For the longest time, he refuses to engage. Remaining stubbornly silent through a succession of veils before he says, “I chose you over Dace, as you put it, because I knew that you were the key to ultimately saving him.”
I stare at his profile for a long time, before I say, “That doesn’t make any sense.”
He nods in acknowledgment, but steadfastly refuses my gaze. “On the surface, it probably doesn’t,” he says. “But the fact is, Dace loves you and you love Dace. You are fated for each other.”
I continue to stare. My interest now piqued.
“As Dace’s spirit guide, it’s my job to guide him. Much like Horse does, only I do so in different ways.”
I switch my gaze to Dace’s battered, unconscious form. Barely able to keep my anger in check when I say, “Well, you’ve done a really bang-up job there, haven’t you, Axel?” I scowl. “Really. Stellar work
. Way to go.”
He ignores the slight and goes on to say, “While I am always attuned to him, and my influence is strong, it is only to the degree that Dace is willing to allow it, or acknowledge it. I am the nagging tug he feels in his gut. I am the gentle push toward a particular choice. I’m the intuition he doesn’t always choose to act on. I’m there to guide and influence only. It is not my place to interfere with his choices. There is such a thing as free will, and I have to say that Dace Whitefeather has never failed to exercise his.”
I weigh his words in my head, but remain unconvinced.
“Think of life as a classroom. You humans arrive here in order to learn and grow. And most of that learning and growing comes from the mistakes that you make. It’s just the nature of things. Humans would never learn anything if their guides were always interfering, or trying to protect them.”
“But you did interfere! You just said that you saved me to save Dace. I was already dead, I took my last breath, when you gave me the kiss of life!”
Axel’s lips flatten. His face grows conflicted.
And in that moment, I know that I’m right. His expression providing all the proof that I need, to know that his feelings for me go far deeper than he’s willing to admit. Far deeper than they rightfully should.
He pauses a long, thoughtful moment, before he turns to me with a regretful gaze. “By allowing you to live, by restoring your breath, I’m afraid I’ve broken my most sacred oath.”
His expression is broken. He’s speaking the truth.
A truth that reveals just how much I’ve misjudged him.
Axel wasn’t hiding me because he’s secretly in love with me.
He was hiding me because he wasn’t supposed to save me.
“It’s true,” he says, having eavesdropped on my thoughts. The look that follows assuring me there’s no need for embarrassment. “Dace was meant to die, not you. That’s why I was there—it was time to guide him home. But instead of Dace, I ended up taking you.”
“So it really was the prophecy, then?” I gaze off into the distance. The entire foundation of what I knew about life feels suddenly tenuous.
“Cade’s forcing it was a little premature, but only a little. It was going to happen anyway. But now, because of what he did, everything’s changed.”
“Because I died instead?”
“Partly.”
“And the other part?”
Axel looks at Dace.
“So, let me get this straight, you were there to whisk Dace to the Upperworld because it was his turn to die?”
He nods.
“But then everything got messed up, and I died instead?”
He inhales deeply, lifting his shoulders and dropping them again.
“And so, somewhere between the Lowerworld and the Upperworld you decided to save me, even though it went against your most solemn oath. And you did so in order to ultimately save Dace.” I stare hard at him, but he doesn’t respond. “And then you proceeded to hold me hostage so no one in the Upperworld would discover what you did, while everyone in Enchantment assumed I was dead.”
He turns away.
“So all of this time you were basically protecting yourself?”
He closes his eyes.
“What kind of a Mystic are you, anyway?”
“According to you, not a very good one.”
He shifts Dace higher onto his shoulder, and if nothing else, the gentle way in which he handles him tells me he truly does care for his charge. Still, there are too many unanswered questions for me to even think about lowering my guard.
“Why can’t you heal him like you did me?”
“I’m not sure. It’s either because the energy here is too dark and heavy. Or…” He pauses for a moment, before he’s able to continue. “Or I’ve been down here too long and too often, and now it’s influencing me in ways it never has before. Or, I’ve been stripped of my magick as punishment for what I’ve done. This is all new to me. I can’t say for sure.”
“I saw you annihilate that tree. That’s pretty much the opposite of healing energy.”
“Energy never dies, it just transforms. The magick’s still with me, it’s just that it’s so much easier to destroy than create.”
“Do you know what happened to Dace’s soul?”
“I know it’s not here.”
“Does that mean you do know where it is and you won’t tell me?”
He looks away. “Daire, please.”
“Axel—if you’re purposely holding back much-needed information for some messed-up reason, you’re only delaying the inevitable because I will find it!”
“I have no doubt you will.”
“So why not save me the time, and tell me now?”
“Because I don’t know where it is. But I’ve told you enough already, more than I should.”
I scowl, shoot him a dirty look, curse him under my breath, but he’s like Teflon, none of it penetrates.
He just continues to haul Dace through the veils, as I race alongside him. Glancing over his shoulder to say, “I guess you’ll just have to try to trust me—like I once tried to trust you.”
twenty-five
Xotichl
“So where is lover boy Greyson anyway?” Lita taps her square-tipped nails hard against the table, resulting in an incessant clinking that’s magnified by a lull in the music.
“Don’t be nervous. He’ll be here,” I say, trying to keep my rubbernecking in check. I’ve never seen the Rabbit Hole in the way I can now. And though I can’t see it clearly, it’s even spookier than I thought it would be. Still, I need to get it under control, be more discreet. I’m not quite ready for anyone to know I can almost, kinda see.
“Nervous? Over a boy?” Lita’s voice rises in outrage. “Please.” She continues with the nail drumming, as I focus on her energy sparking and flaring—a definite sign of nerves if I’ve ever seen one. “He’s the one who should be nervous. It’s his job to impress me, not the other way around.” Her head bobs, her nails tap, and it’s not long before her leg joins in, swinging back and forth. And I know I need to change the subject before she rockets right off her stool.
“So tell me, what do you see?” I ask, eager to see if it matches the shadowy visions before me.
She ducks her head, takes a sip of her soda, as I watch the swish of her energy, the tilt of her straw. “Okay, well … the band is taking a break, and I hope it’s a long one because they totally blow. I mean, where’s Epitaph when you need them? Especially the drummer?”
“For the last time, he’ll be here.” I groan, wondering what I was thinking when I agreed to set her up on a date. “And, for the record, I already know about the band. I’m blind, not deaf, you know.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. So let’s see … Phyre is still holding court, but she keeps looking over here. Though every time I catch her looking over here she pretends she wasn’t actually looking over here but rather at a spot just slightly to the right of over here.”
“Next time she looks, call her over.”
Lita leans in and lowers her voice to a furious whisper. “You’ve got to be kidding. Daire gave specific instructions to eavesdrop. She never said anything about getting chatty with the enemy.”
“Daire told you to be your normal charming self—and that includes small talk.”
“I don’t think I remember how to be charming. It’s been so long since I tried.”
“I’m not sure you ever knew how.” I raise a grin to soften the blow. “People were mostly afraid of you. But you can use that too. Just, turn it up like you used to.”
Lita grumbles a string of mostly unintelligible words, though it’s not long before she perks up again. Sliding her elbows across the table, she grabs hold of my arm, and squeals, “Oh my gosh—Cade’s here! He just walked up to Phyre and gave her a hug … um, actually, I think it’s more like she’s giving him a hug. She seems a little lingering. Like she has no plans to live in a world where she’s not hugging Cad
e. But, from the looks of it, he’s not all that into her. He extricates more or less gracefully, but not before she runs a finger down the length of his cheek, and looks at him all starstruck and dreamy … Gag. Consider yourself lucky you can’t see this. It’s straight out of the Come Hither playbook. So forced it’s embarrassing to watch. Anyway, better her than me. That’s what I say.”
I peer across the room, seeing far more than I let on. Still, it’s not quite as clear as Lita’s version, so I’m quick to press for more. “What’s Cade doing now? Are you sure he’s not into it? I mean, she is really pretty, right?”
“If you’re into tall, slim, perfectly proportioned, exotic-looking girls with smooth skin, full lips, perfect noses, and cat’s eyes—then yeah, I guess she’s okay,” Lita says, her voice clearly sour.
“You’re not jealous, are you?”
“Please.” She straightens her spine, fluffs her hair so that it falls softly over her shoulders, and tugs on her sweater to put a bit more cleavage on display. “Anyway, Cade’s always been hard to read, but one thing is sure—he loves the attention. He lives for attention. But whether his interest is truly reciprocated is anyone’s guess. What about you—are you getting a read on his energy?”
I shake my head and continue to peer toward the far side of the room.
“Okay, so back to Phyre—she’s acting really flirty. Like seriously, seductive and flirty. Her body language alone is like some over-the-top, animalistic, mating dance. But despite the fact that she’s going all-out, they’re mostly just talking, and he seems kind of distant and uninterested … and … oh great … oh crap! He just caught me looking and he just smiled, and now … oh crap, crap, triple crap…” Lita slumps down in her seat and leans toward me. “Pretend I’m not here.”
“How am I supposed to do that when he already saw you?” I say, aware of Cade’s frenetic, dark energy drifting our way.
“I don’t know—I just—what do I do? What do I say?” Her voice is frantic, her energy panicked.
