Page 65 of Avaritia

But it was also a chance.

And not having the orb might be a good thing. The silver necklace on its own was easier to explain away if any of the Hunters saw it.

I could hear murmurings and the odd burst of laughter from downstairs, and the idea of going back there and facing that crowd again made me nauseous. The idea of Sebastian holding my hand again made me feel nauseous.

The idea of sitting around, hoping that Theon hadn’t forgotten about me, that Astrid was finding a way to save me, made me feel worse than those things combined. I didn’t want to be a burden on them.

I had to do my part to find my way home too.

I turned with a trembling exhale, leaning back against the basin, and threw the orb with all my strength against the beige tile wall opposite. The glass shattered, and a black sludge-like substance slid down the wall, small and insignificant. Just a small dollop of mystery goop that I was going to have to explain away that had done nothing.

I slumped against the sink, my throat burning as I tried to hold back tears. It had been a long shot anyway. What had I really expected?

The inky sludge pooled at the baseboard, and just as I was wondering how I was supposed to clean up this foreign substance before the Hunters put me on a torture rack, it started to expand, coating the floor in a layer of black before climbing up the walls, and spidering over the off-white ceiling, completely concealing the fluorescent lighting and encasing the room in darkness.

My breath was sawing in my lungs, far too loud in the perfect silence as the room vanished around me. Hesitantly, I took a step forward, followed by another. Was there enough space in here for this to work? I reached my shaking hands out in front of me, waiting to hit a wall at the far end of the bathroom, and finding only air. Somewhat bolstered and mostly terrified, I took a stumbling step forward. And then another. And then another.

“Hello?” I called out tentatively, giving my eyes a moment to adjust. The portals were still active on the Shade side. If I kept walking, I had to find one eventually, right? Right. Or I’d run into someone in the in-between, and hopefully, they were nice.

It wasn’t my most solid plan, but I’d committed now. Shit, I really hoped that portal sludge disintegrated on its own. I did not need a herd of Hunters following me here.

Bolstered by the idea of getting away from them, I trudged on into nothingness. Oddly, I didn’t feel particularly strongly either way about the fact that I would never see Sebastian again. I thought I’d be thrilled, but by the end of it all… I just felt nothing where he was concerned, except for maybe a vague hope that he’d leave the Hunters someday and choose a better life for himself.

I peered into the darkness, calling out again to try to get someone’s attention. Nothing lived in the in-between, right? Like creatures and such? No, surely not.

Someone would have definitely mentioned that.

Maybe.

“Hiiiiiiii,” I called breathily, panting slightly. The pain meds were doing their job for now, but they’d wear off, and I didn’t have any more. I should have put my smelly flats back on. The ground was freezing cold and unforgivingly hard beneath my bare feet. “Is anyone else in here?”

Nothing. There was no echo either, nothing to give me any idea of space or structure. My words just hit the emptiness and died on impact, barely carrying. My footsteps were almost soundless, despite my heavy, limping gait. Shades had good night vision, but I really needed to make at least a little bit of noise to draw attention to my presence if they were farther away.

“But I would walk five hundred miles,” I began pant-singing, since I had walking on my mind. “And I would walk five hundred more…”

I’m going to be falling down at your door, Theon.

You’d better be ready to pick me back up again.

Chapter 22

I’d never noticed it before, but the ground of the in-between was so cold. Hard, too. I felt like I was lying on a slab of frigid marble, and I desperately wanted to get to my feet, but the rest of my body wasn’t cooperating with that idea.

I didn’t want to believe that I was going to die here, alone in the dark, so close and yet so far from where I was running to. But I was.

The bond was a weak, fading pulse in my chest, dying right along with me.

Would Theon move on? Find another Hunter mate to replace me with? He’d told me that he was more attached to me than he expected to be, and I’d read so much into that. Now, I was less certain.

But I was dying, so perhaps it wasn’t a blessing that he didn’t love me the way I loved him. I didn’t want him to suffer any more than necessary.

For a long while, I alternated between dozing and shivering, hating the sensation of being awake. My voice was too hoarse to so much as whisper, so I didn’t even have the luxury of distracting myself by singing. My memories were a beautiful solace, though. In the peaceful sanctuary of my mind, I was at home with Theon. I was at Lindow, and the rain I’d come to love fell constantly, a comforting drip, drip, drip against the stone while we were warm and dry inside. The library was clear of dust, and we were sweaty and satisfied, tangled up in each other while Fester prowled the estate, searching for scraps of meat to steal. Rainy was tucked up in her bedroom—surly but safe—and Aderith and Wilder were sharing tea and cake by the fireplace downstairs.

It was a mash-up of memories, coated in a filmy haze of wishful thinking, and yet it felt so tangible that I could almost touch it. The pitter-patter of the rain; the warm, solid bulk of Theon’s body at my back; the smell of sex and the citrusy cleaner Aderith used to scrub the floors in the dining room; the gentle hum of voices from around the estate.

What a beautiful life we could have had. What a perfect dream to carry me into whatever came next. I clung to it with everything I had as I was carried away into the next life, the journey far less gentle than I expected it to be.

It was rushed, and I was jostled, and there was shouting. So much shouting.