“Stop looking at it,” Cole commanded. “Focus on walking.”
I turned to face him, and he raised an eyebrow at my appearance. “What is it?” I said.
He bit his lip. “It’s okay. I always thought you should have short hair.”
My hand flew up to the side of my head. I felt brittle, curly strands that fell away as I touched them.
Cole looked at me anxiously, probably wondering what my reaction would be.
I gave a halfhearted laugh, which dissolved into tears. I turned away. Seriously? It was the hair I was crying over?
No. The hair was just the breaking point.
I sniffed. And then I sank to the ground. The movement was the exact opposite of what I was telling my muscles to do. My brain was screaming at them to walk, but I couldn’t move any farther.
Cole immediately crouched down and put a hand on my shoulder. “It’ll grow back, Nik.”
“It’s not about the hair.” I shoved the palms of my hands into my eyes, plugging the tears.
He put his arm around me, careful to avoid the burn, and let my head fall on his shoulder. “I know you’re tired. I’m tired too. You don’t have to think about making it through the labyrinth or conquering another ring. All you have to think about is putting one foot in front of the other.”
“I’m trying,” I said with a shaky voice. “It’s my stupid legs. They won’t … w-w-work.” Now I was stuttering. What was my problem? It was Jack we were trying to save, and Cole was giving me a pep talk?
And yet here we were. My arm felt as if a pit bull had sunk in its teeth and refused to let go. My legs felt like two barrels of cement, and Cole could make me bald simply by blowing on my hair.
But my exhaustion went even further than that. “Cole, is this the despair?”
He sighed. “Don’t think about it.”
“I can’t not think about it.” The words were harsh and sharp.
Cole winced at the acid in my voice, and I noticed the evidence of the fire’s work on his face. The darkness in his eyes. The accentuated shadows under his cheekbones. The defeat in his posture.
Max had signs of it too, in the frown lines that ran deeper than usual.
But neither of them was incapacitated by it. I wondered how bad I looked, with half of my hair and the smoke still rising from my arm.
“Well, that’s just great. How are we supposed to rally against all this despair?” I said.
Cole’s lip twitched microscopically. “Now, Nik. That’s the despair talking. Don’t think about it.”
“But—”
“Did I ever tell you about how I became an Everliving?” he interrupted.
“No,” I said. “You never wanted to talk about it.”
“Did I ever tell you I was a Viking?”
I lifted my head off his shoulder and wiped underneath my eye. “No.”
“You’re going to love this story.” He smiled despite the strain on his face and hoisted me up to a standing position, which I wouldn’t have thought was possible until I was actually standing. “This story has everything. Intrigue. Tension.”
“Romance,” Max interjected.
Cole rolled his eyes. And with his hand on my good shoulder, he turned me around and pointed me in the right direction, then gave my back a gentle nudge and got me going again.
“And it all started centuries ago, with a little blond boy skipping through the fields of Norway.”
I turned and gave him a quizzical look, but he waved his hand in a Watch where you’re walking sort of way.
“Yes, Nik. This jackass—who according to you has no morals—was once a little boy.” His tone was light, and it was working. I was putting one foot in front of the other.
“How does a Viking get mixed up in the Everneath?” I said, my voice sounding noticeably stronger.
But he was quiet for a long time. I glanced backward to see him rolling a small, flat rock between his fingers as he used to do with his guitar pick. I realized he was probably struggling to carry on just as I was. Max called over his shoulder, “Just tell her, Cole.”
Cole threw the rock, pinging it off of Max’s head. Max gave an exhausted laugh and rubbed the spot the rock had hit. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“Why would you be embarrassed?” I said.
Max answered. “He came over for a girl.” He sounded as if he were ten years old when he said it.
I stopped. “What?”
Cole kept walking, making no attempt to slow down. I started up again.
“You were in love?” I said.
“Yes,” Max answered, and at the same time Cole said, “No.”
I smiled. “This is getting good. I’m totally focusing.” And it was true. I was. The pain in my shoulder seemed duller and the cement in my legs more manageable. “Keep going.”
“He fell for her hard,” Max said. “She came up in a skimpy little Viking outfit—”
“Shut up, Max!” Cole said, exasperated but grinning. “I’ll tell the story.”
“Good,” Max said.
“Her name was Gynna, and she wasn’t wearing a skimpy little Viking outfit. There’s no such thing as a skimpy little Viking outfit. Vikings are cold. Anyway, I was working as an apprentice to one of the merchants in my village when she showed up one day. And it went on from there.”
He was quiet again, and it sounded as if he was finished. But I wanted more. “That’s not a good story. That’s girl meets boy. I want the meat.”
“There is no meat.”
I whipped around, and Cole nearly ran into me. I put a finger on his chest. “For a split second there I forgot about the blistering pain in my shoulder and the fireballs licking at my feet. Unless you want to make a permanent home in the Ring of Fire, you’d better keep talking.”
A smile played at the edges of his lips. “Whatever you say.”
I turned around and started walking again, and Cole continued. “Gynna came to our storefront. She looked lost. She had a bag full of money, all sorts of coins from all over the world. Coins I had never seen. Master Olnaf ordered me to take her to the back room, where we kept all of our reference books, to try to document each of her coins. We spent a lot of days in that room.”
“Is that a euphemism?” I looked back.
He raised an eyebrow. “If by ‘euphemism’ you mean we spent hours and hours researching the origins of ancient coins, then yes, it’s a euphemism. Anyway, she seemed interested in me. She was the first person to ask me questions about my life, my family, my dreams. And every time she was near me, my worries seemed to disappear. Now, of course, I know she was able to siphon off the worst of my emotions. But at the time I was fooled into thinking it was friendship.”
“You mean love,” Max interjected.
I glanced back and caught Cole glaring at Max. “Yes. I was in love with her. And when she asked me to follow her to the Everneath, I didn’t hesitate. I had no family. My parents were dead, and my brothers had been shipped off to different parts of the country.”
“So she took you to Feed on you?” I never would’ve imagined that Cole had been through a Feed.
“No. She took me for the sole purpose of bringing me over. To become an Everliving. But it wasn’t long before I realized why she had done it.”
“And why was that?”
“She wanted out.”
I paused. “Out? Out of what? Out of the Everneath? Couldn’t she just go to the Surface?”
“She wanted out of … immortality.”
“What do you mean?”
He exhaled. “She didn’t want to live like this anymore. She wanted to break her own heart.”
“Well then, why didn’t she? Didn’t she have a pick, or something, like you?”
“Yes, but simply breaking her Surface heart wouldn’t kill her. Everlivings have two hearts.”
I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at him. “Two hearts?” Was that why the Wanderer had used that odd phrase Surface heart? “You
mean you have more than one heart?”
“Yes, that’s traditionally what the number two means. When we become Everliving, our hearts split in two, creating a Surface one, which we carry with us, and an Everneath one, which goes straight to a vault held in the High Court. They are two halves of a whole heart.”
“So … that night at your condo … when we tried to …”
“Kill me by breaking my heart? I remember. No, even if you had broken my pick, you wouldn’t have killed me. All you would have done is made it impossible for me to travel back and forth between the Everneath and the Surface.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why would I?” For a moment, a sad smile appeared on his face. “It was obvious you thought you were killing me. And you didn’t hesitate. I was hoping, someday, you might feel guilty about that, by the way. But maybe I have misplaced faith in your humanity.”
I looked into his eyes. I’d always thought I’d missed my chance to kill him. And now to find out I hadn’t even been close?
And to ask myself the tougher question: Would I do it again? If I had the chance to kill him … would I?
If it came down to Jack’s life or Cole’s, there’d be no question.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Sorry that I had been so willing to kill him, and sorry too that I would do it again if it would save Jack. Hopefully it would never come to that.
Max called from some ways ahead. “Guys, we need to keep moving.”
We started walking again. Cole was quiet, so I said, “Tell me more about Gynna. And her hearts.”
“The Surface heart allows passage between the worlds. The Everneath heart holds our world together. If you imagine the Tunnels as the power source of the Everneath, then you can imagine the vault of hearts as the keystone. If an Everliving wants to give up her immortality, she has to bring a new heart to the High Court to replace the one she wants to break. It’s like if an employee at a factory leaves, there’s a loss of productivity. The Shades don’t like losses of productivity.”
It finally all clicked. “So she used your heart to replace hers. So she could leave. So she wouldn’t end up a Wanderer.”
“Yep. You see, it’s not really a love story. But I guess there is an element of betrayal in it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it. “What happened to her?”
“Who?”
“Gynna.”
“Oh, she was gone before I knew what hit me. She took her Everneath heart and left.”
“Gone where, to the Surface?”
He nodded.
“Did she break both of her own hearts?”
He finally looked me in the eye. “I don’t know. I never saw her again. I assume she grew old and died. So I guess the joke’s on her.”
He said it without an ounce of mirth, his voice caustic.
“She was crazy,” Max added. “She didn’t grasp the benefits of being an Everliving.”
“What exactly are the benefits?” I said.
“Seriously?” Max let his mouth hang open for a dramatic moment. He started ticking off his fingers. “Eternal life. Eternal youth. A fountain in the center of every Common that makes you forget all of your worries.”
I remembered that fountain. I’d seen it at the slaughter.
Max went on. “Plenty of time to hone our musical skills. A paved road to rock stardom.”
“A paved road how?” I asked.
“All we need is a room and a captive audience …,” he said.
My stomach sank as I remembered what it felt like watching them perform. “You mean an audience whose emotions you can easily manipulate.”
“Exactly. There’s nothing like that breakout moment, when some influential guy in a suit looks at you and thinks he’s found the next Beatles.” Max looked away wistfully. Cole walked next to me in silence. His head was down. I’d never heard him talk about being an Everliving like Max was talking now.
“Is that why you spend all of your time on the Surface? Because music isn’t allowed in the Everneath?”
Max answered. “Yep. That’s what makes us different. And it’s worth it. We’ve had that ‘breakout’”—Max made air quotes—“moment on the Surface several times now, in different generations; right, Cole?”
Cole gave half a smile. “Right. But you’re forgetting the best part of immortality.”
“What?” I asked.
“The absence of that one part of your body that makes all the dumb-ass decisions. The beating heart. The place where emotions reside.” He said it with equal parts disdain and awe.
We were quiet. Cole seemed as if he was done talking, so I turned to Max.
“So why did you come over?” I said to Max.
He turned around and started walking backward. He spread his arms out wide. “For love!” He had to jerk his hands back in when they got too close to the flames.
Cole broke out in spasms of laughter.
“What is it?”
Cole looked at me. “I brought him over. Ages ago.”
“I meant for love of music,” Max said with a grin.
“Careful how loud you say that,” Cole said, but he was still smiling.
“Why do the Shades hate music?” I asked.
“Because they can’t control it,” Cole said. “Music is full of emotion, so it’s unstable. They’re wary of energy they can’t control.”
“At least, that’s Cole’s theory,” Max said. “Nobody really knows. They only know what happens if the ‘no music’ rule is broken.…”
Max turned back around and jogged forward to scout ahead. We walked for a while in silence, the conversation having counteracted the despair just enough to keep our momentum going.
My mind kept going back to Cole’s story about Gynna. I wanted to say something to Cole, but I’d already told him I was sorry, and I didn’t know what else to say.
The truth was, I was in a strange place. I felt sorry for Cole despite all the pain he’d caused me. I didn’t like it. For so long I’d been content and sure in my hatred of Cole. But now to learn how he’d been betrayed …
Actually, betrayal seemed to be a theme with the Everliving. I reached into my pocket and felt Nathanial’s medal in there. Cole seemed to be in a sharing mood now. Maybe it was the right time to ask him about Adonia.
“Cole?”
“Nikki?” he replied.
“You know Ashe …” I paused as I figured out the question I wanted to ask. I wasn’t sure I wanted to reveal that I knew Ashe had his Forfeit killed. But I wanted to find out Cole’s place in it all.
“Yes, I seem to recall him.”
“Do you think he escaped the Siren somehow?”
Cole sighed. “I don’t know. I hope so.”
“You said you did something for him. And that he owes you.”
“Yes.” He wasn’t offering anything.
“Well, what did you do that he would owe you?”
He was quiet for a moment. I could feel Max’s eyes on us. “I helped him find something he had lost.”
My breath caught in my throat. Something he had lost. Something, or someone. Adonia.
“What did he lose?”
Cole hesitated. “It doesn’t matter now, Nik.”
It mattered to me. “This thing he lost, was it a person?”
Cole grabbed my elbow and jerked me back. “What did you say?” He stared at me, apprehensive.
I stood my ground. “Was her name Adonia?”
At the mention of her name, Cole closed his eyes. “How do you know?”
“I visited Mrs. Jenkins. Adonia was her ancestor. She has her ashes in an urn above her fireplace.”
Cole opened his eyes and watched me. “It was a long time ago.”
“You hunted her down? And turned her location over to Ashe?”
“It was a unique circumstance.”
“You were a different person then?” I said, not even trying to mask the sarcasm. “You’d never do it again?”
&nb
sp; “I didn’t do it again!” The quiet after his outburst was intense. Cole backed away from me. “You’ll notice you’re not in a jar on someone’s fireplace,” he said.
“Were you there?”
“Was I where?”
“Were you there when the queen found Adonia?”
He shut his eyes again. “No. But I hunted her down. Told Ashe where he could find her. And he told the queen.”
“And you knew she’d be killed.”
He opened his eyes. “Yes,” he said simply. “But, Nik.” He stepped forward and put his hands on my good shoulder. “I didn’t do it to you.”
Staring at him right then, I didn’t put voice to the word in my head. Yet. He hadn’t betrayed me to the queen yet.
TWENTY-SEVEN
NOW
The Everneath. The Ring of Fire.
Silence filled the next few minutes as we traversed the fiery corridors, dodging the occasional rogue flare. I kept a steady pace until we came to yet another archway. The others passed through without hesitation, but something about it made me stop. An uneasy feeling gripped me as I looked up at it. We’d already been through several archways, but this one was different. The flames at the top formed strange shapes. Mostly round ones, with stems sticking out.
As I passed underneath, I finally realized what the shapes looked like: fruit. Grapes, apples, cherries, all formed out of flames. I realized how long it had been since I’d eaten anything, and yet I’d never felt hungry. Mrs. Jenkins told me not to eat, but she didn’t have to worry. Until now, eating had been the last thing on my mind. But as the archway faded behind us, I felt a new hole in my stomach.
I tried to think of something else. I focused on the story of Ashe and Adonia. How was I supposed to feel about it all, knowing Cole’s role in her death? He didn’t do it to me. But he could. Would that possibility be hanging over my head for my entire life?
His actions had resulted in someone else’s death. But that was a way of life here. And Adonia was headed to the Tunnels anyway. Was I excusing his behavior because my feelings for him had changed? With everything we’d been through down here, it was hard to remember that for so long Cole had been an adversary. His history with Adonia simply reminded me of what Cole’s role was supposed to be.
Everbound: An Everneath Novel Page 20