Into the Dim (Into the Dim, #1)(98)

“It was Eustace,” I said. Once I started babbling, I couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “He hit you from behind. The wind started a few minutes ago. I have no idea if it means what we hope it does. I thought you were dead. Then he . . . he tried to . . . And so I—”

“Did he hurt you?” Bran’s voice was deceptively soft, but I could see rage glimmer in his eyes as he pulled the edges of my ripped bodice together and tied it closed. “Did that bastard touch you?”

“No. I mean he hit me, but he didn’t—you know—do anything else. He didn’t get the chance.”

As our eyes met, the realization of what I’d done struck me. “I killed him, I think. Shoved him into the chasm. He screamed for so long, Bran, but I had no choice. He was going to . . .” I slapped my hands over my mouth, trying to hold in the moan. Bran eased them away and cupped my face, forcing me to look at him.

“Listen to me. You did the right thing. The only thing. I hope that misbegotten son of a whore is burning in hell.”

A weird little hiccup erupted from my throat. “Well, he’s on his way. That’s for sure.”

Bran pulled me to him and held me so tight.

In his arms, I felt the sense of unbelonging I’d lived with my whole life begin to fade away. The grief at losing my mother. The confusion when I learned she was still alive. It all disappeared as Bran rocked me in his arms while the wind keened and tugged at our cloaks and hair.

He stiffened suddenly. “The Nonius Stone? That monster didn’t take it from you?”

“No.”

We still had no idea if it would take us both back. Or where we’d end up if it did. But I pulled the walnut-size stone from my pocket. It throbbed against my palm, and immediately my skin shimmered in a lavender light.

I grabbed Bran’s hand and pressed our palms together. The mist crawled up his arm, coating him in purple, and the knot inside my chest loosened.

“See?” I said. “It’ll work. It’s powerful enough to take us both. Now we just concentrate on where we want to go. Concentrate hard, Bran. Think about Christopher Manor. Hold it in your mind as hard as you can.”

The wind became a cyclone, and suddenly I could feel pinpricks dancing along my nerve endings. The Dim’s pull.

He looked at me then, and I felt cold dread pour over me at the regret on his face.

“Hope,” he said, “Listen, I can’t . . .”

“No,” I tried to protest, but he stopped me, his fingers soft on my lips. “I can’t let her corrupt Tony. But I swear I will never let her hurt you again.”

The pain when I realized what he was saying was so exquisite, I couldn’t even touch it. I could feel myself coming apart but didn’t know if it was the Dim or what his words meant. His hand twined in my hair, and he raised my face to his.

When our lips touched, I murmured against his mouth, “Please.”

The suction ripped the air from our lungs. We kept pressing the Nonius Stone between our palms and knotted our fingers together, clinging. Desperate. Bran locked his other arm around my waist. As he tightened his grip, I felt no fear. I didn’t even worry where we might end up. Either way, I had lost him.

“Hope!” Bran called over the roar of the wind. “I will always—”

But whatever he’d been about to say was drowned out by a sudden roar, and all I knew was the smell of wood smoke and apples as it filled me. As the Dim took us.





The Nonius Stone. It must’ve been why the journey back was so much easier. At first.

Sublime joy flooded through me, shoving away the sorrow as we soared forward through time. I felt no disorientation, no pain. Saw no rotting faces. Brilliant colors burst from between our fingers, twining around us in a blaze of rainbow light. It fused us together, and I threw my head back and laughed with sheer exultation.

Then I felt him slip. Just a bit. But it was enough. The Nonius Stone slid from our joined hands. Bran’s hold on me loosened as he grappled for it. It grazed the tips of his fingertips and dropped away into the shimmering, sparkling ether around us.

Everything changed. Darkness rushed at us. The faces of the dead crowded in, not one at a time but in a churning mass.

I tried to hold on, to keep us bound together, but the Dim ripped him away as I twirled end over end, tumbling and whipping like a leaf in a hurricane. I felt each cell as it tore apart, one microscopic particle at a time.

I landed hard on my shoulder and hip, rolling over and over until my head bounced against stone. My brain imploded in agony, and nausea rolled through me. I forced my eyelids open, but something was wrong. Everything was bleary, as though I was peering through the water of a murky fishbowl.

I can’t see.

My lips refused to form words. My mind was sluggish, my muscles as weak as water.

“Bran,” I croaked.

No answer. I tried to scrub at my eyes, but lightning bolts of electricity jolted over my nerve endings like my entire body had gone to sleep. My ears felt stuffed with cotton. “Someone! Anyone! Please!”

Muffled noise. Footsteps pounding across stone.

“Bran!” I screamed his name with everything I had left.

A familiar hand grabbed mine. Scalding fingertips traced my cheek for an instant before his hoarse voice croaked, “I’m here.”

My head fell back in relief, and the indistinct world around me faded to black.