Only when she spotted salvation ahead, a sanctuary from this liquid death, did her heart lodge in her throat and a small cry slip from her.
Emmery sprinted toward the field of noxcore. As she took her first step onto the soil, the petals yawned open at her presence. Their humming power fizzled in her blood, and she inhaled it, craving the strength, needing the magic’s nectar to feed her. She sank to the ground, and reached for a petal, but her hand passed through it like smoke.
A wave of panic crashed over her. The outline of her fingers frayed as Briar’s did when she wielded her shadows too long. Once more, she tried to pick a flower and failed.
“It won’t work,” a familiar voice said.
Her skin prickled as her eyes lifted to find Zyphira seated in all her uncaged glory on a boulder nearly twice her size. She blinked behind her thick spectacles and her foot bobbed as she waited for Emmery’s approach.
Emmery sighed in relief from this infinite loneliness, though it was short-lived since Zyphira never stayed long.
She beckoned Emmery with an outstretched hand. “Let me see you, child.”
Hesitantly, she closed the distance and laid her hand in the Oracle’s warm touch. As Emmery met her strange plum-coloured gaze, it seemed they were both tied to this place, though Zyphira owned the darkness, while it ate Emmery alive.
“Something has happened. Your path has disappeared," Zyphira said. Her words needled into Emmery and tore open an old wound. The Oracle examined the rose pactum, and frowned.“Your task was to find your tethered and follow the prophecy. But I can no longer see the threads. It’s as if they have been stolen.”
Emmery’s stomach twisted and she studied the ground to hide from Zyphira’s disappointed stare. Shame festered inside her. Had what she and Dez done resulted in this? It was only a kiss; a brief moment of weakness. All else she had done in search of Shade.
“I’m following the path,” she said, though her voice wavered. “I retrieved my memories. I’m—I’m so close to finding Shade. I know it. IknowI am.”
The Oracle’s eyes narrowed. “Do youtrulyunderstand the consequences? Your people will die and magic will cease to exist if you do not find your way to him.” Zyphira released her hand, stood, then strolled with her arms tucked behind her back. “Nothing good can come of that.”
Panic swelled in Emmery’s chest, and she took a shaky breath.
Zyphira continued, “The choices you have made led you astray and your path is blocked. I no longer hold the answers.” She plucked a flower from the garden and extended it to Emmery. “You are on your own for now.”
Emmery shrank away and violently shook her head. The ground seemed to crumble beneath her. “No,no. I need you to guide me. I don’t know what I’m doing. Without you, I’m lost.”
Zyphira stepped forward and pressed the flower into Emmery’s hands. Herkhaosflame sparked and reduced the noxcore to ash. Emmery gasped, tried to pull away, but Zyphira held firm.
“Follow your heart, child. It will not lead you astray. But it seems this place is claiming you, and we cannot allow that.” She exhaled onto Emmery’s fading flesh like an icy wind, biting into her blood. “You must return to him whole, with fire in your eyes and heart. Not as you once did.”
There was no time to question, to blink, to breathe, before her existence fell into the whirling depths of unending darkness.
Though the beckoning world waited, Emmery wasn’t ready to wake. Red light speckled her vision, a breeze caressed her cheek, and she crawled to the opposite side of the bed to find warmth still clinging to the sheets.
Her dreams lingered out of reach. Slowly, as consciousness flooded back, she wiggled her toes, fingers, and scrunched her nose. A foreign sensation, a presence, swam in her blood and loitered in that dark, hollow place inside her that now didn’t feel quite so empty. But its misshapen edges were different, not of her own creation, though still moulded to fit her soul.
She buried her face in the pillow that smelled of icy mint and—
Home. It smelled likehome.
Her eyelids creaked open like a stubborn window.
The last vestiges of sunlight kissed her face, and out the ajar window, the embrace of night lingered only moments away. Like the souls of the Hollow, the dark furniture’s shadows warped and twisted at dusk’s command.
As she studied the familiar burgundy walls, gold accents, patterned rug, and black sheets tangled around her legs, her thoughts whirled like a hurricane.
How had she gotten back to Dez’s bedroom? Or to Asaella at all? She didn’t recall anything beyond—
The air knocked from her lungs as the events slammed back into her: the Hollow, the study, the sabers, the phoenix, and that vial containing the most precious thing in the world.
Answers.
She fumbled with the too-long sleeves on her shirt, still Dez’s but this one clean and—
The vial was gone. Her stomach sank as she examined the slice on her elbow. But Dez had likely taken the vial while she slept, or perhaps he already sought answers for how to inject the memories back into her mind.