The guy inside the stone house has a rounded back and the mild smile of a sloth, which he turns on Sebastian. “Hello, Bas,” he says. “You’re here. Everyone said you left.”
Bas smiles back. “I tried,” he says. “But I realized after about a week or two away that I missed it here too much, as messed up as this place can be.” I casually walk behind the man as Bas talks.
“I could never even try to—”
I grab his wrist and get him into an armlock. He barely struggles, even as I tie him up with rope.
“Sorry,” Bas says. “It’s safer for you to be out of the way.”
The man nods and accepts his situation.
Bas climbs down the ladder and opens the inner latch, pulling the gates open.
Marcus and Jode bring our horses over. We close the gate behind us, mount up, and charge for the main house.
We pass a few smaller homes along the way. Enclosed gardens. Stables. Everything Bas told us to expect.
People stop working in fields and look up. They stand at their front doors and watch us ride past. I get the same vacuous feeling from them, like they can’t feel anything in the extreme zones of life, like love and hate. Hope and disappointment.
We reach the house and move as planned. Fast. No hesitation. Jode guards the front. Marcus sweeps through the first floor as Bas and I shoot up the stairs.
Bas rushes into Samrael’s room to hunt for the orb. I bust through the other doors in search of Daryn.
As soon as I step into the last room on the right, I know it’s hers.
Her journal sits on the bed.
I grab it and stuff it into my belt at my back.
I find Bas in the hallway. “I found this,” he says, and tosses my sword at me. I catch it by the grip. “But no orb. It wasn’t where I thought it might be.”
“Neither was Daryn,” I say.
“Time’s up,” Marcus calls from downstairs.
Bas and I rush back downstairs and head outside, joining him and Jode.
Harrows pour through the open gate in swarms. I don’t know who opened it for them—maybe the guard was coerced? It doesn’t matter now; there’s no undoing it.
The people who gawked at us minutes ago dash for safety, shutting themselves behind doors. Their panic is bizarrely quiet—no yelling for friends or family to take shelter.
The Harrows don’t miss any opportunities as they come after us. They’re a rabid cluster of fangs and claws, and they don’t hesitate to attack anyone in their way.
But the mass of Harrows flows with focus, and an obvious goal, thundering closer.
They’re not here to wreak destruction at random.
They’re coming for us.
CHAPTER 43
DARYN
I’m watching Shadow—the Shadow I’ve created out of water—when fear touches me like a breath, lifting the hair along my scalp.
My focus breaks. Shadow dissolves back into the pool with a splash.
I know Rael is behind me, but I can’t face him. And I hate the smoky scent I smell hanging in the air.
I think of what Gideon told me about conjuring, about what Rael told him was the cost, and realize I’ve just created Harrows. I’ve created violent, mindless creatures because I needed a little bit of comfort.
I’m disappointed with myself. Disgusted.
“I wondered what you would create first,” Samrael says. “Intentionally, that is. I thought it would be your mother.”
I lick my dry lips. “When I see her, I want it to be real.”
“I understand.”
I whirl around, facing him. “How could you? Have you ever told the truth? Ever? Even once?”
“Yes,” he says. “Today, I told you the truth. Yesterday, I did as well. Tomorrow, I hope to continue to. And the following day. You’ve changed me, Daryn.”
“I don’t believe you!”
He winces and looks away, staring off across the water. “I’m very sorry to hear that. I have to admit,” he says, “I’m surprised you’re still here.”
“I wanted to leave. I would have if I’d found Gideon.” I reach into my pocket to touch the orb. “What did you do to him, Rael?”
“I held him captive. It was before, Daryn. Before you gave me hope. I had nothing to do with his disappearance last night. I wanted to explain all of this to you.” He reaches for my arm. “Listen, I—”
“I don’t want to listen to you anymore! I don’t trust you!”
“Did you? Before you learned about Gideon? Before you realized I was deceiving you?”
“Yes! Yes, I did! But I don’t anymore. You ruined it. You lied to me. You played me for a fool, and you—”
“You’re not a fool. You’re—”
“But you treated me like one. You disrespected me. Can you understand that? You hurt me.”
Devastation breaks over his face. His eyes gloss with tears. “Then why are you still here?”
“Because I don’t want to believe you’re evil. And I don’t want to judge you. And I don’t want to turn my back on you and wonder for the rest of my life if I was wrong.”
“Wrong about what?”
“You, Rael. I don’t want to take away your future. I don’t want to take away your hope. You said it yourself. Part of being a Seeker is hope. Giving it. Protecting it. If I leave you here…”
“I would lose it,” he says, finishing for me.
As I stare into his tearful green eyes, I wish with everything in me that I could give up on him.
A sound drifts down from the hill and bleeds into the silence. My body recognizes it; my heart leaps and my muscles tense.
It’s the howling of the Harrows.
I break into a run. Rael stays right beside me.
As we reach the top of the hill, I see the slashes of light from Jode’s bow first. Then the guys, mounted, fighting against a torrent of Harrows in front of the main house.
I stop, gasping for breath, my legs twitching. The guys shouldn’t be here. They couldn’t have gotten into the Rift without the orb and my help.
This is a haunting. It’s the only possible explanation.
But as soon as Gideon looks over and locks eyes with me, I know it’s real.
It’s him. It’s all of them.
I sprint toward them, drawing notice from several of the monstrous ragged creatures. Three gallop together, pursuing me on my right. Samrael stays behind, no longer with me.
Ahead, Gideon is driving hard in my direction, fighting Harrows as he comes, his sword a line of light. Riot’s coat blazes, snaking up Gideon’s legs.
Gideon won’t reach me—not in time. He’s too far, a hundred yards. The three Harrows are much, much closer.
In an instant, I imagine how I would fix this by reaching for the strength inside me. Raising roots from the earth and lashing them at the Harrows like whips to snare them to the ground.
I could stop the Harrows by conjuring. And I could reach Gideon and the guys.
And I have the orb.
We could leave the Rift. Leave this place behind forever.
I could do it so easily.
I could run, and never have to think about Samrael again.
Except I know I’d think about him all the time. I’d go back to living with regret.
I can’t do that again.
My legs slow, some ancient part of me knowing the correct path forward before it even enters my consciousness.
I turn and see Rael where I left him. Standing at the edge of the tree line, watching me.
He sees me. He must sense that something has changed, because he begins walking toward me.
“Daryn, no!” Gideon yells behind me. “Don’t do it, Daryn! This is what he wants.”
Is it?
I don’t know. I’m beyond considering the hatred between Gideon and Rael. The friendship between Bas and Rael. I’m beyond grudges, revenge, and lies. Nothing about this has felt right, and I know it’s because I’ve been going about this the wrong way. I�
�ve been trying to evaluate and decide something I can’t know, or see, or even begin to understand.
Who am I to judge Samrael?
Who am I to determine whether he’s worthy of forgiveness?
This has to be simpler than that.
It has to be.
Isabel’s words surface in my thoughts, a seashell revealed by ocean waves.
Evil is its own undoing.
I hear it over and over as Rael draws nearer until he stands before me, tall and still, his stillness amplified by the struggle behind me and the sounds of the guys fighting for their lives.
I stare into his eyes. Stare into the complexity of who he is, full of falseness or truthfulness, or both. Aren’t I those things, too? Honest and dishonest? Kind and cruel? Selfless and greedy?
Trust, Isabel told me. Especially when it’s difficult.
“Tell them to stand down,” I tell Rael. “Call the Harrows off.”
CHAPTER 44
GIDEON
I’m fighting my way to Daryn, slashing at Harrows with my sword, when the unbelievable happens.
She turns around. To Samrael.
And walks in his direction.
“Daryn! Daryn, no!”
She glances over her shoulder. There’s no uncertainty in her expression. She knows what she’s doing.
What’s she doing?
Is she going to open the portal for him?
The roaring noise in the clearing lessens noticeably as the Harrows disengage from our battle. They retreat and cluster in groups. In less than a minute, it’s nearly quiet and they’re crouched together like bats. Watching us. Waiting to be unleashed again.
Without them to fight, my path to Daryn is clear.
I cue Riot and he gives me everything he has, flying toward her. “Daryn, don’t!”
She whirls around at the sound of my voice. “Stop!” she yells. “Don’t hurt him!” She stands in front of Samrael, her arms wide, using her body to shield him.
I check Riot. Seconds later Marcus, Jode, and Bas thunder up beside me. They look like they want to rip Samrael apart as badly as I do.
“Trust me,” Daryn says. “I know what I’m doing.”
She’s addressing all of us, but her eyes are on me.
If I trust her, I could lose her.
If I don’t trust her, I will lose her.
She turns to Samrael again. The way he looks at her, with adoration, sickens me.
“After I betrayed you … more than once. You’re granting me freedom?” he asks. “You’re forgiving me? Giving me a chance?”
“No,” Daryn says. “You’re going to do it.” She slips the orb from her jacket pocket and holds it out in front of her.
“Gideon,” Marcus says. I feel his desperation to make this stop.
It doesn’t stop.
Daryn begins the process of opening the portal. The orb rises from her palm and dissolves, solid becoming light and color that tumbles around us. I wait for it to break into the network of threads that show everything—fields and oceans and stars—but seconds pass with no change. Then the light intensifies, growing brighter, growing heavier. Light that gains power. That passes through me, a gale whipping at the blood inside my veins.
It’s a sandstorm of light.
It swallows the stone house in the distance. Then it blots out the clearing with the Harrows lurking along the edges.
Everything washes out.
Samrael and Daryn disappear, eclipsed by the brightness. Even Marcus and Ruin, who are three feet to my left, disappear.
When I can barely see Riot’s ears anymore, the white glare slowly begins to recede.
“Gideon, look,” Jode says.
The earth beneath us is cracked and bleached—to the dirt that should be there. As the light continues to dim, I no longer see the clearing on the hilltop in the Rift. There’s no stone house, or wall in the distance. No Harrows crouched together, waiting to attack.
Night desert stretches out around us.
I know this place. It’s the Nevada playa, with the ring of mountains silhouetted in the distance. Above, the sky is loaded with stars. So many stars that they give the night a glow.
It’s exactly like the place we left behind, with one difference: this desert is bisected by a barrier.
The threads that have always whirled around us in our crossings are here, but they’re pulled straight. They run in parallel lines that vibrate like exposed electrical currents, stretching into the sky and out across the desert as far as I can see, forming a living wall with no vertical or horizontal end.
The world—at least everything I can see—is now divided.
There’s my side and the one across the barrier, and they’re mirror images.
Daryn stands beside me—but she’s across from me too, opposite the barrier.
And so am I.
I see myself on the other side.
I’m right there. So are Jode, and Marcus, and Bas. Our horses.
I keep waiting for this glitch to fix itself, but it doesn’t. There’s two of everything.
Then I see it: there’s only one Samrael.
He stands at the dividing line, looking one way and then the other, his movements setting the threads of the barrier rippling out like waves. “What is this?” he asks.
“It’s what you asked for,” says Daryn—the one on my side. “You wanted this, Rael. You wanted a chance to prove you’re worthy of leaving.” She falls quiet and now the other Daryn speaks. “But I won’t be the one to decide. It’s up to you, Rael. You decide your own fate.”
It dawns on me: Daryn’s doing this.
She created all of this.
Samrael doesn’t know where to look. He doesn’t know which Daryn to address. Then I can almost see him decide: Pick one and stick with it. He chooses the Daryn on my side.
“I don’t understand,” he says. “Am I to choose which side is real? Am I supposed to blindly guess which is which?”
“No—I’ll tell you. I’m real,” says the girl beside me. “This side is your freedom. This side is your forgiveness.”
“That simple?”
“That simple. Believe me. Trust me. Or don’t.”
Samrael squares himself to her, to us. He laughs, but it’s a bitter sound. Then his eyes move to me. I brace myself, but when he reaches into my head, there’s nothing I can do.
Hello, Gideon. I’ve guessed right, then. She’s telling me the truth.
He withdraws just as suddenly. I don’t even move a muscle.
He cheated. He peeked at the cards. The Gideon on the conjured side would have no thoughts. He knows I’m real. And, of course, the real Daryn will be on the same side as me.
But she has to have foreseen this, hasn’t she?
The smile on his face disappears.
“I know which side is freedom,” he says to Daryn. “And I choose against it.”
He takes a step backward, away from us.
CHAPTER 45
DARYN
Rael takes a step away, choosing not to believe me.
Choosing to go back into the Rift.
Something crumbles inside me. I run for him, stopping at the barrier. “Rael!”
We stand on opposite sides, barely two feet apart. I can’t hold the porthole open anymore. It’s pulling at me, tearing at me. The desert behind Rael melts away. The Gideon and Riot I conjured. Everything I created begins to fade as the Rift returns.
The stone house appears again. The garden. The orchard and the paths that wander all over the hilltop. The Harrows, awaiting their next command.
“You really would have let me go,” Rael says.
“Yes. I would have.”
His smile holds lifetimes of sorrow.
I don’t understand, and the pull to leave the Rift is breaking me. I can’t hold this together anymore, the weight of worlds and souls and of the endless, endless sadness I feel for him. “Why are you staying?”
“Because it’s better if I do. Better for
all of the innocents I’d have harmed.”
“You wouldn’t have.” But I know he’s telling me the truth. “So this is self-sacrifice?”
“Atonement,” he says. “Perhaps redemption.” Rael takes another step backward. “Or perhaps, keeping hope alive. Thank you, Daryn.”
“You’re thanking me?”
He nods, his green eyes glimmering. “For showing me that deserving trust and forgiveness is worth more than having them.”
Behind me, Gideon yells for me to come with him, but I can’t leave Rael yet. His smile is heartbreaking. He is heartbreaking. “Go,” he says. “Your life awaits. And, Daryn? I’ll miss you. Terribly.”
The portal pulls me in, my hold breaking. Brightness flashes, like the snap of a band, and I’m blind for long seconds, caught in a turbulence that reaches into my bones and rattles my ribs together.
Then stillness comes, and I find myself clinging to dusty earth. Holding on to it like I’ll be swept out to sea if I let go.
The Nevada desert appears with its black mountain ranges framing the edges of the blue night. I blink at the disorientation, the rush of feeling that’s sweeping over me.
A white spot of light sits on the horizon. Our camp. Where Ben will be. Maia, Cordero, and all the others.
The playa is beautiful under the light of a trillion stars.
Gideon is with the guys. They’ve dismounted and stand together, waiting for me.
I wonder how long I’ve been here. I wonder if I asked for some time to myself, some space. I think I might have.
There is no more orb. I look for where it should be, hovering in the air before me, but my eyes pull up to the stars. To all the infinite possibilities. Infinite creations.
Rael.
As I think of him, I feel awed and inspired.
If evil is its own undoing, I think, then good can be self-generating.
He did a great and selfless good tonight.
I pull myself to my feet. Gideon walks up and pulls me into a hard hug that lasts and lasts.
He steps back. “What’s next?” he asks, with a soft smile.
“I think I’m actually going to stay here a little while longer.”
He nods. “Okay.”
I watch him rejoin the guys. Then I see Bas swing up behind Jode. Bas lifts a hand, and they ride off toward the beacon light of base camp.
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