“But …” Ashe looked at Cole helplessly. Cole seemed just as lost as he was. “But if you’re here, that means you killed the queen. You took her place. And you never told me.”
She looked taken aback. “You betrayed me. So I betrayed you. The last thing I wanted was for you to get anything out of it.”
As they spoke, I glanced at the water behind me and slowly stepped away from Cole. My tether appeared fully, still pointing to the lake. But I no longer thought it was just a lake.
“I loved you,” Ashe said. “I only did what I did because you broke my heart.”
“You broke me,” Adonia hissed.
The conversation sounded familiar. Cole and I had had it many times. And yet here we were, standing next to each other, not facing off against each other. And closer to saving Jack than we’d ever been.
I grabbed his hand, and he squeezed mine. Then I started to inch backward, toward the lake. He gave me a confused look.
“Trust me.” I mouthed the words.
Had we reached that point? Where we trusted each other implicitly? If I jumped into the unknown, would he follow?
The queen had moved toward Ashe, following him step by step away from the lake. After all they had been through, the two of them still couldn’t resist the attachment that once bound them together as Forfeit and Everliving.
Ashe’s voice was calming. “Donia. Be with me. You can’t bring Nathanial back to life. I’m here, and he’s not. Let’s be together.”
I froze. Ashe had said the wrong thing. At the mention of Nathanial’s name, Adonia whipped around and stared at me.
“But this one said she had a message. For me. From Nathanial.”
Cole’s grip tightened on my hand. I cursed myself for saying I had a message.
I took a breath. “I came here for love. You understand that, don’t you?” It was the most honest thing I could think to say.
She got a wild look in her eyes. “If I can’t have love, neither can you. Now, tell me the message before I make another tree, but this time out of your friend.”
Adonia dropped her projection of the redhead and reverted back to her true self. Her face became maniacal. I knew she wouldn’t settle for anything less than the hope of being reunited with Nathanial. It was a hope I couldn’t give her. Her blue eyes bore into me, and yet she looked as angelic as she had in the cameo.
The cameo. The cameo! I remembered what Nathanial looked like in the cameo. Now I needed to buy some time.
“You have no message,” she accused.
I pulled the medal out of my pocket. “I have this.”
She stared at Nathanial’s medal for a few seconds and then snatched it out of my hand to examine it. I used that moment to close my eyes and shut out everything around me. The queen, Ashe, Max, Cole, the Shades. I only allowed for one image in my head, and that image was from the cameo of Nathanial. In my mind, I gave the portrait flesh and blood. I took a deep breath and breathed life into him. I dressed him in uniform, stood him up straight, and then I opened his eyes.
I placed him as far away from us as I could.
“Look!” Max called out.
I opened my eyes. Max was pointing behind the queen, and everyone turned to see. There, maybe a football-field length away, stood a man in an army-green uniform.
The queen took two hesitant steps forward, then she was running. The Shades followed her close behind. Even Ashe took off after her.
I turned to Cole, who was staring at the soldier with a stunned expression.
“We don’t have much time. We have to jump.”
He furrowed his eyebrows. “Where?”
“Into the lake. Did you see how the sword didn’t make a splash? It’s not a lake, I don’t think.”
Cole considered this for a split second and then turned to Max. “Go home, dude.”
“I’m not leaving you,” Max said.
“When they turn around, let them see you run into the maze, as if you were following us. They’ll think we’re in the maze. Then go to the Surface and hide out. I’ll find you.”
Max looked unsure. By this time the queen would be close enough to realize that the soldier’s face lacked real definition. We had only moments.
“Do it!” Cole commanded. “She’ll never think anyone willingly went into the lake.”
“Okay.”
Cole and I turned toward the water. “Ready?” I asked.
“We have no idea what we’re jumping into.”
“I know. But I don’t have anything to lose.”
“I do!” His voice was gruff, and full of more emotion than I’d ever heard from him before. I looked into his eyes. He was holding on to something as dear to him as his own life. I knew that. I’d seen it in his memories. “You have to know … if I lost you … Why can’t you see that would be the end of me?”
I knew exactly how he felt. Because I felt the same way about Jack. I was asking Cole to risk his life, again and again, for the boy I loved. And it wasn’t him.
I eased his grip from my arm and clasped his hand in my own. “I’m going. But I understand if this is where you have to leave me.”
He brought my hand up to his lips. “Never. We jump. If something happens, it will happen to both of us.”
We coiled our legs and jumped.
I was right. The water didn’t splash. We went right through it, into a free fall.
THIRTY
NOW
The Everneath. The Tunnels.
I fell for a long time. Well, fell or floated. I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that once we passed the threshold of the water, there was no light. There was no sound except my pulse thrumming in my ears. There was no feeling except the rough skin of Cole’s hand enveloping mine. After a while there was no up and no down anymore.
We’d been falling for minutes. Hours. Maybe we would never stop.
“Cole—” I started to say when suddenly the wall slammed into my back. I had no air to scream. My lungs smashed against my ribs. My head felt as if it had exploded against a cement slab. I imagined my brain in a gooey mess coming out of my ears.
But it was still dark. I couldn’t have seen that. Now I was cold, and when I opened my mouth, water rushed in.
“Nik!” Cole’s voice came from beside me. I wondered when he had let go of my hand, but then he was pulling me upward. I couldn’t feel my hand. “It’s water! We landed in water! Nik!”
Maybe I wasn’t dead. But I couldn’t breathe. Something was squeezing my lungs together.
I tried to cough, but I couldn’t even manage that. My arms flailed. I tried to grab something for support: the ground, a wall, Cole’s face, anything that would help me get air. I could hear water splashing all around us.
“Whoa, Nik. Settle down.”
He didn’t understand. I couldn’t breathe!
“Step down. Reach your foot down. It’s not that deep.”
Why didn’t he understand that the depth of the water was the least of my concerns at the moment? Air. Air. Air.
My foot grazed something slippery. The ground. Large rocks. I pressed against them and regained my balance. All at once, the invisible vise around my lungs loosened. I gasped. Sputtered. So loud it sounded like a horse with colic.
“You okay?” Cole said. I realized he hadn’t been yelling the whole time. In fact, he was whispering.
I nodded. “I couldn’t breathe.”
“Shhh. It’s okay.”
“Easy for you to say.”
He chuckled as I gasped in precious gallons of air. I blinked the tears out of my eyes. It was still too dark to see. My eyes should’ve adjusted by now.
“Where are we?”
“Good question,” Cole said.
“How come you”—I gasped—“recovered so quickly?”
“I dove.”
“What?”
“I don’t know how I knew. I think I heard lapping water or something right before we hit. So I twisted around and dove. Whereas you went flat as a pancake on your back.”
“You could’ve told me.”
“Yeah, because there was plenty of time for that,” he said sarcastically. As Cole was talking, he pulled me forward, and I realized that whatever water we were in, it was getting shallower as we went.
“Once we’re out of the water, we can check. And see if you feel anything.”
I nodded, even though he surely couldn’t see me. I couldn’t get over how dark it was. My eyes would’ve adjusted by now, but there was nothing to adjust to. There was absolutely no light. The air I was breathing felt heavy and stale. I wondered if light could even survive down here.
The water now barely covered my feet. “We’re out,” Cole said.
I shivered. We still held hands. If we were separated, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to find him again. My other arm was outstretched in front of me. I assumed Cole was doing the same. We took a couple of steps forward, the ground shifting beneath my shoes as if I were walking on wet sand at a beach. But not fine sand.
“Stop,” Cole said.
“What is it?”
“I feel a wall.”
“Your arms are longer than mine.”
I inched forward until I felt the same wall, craggy and rough beneath my fingers.
“Okay, Nik. It’s down to you again. Which way?”
I didn’t have to close my eyes and concentrate. The pull toward Jack—at least I hoped it was toward Jack—was constant in my chest. A dull ache that never went away. It had only become more pronounced down here. Even as I grew weary, my connection to him was there.
“This way,” I said, tugging Cole toward the right. We felt along the wall; and as we did, the sound of lapping water retreated farther and farther in the distance.
Wherever we were going, it was leading us farther away from the body of water in which we’d landed.
“How are your lungs?” Cole asked.
I was sure my whole body must be one big bruise. But as I was about to answer, I realized Cole’s voice sounded different. As if it were no longer bouncing off a small, enclosed space but rather a larger, cavernous place, which made me nervous. In a large, dark space, there were so many places to hide. So many ways to convince myself we weren’t alone.
“Do you hear that echo?” I asked.
“Yes,” Cole said. “We’re in a bigger cave.”
“Come away from the wall,” I said.
“Why?”
“Just do it!” I couldn’t explain why I was suddenly so adamant about not touching the wall. The pull from my chest was drawing me away, and more toward the center of whatever place we were in. But even without the pull, I didn’t want either of us touching the wall anymore.
“Nik, it will be easier if we can feel our way—”
“Just trust me on this, Cole. Please?”
He didn’t say anything, but I imagined him nodding. Without the wall for guidance, our steps became more tentative. I carefully placed one foot in front of the other, slowly increasing the weight. The ground was uneven and full of sharp rocks. Underneath our voices, there was a constant sound in the background. A sort of shushing, as if somewhere in the distance people were shuffling through newspapers. It was unnerving.
“We need a light,” I said.
“You could always project one like you did that Nathanial guy.”
I closed my eyes and pictured a candle.
“Nik, I was kidding. Please don’t tell me you’re trying.”
“Shhh.”
“The Nathanial image would’ve taken everything you had. Plus, we’re in the Tunnels now, and they’ll drain you fast.”
I could already feel them working on my energy. But I focused everything I could on a tiny little candle flame. And just when I thought I couldn’t hold the focus anymore, a tiny blaze appeared. It burned bright in the dark.
We looked all around us … and froze.
At first glance the walls seemed to be moving. But I quickly realized it wasn’t the walls themselves. It was what was inside the walls. Sticking out of the clay and dirt were hundreds … thousands of hands. Smashed together. Fingers interlocking with fingers. Stretching out. Grabbing at … nothing.
My little flame hung there in the air, illuminating Cole’s face. “What the hell?” he said.
He turned around. More hands. Hundreds. Thousands.
Both of us instinctively backed toward the center of the tunnel, circling with our backs to each other. The hands went as far as I could see to where they disappeared farther down the tunnel. I focused on one of the hands. It was opening and closing, as if looking for something to grab on to. The hand just below it was skinnier, with a distinctly gray pallor. The bones in the pointer finger nearly poked out of the skin. That hand, the sickly looking one, lay limp.
Lots of the hands were limp.
Others were fresh and pink, and those were the ones that were creating the illusion of the walls moving. They reached and grabbed; fingers tangled with other fingers; some grabbed the limp hands as if all they wanted was something to hold on to.