Silvera’s pace picks up from a trot to a run.
“Wait!” I scream. If she goes any faster, I won’t be able to keep up. She doesn’t wait—she keeps running, maneuvering between the trees, jumping over dense, mossy logs.
“Willow!”
I gasp and stop running when I hear the voice. His voice.
“Willow, do ya hear me?”
“Caz,” I whisper. It’s just like the dream. I look all around me, his voice filling the void, then I look down at my arm, at the purple haze that’s beginning to fade. My brown skin is breaking through. I’m returning to his world—to him. It’s not too late.
I’m close.
I run in the direction Silvera went, as hard and as fast as I can. Darkness descends, swallowing the trees behind me, chasing me, but I keep running, refusing to let it catch me. The wind whips at my face, my locs, and a chill strikes me in my stomach. It takes everything in me not to double over in pain. I glance back as the darkness climbs behind me, moving faster. I clutch my belly with one hand and don’t stop. My lungs work harder. They feel like they’re freezing inside me.
Shit. Perhaps I was wrong. Maybe Leah Bianchi was wrong too. It could be possible that this Tether doesn’t make you stronger at all, and what Beatrix said wasn’t a lie.
“Willow!” Caz’s voice is louder. Closer.
“I’m here!” I scream. The darkness is blinding now. My purple light is fading. The cold begins to paralyze me, my toes becoming numb, the soles of my bare feet pounding into the ground.
I’m here. I’m here. The thought is fleeting. I hope he can hear it.
And just when I feel I’ll be engulfed in darkness and cold, swallowed whole by this evil that doesn’t want us together, I spot Silvera, and her body clashes with a blur of black fur. Cerberus. And not too far behind Cerberus is Caz.
He’s wearing his trench coat, no shirt beneath. His chest—the black veins that have taken over his pale body are prominent, but that’s not what catches me off guard. It’s the way he looks right now—his face sunken in and hollow, the dark bruises around his eyes, most likely from lack of sleep.
He’s dying and Mournwrath is lingering, trying to take him before I can get to him.
When he sees me, my heart slows in rhythm, but I don’t stop running, and neither does he. Every second counts. No breath can be wasted.
We run, racing against darkness, racing against the cold. The mist in the air clings to my skin, ice shooting through my limbs, but I don’t care because he’s here. I’m here.
And when we meet, we clash. We clash hard, my arms locking around his neck, his going around my middle. He holds me close, and I squeeze my eyes closed, waiting for the pain to sweep through me, waiting for the dark cold to steal us away and suck us dry.
“I’m here,” I whisper. His body is chilly against mine, like a slab of ice. And then I hear voices above me—so many voices.
I open my eyes, and a cloud of purple swirls us. Caz grunts, as if he’s been struck by something, but I hold on to him. Like we’re in the eye of a hurricane, the thick cloud spins faster, faster, and three-dimensional figures pop out of the clouds.
A boy, holding the hand of a woman.
A boy, a little bit older, yanked away from her by a large man. The boy cries and reaches for his mother. She fights to get him back, screams, but someone covers her mouth and she faints.
The boy being tossed into the back of a wagon.
The boy alone in a dark cell, crying, whimpering.
Then, people are hollering, waving their fists in the air, and in the middle of the mad crowd are two boys fighting each other. Bones crunch and blood spills, as if they’re fighting to the death.
With one punch from the opponent, the boy falls backward. He’s taken back to a dark cell, holding his knees to his chest, trembling with fear.
The boy stands, a gunshot goes off, and he cries out, “Mama!” as he holds his chest. I wince. He bleeds as he crumbles to the floor, then another man enters the cell, giving the boy a tiny bottle, demanding him to drink it.
The boy drinks, and when he sits up, the bullet wound heals quickly. Bang. Another gunshot. The boy cries. Forced to drink another tiny bottle.
Another fight.
Another loss.
Back in the cell. A man enters, using a sharp razor to slice the boy’s abdomen. The boy cries, another tiny bottle is handed to him, he heals instantly. Another slice of the razor.
It’s a repetitive cycle, and with each gunshot, each slice of the razor on his skin, he’s getting older, becoming a man.
People are around him again, shouting, waving fists, and the boy, I realize, is Caz. He can’t be any older than fifteen or sixteen. He’s in the middle of the ring, fighting a guy much larger than he is.
Blood gushing, bone crunching. He wins this time, and his arm is thrown in the air by the referee, despite the blood dripping out of his mouth.
Another vision appears, the boy sitting in a pristine room, a man standing by the door. “Where is my mother?” the boy demands.
The man leaves the room, slamming the door behind him.
Another vision, Caz standing on a dark shore in front of an ocean, dressed head to toe in black. A flat black cap is on his head, and beside him is an older woman. Maeve. Behind him, Juniper, Killian, and Rowan. Ahead of him, a body wrapped in black cloth, lying on top of a wooden board. Someone lights the body on fire and Caz watches the body float aimlessly across the ocean until he can no longer see it.
“You’re safe now,” Maeve tells him, her hand on his shoulder.
He pulls away from her, leaving the grave.
More gunshots.
More screaming.
More crying.
But none of it is happening to him. It’s happening because of him.
I suck in a breath, and Caz groans again and buckles, but I catch him as the purple hurricane roars harder. It’s all his inner turmoil being unleashed. All his rage, his bitterness, his pain…it’s all here, laid out in front of me.
I clasp his face in my hands, giving him my attention again. “I see now. I understand.”
“You shouldn’t have come back,” he says, looking away.
“Yes, I should have.”
He finds my eyes, stares into them, then clutches my face in his hands too, his nostrils flaring.
“I’m no good for you, Willow,” he rasps. “You can’t be with me.”
“I can,” I counter.
He shakes his head, denying it, trying to pull his face out of my hands, but I hold steady.
“I can,” I repeat, and he stops fighting me. Our gazes hold, and instead of cold this time, a blazing heat courses through me. Every chain wrapped around my heart breaks, and it comes alive.
This vulnerable act, us as one…I understand it now. Something this powerful is impossible to withstand. It’s this moment that I understand what Leah was talking about in her book.
This Tether, it literally will make or break us, and if that’s the case, we should choose for it to mend us. Every fragile, broken piece of us can be solidified with this bond. These vicious bonds that I never knew existed, they’re here, dwelling in two sad, lonely people, combining into one cosmic union.
We’re right where we need to be—at the right place, at the right time. Hardly knowing each other yet trusting that being together is the solution to our broken souls.
“You’re right,” Caz murmurs, his mouth moving closer to mine. He bows his head, and the hollowness in his face has filled again. He’s being restored, back to the way he was. The man he was when I first met him. The bruises around his eyes fade, and color rises to his cheeks.
Let me in, I beg, holding his gaze.
I can’t lose you too.
You won’t.
He sighs, pursing his lips. You don’t need my permission to be let in. His eyes fall to my mouth. You’re already here, within me. You’ve been here, long before we ever even met. His voice swims through my mind, and I cave to them.
Our lips collide, and the hurricane of turmoil loses speed. The darkness that was chasing us fades away, and the longer I hold on to him, the more I feel myself opening—blossoming like a flower breaking through concrete.
A pressure builds at the center of my chest, but it’s not one of pain. It’s one filled to the brim with passion—a passion so profound I can feel it in the depths of my soul.
This connection is hard to explain. It can only be experienced. Never in my life have I felt so sure about something—or someone, rather. Yet this man in my arms, this man kissing me, holding me, filling my mind with his sweet, aching words—You’re in. We’re one. I’m yours. You’re mine.—well, I’m sure about this.
Apart and in denial, the Tether will kill us. But together, in truth and harmony, we can thrive if we fight for it. And here we are, choosing the latter.
