Wind started blowing around them. It was growing faster, starting to tug at him. Their time was ending. He was getting pulled away.
He didn’t want that. He wanted to only savor her.
“Lucas!” She framed his face with her hands. The wind was like a tornado. It tripled in power and she was yelling so he could hear her. “I can come back! You can bring me back!”
The wind was too much. It was a vacuum. He was pulled away and their hands held onto each other. He was in the air, but still, his fingers laced with hers. She was trying to keep him there, but right before he was yanked backwards, she yelled again, “Bring me back!”
Then, he was gone.
His eyes snapped open and he jerked upright. “Did you do that?”
The Immortal was on her sleeping bag. It was light out, and she turned her head lazily to him. “Do what?”
“My dream. Davy.” His breathing was ragged. “Did you do that?”
Her eyebrows knotted together and the corners of her lip curved down a bit. She sat up, straightening her dress. “No, but now I’m intrigued. What did you dream about?”
“Why do you lie?”
Her eyebrows arched high. “I’m not. I really want to know now. What did she say?” A half grin teased at her lips. “Did she tell you of my demise?”
“Someone is missing . . . the innocent is the key. There are people coming. They will help. People you have forgotten about. People that you started in motion. Remember, Lucas. Think, Lucas.”
Davy’s words haunted him. They were ricocheting around him, and they felt so real. Her desperation was still with him. He could feel it. He could feel her.
He sat back down.
Davy had been there. Whether real or not, she was there. She was giving him a message. He shook his head and lifted his gaze. The Immortal was watching him. Her eyes were piercing. He asked, “Are you in my head?”
She didn’t respond. Her lips pressed together, then she stood up. “Let’s go. We’ve rested long enough. Neither of us is human. We don’t need that much sleep.”
She wasn’t in his head anymore. She started forward, but that realization echoed strong inside of him. She wasn’t in his head, and she was pissed about it. Then, did he dare hope, that could mean that Davy had been real?
He swallowed hard, painfully, but hope bloomed inside of his chest. It was small, but it was there.
He could bring her back.
Someone missing.
An innocent.
And people were coming back.
That was Davy’s message to him, and Roane tried to decipher it. Who was missing? Davy. Everyone. Himself. He couldn’t wrap his mind around who she meant and the innocent—no one was innocent. And who was coming back? She was insistent that there was hope, but as he followed The Immortal, he couldn’t figure out who Davy meant. The one person who had enough power to defeat The Immortal was Jacith and he was dead. Thinking about it, Roane could’ve cursed himself. He hadn’t been thinking, but The Immortal was in his head. He couldn’t have been thinking ahead. She would’ve known then.
“Okay.” They’d been steadily winding up around a mountain and The Immortal stopped. She stepped out on an edge. “We’re here.”
He looked to where she was gazing and was surprised. “That’s the Mori village?”
His mind was racing. Why had she come here? What did this mean? He glanced sideways to her. “Are you here for my brother?”
Her eyes narrowed, but a hint of a grin flashed over her face. It was a glimmer, and it was gone just as quick as it showed. “No, but your brother could become an annoying pest.” She leaned forward and said, “Silence. I need to hear.”
She was listening to the entire village. He should’ve have been surprised, but nothing surprised him anymore, not when it came to this creature. She could bend the world’s rules. She could be in his head. She could do almost anything. It was hard to imagine that Davy could be brought back, and yet, The Immortal was no longer in his head. A small victory happened, and she hadn’t gotten into his head since. She had stopped many times on their trek, and she kept glancing back at him. She was trying to understand what happened, how she was locked out. Frustration rippled off her, and he basked in it, but all that was gone as she was eavesdropping on his brother’s allies.
“Your friends are there,” she murmured.
Alarm spiked in him.
She waved a hand at him. “Of course, they’re there. They want to free you.” She shot him a warning look. “They won’t succeed. They’re harmless, right now.”
His friends weren’t being held captive. She would’ve told him if they were. That meant they were there on their own accord. They were there to work with his brother, like he told them to do. He needed to distract her.