Strange and Ever After (Something Strange and Deadly #3)(77)

“I know. But you were right, Oliver. Like you said on the airship, I must let go of everyone I love. And that includes you.”

He smiled sadly. “I appreciate that you have listened to me for once, but I don’t think this is what you actually want. You feel guilty—am I right? You saw my pain and my memories, and now you pity me.” He shifted as if to draw away.

“No,” I croaked, yanking him closer. “That isn’t it at all. This . . . this is it.”

I tipped up my chin and stared into his yellow eyes. . . .

And then I bared my soul to Oliver.

I poured everything I had through our deep, wide bond. My life in Philadelphia, before Father died. Then after. Before Elijah’s return—then after that too.

I showed Oliver how much I had loved my brother—idolized him. He had been so clever and older, and I had always trusted everything he did or said.

I let my pain for Clarence crash out of me. My heartbreak when Daniel rejected me, and the tears when Mama disowned me. My bone-deep terror over Jie. My grinding hatred for Allison.

I gave Oliver everything I had—and I showed how much I loved him too. How much I loved and relied on him, both as a demon and as a man.

Yet I also showed him how fear lived inside me. Fear that I had changed him, fear that he had changed me. Fear that we could never exist apart . . . unless I let him go now.

Bit by bit, memory by memory and heartbeat by heartbeat, I showed my soul to Oliver until there was nothing left to give.

Then as the final pieces of who I was washed over our bond, I tried to let him go. To pry my soul from his—and to release my grip on his locket.

“Wait,” he rasped, squeezing my wrist and tightening his fingers in my hair. “Don’t do it. Don’t break the bond. Not yet.”

“This is what you wanted.”

His head nodded, his nose touching mine. I want to go home, he whispered to my mind. But if you do this, I will leave you.

“Then,” I whispered, my lips skimming over his chin, “that is what you should do. Leave. No more commands. No more pain. Find what you want, and I will find what I want.”

And with those words, I let him go completely. My fingers released the locket. My heart released his soul.

Oliver staggered back, his eyes brilliant as the sun. Then he began to cough.

And I began to cough too.

I was drowning . . . no—I was suffocating. There was a hole in my body, and it was real this time.

I gaped down, watching my chest billow ineffectively. Oliver was gone from me. I had lost him.

“Oh God,” I wheezed. My gaze leaped back to him. But his yellow eyes swayed in my vision.

He stumbled close and gripped the sides of my face. “Desperate measures.” His words were rough and broken. “Desperate measures to do what needs to be done. Thank you. Thank you.”

Then he dropped his hands, pressed the glowworms into my left palm, and lurched to the ladder.

And for several agonizing seconds, all I could do was watch him climb the rungs and disappear. My lungs heaved and heaved. I tried to claw at my throat . . .

But I had no hand.

My right wrist was a puckered, shadowy scar. Green in the glowworms’ light. “Stay,” I tried to call after him.

I shambled to the ladder and clumsily ascended—only to topple up through the hole and into the harsh moonlight.

By the time I had crawled upright, Oliver was long gone.

My demon was gone. He would not be coming back.

And I had made my choice.

A sob burned in my chest. How could I have finally realized how much I relied on him yet been so utterly blind to it too?

I needed Oliver simply to keep standing.

Far to the west, something gleamed. The obelisk. It wavered and shown like a beam of silver sunlight. Without thinking, I scrambled upright and set off toward it.

Time passed. When I finally reached the obelisk, almost tripping over the sand piled around it, the Spirit-Hunters were nowhere to be seen. No doubt they were sleeping—and I was grateful for it.

I laid my left palm against the carved granite face. “You can do this, Eleanor. You are strong. You are an empress.”

Nothing. No spark of strength. No surge of self-belief.

I rolled my head back to stare at the pointed tip. It swam and drifted in my vision.

“Can I, though?” I whispered to the stone. Then to the starry sky, to the moon, to anything that would listen. “Can I?” I had learned how to use my magic with Oliver’s help—before him, I had been simply me. . . .

A girl with no hand and no family.

My fingers fell, dragging down the obelisk’s surface.

“Eleanor?”

My head snapped sideways. Joseph stood at the base of the pyramid. The worried lines on his brow told me he’d heard my outbreak, seen me cry.

“Come,” he said softly. “Join me.” Without waiting to see if I would follow, he began a graceful ascent up the worn steps of the pyramid.

And I hurried after. There were only thirty steps to climb, and they were waist high—easier to rise than the Great Pyramid had been.

By the time we reached the top, I was sweating and my breath burned in my throat. But I welcomed it—any feeling that distracted me from the gaping hole in my heart.

Joseph settled onto the top stone and eased Daniel’s spyglass from his pocket. I dropped down beside him, rubbing my face on my sleeve.