by Lynne Matson
One second. Two.
Thad had helped Zane get close to the gate, keeping himself out of range. “I don’t want to throw you in,” he said. “Can you make it on your own?”
Zane nodded. He hopped on his good foot into the gate, falling fast into the portal with two thumbs up.
Dominic went next, then Calvin.
Tick tock.
“Rives!” Thad shouted.
I turned around and came face to face with James and a massive Bengal tiger.
“He is next,” James said, his hand on the tiger’s back. “It is right.”
I didn’t have time to argue, not that it would’ve mattered. It was a freaking Bengal tiger. It strolled past me and into the gate as if it owned the place.
Heads up, Calvin, I thought as the cat vanished.
Two heartbeats later, James followed the cat.
It was me, Thad, and Skye.
I couldn’t miss the torch in her hand or the tears on her face. This was it. The moment I’d dreaded, the moment I lost everything.
Skye.
Thad squeezed my shoulder, then leaped into the gate. The ground rumbled beneath my feet, ominous and angry.
Skye stared at me. Her torch lit her face with a golden glow, setting the sparks in her eyes on fire.
I couldn’t leave her. Not here, not ever.
“No.” My heated defiance flooded the platform. “I’ll walk in with you. We’ll do this together. We’ll finish this together.”
“We are,” she said softly. “But you know two people can’t go at once. It has to be me.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Fire roared and smoke choked the air. Desperation choked me. “I’ll do it.”
“You told me once you’d do anything for me.” Her voice shook, but her gaze didn’t waver. “And now I’m asking you to live. To walk into that gate and let me go. I won’t throw you in this time. I need it to be your choice. I need you to do this for me.”
I didn’t move.
“Please,” she whispered. “Go. Do all the things we talked about. Take a picture of the river Seine, the one you were named for, in the place where your parents kissed. Go to the university like you planned. See the world. Fall in love. Live.” She pointed at the gate. Tears spilled from her eyes like falling stars. “Go. Please.”
Please.
I broke. I broke for her.
Because this was how she wanted it to end.
I backed away. “I love you.” It wasn’t enough, not even close. My voice cracked. “You won’t be alone. I’ll be with you, okay? To the end.”
My eyes never left hers, not when I stumbled as the rock shifted, not when I felt the heat, not when it closed around me, not when it stole my breath. The last image I had was of Skye standing alone on Nil ground, a burning torch in hand, the wind whipping her blond hair around her face like golden flames, her unblinking gaze fixed on me. She lifted one hand to her mouth, pressed her fingers to her lips wet with tears, then held out her hand, offering me one last kiss.
I reached for her, but she was already gone.
The darkness rushed in, severing me from Skye forever. The cut cleaved all the way to my core, cruel and permanent.
To my relief, I blacked out.
CHAPTER
77
NIL
AUTUMNAL EQUINOX, MIDNIGHT
Pain.
Impossible pain.
Searing, consuming, and wholly unbearable; the island twisted and writhed, trapped as it burned from the inside out and the outside in. It fought with the intensity of a different world, a different time; it unleashed the full force of the electria swirling within, using the visceral rush of energy to battle the flames. It roared against the pain, blind fury erupting. Pain mixed with power; the invisible battle raged between worlds, between sides. Within itself.
The past fused into the now.
Now the one called Skye clung to life between worlds, trapped in the seam; she had brought the pain; she had released the power. She had become the keystone—her electria kept the seam from collapsing, from expanding, for she held the power within.
She was the conduit between the past and the future.
She was the one.
With patient deliberation and fearsome rage, the island turned its faces to her.
This was the moment.
The future was now.
CHAPTER
78
SKYE
AUTUMNAL EQUINOX, MIDNIGHT
The burn began like the strike of a match, quick and bearable, reminiscent of the gates I’d taken before, the kind of gate that flips from heat to ice, then brings the sweet relief of freedom.
Not this gate.
The simple flame licking my skin exploded into a solar flare, blistering and burning, as if the match had been tossed into an ocean of gasoline. The fireball engulfed me, as hot as the sun.
I was Icarus, burning.
Melting.
Falling.
The pain was unbearable.
I did the only thing I could: I retreated within.
Within me.
White walls, closed room.
I slammed the door and locked it tight, squeezing my eyes closed, shutting everything out. This room—this quiet sanctuary within me—was where I would ride out the end. Where I would end, taking Nil with me.
Beyond the walls, the darkness roared. Fire exploded from the inside out and the outside in, ignited by the torch I’d carried into the gate; the door rattled under the pressure. Even here I sensed it: the frightening depth of Nil’s fury and fear … its hope and its hate … and above all, its pain; echoes of it all battered the walls around me. It was extraordinary, and extraordinarily terrible.
Nil was being burned alive.
Inside my room, inside me, memories swirled like a vortex, drawing me deeper.
A thin boy with my eyes, carving the words Look Inside.
Thad, throwing Charley into a gate, victory on his face.
Lana, tracing a rough 3-2-1-4, her finger lingering on the 4.
A girl named Macy, peace in her soul, whispering, Four chambers of the heart.
The princess, believing.
The prince, returning.
Talla, begging, Choose me.
Me, telling Paulo, You always have a choice.
Paulo, choosing.
My dad, urging, Think.
Rives, saying, Balance reigns.
Rives, vowing, I love you.
Rives, his heart breaking, letting me go.
My heart skipped.
My heart, not Nil’s. I’d created this place, inside me, a place Nil couldn’t breach, a place where my heart and soul and mind were mine alone. Light blazed around me, soothing, not burning, the light of a new moon, the light of a new day.
The white—the light—was mine.
Clarity struck, quelling all thoughts but one: I had the power to choose.
I had the power.
Love was stronger than hate, stronger than fear; love turned pain into strength, into a power I could wield. I wasn’t alone, I didn’t have to die alone, and just maybe I didn’t have to die at all. Nil’s pain was not mine. I could block it out. I already had, right here, right now.
I would trap Nil in the dark, rather than hide in the light.
I choose to live.
I flung open the door and stepped into the maelstrom of fire. The protective walls vanished; silky darkness converged around me with a choking power: snarling and hungry and cruelly ecstatic; it burned to live, and lived to burn. Behind my eyes, the world churned black and red, like lava, like molten steel. Heat seared my skin; darkness brushed my mind.
And I knew.
The darkness had already declared victory; it relished the fight. It wanted to toy and to hurt, to bring me to my knees and break me; it ached to revel in the power of my pain. Images of Paulo and Hafthor, of Dai and Dex and Talla and hundreds of others roared through my head, a silent film infused with painful emotions in levels coldly desi
gned to make me shatter; cruel laughter imbued with hate and power echoed in my head even as it fought to claim me.
No.
My thought was calm, because I’d made my choice. I’d chosen to die; then chosen to live. My future hinged on the now. Now the fight was mine.
I would fight fire with fire.
Reaching through the darkness, I reached deep inside, into that place Nil couldn’t touch because it couldn’t understand, and I grasped all the love and light and beauty I held inside my heart—and with all the strength of my human soul, I flung my power into the black void.
Rives.
I pictured his face as he looked back at me with grief in his heart; I remembered his incredible depth of compassion and kindness, his last promise and his fierce declaration of love; I imagined our future, the one he’d given up because I’d asked him to. Because I thought I needed to die with Nil for Nil to die.
But my heart wasn’t entwined with Nil’s, nor was my fate.
Nil wasn’t my counterweight.
That was Rives.
Rives! I shouted his name in the dark.
I CHOOSE TO LIVE.
I poured every bit of love I’d ever felt into the fiery blackness around me. Love brought the greatest pain and the sweetest joy; it was the purest source of power I’d ever felt; I wielded it like armor and sword alike. Love offered hope and light and protection and forgiveness, and with my very last breath, I pitted all of mine against the cruel dark.
Love for Rives.
Love for my parents. Love for my friends.
Love for Jillian and Dex, for Charley and Thad. For Hafthor and Paulo.
Love uniting Rives and me; love binding Charley and Thad; love bursting between Molly and Davey. Love shared by others I’d never met, others the island had known, love that brought people home and pulled them through. Love wrapped me like armor, absorbing the fire and the pain; walls rose around me of my own creation.
I was bound in light and life and love. I was on fire, and it came from me.
Love cleaved the dark; it revealed a speck of light, still there, dim but present. A girl stood in the dark, smiling.
Talla.
She nodded, once; the flames flickered.
In the deepest part of me, I felt a stillness. Abrupt and unexpected, the barest whisper of time. The tiniest fraction of the now.
A hesitation.
It was enough.
Coolness pressed against my shoulder blade, a soothing liquid touch in the midst of cruel fire.
Live.
The hand on my back pushed.
I hurtled forward as the fire turned to ice. A thick layer of me stripped away, taking a suffocating weight with it, leaving my entire body stinging and raw and free—and then there was nothing.
No dark, no pain.
Just me, tumbling through, wrapped in my shell of light.
No air. No direction.
Rives.
He was my final thought before there was absolutely nothing at all.
CHAPTER
79
RIVES
AUTUMNAL EQUINOX, MIDNIGHT
I came to under another glittering crescent moon.
Black night, black ground, blackness in my head.
I turned toward the gate still writhing in the air like a mirror.
Please turn black, I begged. Send her through. Send her back, to me.
Please.
The gate seethed, shifting and rolling, billowing mightily as if a battle warred within. But the color didn’t shift. No black, not when I was desperate for it.
The ground rocked. A warning shift.
Thad grabbed my arm. He hauled me away from the gate, as he pressed athletic shorts into my hands.
“Rives! This rock is shaking. Let’s go!”
I shook off his arm as I slid on the shorts. Professor Bracken stood nearby, arms crossed, gazing at the gate, grief written all over his face. I couldn’t meet his eyes.
I’d broken my promise to him.
I whipped my head back toward the gate. I’d made a promise to Skye, too, and I damn sure wouldn’t break it.
SKYE!
“Rives!” Charley cried. “You have to come!”
“No.” I stared at the gate. “I promised Skye. I won’t leave her,” I said. I promised her she wouldn’t die alone. I didn’t count Nil as company.
In my mind, Nil didn’t count at all.
I dropped to my knees. I would stay with Skye to the end.
Skye!
The gate writhed, still open. Still taunting me with hope.
“Rives!” Thad shouted. “We have to go, brother!”
I didn’t move. With Skye in my soul, I focused on the gate hanging a few meters high, thinking of all I couldn’t see; I thought of the darkness, real and cruel and hell-bent on keeping her; I fought it like Skye had done for months, only now I fought for her.
Skye!
Pushing through that blackness, I reached for Skye with my mind, willing her to hear me. To feel me, to give her strength, to show her that she wasn’t alone.
I hit a wall. Invisible and unyielding, it pushed me back. Repelled me with shocking force.
And my heart told me Skye was trapped behind it.
SKYE!
I love you with all that I am. I am with you, always.
Skye.
I breathed her name, reaching for her with my soul, knowing this was it. My final shot. For her to hear me, for her to beat Nil.
For her to find her way back.
Because if anyone could find a way out, it was my Skye.
Tick.
Tock.
The gate’s iridescence surged. I shielded my eyes from the flash. The writhing doorway glowed like a white-hot ember in the night, burning more brilliantly than I’d ever seen. Not reflecting the crescent moon above but lit from within—like a fragment of the surface of the sun.
Something terrible was about to happen. I took a step backward as a crisp thought slashed through my head:
RUN.
I ran.
Still writhing in midair, every speck of the gate turned a brilliant orange-red. Fire red.
And then the gate exploded.
The force of the blast blew me back. I slammed into the ground as flames shot from the gate; they blew past me with a powerful rush of air unlike anything I’d ever felt before. Noise rumbled like a freight train as the ground shook; my ears rang, then an equally massive surge of air roared back the way the first one had come, sucked back into the gate. Branches and rocks and a cat flew past, toward the gate; I grabbed hold of a tree, bracing against the snarling rush of air. Lana slid past me, her hands scrabbling along the ground as she tried to stop her slide. I caught hold of her ankle and held it tight
Abruptly, the wind surge stopped. The mountain was half destroyed; its top, gone. The platform itself had split in two; a jagged crack mutilated the ground, the intricate rings destroyed.
The gate was gone.
Skye!
Hauling myself to my knees, I searched for Skye, first scanning the platform’s perimeter, then closing my eyes and reaching with my mind.
Nothing. Just me, in my own head. No darkness, no remnant of Skye.
Around me, trees crackled, their tips on fire.
“Skye!” I screamed. It came out a choked rasp.
“Rives!” the professor yelled. He sounded far away. “We have to go!”
“No!” I threw off his arm. “Not when Skye’s still there!”
“She’ll take the next one,” he said, his iron grip insistent. “She has time!”
I stared at him, stunned. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know Skye brought fire into the gate. That Skye sacrificed herself for humanity’s future.
That she was gone.
“This island is unstable, and it’s on fire.” His voice softened. “It’s time to go, son.”
“He’s right.” Thad’s quiet voice sounded behind me. I turned to find him flanked by Lana and Charley.
The pair wore matching expressions of shock and grief. “Skye would want you to go. She would want you to live.”
I’m asking you to live, Skye had told me, tears in her eyes, resolve in her heart. To walk into that gate and let me go.
I’d left her behind. She’d asked me to, but the choice was mine.
Her choice was selfless. Mine had felt forced. And yet I’d have to live with it, with Skye’s death on my hands.
The heat intensified. Around us, the trees spat flames.
I stared at the platform until Thad ripped me away.
And then I ran. Through the trees, away from the platform, toward the water and the waiting boat.
Away from Skye.
The mountain rumbled. Behind us, billowing steam filled the night sky, obliterating the stars. The Death Twin burned.
I’d lost.
Skye was gone, forever.
Live, she’d said.
How could I live without her?
CHAPTER
80
SKYE
AUTUMNAL EQUINOX, MIDNIGHT
Salty night air kissed my skin seconds before I hit the water. Black night and brilliant stars fought with billowing smoke and spitting flames; below me, inky water glittered like the deepest part of a gate, the sort of darkness with the potential to suck you under forever—the kind of darkness where you could be lost. I struck the water, and went under.
Water as cold as the Crystal Cove pressed against my mouth, dark and searching and wanting more; it wrapped me in ice, as constrictive as a gate and just as deadly. There was no up or down, no right or left; every direction pressed in equally cold, equally black.
All deadly.
I writhed in the gate, burning.
I twisted in the gate, freezing.
I was on Nil.
I was part of Nil.
I was one with Nil.
Birth, life, death.
Time slowed, time stopped. Rewound, sped up, fast-forwarded, and paused; every second I’d lived settled into the now.
Now, I was me.
Now, I was free.
Think.
I stopped fighting the water. I relaxed, letting myself float, relying on my own body to tell me which direction to go. Then I kicked, hard, with everything I had. When I broke the surface, I barely avoided being slammed by a falling piece of flaming rock; I ducked back underwater at the last minute. Sparks and debris and ash fell around me, fireworks raining from the sky. I strained to make out any sign of a boat. Surely my dad would’ve brought a boat. The moon and flames glowed across the water, helping me get my bearings, bright enough to tell me that the shallow beach was on the opposite side of the island.