Energy flowed, brilliant and strong. It started slow, but its momentum built rapidly. She tried to slow it down, but its flow wasn’t hers alone to control—the strength of Alex’s Gift was overwhelming, and it pulled relentlessly, mercilessly, on her.
Her eyes widened, and she looked at Alex wildly, her body rapidly weakening. His eyes met hers, but they seemed to look past her, bright with power.
“Alex…” she whispered, as dark spots blossomed in her vision, and she started to fade.
Awareness snapped back into his eyes. The connection severed abruptly. Her body slumped forward with exhaustion.
Alex caught her and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her roughly into his chest. His breathing was harsh and labored, his pulse uneven against her. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” he whispered over and over, like a mantra into her hair.
A long time passed before Allyra regained control over the rhythm of her breathing—before she felt any semblance of strength once more. She disentangled herself from Alex.
“I’m sorry,” Alex said again. “I’ve never done this before, I didn’t realize what I was doing to you.”
With a small sweep of her arm, Allyra waved his apologies aside. “I’m okay,” she said. “It’s okay.” But the tightness of her voice belied her words. The winter air was cold around her, but the blood within her veins was colder still, having turned to ice, and she felt as if she would never know warmth again.
Alex got to his feet, and she looked up. “Wait,” she said, “let me see.”
He understood without further explanation, and he lifted his shirt. The black web of poison had disappeared, and the wound in his side had knitted together into a red welt. At the sight of his scar, her own Revenant wound throbbed in her side. She ran her fingers across it, and they came away wet with blood. Energy cannot be made, she remembered, only taken and reformed. Alex had taken her energy to heal, and in turn, she had grown weaker.
Push and pull.
Give and take.
Alex walked from the room and returned with two bowls of steaming soup. She had no appetite to speak of, and the soup was of the worst canned variety, over salty and tasteless. Nonetheless, it warmed her as it slid down her throat, and against all odds, she started to feel a little better.
She glanced at Alex and found him staring at his own bowl, a perplexed expression on his face. “Something wrong?” she asked. “It’s not fantastic, but it’s warm.”
Alex shook his head. “It’s not that. It’s… Well, I haven’t eaten, not really, for a long time.”
It was impossible to imagine what it would feel like to return to the world after a century and a half trapped in the Between. Allyra laughed ruefully. “Well, I wish I had something better to offer you. If it helps, the tin said it was vegetable soup. Not that anything vaguely resembling a vegetable has actually survived.”
Alex tasted the soup carefully, and to his credit, he didn’t grimace. Instead, he swallowed spoonful after spoonful methodically, finishing his bowl before she did.
* * *
Later, after they’d both showered and gotten dressed in clothes borrowed from the closet, they settled in front of the fire.
“You knew me before,” Allyra said quietly, not looking at Alex, choosing to stare at the flickering flames. “Before I entered the Between.”
Alex nodded. “My Gift is to see the future, and it’s a Gift I’ve struggled with. I’ve seen many things, some of them wonderful and extraordinary, others commonplace, and most of them terrible. Of everything I ever saw, you were the first that ever spoke to me.”
“Because of my Gift for the past.”
“Yes, together, we breached the power of time itself. For a long time, I’d been terrified of the things I saw, thinking I was cursed somehow. But you helped me come to terms with my Gift, and I started to look forward to seeing you. Though I knew that we’d never truly meet.”
“I need to know it all,” Allyra whispered, her breath choking in her throat. “Please don’t leave anything out.”
Alex settled deeper into the couch and nodded. Then, with his lilting storyteller’s voice, he started to speak.
“You already know that my parents were killed by Revenants, consumed until nothing but a husk was left behind. They were well loved amongst the Gifted, and their deaths lit a fuse on something that had been simmering silently for a long time. The call went out demanding that the Council do something, that no more lives should ever be lost again to the Revenant threat. I was swept along by that call, carried by my own anger and grief.
“So, we prepared and planned—for one massive offense into the Between. Every Elemental alive at the time volunteered to go, and though other Gifted wanted to be a part of it, I refused, believing that their ability to only see their own Element within the Between would make them more of a liability than help.
“The day arrived, and at the last minute, you appeared and took me and Mandla into the Tunnels. I couldn’t quite explain it, but I knew then that it was the right thing to do. And from that room, we entered the Between through the Fever Tree Gate to Sanctuary Hill. My brother Thomas led another group of Elementals through the Redwood Gate from the Terra Great College, and similar groups entered from each of the other Great Colleges. Our plan was to enter from different points and to sweep through the Between, killing any Revenant we came upon until we met up at the Source itself.
“Any trip into the Between takes at least two people, one to stay behind to protect the Gate and another to go deeper into the Between. This is why The Five Finals
