Page 118 of Inextricably Tied

Agony’s voice draws nearer. And do you miss me, little death?

“Yes.” She keeps her eyes closed, clinging to the darkness, willing herself to sink into it. “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know if I want to.”

You do. You have to. She can almost feel the flutter of his body. This is no place to live. No place to die, either. Trust me, I know. The real world is better. There’s a kiss of shadows against her cheek. It brought me to you.

Tears slide down her face. He tries to catch them, but there’s no end to them, every drop disappearing into the grave.

“Is this the last time I’ll see you here?” She tries not to let her voice break. “Are you going to leave for good?”

Maybe. He dries her eyes as the forest thrums around them. If this is the last time…if you could only wish for one thing, anything, what would it be?

It’s not a question. She’s known since the second he left. She doesn’t open her eyes, too scared of what she won’t see. Too scared to leave this world behind.

“I want you back. I want you alive — real. I want you with us.”

Tendrils pull tighter around her. She can almost feel them. Almost believe they’re more than her mind. More than Flint’s arm draped over her. More than wishful thinking. She curls her fingers into one.

It squeezes back.

Wind rushes past her until Agony’s voice is a shout in her ear.

“Then wake up!”

FORTY-THREE

Flint

Flint didn’t realize how heavy his grief was until he finally sat down with it and found he couldn’t get back up.

He’d kept himself busy by keeping Harbinger alive, but the pain was always there, waiting for the right moment to drag him back beneath the surface.

His dreams take him back to the cellar. Watching blood seep out of Harbinger’s broken body, her hand straining toward him until the life drifts from her fingers. Sometimes she becomes Sidi, fading in Flint’s arms far more slowly than she did the first time. Other times, he can do nothing to reach either of them. Without fail, he wakes to the burning pain of chains digging into his wrists and that serrated feeling in his chest.

Most often, though, it’s Agony. Not bloody. Not beaten. Just dissolving into shadow, leaving no trace, as if he’d never been there at all. That makes it harder, having nothing to show for him. No body or ashes or trinkets, just memories imprinted in Flint’s skin where Agony found cracks in Flint’s armor and slithered inside.

Flint doesn’t know why he could feel the very moment Agony died. Doesn’t know if something forged between them that night at the Timbers’, when their bodies were knit and melded together, Agony no longer constrained to a physical form. But it means the wound his absence leaves is almost too much to bear, embedded in a part of Flint that he can’t reach. If he feels like this, he can’t imagine how Harbinger manages the empty sockets left in her.

Dreams are the place he finds Agony. The place where, if Flint is lucky, Sidi lives as vibrant and vivid as every day before the last one. The place he can take those waking moments when he finds a crossword in the newspaper, and his fingers flex to hand it to Agony. When all these years later, the fleeting thought still passes through Flint on the most mundane whims. I should tell Sidi about that…

Muscle memory.

Too bad his body couldn’t remember anything useful to save either of them.

Tonight, he can’t find Agony or Sidi, even in sleep. His mind is dreamless darkness, a void without the broken pieces he seeks. He drifts in and out of consciousness, lulled by Harbinger’s chest rising and falling against his side.

Her gasp jerks him awake. A sound that’s almost strangled, ripping Flint from the place before sleep that reminds him most of Agony: shadows pressed against his eyelids, hazy and intoxicating. Harbinger topples off the foot of the bed. Flint lunges to his feet, rushing to separate her from the figure she’s tangled with, but Flint’s hand disappears into shadows.

Harbinger buries her face against it. Flint can’t move, blinking, disbelieving, certain he’s sunk into another of those hopeless dreams where Agony promises, I’ll look after her. Flint’s never sure which ‘her’ Agony means: the living Harbinger or the ghost of Sidi.

Glowing eyes turn to Flint now, matching jagged mouth stretched into a smile. Shadows extend toward Flint, brushing his jaw. His eyes slip shut.

Agony’s voice is clear and absolute. “You did miss me.”

Flint sinks to his knees, cutting through any remnants of sleep. Harbinger holds Agony back from her, shaking fingers slipping through his shadows. “How…”

“I told you I’d come crawling back.” Light casts across her face when Agony leans close. “You’re stuck with me.”

He looks like Flint’s dreams, but this Agony doesn’t vanish. Doesn’t rip away as soon as Flint reaches for him. Tendrils twine around Flint’s hand. He flexes his fingers, trying to make sense of it. “Is this a dream?”