Deep within, the darkness hissed. Deep within, he feltits fear.
Her frowning at him, eyebrows furrowed in annoyance. Her crying into his shoulder, her tears soaking the fabric, her sobs ripping through his chest.
In the distance, the fabric of the long dark rippled. Shadows ebbed. Spots began to appear in light patches of grey.
Her kissing him, her lips sweet as honey. Her laughing at him, her voice like a song from another life, lived in the shoes of another man.
The darkness growled, resisting. It sucked him in, dragged him back. Her laughter sounded, but it was too faint, she too far. What was the point?
I’ll find you.
Hisvoice rang through the abyss, and the memory of fire, of a promise rendered, rammed back against the dark.
You’d better.
You’d better.
You’d better.
A promise. He had promised her.
He moved forward. The darkness sucked at his limbs, alarmed, but herememberedher. Her laughter, her voice, her anger and desperation and fear.
Her love.
All the best memories were of her.
And he knew her face, even in the darkness of death.
The shadows dripped down from the sky, as if a hand was peeling back the facade. Her voice pulled him, tugged him. He latched on, like a starving traveler stumbling through the dark, and followed until he saw a light in the great abyss and reached for it.
It was then that he knew of hope.
CHAPTER 73
YASSEN
I have woken to a great and terrible transformation. I am the Sixth Prophet.
—from the diaries of Priestess Nomu of the Fire Order
Yassen Knight awoke to the sound of her memories. The first thing he realized was that he had made a promise to find her. The second was that tubes were attached to his arms, his chest, his legs, pumping a rich red liquid into him. Faintly, he could hear the wheezing of someone dying. It took him a moment to discover that the wheezing came not from someone, butsomething. The large metal contraption around him shuddered. He touched its side, and it brushed against his palm as if alive. He shrank back. Panic—thick, drip-like—beaded down his throat, and he knew he should be screaming, trapped within a metal beast, but then the glass before him slid back with a hiss.
Slowly, he heard it.
The inferno.
He turned to where a tiny fire crackled along the back wall. It blazedbrighter beneath his gaze. The flames pulsed and lengthened, their tips curling upward toward him.
“You’re finally back.”
An all-too-familiar voice cut through the space. He forced himself to look away from the inferno to Akaros. Behind him stood a tall Yumi girl with eyes of amber and cheeks streaked with dried tears. Why had she been crying? Her eyes met his, heated, accusatory.
“Wh—” he began, but his tongue flopped in his mouth. His voice was a pale sliver of its former self.
“Think you can sit up for me?” Akaros said.
Before Yassen could respond, Akaros hooked his hands beneath his armpits and hauled him up. Pain gripped his body. Yassen moaned, leaning forward. Gently, Akaros brushed back Yassen’s hair, his fingers lingering along his ear.
