Page 168 of The World Undone

Eventually.

She had to.

It took me several days just to work up enough strength to dream-walk, which was strange, because dream-walking was how I often regenerated my power. But even then, I couldn’t reach her right away. I wasn’t sure why. Reaching for her was like trying to reach across the ocean, with only my arms to stretch. Instead, I’d focused on dream-walking to Dec, then Eli, but I could only hold the dreamscape for a few minutes at a time, like trying to hold water in the palm of my hand, the tenuous threads slipping through the cracks of my fingers.

Until today.

She was here.

And while I’d never experienced a dreamscape quite like this one, unable to control a damn thing—including my own body—it was a start.

17 Days After the Ritual

I pushed the disappointment away at being stuck to the ceiling again, a frozen blob that just had to float here and watch the girl I loved contort in pain, unable to rescue her from it.

She was never one to be rescued though, always the one to do the rescuing.

My last dream-walk to her had cost me. I’d woken up drained, more tired than I’d been before, and unable to reach for her again immediately. I was determined to get stronger, to stay longer, to bring her back or lend her my energy—whatever it took to have her awake and with us again.

She whimpered, and my stomach flipped at the noise.

I fought again to reach for her, but I didn’t achieve anything. It was like she was in a glass case—a mental version of The Guild’s cells—and I didn’t have the necessary skills or tools to break through.

Yet.

“It worked,” I said, my pulse thrumming against my skin when she twitched at the sound of my voice. It was slight, maybe even a figment of my imagination, but I clung to that small response with everything I had. “We think it worked anyway, we aren’t really sure.”

There wasn’t any way to really verify if we’d dissolved the realms or stabilized them or what. Surviving the apocalypse hadn’t come with an instruction manual, unfortunately. And when the ritual was completed, we’d all been unconscious. There weren’t any buzzing neon signs hovering above The Lodge declaring the world saved, the final boss defeated.

“Your uncle,” I said, excitement flooding me at the prospect of delivering good news for once, on the off chance she could hear and understand me, “he woke up. He was actually the first one. I think something you did unlocked whatever hold the anchor magic had on him.” Saif didn’t look exactly refreshed. He was weak, and seemed to have aged during his slumber, like the power had drained some of his youth. But he was alive, and seemed unbothered by the cost his body had paid. “He’s actually the one who helped get us all inside—after, well, whatever happened, happened. Everyone else is awake now?—”

I let the rest of the sentence drift off.

Everyone else except for her.

The edges of the dream blurred, and as hard as I fought to stay here with her, the world dissolved around me.

19 Days After the Ritual

“Some more good news. I think Seamus is better. We’re trying not to get ahead of ourselves and call it a cure just yet, but the blood that Darius collected—not sure if you remember, you were kind of—” possessed by a boiling rage that I’d never seen the likes of before, “out of it that day, but he had an idea. A good one. He collected some of Jarrod’s blood on a hunch, after?—”

I held my breath, waiting with desperation for some kind of reaction, for the flutter behind her eyelids to grow strong enough to part them. Each day that passed when she didn’t wake up was like living through a never-ending nightmare.

It wasn’t fair that she wasn’t there to celebrate with us. And we couldn’t bring ourselves to enjoy the win without her.

All I could do in the meantime was talk to her as if she were awake, will it strong enough into reality that one day soon, it would be.

“Well, I guess we never filled you in on all the details of that meeting,” I winced, remembering the flare of anger that seemed to pulse from her every pore, amplified by her fear about what might happen to Dec and Rowan in Jarrod’s custody. “Sorry about that again, by the way. We shouldn’t have gone behind your back, we shouldn’t have met with The Guild. If we hadn’t, maybe Dec, your home—” I shook my head, my mouth going dry at the thought of all those people, that entire town, dead, because of Jarrod’s power complex. “But then, at the same time, that’s the whole reason we knew where to find Dec, where to find Jarrod, and the stone.”

I sighed, then pinched the bridge of my nose. “Sorry, I’m really shit at this one-sided conversation thing. I miss talking to you.” I missed closing my eyes each night and creating entire worlds in our dreams together. It was our place, our thing. It was lonely now, confusing without her here with me. Really here.

“Anyway, where was I?” I lingered in silence for a moment, trying to collect my thoughts. I didn’t have full control of them, it was like this dream was only partially lucid, the world not entirely my own. I was simply a traveler here, stopping by.

“Right, the blood. Nika—do you remember Nika?” I shook my head, grunting. “Of course you do, she’s maybe the first vampire we’ve met who’s even more unhinged than Darius.”

I pictured Max rolling her eyes at that, a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth in reluctant amusement.

Fuck, I missed her.