Mud

  She pauses a moment to breathe. She’s still so weak, so wasted from the Underworld.

  “I don’t know if he told you—Theia used to speak to me. The night before the wedding, Kythiel used Her portal to break through to me in my dreams. He begged me to stop the wedding, but I didn’t have the will for that fight in me, not then from the depths of my grief. But Kythiel kept coming to me, and I spent most of my time in dream with him.”

  Rona pauses again, brings her hand to her face to brush away a tear. She bites her lip but it won’t stop trembling.

  I fight the urge to stand up and pace—Kythiel already told me all this. She said he was on his way. How long will it take him to get here? When he arrives, she will see. Her confusion will fade away.

  Jordan reaches out and rubs his hand soothingly across her shoulders again. “It’s okay. Go on.”

  She nods with a heavy breath.

  “I didn’t realize it then, but as soon as he broke through to me, a wedge began to push its way between Kythiel and Theia. Every time, it grew deeper. Soon Kythiel’s presence drowned out Theia’s voice in my dreams, and I could not hear Her anymore.”

  An uncomfortable crawling sensation is spreading over my skin. I don’t like this story.

  “In time I began to see the love in my husband’s care for me, and the pain I was causing him. I tried to start caring for him as a wife should. But I still went to Kythiel in my sleep. It was like being awake all the time. I started to lose myself. I knew what I had to do. I had to choose.”

  She tightens her arms around her legs again, begins to rock, her shoulders shaking.

  “Angels are not like men. Their hearts are constant and do not change. It was impossible for Kythiel to let go. It was not fair of me to ask him to. But it was destroying me.”

  She shuts her eyes tight, tucks her head into her arms. We have to lean in to hear her story through her muffled voice.

  “The night I told Kythiel we had to stop was the most terrifying of my life. The wedge between him and Theia had grown too deep, and his mind was unraveling. When I told him, something in him broke. My body bore the marks of his rage even after I woke. He wasn’t my Kythiel anymore.”

  Jordan looks to me, his eyes heavy with meaning. I blink back. The crawling buzz over my skin burns deeper into me.

  Rona keeps going. “Worse, he kept coming. He acted like nothing had changed. When I resisted, the rage took him over. I tried avoiding sleep, but it was impossible. Eventually sleep would overcome me anyway, and when it did, Kythiel was there waiting for me.”

  She lifts her head and glares at me, panting from the effort of so much talking. Little dots of sweat dapple her face.

  “I became obsessed with finding a way to escape him. Finally, I did—I had to go where Kythiel couldn’t. I took a knife and sent myself to the only safe place I could think of.”

  She pulls away from her knees, trails her fingers over the gash in her stomach.

  “I sunk into blankness. Numbness. Quiet. And it was more than enough.” Her head lifts and she glares at me. “Until you dragged me back here. And now he is in me again. In my dreams. And he is coming. Now.”

  Her voice is loud, practically a yell, crowding in on me off the cave walls. She lifts her head, her face writhing to hold back tears. She pushes herself onto shaky feet and stumbles to me, gripping my cloak to steady herself.

  “I cannot go back to him. It would be worse than death. Kill me. Send me back where I am free of him. Please.”

  Her words tumble past me, on and on like they are falling into an endless pit. I understand what she says to me and I do not.

  She presses her forehead into my chest. “Kill me,” she begs.

  I can’t get it all into my head. Can’t bring it together. Can’t force it into anything that makes sense. I realize the world is tilting side to side … I am shaking my head.

  “Kill me.”

  No.

  Kythiel, a violent madman? All of this effort for nothing?

  No.

  Pressure tightens through the air all around me and I am up to my head in it.

  Barely staying afloat.

  On the cusp of drowning.

  It can’t be. Something inside me twists around my hope for a soul and chokes it.

  “Kill me,” Rona’s voice turns into a raspy scream, and she beats her fragile fists into my chest and shoulders, and my head is still shaking side to side. This cannot be true, this cannot be possible, and then she collapses and I almost don’t move my arms in time to catch her as she crumples against me, unconscious.

  My soul.

  It all depends on delivering Rona to Kythiel.

  All I’ve been through to bring them together. The pain, the struggle. All the pieces crumbling away at the barrier between the realms because of what I did to bring her back to him.

  I stare at the heap she has become, leaning against my cloak, still rough and stiff with her blood. It’s strangling me.

  “No.” I say it aloud.

  I pull forward every detail I can remember from when he came to me—so far away, ten years away, is that all?—My memory drags forth the soft glow, the grace that glossed every move, the easy peace of his presence.

  “It can’t be.”

  I can’t force it together with the Kythiel she described. He isn’t capable of the things she said. He couldn’t be.

  “Adem.”

  There’s a hand on my arm and a voice in my ear.

  “Adem. Adem.”

  Jordan.

  He pulls me out from the fog of my mind. I look at him. His eyes are sharp. Biting flames. “Come outside with me.”

  “It’s light out. The humans will see us.”

  “It’s okay. They will not bother us.” He tries to give me a comforting smile, but it is too tense.

  The air is crowding tighter and tighter in the cave, accenting the hard low walls and distorted echoes and sticky salty wetness. There is no room to think. Outside, yes, outside is better. Rona is still in my arms, collapsed against me. She isn’t strong enough for this yet, it was too much. I lay her back on the large flat stone to rest. Turn and leave the cave, eager for the breeze.

  As soon as I’m out, the Hunter’s blank eyes accost me from the sand.

  Golem.

  Cold. Flat. Accusing. They stop me in my tracks.

  Muffled steps rustle through the sand as Jordan follows and stops behind me. He ignores the body.

  “What needs to be done?” he asks.

  I stare into the dead face staring at me. The mid-morning sun is swollen and glaring. The back of my palms tingle like a thousand prickling needles.

  “Adem. What are we going to do?”

  We. As if he has any part in this. I should tell him to leave, that he has no role in this tangled mess. But I don’t know what to believe anymore. I don’t know what to do, and the “we” drapes over my shoulders like a warm blanket. I should tell him to leave. But instead I take his “we” and I pull it close around myself.

  Jordan stares at his feet. Waves of water drag along sand. Neither of us wants to say it aloud, the thing that must come next.

  “Kythiel expects to meet me. When he gets here, you stay with Rona. Distract her and keep her calm until I can warn him of her condition.”

  Jordan steps back, eyes popped wide, sputtering.

  “But—you’re going to—her condition?” He pulls his hands through his hair and down his face. “That’s your plan? You can’t possibly still intend to hand her over to that thing. After the things she said—”

  “She doesn’t know what she’s saying,” I growl. “She’s not well. You saw her.”

  Not well, not well, not well. The Hunter’s hard flat eyes staring up at me. Judging.

  But no. That’s all this is. She’s not well.

  “You can’t be serious,” Jordan hisses. “I don’t fully understand what’s going on with all this, but even I can see what’s right here. You can’t just hand her over to him.”


  He stands, stares, waiting, his arms folded. I feel his eyes on my back, and I do not move. Something tells me the emptiness of the Hunter’s eyes is easier to bear than whatever lies in Jordan’s right now.

  “Adem. I know you. You don’t want to do this.” Jordan reaches a cautious hand out to my shoulder. “You might not realize it now. But you don’t. You have a good heart.”

  He realizes his slip as soon as the words leave his mouth. Bites his lip.

  “I have no heart.”

  But I could, I will, I’m so close I can almost feel what it will be like. To be human.

  I just have to I get my soul.

  Kythiel will be here soon.

  Just give her to him. That’s all. She is not well. She does not know what she says.

  The sun beats on my shoulders, presses over them through my cloak. The heat is a physical pressure building under my skin, tightening around me like claws.

  Jordan steps around to face me. Don’t. His expression is begging me, Stop. But he doesn’t know.

  “You don’t know how it was down there. In the Underworld.” So long I was buried down there, but still it feels strange rolling off my tongue.

  “It will do anything to trap you there. Fills you with its lies. Whatever it thinks will hold you there. The realm itself can sense you, listens, learns how to prey on you.”

  The Keeper’s raspy words tumble through my mind and out of me. I wonder how much time has passed for him on the other side. What they did to him for helping me escape. Another piece of collateral damage to add to my pile. All of it to get Rona back to Kythiel. And now I may have to turn my back on the deal. Because how can I possibly hand Rona over to something that is more monster than angel? But no, she is confused. She had to be.

  “It?” Jordan’s brow pulls together. He takes another slow step toward me. “Adem. I don’t know what happened to you. It must have been awful, more than I could imagine. But that doesn’t mean—”

  “I saw you down there,” I growl. “You were still a child. With your own shore exactly like this one. You begged me to stay there with you.” I can hear myself yelling and I can’t make it stop, words thundering down like rocks caught in a landslide. “I almost did. For you. But it wasn’t you. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real, and this story Rona told us isn’t either. She is just still confused from the Underworld.”

  As if I can make it so by repeating it enough times, force it into being with my breath. But I can feel the foundation slipping away from under me like quicksand. Breaking apart to take me in and swallow me.

  Jordan is shaking his head. One side to the other, slowly, over and over.

  “You can’t do this. Even if it really weren’t true, she believes it. She’s terrified of him. You saw her. You said yourself, she’s not well. It’s all she can do to stay alive right now. You can’t hand her over to something that scares her enough to kill herself.”

  “I’m telling you. It wasn’t him. Not really.” But I’m sinking, losing the ground under my feet. “Kythiel’s an angel. He can help her. A lot better than we can.”

  Something twists in my gut. Something dark, angry, and desperate. It clings and won’t let go. It nags, screams, and begs me to listen. I shove it away. My soul is at stake. Hundreds of lives, of Hunters and others who will just keep coming and try to take the box’s pieces. Even if what she says were true, what’s one to the hundreds of lives it will save to hand her over, to end the box’s power over me?

  “You know you can’t do this. You heard her. Kythiel lost himself a long time ago. He’s mad. He’s dangerous.”

  I tug it shut like a curtain. Will myself not to hear. My soul.

  “That was a long time ago. You didn’t see him. If he changed once, maybe he changed again.”

  “Angels don’t just change, Adem,” now Jordan’s yelling too, his hair catching in the setting sun as it flies around his face, as if it were catching fire. “They fall. You can’t fall back up. You fall down and then you’re stuck there.”

  There’s no more space in my mind for what he’s saying. Too loud. Too many demands, too many voices there already. Each syllable crams against my skull and the pressure builds and builds until there’s no space left to think and my vision beings to tilt and the Hunter’s stiff eyes stare through me like I’m nothing, less than nothing.

  “If you do this,” Jordan grinds his teeth, “You’re the monster you think you are, after all.”

  Red rage explodes within me and blocks out all else. My fist flies through the air and connects with Jordan’s jaw. The regret floods me bright and burning before he even hits the ground. The one person left still on my side, whoever was really on my side. But the rage is bigger, and my voice runs away without me.

  “You didn’t see him. Rona didn’t see him. I saw him. He’s fine. Her story isn’t true.”

  And then I turn my back on him and stomp back into the cave. I can’t deal with this now. The sand shuffles as Jordan pushes to his feet behind me. I sit on my rock next to Rona. Her breaths come easy and deep again in her unconscious state. Jordan hovers outside, tense and pacing.

  The sun drags lower and lower and darkness pulls in all around. The moon is high in the sky, a full flat circle. I cannot believe it. Will not. It simply cannot be. It sticks in my throat like splinters, as if the words themselves are fighting against me.

  But my soul. It hangs in the balance. My life. My one chance for anything more than the trail of corpses I leave everywhere I go. I don’t want to kill anymore. I want to be free.

  Kythiel is fine. He is fine, because he has to be. Because I have to get my soul. The rest, it’s all lies. She’s confused. A victim of the Underworld’s tricks. Kythiel is fine.

  The sun begins to set into a tense twilight. Still there is no sign of Kythiel. Jordan keeps up his pacing outside the cave. Rona is still unconscious. I shove myself to my feet—I have to do something.

  I walk outside and cut through Jordan’s pacing. I pick up the Hunter’s stiff corpse, sling it over my shoulder, and carry it around behind the cave, up the shore to where the sand becomes silt, where the cattails spring up.

  “Adem!” Jordan is following. It does not matter.

  I find an open patch of ground. This will do. I drop the corpse. Don’t look. Don’t look at the eyes. I kneel down and push my fingers through the sand, shove it away.

  “Adem!” He quickens his pace to a run, tries to catch up.

  Everything crumbles as soon as I touch it, breaks away like the ground under my hands. I can at least return over on this one thing. He should have been buried already. Before the humans were out.

  “Adem.”

  He’s right behind me now. I push my hands deep into the ground. Losing myself in the digging, I try to block him out before he can start.

  “You can’t do this Adem. I think you know you can’t.”

  I keep my head down, my eyes locked on the hole I’m digging. It doesn’t matter what Jordan thinks. He wasn’t down there in the Underworld. He doesn’t understand.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “So you can cover up your sin with the dirt before you go and commit another? This one is different, Adem. This,” he points to the corpse, “Is forced on you. I know that. These burdens belong to someone else, whoever bound you to that box. But if you go through with this, if you give Rona to that lunatic, that’s on you.”

  My hands stop moving. A burning mix of rage and guilt and stinging bitterness clouds my chest.

  Jordan opens his mouth to say more, but then he stops. The air is tightening. Thinning, pulling, and flattening until there’s none left to breathe in. I stop digging and stand up. A blinding burst of light flashes over the water.

  Kythiel. He’s come.

  Chapter 28

  AS SOON AS the air begins to flatten, I break into a run.

  “Adem!”

  The air snaps and crackles with pressure as it whooshes over my arms, my legs, my face.

  �
�Adem!”

  Jordan is chasing after me.

  As I approach the shore, a large form strides up from the tumbling waves, its silvery glow mixing with beams cast down from the full moon. He is headed toward the cave.

  Kythiel.

  He has to bend down low to fit inside, flatten down his inky wings. And then he is swallowed into the rocks.

  Rona.

  My head pounds with pressure. Rona is in there. Alone. She will panic and ruin it all. But Jordan and I are not far behind. I hear his huffing breaths and thunking steps behind me as we race toward her.

  I stop short at the cave’s mouth. Jordan crashes into my back, heaving in uneven breaths.

  Kythiel is at Rona’s side, kneeling next to her unconscious body, splayed across the rock. But the way he looks at her sends chills through me. With one hand he caresses her head, runs fingers through the matted hair. The other holds onto the tight curve of her hip, pulls her close. He isn’t seeing the starved, recovering corpse in front of him. He seems to be seeing Rona from the Beginning, the woman he knew. And somehow, in the soft light coming off him, she almost seems whole again. The glow of his skin pools in the cave’s crevices and collects in a ring around them like a halo’s cast-off light.

  Even as we stand in the cave’s mouth gaping and huffing, he does not take his eyes off her. I watch his face carefully, studying it for any sign of menace. His strong chin is softened; his perfect lips tremble. He could not possibly be the monster Rona described. If she would only wake up right now, she would see it herself.

  I don’t belong in this moment. I want to take it back, snatch away the suspicions sneaking into my mind, pull away, and let them be. I begin to step away.

  But then he says, “Golem.”

  “I am here.”

  But he doesn’t look up. As if his eyes are bound to her. He could not be what she said. He is an angel. Sad. Desperate. But not insane.

  He pushes a lock of hair from her face. “You have brought her back to me.”

  His voice is grace and melody, pearly smooth. I forgot how overwhelming his perfection is.

  “Do you have my soul?”