Page 53 of Fated In Forever
But there was nothing there. The gateway had closed. There was no sign of those living shadows, only a dark, empty space and the chemical taste of otherworldly magic on the air. The connection to the Underworld had been severed, and with it, any hope I had of following Evangeline.
“No, no, no,” I muttered, splashing through the pool until I stopped beneath the portal.
“Evangeline. Can you hear me?Evangeline.” I screamed her name, reaching out with both hands, grasping at empty air as if I could somehow claw the gateway back into existence through sheer desperation. “There has to be a way through.”
I whirled to Nikolai. “Turn back time. To before she dove through.Turn it back.” I screamed.
“I cannot.” He gestured to the cracks in the walls, the floor. “This place is already too unstable. If I use my magic again, I will shatter this mountain around us. There won’t be anything left.”
“I don’t give a fuck.” I bore down on him. “Fucking turn it back.”
“If I fail, and I destroy this room, there is no way home for her,” he explained calmly. “No way back for Malachi. We leave this room as it is, they have a doorway back to our world, we just have to open it again.”
Malachi.
Fuck, Malachi was gone, too.
“That’s why she went through. She went after him.” I muttered to myself, staring at the now-closed doorway. The truth tasted bitter on my tongue, like something rotting away.
“Riordan,” Blake's voice was cautious, but I barely heard him over the roaring in my ears. “Nikolai’s right. We lose access to this room, we could lose her forever. There has tobe some other way to reach her. Right?” He stared at Nikolai with the kind of hope a fated mate had for the impossible.
Nash joined us and I had to check to make sure his skull was still intact, to stop envisioning him flattened on the floor, crushed beneath that granite boulder. Replaying how he’d saved me without the slightest hesitation made my throat close up. Someday, when this was over, I’d have to make it up to him.
“She's gone,” I whispered, the words as sharp as broken glass. “She's really gone.”
“We'll get her back,” Blake said forcefully, staring at Nikolai. “There are other ways into the Underworld. Right?”
“There are, but this portal…” Nikolai gazed up at the portal. “We know this one works, so we can’t risk losing it.”
We rechecked the outer passages, the other chamber, which held a wooden chair, a table and a few burned down candles. The entire time, bitterness pressed down on me like a physical thing. Evangeline had risked her life to wound Ravok—with a legendary iron blade, no less—then threw herself into an unknown realm to save Malachi—who didn’t fucking deserve her sacrifice—and I hadn't even said goodbye.
The entire mountain echoed with emptiness, the ancient stones bereft of the pulsing magic that kept it alive. The ley line still leaked a steady stream, but instead of flowing into the portal, the glittering power filtered up through the myriad of cracks on the ceiling. Ravok was gone, disappeared to whatever rock he hid beneath, and Romulus was dead, buried in some forgotten tunnel beneath a million tons of rock.
I stared at the portal and made a silent promise.
I would find a way to reach her. I would pry this doorway open with my bare hands and follow her into theUnderworld itself, because a world without Evangeline in it wasn't a world worth living in.
Somewhere beyond the boundaries of our world, Evangeline was facing the dangers of the Underworld and I was powerless to help her.
But not for long.
23
EVANGELINE
The enormous obsidian stones pushed up out of the black sand, their black surfaces gleaming with an otherworldly sheen, covered with neatly chiseled markings I couldn’t begin to decipher. Each step I took echoed hollowly against the stone, the sound swallowed almost immediately by the darkness pressing in from all sides. My fingers traced over the strange markings as I walked, keeping myself oriented in this maze of shadows.
“Malachi,” I called again, the sound disappearing as soon as his name left my lips. The shadows consumed all sound, there had not been one sign of life, and still, I felt him ahead of me—drawn by that strange, inexplicable tether that bound us together, pulsing like a second heartbeat in my chest.
Really, I should be dead.
Vaporized, the moment I had hurled myself through that swirling portal of darkness. I had feared my lifeforce might drain away like water through cupped hands, the second my feet hit the ground, yet here I was, on a day hike through hell.
The Underworld was not meant for the living, and I was very much alive—or at least, I thought I was. My heart still beat a frantic rhythm against my ribs, my lungs drew in cold,acrid air tasting of sulfur and ash. Yet somethinghadchanged during that split-second crossing.
The shadows pulsed with recognition, the razor-sharp obsidian walls didn't cut my fingers when I touched them, and…I glanced back, my frown deepening.
A trail of small, glowing incorporeal blobs bobbed along behind me, like I was the fucking pied piper of lost souls.
