by Anna Webb
No.
Not now.
Not yet.
She didn’t have the luxury of time. Without thought or consideration, she forced the tigers into a small dagger and dragged it across her palm and then across his. Her actions were neither graceful nor gentle, and the cuts left an angry trail of blood behind, dripping from their hands onto the dried grass beneath.
Allyra pressed their palms together. Blood to blood, creating a direct path down which her energy could flow. Then she poured everything she had left into him. To begin with, it was not more than a dribble, so she pushed harder and more relentlessly, impatience eating at her. Soon, the dribble became a stream and then cascaded into a river of silver lifeblood flowing from her to Alex.
Something invisible pulled taut between them, and the energy flowed from her, like a raging flood. The walls she’d built to protect her mind crumbled before the onslaught, and soon, it wasn’t just energy they were sharing. A rush of emotions carried over the connection.
If she felt guilt for the day’s events, it was nothing compared to the dark bitterness Alex harbored deep within himself, and she could feel all of it.
Sorrow.
Remorse.
Guilt.
Dark and venomous sensations eating into her. Old and powerful emotions that had taken root and grown over the years since the Betrayal. Desperate guilt for the thirty-one Elemental lives lost that day, for his parents, his brother, and, more recently, Mandla. The pain and darkness were overwhelming. She could almost taste it, bitter and acrid on her tongue. It was a tidal wave, and she was drowning in it.
Allyra tried to let go, to break the connection. But her protections were down and impossible to rebuild under the flood of emotion. She was drowning. She was dying.
Then abruptly the connection broke.
She was empty and hollow, drained both physically and mentally. She was a black hole of darkness. Retches heaved through her body, and she gasped and sobbed for air, tears running down her face.
Alex’s eyes snapped open, golden flecks rising to the surface, brightening and exploding. He looked at her, his expression filled with horror.
“What have you done?” he whispered before dropping once more into a dead faint.
She collapsed over him, painful gasps tearing from her lungs, her throat raw and bloody. Pressing her ear to his chest, she felt the comforting rise and fall of his chest, the indicator of life even as he lay still and unconscious before her. She let out a sob of relief, her entire body trembling with it.
The respite was momentary, all too brief before the horror of the day came rushing back.
Jamie.
No.
She screamed.
Wild and animalistic, it ripped forcefully from her. Her Gift answered her rage. It gathered and coalesced, bright and beautiful but darkened at the edges by grief. It exploded, but she turned it in on herself, wishing to turn the mental anguish into something physical.
She wanted to break. She wanted to bleed. She wanted pain. Something, anything. As long as it offered the opportunity of an end, unlike the grief she knew would accompany her for the rest of her days.
Grief became more than an emotion; it took on weight, a black hole so massive it threatened to consume everything around her. It bled color from the world. Everything just a little dimmer in Jamie’s absence.
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 li
fted 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 prey in the night. They had been connected all along. Somehow, through the Tigers, they were connected. It had been Alex’s energy she had used to beat Jason in the Final Trial. It had been his energy she’d stolen to heal Jason deep in the icy cold of Antarctica.
He had given so much for her.
She had taken and taken—greedy and thoughtless.
Guilt ate at her like acid, sitting heavy and sour in the pit of her stomach.
Alex flinched.
Instinctively, she reached out to steady him. “What is it?” she asked, concerned.
He averted his gaze from her, looking out the window, as if trying to find the right words. “Your thoughts are very loud,” he said eventually.
“Excuse me?”
His blue eyes met hers reluctantly. “You don’t know, do you?” he asked quietly.
“Know what?”
“We’re Tethered, Allyra,” he said gently. “You Tethered us.”
She recoiled from him. “What? No, that’s not possible—Tethering is a sharing of minds, it can only be done willingly, with the acceptance of both minds. You were unconscious.”
“Yes, but I wasn’t the first time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tethering does require the agreement of both minds; it occurs through the sharing of power. A give and take. That moment in the Between, when the Ancient cut so deeply into you, and you lay dying before me, I knew I had to save you. I gave you the Tigers, but that wasn’t enough, you needed energy, lifeforce to heal. So, I gave it to you—willingly.”
“We’ve been Tethered since the Between?” she asked incredulously. “How? I didn’t open my mind to you then.”
“No, you weren’t aware then. That flow of power only occurred in one direction—from me to you.”
“But I saw you—in the Final Trial—I know now that I took more energy from you, that I couldn’t have won without you. How is that possible if we weren’t Tethered?”
Alex reached out and took hold of her hand, running a finger lightly across the tigers tattooed around her wrist. Her heart jumped, and her breath caught in her throat. He looked up, into her eyes, his gaze intense and searching. It stripped away her layers of protection, as if he could read her mind and see her darkest secrets, her deepest fears. She felt laid bare before him, open and vulnerable.
“It was always here,” he said. “Through the Tigers. We weren’t Tethered, but we were still joined.”
“That’s why I felt ill every time I tried to call on the Tigers—because you were weak,” she said slowly.
He nodded. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that it would be a side effect. To my knowledge, we’re the first to have both worn the same Living Weapon without death dividing us.
“Still, that wasn’t true Tethering. That only came now, when you allowed your power to flow into me—you gave willingly and opened your mind to mine. It completed the ritual and Tethered us.”
“Spring to stream. Stream to raging river,” she whispered.
“Bound in confluence. Together, we will forge new paths,” Alex completed, his eyes never leaving hers.
The moment stretched and lingered, thick and syrupy sweet like honey. There was an intensity there, a strength of feeling that she didn’t know. Did it belong to her, or was it his, or something from both of them?
It was too much, and her mind balked at the weight of the knowledge. And she tried to withdraw, afraid that he could see her uncertainty, her doubt and her fear. Afraid he would see the worst of her and realize she wasn’t worth saving.
His finger tightened around her wrist. “Don’t, Allyra. Don’t ever think that—don’t ever doubt yourself. And, never doubt that I will be there. As long as I am able, I will be by your side.
“I’m sorry, Allyra. I never meant for this to happen—you couldn’t have known that we would be Tethered.”
She felt his mind retreat from hers as he rebuilt the walls between them.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Rebuild your protections—even though we’re Tethered, you can keep me from your mind. I will never look without your consent.”
Uncertain, she looked at him, searching his face, hoping he could tell her what was in her mind—what she wanted. Eventually, she nodded. Rebuilding her walls was easier, reverting to something she knew, something that was familiar. If he felt disappointed or relieved, he didn’t show it, his expression carefully blank.
She looked down at the Revenant wound in his side, with the tendrils of black poison spreading across the plane of his ribs. “Take energy from me,” she said abruptly.
Alex flinched at her words. “You don’t know what you’re offering.”
“You’re hurt.”
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, letting the air out with a low hiss. “Allowing someone to take energy from yourself is extremely dangerous. Once connected, one person can drain the other completely, taking every last drop of energy and leaving nothing but death behind. Tradition dictates that it is only done between those that are Tethered, and it goes against the Gifted Charter to take energy without previous consent.”
She laughed sarcastically. “We’re Tethered, and I’m giving you my consent.”
Alex stared at her for a long time, considering her words. Too long. The bitter corrosion of regret was coursing through her veins, and all she could think of was the need to right her wrongs. She needed him to be strong.
She called the Tigers to her hand and sliced once more into her palm, another line of blood over the other already on her palm. She held out her bloodied hand to him. “Take it,” she demanded.
Eventually, Alex nodded, reluctantly. The Dragons appeared in his hand as a small dagger that he twisted across his palm. His eyes lifted and met hers. “Are you sure, Allyra?”
She nodded, and before he could say anything else, she took his hand in hers, smearing their blood between them. “I trust you,” she murmured.
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.”