The orchestra banging deep in my brain finished its song, the last notes of the melody faded to nothingness. As the curtain fell before my eyes, I sank deeper into the blackness, welcoming it, begging for it to come faster. I fought hard to remember what had brought me here in the first place, but even that pivotal information eluded me. As my body stilled, I had nothing.
“Lily…”
Through the blackness, my name sounded from a voice that was neither alive nor dead. The word wasn’t spoken aloud, but neither was it whispered or thought or dreamt. It merely was.
“Open your eyes.”
It was an uphill battle to peel my eyelids open, but I managed it after a few failed attempts. My thoughts were a confused mess, and I couldn’t say whether I was alive or dead or floating somewhere in between. “Where am I?”
I thought I spoke the words, but my lips didn’t move. None of my body moved. I stared straight upwards, but instead of seeing the face of the man who’d killed me, I saw only white.
White all around—the sort of white that made me feel walled in from all sides. Captive, but free, all at once. This new place was full of contradictions: it had no name, but it existed. I was awake, but not alive. I heard voices, but nobody was speaking.
“Look at me, please. I have limited time.”
The voice grew clearer. I tried to squint, but my eyes wouldn’t move. Anything I tried resulted in frustration. My limbs were frozen, all the way from my eyelids to my toes.
“How can I look?” The words were accompanied by a slight echo. “Why don’t my lips move? I can’t look. I can’t move at all.”
“Listen to my voice. Listen to your name. Do you know who I am, Lily?”
The careful way he said my name shook life into my mind, and a flood of memories came rushing back. Ranger X’s lips hot on mine as we kissed under the moon. Gus’s careful precision as he guided me through The Elixir potion. The man with the black hood and black ribbon floating onto shore.
“You drank The Elixir,” I said with finality. The gravelly tone in the man’s voice had disappeared after his death, as if the only thing keeping it there had been the weight of the world on his shoulders. When he spoke now, it was with the lightness of a child and the experience of a grandfather. I found myself trusting him inherently. “Your name is Turin.”
As soon as I said his name, the outline of his body solidified. He appeared before me like a mirage, and I remembered Ranger X’s warning that names had power.
“Yes, it’s true,” Turin said. “Names are powerful things. They attach you to something—or someone—who is real. Listen, Lily.”
His use of my name jolted me awake again. My vision had begun to blur, the light flashing into a rainbow of disorientation.
I gasped for air, my lungs constricting. “Am I dead?”
“You are not alive,” he said carefully. “Listen to me. I took The Elixir to help you. I’d already been poisoned when I requested it—”
“By Thomas?” I asked. “Did Thomas kill you?”
“It doesn’t matter now. What matters is that I was already gone. By taking The Elixir, I exchanged a few minutes of life for a few minutes to help you, and that’s why I’m here now.”
“You shouldn’t have done—” My voice was raspy, and I couldn’t finish my thought.
“I wanted to. I needed to—I must give you one last thing.”
“I can’t move,” I whispered, the whiteness morphing into a blinding flash of light. “I can’t…”
“When you wake, clench your palm. I’ve set something in your fist, a piece of your past that will help with your future. I’m sorry, I wish that I could save you, but I don’t have that power. I’ll be gone as soon as you wake, and you’ll be left to save yourself. When I touch your forehead you will have three breaths to make your wish. One, two…”
“Wait!” I cried, just as he said the word three.
All at once the pain came crashing back, a wave as large as the one that’d welcomed me onto The Isle, but far more intense. Ice shot through my veins, slicing my insides, burning through my limbs. My breaths were stifled, but the hands around my neck had let go. As I forced my eyes open, I saw the back of Thomas. He was walking away, but at the sound of my desperate gulp of air, he whirled around. The shock on his face told me that he’d thought I was dead.
Breath number one. The count had begun.
I clenched my fist tight, the smoothness of the item jogging my memory to that moment on the beach. The salty air whipping across my face as Ranger X’s fingers twisted into my hair. The warmth of his kiss washed over me and desire filled my stomach, giving me the strength to concentrate.