The walls crumbled, and a violent tug cast the shadow back to whence it came.
Emmery gasped as she lurched back into her body, her limbs reclaimed and—
Oh gods, her heart pounded. When she glanced down at her hand and saw Dez’s arm, tears flooded her eyes. She’d caused that, and had hurt him, or whatever that thing was had. And she didn’t know where she’d gone or what that dark space she’d fallen into had been.
“Dez?” she whimpered, finally finding her voice.
Emmery’s eyes rolled back and her knees buckled.
He lunged and caught her before she hit the ground. He grunted from the strain, but he held firm, even as his burnt flesh and steadily bleeding arm weakened him.
“There you are,” he breathed. And even through the pain and the terror and this insane heartache, he gave her a sunshinesmile that could banish any darkness. Despite the thick blood slathering him, he was a beacon. He exhaled a long, shaky sigh. “I—I thought I lost you.”
Her teeth chattered, the rest of her body trembling, too.
“I’m sorry,” she managed. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face into the crook of his neck, not caring about the blood or about anything but him. “I’m so, sosorry. I couldn’t control it. I don’t know where I went. It took me away—”
“It’s alright. It doesn’t matter.” He stroked her hair in a soothing rhythm and held her until she stopped quivering.
Emmery pulled away only to sway like a dandelion in the wind.
He caught her by the shoulders and surveyed every fleck of crimson splattering her, the nasty slice down her cheek, Senka’s fleshy goo coating her hands, and he caught a dribble of blood from her nose on his thumb then eyed it like poison.
His hands skimmed to her elbows. “Can you walk?”
She nodded though fatigue gripped her as the world spun. Dez led her to the red chair Senka had sat in and shoved it aside. An open doorway lay behind, the same strange portal as when they’d entered the outskirts of the Hollow.
Emmery’s heart pounded as she fought the urge to sprint for the door as fast as her legs would carry her, for fear it may be some cruel trick and she’d exit it to find the same shadowed corridors in an endless, infinite maze.
She took a wobbly step forward. Dez muttered something she didn’t recognize that sounded equivalent tofuck it,before he scooped one of his arms under her knees and the other around her waist to lift her into his arms. Emmery sank easily into his embrace.
He wasted no time. As they breached the exit, a burst of aged dust flared as if this threshold hadn’t been crossed in hundreds of years.
And together they descended into the Hollow.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
VESPER
As the remnants of sunlight bled through his piece of paper, Vesper frowned at his shitty drawing. Even after he’d spent hours on these silly doodles, he couldn’t get the eyes right. They were cold, dead, like looking through a fogged telescope at a far-off island. It was an adequate distraction from the looming deadline a mere seven nights away. Nevertheless, the threat of losing Ellynne grew closer and Thorrin hadn’t found any information on how to help Izzy, nor the bloodlace.
Every day, after training, he and Kyrith had escaped to that little cliffside that now felt like their own, and sketched all sorts of nonsense. He would often sneak in some questions thoughshe never really delved into anything about herself. And every night when he collapsed into bed, he would dream of her. It was utterly and completely pathetic. Infinitely stupid, too.
But she was just so annoyingly flawless. Stupidly perfect.
Sometimes he wondered if it wasn’t his imagination at all. If there was something there. And maybe, in some delusional pocket of his brain, he dreamed she felt it, too. Whatever this was.
He returned to the drawing and hummed to himself, this time that tune that reminded him of his home. Of his mother and his father and everything he was fighting for. For a flicker of a moment he wondered if his father would endorse his efforts here or label them as wasted, because as much as he battled the bloodlace, it fought back with teeth and claws and at the end of the day, it won. But he still clung to that fragile spark of hope.
Vesper sighed and straightened his mask. “Would you hold still?” he asked, exasperated. Kaida flashed her teeth. “Squirmy beast,” he added under his breath.
The dragon pranced through the bloodlace like it was spun sugar and not this deadly, infectious thing. It seemedShadowheartswere immune to this plague. Maybe it was the shadows that writhed beneath her flesh or the billowing flame in her belly, but whatever it was, she clearly wasn’t afraid of it while Vesper shrank away like some pathetic wilting flower.
The dragon flopped onto her back, kicking the bloodlace into the air in a great puff. Vesper tried not to wince as the red, sticky cotton came much too close to his face and withered in the shelter of trees barricading the sun.
“She never listened to you before,” Kyrith mumbled from beside Vesper. “What makes you think she will now?” She laid on her back with her burgundy hair fanned amongst the grass. As she shifted the bend of her elbow from her eyes, she crackedan eyelid. Stiggy curled further into her side like a spoiled housecat.
“I’m clearly delusional,” he said.