“Who’s there?” I call, my voice coarse and strange. A result of the festering wound on my neck. “Show yourself!” I roll to my left and survey my surroundings, only to find no one there. Then I roll to my right and confirm the same thing.
It’s just me.
Only me.
With nothing but this bleak and barren landscape for company.
Dark.
I heave a deep sigh and flop onto my back. Tempted to laugh at my foolishness, but the mirth just won’t come. It died along with all the other virtues I once held in high regard.
Things like faith, hope, charity, and love have no place here.
Though love was surprisingly stubborn. It put up a good fight.
Long after the others were lost, it’s love that held on.
Determined to stick well past the point when my heart became a cold, bitter stone.
Long past the point when my memories of Daire railed against me, turning into an enemy existing solely to taunt me. A crafty, cunning adversary with a surplus of patience, willing to wait for just the right moment—when exhaustion turns to despair—to strike hard and fast. Able to devastate with a few happy images that are welcome at first—quick takes of Daire laughing, Daire loving, before fast-forwarding straight to the moment when her eyes shone with fear once she saw how I’d changed. Accurately guessing the embarrassing truth of the reckless choice that I made. How I sacrificed my soul in an attempt to save her, by becoming like Cade.
Still, it was her face I clung to when death came to claim me.
It was her face that cushioned the fall.
But now that I’m no longer at home with the living—now that I’ve no place among the dead—it’s her face that haunts me.
Daire is gone.
Dead and gone.
In my attempt to save her, I failed her. And now, in the place where my soul once thrived, lives only regret.
Dark.
I bite hard on my tongue. Cover my ears with blood-caked hands. Still the word sounds again.
And that’s when I get it.
That’s when I realize that it doesn’t sound from outside of me—it’s a word conceived in my head.
The sound repeats. Becoming more insistent each time, as the enormity of my situation becomes clear.
The darkness it speaks of is thrumming inside me.
My fingers slip down my torso, seeking the blood-crusted gash where I plunged Daire’s athame deep into my gut, willing to sacrifice my own life in order to end my brother’s. An act of martyrdom ultimately denied me when, at the very last second, Coyote stepped in. Catching Cade’s departing soul in his snout and forcing it back into him, while allowing mine to drift free …
Still, we are connected in miraculous ways, and one thing’s for sure—if Cade lives, I live.
Or at least some semblance of me.
Dark.
There’s no use pretending. No one will find me. I will rot in this place and I deserve nothing less.
I shutter my eyes, fold my hands over my chest, and wait for the numb
ing wave of unconsciousness again.