Page 230 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
“Vrali Toro nah Kyvena!” she screamed at her hands. She used a different variation of the word for Passage—and also added aplease.
Her power didn’t even bother to react.
Maybe she needed more Zuprium. She wouldn’t find it so close to the surface, but she dug anyway. Dirt and grime and grass collected under her fingernails and in the cracks of her hands. She couldn’t dig far. Not without a shovel.
Her hands, her fingers, even her nails ached with the effort of digging for the metal only to come up empty. She pressed her forehead to the muddy, disturbed ground and screamed in frustration.
She was so lost in her fury and desperation she didn’t hear the footsteps behind her until a voice spoke.
“You’re late.”
Hallie tensed. It didn’t sound like Mr. Gray or Correa.
“Could’ve predicted that. What I didn’t figure was if I ever saw you again, you’d be throwing some sort of hissy fit.” A pair of black boots stepped into her peripheral. “Nor would I have bet you’d be ruining my lawn.” A soft scoff. “Probably why I was always rubbish at cards.”
Hallie’s heart stopped squeezing itself and flew into her throat. She choked on the air she’d breathed in. That voice. That accent. The lazy tilt to each vowel. But it was impossible. Absurd. Unless…unless…
This was what Mr. Gray had meant. It hadn’t been physically painful, nor had her life flashed before her eyes, but somehow death had met her anyway.
Because the only way she would be hearing that exact voice was if she were dead.
She pushed herself to her knees, ignoring her aching limbs, and looked up.
An older teenaged boy stood a few feet from her, a small pile of firewood in his arms. The little woodcutter’s cottage she’d noticed earlier with Fely stood just behind him. The stone bricks were whiter than snow and gleamed in early evening light.
The boy himself was tall and lanky. Too skinny for his height, really, but that wasn’t abnormal for him. His hair was red as fire, and his face was drowning in freckles. His eyes were a burnished bronze and full of mischief, a crooked smile to match.
A gasping sob was her only response. It couldn’t be helped.
Jack hadn’t changed one bit since the day he died.
“Now there ain’t no reason for you to get all upset,” Jack said, setting the wood in his arms onto the manicured grass Hallie hadn’t torn up. “I ain’t mad or nothing.”
The sobs now came quickly. Soon, she was gasping for breath, tears pouring down her cheeks. She clenched her fingers, the dirt clogging further beneath her fingernails.
She’d thought she’d worked through most of the pain, but his presence before her now only ripped out the thread she’d used to sew up her damaged heart.
The pain was sharp and thick, lancing and stinging. It went as deep as the Josei Ocean and as high as First Earth’s Mount Everest. On one hand, her twin stood before her, his work bootscoming closer into her blurred view beyond the salty tears; on the other, somehow, she’d gained her brother back only to lose Kase.
The joy and anguish melded together, and she knew not where one ended and the other began. And at that moment, she didn’t know which was loudest.
“I ain’t about to complain—it’s a little gratifying, if I’m being honest—but I’d reckon I don’t deserve all that blubbering.” Jack squatted down in front of her and held out a hand.
Hallie stared at it for a moment. Before his body had been Burned on the funeral pyre, that particular hand had been buried under the mine beam. After the mining crew recovered his body, Hallie couldn’t bear to look at the rest of him—only his right hand. Mangled and flattened. She wouldn’t forget it for as long as she lived.
Now it was whole and clean. No scars. No evidence of the mine collapse that had killed him. Nothing left to remind Hallie that Niels had pulled her away as the beam started falling, leaving Jack behind.
Like she’d been pushed here, leaving Kase behind.
Hallie grabbed his hand, pulling herself up. Her bones rattled with grief and shock. It ached. She clenched her teeth against it, but that only made her shake harder. Jack just raised a brow. It was a look she once would’ve throttled him for—one she hadn’t realized she’d missed.
Her brother pulled her into a hug so crushing that the shakes ceased—not because she willed them to do so, but because he held her so tightly she physically couldn’t manage it. She could finally smell the clean scent of linen that told her Jack was right there even if she didn’t understand why.
That was when the dam broke loose. Sobs wracked her body instead of shakes, and her brother squeezed her harder. “I’ve missed you, Lark.”
Three years. One year of darkness so deep she nearly wasted away. One year of finding the light. One year of hoping the light would keep shining.
And now this.
