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Mortifer wrote something down and then flipped the board up. In—between, it said.
Loren’s forehead creased. “In—between? Like inside the Divi—” Her damned tongue froze again.
But Mortifer understood. He nodded, the black flames that made up his head rippling in the buttery sunlight streaming through the yard.
She didn’t really like the sound of that. When she entered Spirit Terra with the imperator, it was only a matter of two steps and she was inside that realm. If she ended up in the Divide…she didn’t know what to expect, what it would look like, or how she would find her way back out again. How far would she have to travel until she got all the way into Spirit? What was it like inside the Divide? Would she risk dying the same way she would risk it if she were to enter Spirit without a Life Clock?
She had two syringes to use, both of them in the back pocket of her jeans. She hoped there was enough time on them combined to keep her alive until she could get back out again.
Loren stepped closer to the tree. “What do I do?” That unnatural cold raised a shiver on her arms. This corner of the massive yard was quiet; no birds chirped here, like they did in the jasmine shrubs and palm trees. It reminded her of the Widow’s habitat and the Chalk Door, two places stuck between worlds. Two places lacking the vibrancy of the land of the living.
Mortifer climbed down into the hole, nimbly sliding down the rough roots protruding through the soil, and stretched his arm into the shadows under the base of the tree. Loren blinked in astonishment as she watched his hand disappear, nothing left in its place but rainbow sparks floating through the darkness like multicolored fireflies. The sparks formed the vague shape of his hand.
She crouched down beside him and copied him.
But her hand didn’t change. No colored sparks appeared.
Mortifer scrubbed the whiteboard clean. Concentrate, he wrote. He had surprisingly good handwriting, even if he was crushing the tip of the marker into a stub.
With a deep breath, she closed her eyes. She pretended she was back at Agatha’s, conduit cupped before her. Without any Venom in her bloodstream to aid the summoning of her magic, she thought of Darien, thought of everything she loved about him. She thought of how important his life was, how badly she wanted to protect him. Love wasn’t a great enough word for how she felt about him. She would die for him—would protect him with everything she had to offer, no matter how small or insignificant. Nothing mattered as much as his safety, his wellbeing. His future. Even if he believed he wasn’t worthy of one, wasn’t worthy of a better path than the one he’d walked his whole life. He deserved it all, and she would help him get there someday, no matter what it might cost her.
When she opened her eyes, her conduit was glowing.
She reached for the shadows beneath the tree, Darien’s face still in her mind. This time, her fingers and palm tingled, the tips of the former disappearing into sparks all shades of the rainbow.
A shaky laugh slipped out of her. “This is crazy.”
Without allowing herself to get scared of what might be lurking in the world beyond this tree, she took one of the syringes out of her pocket, pushed her thick hair to one shoulder, and emptied its contents into her bloodstream, ignoring the prick of the needle in her neck. When she was finished, she stuck the cap on the syringe and placed it and the other on the lawn, remembering what Calanthe had told her about the Life Clocks not lasting beyond the Divide.
And then she crawled forward…down below the tree roots, the cool moisture from the soil seeping through her jeans. Her whole body tingled as it dissolved into white and rainbow sparks…
And then she fell head—first into the Divide.
Loren tumbled feet over head, as if she were falling down a rabbit hole, the backyard of Hell’s Gate vanishing into swirling slate mist. Every trace of sunlight and the world she knew disappeared, and in its place was only darkness. It swirled around her, infinite and cold.
A moment later, she landed with a splash of water she couldn’t see or feel—she could only hear the noise it made upon contact.
She scrambled to her feet, grateful to have Mortifer at her side. The black roots of the tree hung above her head, the only visible part of it, the trunk and branches gone. Those roots were too high up for her to reach, too far to climb back up.
Slowly, she turned…
Her mouth dropped open at the sight of the endless black surrounding her, stretching on and on and on forever.
Being inside the Divide felt like floating through space. There were tiny pinpricks of light that reminded her of stars, most of them white or silver, a few of them gold. Glittering dust motes were suspended in the air, broken up here and there by different colored orbs that bobbed away every time she reached for one.
She looked down at Mortifer, who still had the whiteboard in his hands, thankfully. “What do we do now?” The words traveled far and wide, the metallic echo of them startling her.
He merely shrugged.
“Where, exactly, are we?”
He wrote down a handful of words and turned the whiteboard around. Not far from Crossroads.
Loren was too afraid to ask which one.
She started walking. Mortifer kept good pace with her, his webbed feet soundless. Singer watched from her shadow—the shadow she couldn’t see in here. She sensed he was too spooked to venture out.
It’s okay, buddy, she told him. We’ll be fine.
