Labyrinth of Stars(53)

I wanted them with me, so badly.

Zee ran his claws through my hair and pressed that wet rag on my brow. It was deliciously cool, but I wanted more. I wanted to be buried in snow and ice, and I doubted even that would be enough to dim the heat. I thought of Grant, suffering through this, and my heart reached out to him. I couldn’t help it.

Our bond. Our light. No Lightbringer could use his powers alone. If he tried, it would eventually kill him. A bond was needed, a person who could anchor and share the power of life.

I was that power. I was that life. And in so many ways, he was mine.

Golden light rushed through me, shining behind my closed eyes—brilliant and spirited, with its own clear tone that rang in my ears like some faraway song. I let it carry and caress me from the fever and pain; and with it memories, moments, shimmering in a haze through my mind—all of them, with Grant.

You’re going to live, I told him, pouring my own heart and life into our bond. You’re going to live such a long time.

Maxine, you’re sick, I heard him say, but his voice in my mind sounded very distant, lost in the fog of infection burning once again through the light.

I love you, I told him, ready to push him away, close up our bond—lock it tight so he wouldn’t feel any more of what I was going through.

Only, he wouldn’t let me.

It was like slamming open a door in a hurricane. Light battered me, and no matter how hard I struggled, that storm held me in place. My chest tugged, a lure that hooked into my blood, pulling hard. Again and again, until it reminded me of a mouth on some open wound, drawing out poison. I could suddenly feel the disease inside me, feel it as if it were a rotting brown corpse, and inside my head, I saw it being broken apart and enticed down our bond.

Impossible. Grant couldn’t heal me. The boys and I were immune to his voice.

But he wasn’t using his voice, I realized. This was something else, something deeper, the part that made us one person.

“No!” I said out loud, struggling to rise. Zee and Raw held me down. Aaz gave me a frightened look and sat on my legs.

No, I screamed at Grant. No.

He said nothing, but the light of our bond dimmed. Pain built inside my sternum, like a knife being pushed, inch by slow inch, into my chest. I writhed, crying out, looking for anything, anything I could do to make it stop.

But I couldn’t, and a vision slashed through my mind—of Grant, on the couch, his fingers digging into his chest and his face deformed with pain. His breath, ragged and gasping, blood foaming around his mouth. Mary standing over him, calling his name. No one else there. Not Jack. Not me.

I was killing him. He was killing himself, trying to save me.

“Fuck!” I gasped, slamming my right hand into the stone. Sparks danced and the metal chimed. But nothing happened. I couldn’t go to him.

Grant, I begged. Grant.

I fought harder, and the world beyond my body disappeared—all that existed, all that mattered, was the nightmare unfolding inside me. My human mind wasn’t made for the abstract: Disease resembled a rotting corpse, my bond with Grant a shaft of golden light. The darkness inside me: a serpent wound deep around my heart. It didn’t matter that appearances weren’t real—what mattered was the reality behind the appearances and what it let me perceive.

And what I perceived was that my husband was going to die in the next minute if I didn’t do something to save him.

No thought, just instinct. I threw myself down that bond into Grant’s soul.

It was like diving headfirst into a hole the size of a rabbit, and the sensation was physical and mental, and overwhelmingly uncomfortable. It wasn’t my body being compressed, just my mind—but the two felt so much the same that I was sure I was going to die, right there, from the attempt.

Instead, I dissolved. I broke apart.

And fell into my husband, just as his heart stopped beating.





CHAPTER 17




I felt his heart stop.

It was just one of a million different sensations that assaulted me at that moment—a cascade of thoughts, memories, desire, and fear—ramming into my consciousness with all the pulverizing force of a bullet train. I flew, plummeted, crashed.

But I felt his heart stop.

I felt the absence all around me, the silence, the drift—and the light between us, the light that had brought me to him, began to dissipate. Everything else was a blur—threads and shimmers, voices crying out in pain—but it was the light I clung to, the fading light that I held, and I let it pull me into his heart, to the spirit of his heart.

There was nothing, then everything: a great floating mass in front of me, an island in a dark sky, but it was made of knots that were gnarled as roots, twisted and thick, and flush with veins, threads that shot in every direction, each one stretched to the point of snapping—just beginning to go dark.