The world froze.
Cold seized Echo’s bones and made them brittle. It stole the air from her lungs, and her blood trickled to a slow, icy sludge.
A word drifted through the tundra of her mind, distant, as if it belonged to someone else. To someplace else.
Curglaff. Scottish. The shock one feels after plunging into cold water.
She froze. And then she cracked, like an icicle smashing against concrete. She was no longer a girl, a single entity in the greater tapestry of the universe, but a collection of shards floating in space.
All around her was darkness, a vast unfathomable nothing heavy with malice. The fractured pieces of her being drifted into the abyss, and she willed herself to stay together despite the overwhelming pull, as strong and as undeniable as gravity, trying to tear her apart, piece by fragile piece.
Awareness of her body as a physical thing came back to her in inches. Sensation prickled up her limbs. There were her toes and her fingers, unbearably cold in the harsh frigidity of the void. An experimental roll of her wrists proved that they were still there. Her knees ached, a hundred points of discomfort from where they’d slammed into gravel and cement. Shoulders stiff with tension and fatigue fought her disjointed movements, but the unpleasantness of forcing her body to move meant she was alive.
As her mind sealed together her disparate parts, the unreality of what was happening hit her. Hard. She closed her eyes, hoping that the darkness would dissipate, then opened them, but it remained stubbornly unchanged. If colors had a noise, the nothingness that surrounded her would be a screaming black so loud that nothing else could survive in it.
It was too much. It wasn’t like the in-between. The space between all the heres and all the theres was neutral in the truest sense. There was a presence to this darkness. A sentience. It cradled her tenderly, but the tenderness was an illusion. It seethed, rife with the taste of what Echo had come to know in Tanith’s eyes as they’d stared each other down. It was a hungry void, one that would never be filled but would only take and take and take, until there was nothing left to be devoured.
Echo opened her mouth to draw breath, to scream, to cry out into the great unfeeling nothingness, but there was no air for her to inhale. No atmospheric substance through which to transmit sound. The nothingness rushed into her open mouth like ocean water, clogging her throat and filling her lungs to bursting.
She was drowning, choking to death on the vile blackness that had poured out of Tanith’s beating heart.
Let me in, Tanith had said. And like a fool, that was exactly what Echo had done.
She could feel another presence in the darkness with her, a malevolent force eager to leach the magic from Echo’s body, from her soul. It pressed against her, oily and insistent.
She felt like a single candle flickering in a strong wind.
You have to fight it, Echo.
The voice was muffled by the darkness, practically inaudible. But Echo recognized the whispered tone.
Her mind was too much of a scramble for rational thought. She tried to call out Rose’s name, but she couldn’t speak. Her lungs burned in the absence of air. Her voice was stolen by the endless night.
It is a cage, cha’laen.
A different voice this time, not as familiar, but still one she recognized. The woman in the cave, with the warrior’s braids and the bow and arrow and the scales that caught the firelight just right. The Drakharin.
She put you here, so you do not struggle while she drains you dry. Rose again. Open your eyes, Echo.
Echo’s eyes were open.
No, cha’laen. The Drakharin woman’s voice was quieter now, more distant. You only believe they are.
The blackness pressing against Echo squeezed her tighter. Her bones felt like they were being ground together. Her muscles twitched against the unrelenting pressure.
The only way out is to remember.
Remember? Echo couldn’t form the words, not aloud or in thought. But the sentiment seemed to reach them, the other vessels. The ones who were still here with her, at the end of all things. Remember what?
Everything it wants you to forget.
A single point of light pierced the darkened veil, so far away that Echo thought she would never be able to reach it, even if she strained against the oppressive shadows with all her might.
But the flickering image grew brighter and larger, not waiting for Echo to reach toward it, but rather reaching toward her. The closer it got, the looser the void’s hold was on her. She could think a little more clearly, in words instead of frantic, half-formed images.
What is that?
Rose’s voice felt closer, her words clearer in Echo’s mind. That’s the part of you it hasn’t touched. The part it wants to snuff out so that nothing is left to stand in its way.
The thing glowed like an ember in the darkness. It inched closer and closer to Echo, or she inched closer and closer to it. Distance held no meaning in this place. No logic seemed to govern the nature of the space, no rules of physics or limitations of magic. The more Echo thought about it, the less real it became, as if her consciousness was chipping away at it bit by bit. But the light never crystallized into something substantial. It sat there, waiting for Echo to act upon it, to give it form.
Remember, Echo.
I don’t know what to remember, she wanted to say. She couldn’t remember where she had come from or how she had gotten here. It was all a pale blur, indistinct and shapeless.
Then let us help.
With a sudden burst of speed, the light slammed into Echo with surprising force. She’d expected the impact to hurt, but in a rush, the pressure that had been crushing her evaporated. The relief she felt in its absence was nearly as overpowering as the unbearable weight that had been wrapped around her body, squeezing her skeleton nearly to the point of fracture.
She blinked against the onslaught of light. When her eyes adjusted, she could see forms taking shape, figures she knew even by their roughest outlines.
The Ala bending down to wipe a smear of dirt off Echo’s cheek. Echo’s scraped knees dotted with blood, her nose runny. Her hair half out of its braid, so neatly plaited by the Ala that morning, now in utter, shameful disarray.
“The cruelty of children is a truly remarkable thing.” The Ala’s voice was faraway and fuzzy, a remnant from a half-remembered dream.
Only the sparsest details of the circumstances surrounding her scraped knees and mussed hair remained in Echo’s memory. Some Aviceling had tried to prove himself to his friends by picking on the human girl, most likely. But what had stood out so strongly to Echo was the Ala’s endless compassion. That she hadn’t chastised Echo for fighting back. And especially that she had not shamed her for losing. The Ala had merely bandaged her bloodied knees and sent her back into the world with a handful of chocolate chip cookies and a promise that she would always love her, no matter what the other Avicen said.
The light flared bright and coalesced into another shape, another scene. A tableau of laughing faces, Ivy’s chief among them. The feel of Rowan’s hand in Echo’s own, his thumb pressing into the fleshy part of her palm at the base of her thumb. They’d snuck into the movie theater at Union Square – Echo had forgotten the movie, but she remembered everything else that mattered. The way Rowan had waited for the lights to dim before reaching out to take Echo’s hand. The way Ivy had staunchly pretended not to notice.
Another shift of light. Jasper, his feathers so bright against the blinding whiteness, surrounding his head like a Technicolor halo. His lips moving, making fun of her, probably. It was his favorite pastime. Echo hadn’t minded. She gave as good as she got, and there was a certain comfort in the way he treated her. Not like a human. Not like an Avicen. But just as herself. He didn’t care about alliances or tribal delineations. All that mattered to Jasper was one’s abilities. Prove yourself to him and you had a friend for life – or for as long as he felt like it. But Echo had known, even before his loyalty had been tested and Dorian had given him a reason to stay, that she’d found a friend in him. A true one.
And then there was Caius.
Oh. Rose’s voice breezed through Echo’s mind like a gentle wind.
Caius, sitting on the beach, watching the waves lap at the shore. His shirt was off, lying on the sand next to him beside his discarded boots. Sunlight glinted off the scales running down the column of his spine, disappearing at the waistband of his breeches. His hair looked like chocolate in the sun, shot through with strands of gold. He was smiling, a soft, reverent smile that had died along with Rose.
Remember, cha’laen. Let them be your anchor.
I remember, Echo thought. And nothing was going to make her forget.
She let the light envelop her in its warmth. Her eyes drifted closed. It seeped into her pores, sinking deeper and deeper, all the way through to her bones. It drove out the darkness that had tried to drown her, and in its screaming brightness, she let herself burn.