Chapter 42

W hen I open my eyes, I don't recognize my surroundings, but at least the snoring lump of fur curled up on my feet is familiar. I gently wiggle my legs out from under Moose, trying my best not to wake him as I slump out of the bed. The ground below me sways from side to side, and I have to readjust my footing to keep from toppling over. My head is pounding, and my body is reeling with pain.

The room smells of fish and musk. Six beds in rows of two line both sides. Nothing ornate. Only a gray blanket and pillow lay atop each one. One window in the back of the room allows some sunlight. And through the window, I see the ocean stretching on for miles.

How long have I been here?

A set of steep stairs leads up to a hatch. I decide to see what's out there – to understand what happened and how I got here. I press on the hatch, and it opens much easier than I anticipated. It flies open and slams onto a deck. I poke my head out further and see Bas standing at the rear of the ship, hunching over the railing. He's looking out into the distance, still as a statue.

"What happened?" I ask.

Bas startles at my question, jolting as he turns to look at me. His eyes are red and weary. Without a single word, he rushes over and wraps his arms around me. He's shaking. I relax into him as he regains his breath.

"Seriously, what happened?" I ask again.

"I thought I lost you… again. We all did," he finally says with his voice teetering on the edge of breaking. He grips me even tighter as my hair grows wet with tears.

I can feel the wreck of emotions running through him as I sink into his chest. His breaths are long and deep, and I give him a moment to regain his composure. I have so many questions, so much to learn. But for now, I'm happy to be alive. Happy to be here.

"After I left you in the mental link, your power started fading. I yelled to Amin and the others to run to the boat while I scooped you up out of the sand. Your body was… limp. But the flames kept growing higher and higher. Those assholes snapped out before it reached them, but it looked like it might engulf the whole palace." He lets go of me to seek comfort in my eyes. "Once we got to the boat, the fire kept burning, but you… you faded. I tried to crawl back into your mind, but it was empty. I couldn't feel you. Couldn't see you. You were gone."

I did it?

I did it.

Creating flames came naturally to me, even within the confines of the study. But on the beach, when we were in real danger, it was even easier to conjure.

But I was never able to extinguish any fire I ignited - not the little candles with Sir Magis, nor the fire I brought forth at Guylita's cottage.

Oh, gods. I don't remember even contemplating slowing down the orb's wrath of power that I hurled toward Olly and Landers. Is it still burning?

Did I destroy the Palace of Light?

But as I think more about it, I remember something. It wasn't just me wielding that power. Bas was there, too. In my mind.

I ask him, "How did you enter my mind?"

When Manka made us immortal, this particular power latched onto us. Nobody else knows it exists. He smiles softly as his eyes dance in the light of a memory.

How does it work exactly? Can you hear my thoughts all of the time? I've had enough of being watched and monitored throughout my life. I don't want my thoughts to be put on display now, too.

Not all of the time, no. I have to… call to you. And you to me.

But we spoke this way earlier, before I knew how to call to you.

Some things are like second nature, I suppose.

Have you ever called to me without me realizing it?

He nods.

Were you calling to me all this time?

It's how I knew that you were alive. The connection was fuzzy until you left Carcera, but it was always there. I couldn't hear you, but I could feel you. That and our marriage mark. He grins again, looking down at my hand like a treasure that he's spent years seeking. He wraps his hand, which bears an identical mark, around mine. I did everything I could to reach you. Every day, I tugged on the tether between us to make sure that it was still there.

Did I ever call to you? I ask. Could I have done it without realizing it?

His grin fades as his chin drops to his chest. I could only ever hear your agony.

A memory stirs inside of me. After my mom died, I flew into a drunken rage, screaming and crying and seriously contemplating burning the whole cottage down. I tripped on a rock in the garden and fell face-first into a blueberry bush. I couldn't bring myself to get up, so I just rolled over and laid in the dirt. The agony was unbearable - too sharp and all-consuming. It was the last night that I spent with Oren.

At the time, I thought that I had imagined it when I heard a voice in my head telling me to get up. I thought it must have been a subconscious part of my brain that had been awakened by copious amounts of whiskey. Yet, I could hear it so clearly, as plain as day in my mind.

That voice told me that I was strong enough to push through it. That the pain of loss would be unbearable for a while, but I would survive it. That if I just got up off of the ground and pushed on one day at a time, then the pain would lessen. Never gone, but quieter.

It was one of the toughest nights of my life, and those words helped me to keep going. To keep putting one step in front of the other, day after day, even when it felt impossible.

And he was right, to an extent. The pain never did go away, but I learned to live with it. I got up off the ground and kept going. I was strong enough.

When my mom died…

I heard you. His face tightens.

Thank you for what you said to me then.

His pained expression says more than words could. He slowly sweeps his thumb across my skin, which reacts with a rush of tantalizing jolts. I have to fight back the tears welling behind my eyes.

But his touch awakens something in me. The mark on my hand darkens to a deep shade of onyx, and the swirling lines on his hand do the same. The two marks seem to sing to each other – a song of pure delight.

"You're alive!" I hear, and I look over my shoulder to see Amin, whose face is now clean-shaven, staring back at me.

I wipe my eyes and give my best attempt at a smile. "Yeah, looks like it."

"I'm glad to hear it because I really didn't want to swim back to shore to kick their asses," he says with a light laugh. "Though, I have no doubt that war is on the horizon, so that ass-kicking will come sooner or later."

I grimace at the thought of war.

The inevitable truth is that after refusing to marry Olly and possibly burning down the Palace of Light, war is a guarantee. More people will die because of me. The last thing I want in this life is to be the cause of more suffering.

We will do what we can to avoid war, Bas says in my mind.

What if it is inevitable?

"I want to be prepared for war. I want to train for it. Will you teach me? Both of you?" When that day comes, I want to defend the people I love.

"Hell yeah." Amin punches me in the shoulder hard enough that I stumble back a step, which makes him frown. "We'll get there."

Though Bas' eyes are still red and puffy, and the tears still mark his cheeks, he smiles and says, "I would love nothing more."

"Good. That's settled." So many questions have yet to be answered, and so many plans still to be made, but one question rises to my lips first. "Where's everyone else? Gemma? Guylita?" I almost say Viola but then the aching memory of her betrayal resurfaces.

I realize that I haven't seen them. And I haven't had a chance to thank them yet, either. To really, truly thank them.

I look from Amin to Bas, both of them are looking out to the horizon and not to me.

"What? Where are they?" My heart starts to thunder.

Where are they? I shout through my mind when answers do not come.

"Gemma is in the crew quarters," Bas tells me, face sagging.

"Why do you look like that? What's wrong?" Please don't say it. Don't say that I lost her, too.

"She's… broken," Bas says.

"What happened? Did she break an arm?" If she broke her foot or her hand, then that would be a fixable ailment. But if she broke… I don't know, maybe her spine, then she may never walk again. Oh, gods.

"It's not her body that's broken. She just…" Bas' voice trails off like it's too hard to form the right words

"After her sister betrayed us, she shattered. She's been staring at the cabin wall for hours without moving," Amin finishes the explanation for Bas. "She won't talk, won't eat, nothing."

My heart drops.

This is my fault.

"What about Guylita?" I can hardly stand to ask the question, but I need to know that she made it. I need to know that another innocent life was not destroyed because of me.

An even graver look washes over them, and I'm afraid that I already know the answer.

"How?" I ask as a lump builds in my throat.

"She inhaled too much smoke," Amin tells me, low and regretful. "She was a nice lady."

I squeeze my eyes shut as tight as I possibly can, trying to force time to rewind. If I could just will the world to reverse its rotation, undoing the events of this past month as it spins, then Gemma and Viola would still be happy and Guylita never would have gotten caught up in this mess. It's because of me that she's dead. It's my fault that Viola was put in a position to betray her sister.

As if sensing my anguish, Amin says, "It's not your fault."

Such meaningless words.

"If it weren't for me, she wouldn't have been in that dungeon. If I hadn't asked Gemma to come, then Viola would have never tipped off Olly. If I hadn't created that fire, then Guylita wouldn't have died. These are the direct results of my actions. How can you tell me that it's not my fault?" I know that he's trying to be kind, but it's unbearable.

"Well, when you put it that way…" Amin shrugs but quickly apologizes after receiving a blow to the ribs from Bas' elbow.

"What are you going to do about it?" Bas asks, and it catches me off guard.

"What do you mean?" I shoot him a look that says that he's insensitive and deranged. He doesn't flinch.

"Death is a part of life. We've –" he stops himself, scrunching his brows together. I feel pain knocking against the walls of my mind, and I know that it belongs to him. " I have lived long enough to see the cycle of life spin over and over again. People that I love, people that I hate, people that deserve it, and people that don't. Every single one of them will meet the same end one day. They live and then die, that is the natural cycle. That fate is inescapable for all but you and me. So, when you look into the face of inevitable fate, all that matters is what you do next – how you choose to react."

"What would you do next?" I want to rip the whole world apart.

"I would start by honoring Guylita. I would show her the respect and appreciation that she deserves," he says, and I can feel a blanket of his warmth reaching out to me through our tether, trying to put out the flames of my throbbing heart. "And then I would be a good friend to Gemma. Be there for her as she recovers. Help her come to terms with what happened."

"Guylita's body is here. She made it to the boat before she collapsed," Amin tells me.

"We can give her a burial at sea," I whisper, even though my heart breaks at the thought.

"I'll get right on it," Amin says, excusing himself.

I look out to the sea for guidance, as if its waves breaking against the ship could whisper their guidance to me. The sea spray lands in dots on my skin, cooling off the warm summer evening.

There is so much left to do and a long journey ahead.

That is what I will focus on – the journey ahead.

"Where are we going?" In my heart, I know the answer. I can feel it calling to me from deep within my soul.

"Home." The corner of Bas' lip slowly raises into a soft, knowing smile, full of anticipation and hope. "We're going back to Umbra."

Home.

Carcera never felt like home to me, even when my parents were still around, and neither did Somne. These places left me unsettled and yearning for something else. I tried to make them work, to mold myself into them by force, but I never escaped the feeling of being an outsider, an orphan desperate to belong.

But perhaps I was never an orphan at all. Not really. Maybe, just maybe, I was simply lost and still searching for the people and place to call home. As I stand here with Bas by my side and Amin, Gemma, and Moose close by, I wonder if I finally found it. With them, I finally feel that I belong.

Succumbing to an instinctual need to reach out and touch him, I grab Bas' hand. His grin grows so wide that he can hardly bear it as his fingers intertwine with mine, and I can't help but smile back.

I don't know what the future will hold.

For him, for me, for us?

But for the first time in a long time, I can't wait for tomorrow.