“You’re telling the truth,” said Spear Varen, his grip on the wooden shaft loosening as he lowered the weapon, “aren’t you?”
“Wouldn’t you be the first to know?” the double replied.
Isobel tried to keep up with the dizzying exchange, her eyes darting between the two as, stepping back, the standing Varen allowed the felled Varen to rise. Still, she could not tell them apart, and in that moment, even though knowing wouldn’t have helped her at all, she despised herself for it.
The Varen with the spear extended his weapon to his opponent, who accepted it with an odd gentleness.
Isobel shook her head, already sensing what would come next.
“Please don’t,” she said, more to herself than to either of them because, even if she’d screamed it, she doubted they would have heard.
“I suppose this way we both win,” said the now unarmed Varen, a small ironic smile tugging at his lips.
“I suppose so,” replied the new victor before shoving the forfeiter to the floor and jamming the spear straight through his heart.
41
Relics
Isobel flinched when she heard the smash. And again when the conquering Varen jerked the spear free.
Tossing his weapon aside, he glared down at his defeated enemy, the empty-eyed Noc who, even in his half-shattered state, had retained Varen’s likeness.
The ghoul’s cracked face even held on to that last ghost of a smile, as if he’d found something amusing in his own demise.
Maybe, Isobel thought, the creature’s continued disguise had been meant as a punch line. One more Grim Facade . . .
Breaking his gaze on the Noc, Varen turned toward her.
Isobel wavered in place.
Then, without her command, her feet carried her forward in a run. Under her shoes, the floor went soft, returning to ash.
Like crumbling sand castles, the angels collapsed with a unanimous whoosh.
The curved stone walls went next, causing new dust clouds to rise and blot out the surrounding woodlands, enclosing her with the boy who wrapped her in his arms the moment she reached him.
“Oh God,” she breathed against his bloodied chest.
“I’m sorry,” Varen whispered as he pulled her closer, squeezing her hard. “I had to.”
He meant the fight, she was sure, though Isobel still wasn’t certain why he’d felt obliged to risk everything—including his own soul—in order to engage in the battle.
She wondered, too, why the conclusion to their war had been so strange and abrupt. Scowling, she tried to replay their last words in her mind. To make sense of them . . .
“You said . . . one of us was bound to die,” Isobel murmured. She pressed her ear to his ripped, stained shirt, listening to the frantic rhythm of a heart that was very much intact.
Then she peered over at the shell of a body sprawled in the dust. The Noc’s eyes—vacant, hollow holes—seemed to watch her. But though Isobel waited, the creature’s form still looked like Varen’s, refusing to return to its monstrous state.
“I think one of us just did,” Varen replied.
Isobel forced herself to look away from the Noc. Closing her eyes, she buried her face against Varen.
But even as she breathed in that nearly faded essence of old incense and dried orange peels, burned leaves and worn leather—an aroma now tainted by the coppery tang of blood and the mordant smell of ash—she feared she might awaken any moment to find that none of this had really happened.
Tricks and turns, twists and illusions—these were the elements that defined this world.
Here, time was a lie.
Faces perceived as false proved real and real faces false.
A dream could be as tangible as reality, and things that seemed real as ephemeral as a dream.
As she considered the sheer infiniteness of this realm and its limitless capacity for treachery, Isobel now had to wonder which category she fell into.
Was it possible that Varen and this whole horrible, confusing day were all the workings of her imagination? A toxic balm her mind had produced to soothe itself?
Or could it be that, unbeknownst to herself or Varen, she really was just another product of his imagination? A dream version of herself that, like the Nocs, had grown a cognizance of its own?
A dream within a dream within a dream within a dream . . .
Maybe she really was dead. Had she ever truly reawakened on that cold hospital table in Baltimore?
Insanity, she thought, as she opened her eyes to the relentless rain of ash.
This place, wherever it was—whatever it was—equated to insanity.
Fighting a strange dizziness, Isobel drew back from Varen. Delving into the pockets of his coat, she searched frantically until she found the trinket she sought: her pink butterfly watch.