She shook her head. “I can’t just leave these people, not when I have an opportunity to save them.”
“Yes, you can. You don’t even know if they need saving. Maybe this is just part of the training process, a Cleaner initiation.”
“Even you can’t really believe that. Look at them, they’re barely skin and bone.”
“And how are you so sure? Did you actually see the Revenant?”
She shook her head reluctantly.
“No,” he said scathingly. “Of course not—it was just a memory, and memories are fickle things. You can’t always trust them.”
She wavered. Was she really that certain?
Jason saw her hesitation and pounced on it. “Whose memory was it? We’ll wake them up and ask.”
“He’s not here,” she whispered.
“No?” How can you be certain? You haven’t checked every cot.”
“I know he’s not here because I saw him—in The Five Finals. It was François. It was his memory I saw.”
Jason gaped at her incredulously. “François? As in François and Xolani?”
She nodded miserably, aware that her story was becoming weaker and less logical by the minute.
“François is fine. He definitely doesn’t need saving. In fact, we’ll be lucky if we don’t get thrashed by him somewhere along the line.”
And still Allyra lingered, undecided. She’d been so sure, but now, in the face of overwhelming logic, she couldn’t help but waver. What did she really know? Jason was right—François was alive and well. He didn’t recognize her, and he definitely didn’t need saving. The Tigers had failed her, so maybe her Gift for the past was similarly fallible. The last time she’d been in this room, she had been terrified, her mind filled with trying to survive the Trials. Maybe the memory she’d seen had been her own, conjured up by an overwhelmed mind—an amalgamation of the Ancient that had so nearly succeeded in killing her with the Tunnels she had been struggling to escape.
“Unless you can use your supposed Gift for the past to give me some proof? We’re leaving,” Jason stated, leaving no room for argument.
“It doesn’t work like that. I can’t see the past on demand. Memories have to be there to be seen or else the person has to want me to see them. Otherwise, it’s just a feeling, a brush of an emotion—instinct more than absolute knowledge.”
“You’re not filling me with confidence.”
“I know.”
Behind them, the wall started to move, groaning as stone ground against stone. They were out of time. With one last look back at the Cleaners, Allyra allowed Jason to pull her from the room.
* * *
He yanked her along after him, refusing to let go of her hand, as if she were a recalcitrant child, liable to misbehave if not strictly controlled.
“I know I’m not going to remember this once we get out of these wretched Tunnels. But you’ll remember—so, I want you to know that I’m furious with you and that was incredibly stupid, bordering on pure insanity.”
Allyra remained obstinately silent, mostly because she was also incredibly angry—at herself. It had been reckless and shortsighted, and in going after one goal, she’d lost sight of all the others. If there had been a Revenant, and if it had killed her—then she would’ve broken every other promise she’d made. Her father, Emma, Alex—she couldn’t lose sight of the bigger picture.
She tried to extract her hand from Jason’s, and he looked down at their joined hands with an annoyed frown, as if he’d forgotten he was holding on to her. He dropped her hand and picked up the pace.
They were moving quickly, keeping up a strong pace, fast enough that both of them were breathing heavily. Their panted breaths too loud against the terrible, oppressive silence of the Tunnels.
Without warning, a wall slid into place directly before them, too close to be avoided altogether. The two of them slammed into the cold, unforgiving rock. Jason had been slightly ahead of her, and he hit the wall almost face on. She had enough time to turn and hit it with just a little more grace, letting her shoulder take the brunt of the impact.
“Damn it,” Jason yelled, slamming his palm against the wall. “I hate this godforsaken place. I might not remember hating it the last time, but I’m pretty sure I hated it then too.”
“You did,” Allyra confirmed acerbically. “You complained incessantly then as well.”
He shot her an annoyed glace. “What? You don’t agree?”
“Oh, I definitely hate this place, I just don’t feel the need to spend every other minute complaining about it.”
“No, you just prefer to linger and make crazy decisions.”
Apparently, he wouldn’t be letting go of that one anytime soon. Allyra thanked her lucky stars that his memories of all this would soon disappear.
She glanced to her left, where the newly moved wall had left a new route open for them. And then she saw it—that same massive door made from dark wooden slats and held together with iron. The door that had appeared to her every time she’d been in the Tunnels. Instinctively, she stepped toward it, unable to shake the feeling that this door was important. That it was important to her.
Fiery writing scrawled across her vision: Forget me at your peril, for I have lessons to teach for what is yet unwritten.
“And—now I’m blind,” Jason muttered darkly.
She ignored him, reaching out her fingers to brush against the iron. Jason slapped them away.
“Don’t you think we’ve wasted enough time on your little side adventures already?”
Allyra nodded but didn’t take her
