Chapter 33

33

T he sharp rocks of the beach bit into my skin and dug what felt like permanent grooves along my spine.

I came awake with a fierce cough that wracked through me from top to bottom. The pain returned with it. I drowned on land. The sensations were strong; they were inescapable.

Turning on my side, just like in the ballroom, I sucked air into my poor body. Water sifted against the rocks beneath my feet and lapped at my legs. Okay, I was definitely back in my body.

The darkness behind my closed lids was matched by the impenetrable black when I finally pried them open. Pitch-black, oppressive and living. Sheer terror curled my fingers into claws.

I pushed onto my knees and pawed at the ground around me. The water between the rocks was frozen. My hand hit something furry and wet. I grabbed hold of the thick limb, feeling in one direction until I hit paws.

Unmoving.

Adrenaline lit me like an electric zap.

“Noren!” Panic overwhelmed me. I scrambled closer, scooting until my legs pressed against the long length of his back. “No, no, no. Oh god, please, no, don’t be dead.”

I felt for his face and the lines of his ears. One, the other. His snout. His eyes were closed.

Was he breathing? Did I feel air passing through his nostrils?

The full absence of light made it impossible to know and I was too petrified to find his pulse. There was only mine, racing faster than a rocket through the atmosphere, my lungs working overtime and my head spiraling.

“Please don’t leave me. You can’t be dead.” I moved closer yet and pulled at him until his head and neck fell over my lap, the water freezing both of us together.

Was this the cost of Life?

If so, fuck that. I’d give my own if it meant Noren made it through. He’d only come because of his loyalty to me.

The direwolf woke with a snort, shifting underneath my hands. In the next beat, he lifted his face to mine and a warm, rough tongue dragged across my cheek.

Relief was immediate. I was shaking all over and for a second I thought I was going to throw up.

“Thank you.” I wrapped my arms around his bulky neck and shivered. “Okay, so you’re with me. That means the others have to be here, too.” I dropped my head to his, letting the warmth of his fur sink into my skin. “Livvy? Onyx?”

After a slight delay, two voices rose from somewhere down the beach.

“Over here,” Onyx called.

“Tavi? Is that you?”

He and Livvy sounded close to each other.

“Keep talking,” I replied. “I’ll come to you.” I pushed away from Noren and crawled on my hands and knees toward the sound of their voices.

Noren gathered at my side in a comforting presence. The rocks underneath us were both sharp and smooth, small and large. I lost my balance more often than I could count until my head knocked against another body.

A familiar scent reached me first. “Livvy? Is that you?” I asked.

Her arms banded around my torso. “I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m here with you. We found each other.”

“Come on. We’ve got to get to Onyx.”

“I’m close,” he said. “But you have to come to me. I don’t think I can move.”

The darkness messed with my mind. The space felt both large and small at the same time. There were no strange echoes but the water continued to pulse along the shore without making a sound.

I swore I saw things in the blackness, blacker than everything around us. Finally my hand brushed against Onyx’s legs and I used it to get my bearings until our shoulders touched.

The four of us were together.

“Is everyone all right?” I asked.

“I’m unhurt,” Livvy answered right away. “A little sore and definitely had better days, but unhurt.”

And I hadn’t been able to feel anything wrong with Noren.

“Onyx? What about you?”

Another beat of silence, and then… “I can’t feel my legs,” he said quietly.

Panic hit me, mingled with despair. I couldn't help crying out before I got control of myself. I fumbled for his hand. His fingers twitched against mine as I grabbed him.

“It’s going to be okay.”

I regretted the words as soon as I said them. I was in no position to offer up false promises. None whatsoever. Because it definitely didn’t feel like things would be okay.

It felt like we were screwed. Royally, fully, however you wanted to call it. We were screwed and lost in the darkness and something had happened to damage Onyx’s already fragile body.

“I hit the rocks hard when the boat capsized and I felt something crack in my back.” Much to my everlasting shock, he laughed. “This is the first time since the injury that I feel no pain. It’s actually kind of relaxing. A marked improvement from suffering through it.”

Guilt lived inside of me especially when he continued to laugh.

“It’s actually a relief. Chronic pain is no joke.”

“You know what? Your dark humor isn’t appreciated right now,” I snapped.

“It’s the only thing I have left, so at least give me this,” he retorted.

“Sorry.” I forced myself to scoff before the sound turned into a sob. “Not doing it.”

I’m the one who hurt him in the first place. I’m the one who damaged his body, who dragged him along on this miserable adventure, who made him come to the Abyss and relive the nightmares of his past .

Whatever happened to his spine was my fault and my responsibility. My interaction with the goddess was all but forgotten at this point.

“Here. Grab onto Noren. He can take you on his back.” I fumbled in the darkness to orient myself with the direction of Onyx’s body. “He’s strong enough to handle your weight.”

“Tavi—” Onyx began.

“I’m not going to leave you behind.”

My voice caught somewhere in the back of my throat. How many more people were going to get hurt because of me? How many more friends were going to suffer?

“Livvy, can you help me move him? I’m not strong enough to lift him on my own. And Onyx, if you even think of telling us to leave you behind, I will strangle you.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Onyx said dryly.

Somehow between the two of us, we managed to get Onyx onto Noren’s back and we inched along down the shore.

It was slow going. More often than not, I slipped on the rocks, holding onto Noren and Onyx with Livvy on their other side. Keeping in physical contact with each other helped.

“So this is the Abyss, huh?” I asked cheekily.

Onyx chuckled, his bitterness evident. “Is it everything you thought it would be? One of the best vacation spots ever because there’s no one else around.”

“It’s nothing like I thought it would be,” I admitted. “Where are all the others who were banished here?”

“What did you think I meant when I said abyss ? They drift, in their own pockets of emptiness,” Onyx explained.

“I’m not sure I actually had a thought. I didn’t stop long enough to consider it.”

“You know, I’ve always appreciated that about you,” he replied.

“What?”

“How you keep going no matter what happens.”

I felt a smile pull at my lips. “I thought the same thing about Livvy.”

“I’m sure there were a lot of things you thought about me,” Livvy joked.

Speaking to each other helped. Time passed, though, with no destination reached. There was only one foot in front of the other, our movements unseen. Did it even count if we didn’t know where we were headed? If we couldn’t see the shore beneath us?

I couldn’t even see the back of my own hand in the darkness.

Maybe I didn’t exist.

Maybe this was the death I thought I’d found when I woke up in the ballroom. My body wasn’t here. Only my mind, utterly disconnected from anything physical. Maybe I was nothing but a consciousness floating in a sea of black with nothing around me in any direction.

Faerie told me I’d pay three prices to access the Abyss. Innocence. Self. Life.

Fear trickled in beside the intrusive thoughts and made itself a cozy home.

I did feel like I’d lost myself. I was nothing and no one. No name. No body. Eventually, not even a need to protect the people I cared about. There is nothing here . And if there is nothing, then I’m nothing .

“Keep talking.” Livvy’s voice sounded urgent. “It’s too easy to get disoriented otherwise.”

“It’s too late for that,” I said distantly.

I didn’t sound like myself anymore. What was left of me when we boiled it down to the raw, base elements? Guilt and fear. Those two emotions were the only sensations remaining when everything else disappeared.

“There’s nothing left.” Onyx spoke my mind for me. “It’s the power of the Abyss. It shows you exactly what you are when you take everything away, and most people are not able to survive it.”

“How did you?” I asked.

“You know, I can’t remember,” he said with another dark chuckle. “I was too focused on getting away from Kendrick.” Even now, he refused to call that monster his father. “He saw it as a banishment. I saw it as an opportunity. He gave me the option of escape. Of survival.”

He chuckled again, rather mirthlessly. “You do some pretty crazy things when you’re in survival mode.”

“You sound tired,” Livvy told him.

“I am tired,” Onyx admitted.

“Especially for one so young,” she clarified.

“You’re only as young as you feel. I’ve heard the expression many times over and I finally get it.”

We’d been walking for hours at this point. Or days. But I never grew any more tired than how I felt in the current moment. My legs hurt, my feet were sore, and every part of me was soggy and heavy, but the sensations remained consistent. Soon even the fear took a back seat.

There was nothing left of me.

Onyx had survived this before, but I understood why he wanted to erase the experience from his memories.

Once, I’d wanted the bliss of emptiness and apathy. As though having those things would finally give me peace of mind.

But this was so much worse than anything else. Even the piercing pain of a battle wound was better than this nothingness .

Alone in the dark. No way forward and no way out.

The toe of my sneaker collided with one of the rocks and I went floundering forward, losing my grip on Noren and my balance at the same time. But my outstretched hands fell into nothingness. Not even the shore beneath me. There, and suddenly gone.

Screaming and digging in my heels, I somehow managed to jerk back in time. Livvy’s overly loud shout came at the same moment.

“Watch out!”

I threw out a hand to stop Noren the second her warning aired. Luckily, Noren and Onyx were a step behind me.

“What’s happening?” Onyx asked in panic.

“Hold on a second.” I slowly folded myself down to my knees, searching the ground. It ended only inches from me. There and then gone. Nothing but empty air. I jerked back, stunned.

We’d reached a destination of sorts at last. Only it wasn’t an actual place but more of a lack of ground. The shoreline ended and even the water failed to drip off the edge.

“What’s there? What do you feel?” Livvy wanted to know. “Tavi?”

I have a name .

“Nothing.”

I shoved some of the loose stones off the edge and waited for them to hit. They never did. No sound came.

“It’s a drop-off,” I told the others. “We’ve reached the end.”

What would happen if we headed into the water? Was there a drop there, too? Or what about further inland?

Something told me we would find the same thing no matter where we went.

Life, I realized. This was where Life came in. This was exactly the end of the line where a decision had to be made and a choice executed.

What good did Livvy’s journal do if I wasn’t around to be the bearer of the prophecy? It made no sense to me. I couldn’t give up my life and unite Faerie. I had to be alive in order to do those things.

Ghosts didn’t exist for shifters.

Our souls were either reborn into new existence or disappeared back into the fabric of the universe.

I bit down on my tongue but a sob escaped anyway. The ragged muscles in my throat constricted and my eyes flooded. This was my choice to make but there really wasn’t one. I was going over the edge. It was that simple.

Onyx spoke up. “It’s the sacrifice.”

“What?” Livvy sounded sharp.

“The Abyss requires a sacrifice in order to allow us to take the notebook, which has become a piece of the time and space here. I know it innately, because of the place where the Abyss still exists in me.”

“Stop it.” My words were hardly more than a whisper. I didn’t want to hear any more.

“One of us has to die,” he finished.

“Me.” It was automatic. “It’s me.”

Onyx laughed, the sound too loud for my raw nerves. “Not necessarily.”

Absolutely not. Life may not necessarily mean mine—it meant me giving up someone I loved as well. But I couldn't imagine giving up the mother I’d thought I’d lost just as I got her back.

And Onyx was one of my best friends. We’d been through so much together and literally escaped an executioner’s noose. To willingly sacrifice either of them was unthinkable, which meant it had to be me.

“I’m ready to give up and go back home,” I said. “We’ll find another way.”

“No,” Livvy replied adamantly. “We’re here. I’m getting you those journals, Tavi. Let me do this for you. Once you have the spell, you’ll have everything you need to get you through. Your friends are there to care for you. You’re used to living without me anyway.”

She didn’t sound bitter. Only resigned. Stating facts.

I felt her move, felt her body lurch into motion. Noren and I shifted at the same time to block her. The direwolf threw his body in front of her, then came the sound of someone dropping to the stones. The air exploded out of my lungs.

Livvy let out a yelp of pain. She must have rebounded off of Noren. “You stupid wolf,” she spat.

He wasn’t going to let her go, that much was clear. And the feeling was mutual.

“What were you thinking?” I yelled. “You were just going to jump?”

My heart lurched into the back of my throat and choked me.

“Of course I was,” she snapped back. “I’m not going to let you kill yourself. You’re too important to lose. I’ve already done my part, Tavi. If I can help you get out of here with those journals, then I’ll do it.”

Onyx had landed beside me when Noren moved, slipping right off the direwolf’s back.

“Tavi?” He grabbed at whatever part of me was closer, my knee in this case, and I fumbled for him. “Is that you?”

“Onyx. Let me help you up. Come on. I can take your weight.”

His fingers brushed against my thigh, my arm, and finally my shoulders. Then there was fire, my blood going fireworks-bright when he pressed his lips to mine.

What are you doing?

An electric jolt cascaded through my system from the point of contact, his lips soft and the energy startling. Pack .

I thought I said the word out loud but the kiss continued, lingering and sweet. His mouth moved against mine but there was no hint of desperation, and rather than shrug him off, I sank into the sensation.

“I love you,” Onyx whispered against my lips. Into my heart and my soul. “I believe with every part of me that you are the answer to the wrong in our world. It’s always been you. I finally understand it.”

“What’s happening?”

Livvy’s voice, but she was far away. Livvy and Noren and the Abyss all far away. There was only me and Onyx in this sea of pure ebony night and his lips became a lifeline through it, keeping me tethered in my body when my mind wanted to fracture apart.

I clutched at him but neither of us were steady. We both shook, rattling the bones of the world.

“You love me?” I whispered back.

“I’m injured beyond repair,” he continued. He huffed out a laugh, kissed me again as though he wanted to get in as many touches as possible before I drew a line. “I’m so tired of living in constant pain. I’m at the end. There’s no going back for me.”

The panic returned and rushed through me as if I’d been dipped in acid.

My fingers looped through the fabric of his shirt.

“I believe in the old legends of reincarnation for those with shifter blood.” A hint of mischief echoed in his tone. “Something greater is waiting for me. Who knows? Maybe I’ll come back to you someday. I’ll try to let you know it’s me.”

My heart was going ninety-to-nothing. “Stop it.” A frozen numbness swept over me and I tried to swallow but my throat wasn’t working. The only warmth left in me came from Onyx and his surprise kisses.

“I’m not going to stop,” he insisted. “You risked everything to save me. And I’m still a dead man back home. I can never go back. I’ve got no future.”

“There’s always hope. We’ll find a way. We’ll heal you. I’m not going to let you do this.”

He loved me. I couldn’t let him go.

HIs lips brushed mine again. He was steady and warm and determined. He was tender and caring and—crying.

Onyx was crying.

“Let me do this for you.” He begged me. “I’ll see you again. I promise.” He pushed me back, with such strength I let go.

Why did I let go?

I said his name. I reached for him and found only open air.

Onyx rolled away from me and even without the use of his legs, he threw himself off the side of the abyss, with only the scrape of stone to mark his sacrifice.