She bent and molded her Gift, reaching desperately for the past. What was the value of an affinity for the past if she couldn’t go back and undo her mistakes? It was all her fault. She had been so easy to manipulate. And now Jamie was dead, and Emma lost, and she was more alone than ever before.
Time passed. She screamed until she could scream no more, until she was an empty husk—an ugly broken thing that would never be whole again. Darkness surrounded her like tar—thick and oily, sucking her in. It would be so easy to give in now. To embrace her grief and allow the darkness in her mind to swallow her whole.
Her eyes drifted down and landed on Alex’s unconscious body. For a moment, she stared at him blindly, her mind fractured and slow. Grief was an old acquaintance. She had lived with it for a long time now. She knew it and understood it. There was only one way to survive it. She had to move. She forced her uncooperative body into action.
Move.
There was still a chance. Alex had come back.
He had come back for her.
His Gift had shown him a future without death and destruction. One silver thread, he’d called it. There was still hope. Barely an ember in the ebony night, but it was there. She could still make things right. All she had to do was move.
Allyra looked up. They were outside a small, stone cottage, set high on a barren and windswept hilltop. Though the sun was shining, its rays were pale and weak in the winter air, offering little in the way of warmth. There was nothing but empty landscape as far as the eye could see. She had chosen it precisely for its remote location and because it was completely unfamiliar to her. No one would think to follow them here—not Emma and not Rob. It was just a picturesque little cottage she’d seen once on holiday long ago, from the car window, as her father drove by. It was remote and obscure. A perfect escape.
Allyra bent down, her movements both mindless and mechanical, and she twisted the fabric of Alex’s shirt around her fingers and pulled. She dragged him along the dusty, barren ground. Inch by painful inch, using every shred of her remaining strength, she pulled him to the cottage door.
She was almost too exhausted to pick the lock with her Gift. If her mind could tremble, it would have. Minutes drifted by before the lock finally clicked into place, and Allyra kicked the door open, still pulling Alex’s unresponsive body with her. She settled him into the bed before taking stock of their surroundings.
The cottage was obviously a holiday home. A thick layer of dust coated every surface, suggesting that the owners hadn’t been by for some time. But a quick glance in the pantry showed that it was well stocked with canned food and water, and the small garden shed out back was filled with firewood. She picked up an armful and carried it into the cottage, kneeling before the stone fireplace to build a fire. It was in that moment that her heart froze. She felt as if the wind had been sucked from her lungs.
Jamie had taught her how to build a fire.
She could still hear Jamie explaining it all to her, his voice patient and cheerful, a smile on his face. Small, dry pieces of kindling at the bottom, built in a small heap, to support larger pieces of firewood. Each one placed carefully to tunnel the oxygen upward so the fire could burn brighter and longer.
Her fingers shook as she placed the final piece of firewood to the pile, and with a small surge of her Gift, she set the pile of wood alight, the flames warming up the cold air slowly. She watched the flickering flame for a moment. Jamie would’ve been proud. He’d taught her well.
It was dangerous lingering in memories of Jamie as darkness closed in once more. She shook herself into action and opened a couple of cans of soup and poured them into a pot, placing it on the edge of the fire to warm up.
Soundlessly, she walked to the bedroom and leaned against the doorway, watching Alex. His breathing had evened out, but the erratic flickering of his eyelids suggested that his sleep was restless. Her heart clenched abruptly as she lingered in the doorway. It was hard to believe that he was actually here. That they were in the same time together. He had come back—for her.
She walked into the room and settled on the edge of the bed. Alex woke abruptly at the slight shift in the bed, his eyes flashing open and fixing immediately on her.
“Where are we?” he asked, his voice rough and hoarse.
“Somewhere in the Lowveld,” she replied with a helpless shrug.
“Will they find us?”
“I don’t think so,” she said and then changed the subject quickly. “Are you hurt?”
He started to shake his head but stopped when she said, “Please don’t lie to me.”
With a steady gaze, he nodded and lifted his shirt. A deep cut marked his perfect body. She’d seen it once before, in the Between. It had been a scar then, pale and barely visible. Now it was an angry crimson, a jagged cord, raw and swollen, dark tendrils of poison creeping from it over the canvas of his fair skin. A Revenant wound come alive once more.
There was no other wound. Nothing new, nothing to explain how the Revenant poison had taken hold over him once more. Then realization crept over her, slowly and deliberately, like a cat stalking its
