Page 69 of The Salvation

Further down the trail, between the thickest trees, the left side of the landscape shifts to ancient ruins of glistening threads. The phantoms wandering about the decrepit structure seem more lost, crying out as lost ghosts. Lost expressions, mourning calls.

The silk beneath my feet feels more like an ever-moving fabric, carrying me across memories and mirages. The forest twists and turns, and I know I’d end up lost if it weren’t for Merikh’s warning. Subtle vibrations pulse into my feet, but I can’t tell where they’re coming from. Or what they mean.

As the woods grow thicker until I need to pull away sheets of the silky netting, Jinxy yips on my left, his tails swinging behind him as he ambles in another direction.

“Jinxy!” I whisper fiercely since I still don’t know what’s in these woods.

He doesn’t turn around. I nearly groan at my fox’s pattern of running away...until I remember how many times he led me right where I needed to go. All seemed dark and wrong at the time, but it ultimately turned into whatever fate was necessary to save my monstrous boys. The irony of how we’ve come to this point where I may bring death to my monsters. The last thing I’m doing here is saving them.

“Jinxy,” I groan and pursue my fox, keeping his dark tails within line of sight—not too difficult with the whiter landscape. My feet dip into the shimmery silk, leaving subtle prints with their running weight.

Weaving between the trees, forsaking where it’s thickest, I rush after Jinx as he scurries toward the nearby ruins. He disappears around the corner of a large pillar. More illusions dance along the sides of threaded buildings. Somehow, the silk holds without breakage when I knock into the walls.

With another yip, Jinx poises on the edge of a bridge about a hundred feet from me.

“Jinxy, we have to go back!” I tell him, gesturing to the woods.

He licks his snout. Tilts his head. And promptly bustles across the bridge, completely ignoring me.

“Ugh...Jinxy,” I huff and hurry across the bridge, hardly able to appreciate the surreal architecture connecting floating platforms...or the moving silk tapestry forming a river beneath.

And just as I rush down the bridge with my eyes still on that river and not on what’s in front of me, my body slams against something hard. Not silk at all. I tumble to the ground, my fall cushioned by the threads, my silvery hair scattering over my eyes.

“Oh!” a familiar moan echoes in my ears, but...it couldn’t be.

My fingers tremble as I lift them to my strands to fling my hair out of the way.

“Savage mercies!” I exclaim, my voice on the border of cracking.

I blink a few times, wondering if it’s a mirage, but if that’s the case, it’s one convincing illusion, given how I just crashed into her. My breath heaves and cleaves as I take her in, my heart almost giving out because I’ve never seen her like this. Never seen her as anything but my Shadow.

But it’s her. It has to be her because she’s identical to me, my very image, apart from the river of dark waves tumbling down her chest.

“Q-Qora?” Nothing could prevent my voice from splintering.

She turns to me, her lips parted in wonder as she glances up and down at me. And with a disbelieving nod and a breathy laugh, she says, “I should have known. Well...hello, my mad little fool.”

“Qora!” I lunge, throwing my arms around her, burying my face in her neck, and crying like the mad little fool she calls me.

To my greatest shock, Qora wraps her arms around me, strokes the back of my hair, and she...cries, too.

An hour goes by.Or what feels like an hour. We’ve stayed here the whole time because I’m too terrified to let her go, afraid she will fade away.

Cuddled against my...sister, I breathe her in while telling her my story. She went first, and I hung on her every word of how she met the God of Souls, the one Merikh calls the Unseen. After everything I’ve shared about my time with my monstrous boys, and all about Aislynn and what a wonder she is, I finally get to the heart of the matter and how I ended up here.

“Shade will strip his soul from his body,” she says with a feminine snarl.

I shake my head wildly. “No, he’s blood-tied with her. If he dies, she dies,” I say, voice panicked.

She heaves a sigh before turning to Jinxy, who’s curled up like a bundle of dark fluff in a next of white netting. “I see you kept the runt.”

I smile and reach over to pet my fox. “More like he kept me.”

“I’m happy for you, Quinn. And I’m sorry for leaving you. I got just what I deserved.”

Before she can blink, I pin my sister down, straddle her, and grip her neck hard. “Take it back.”

Eyes narrowing, she glances down at my hands before flicking them back to me. “You really are mad, aren’t you?”

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