An Ember in the Ashes (Ember Quartet #1)(45)

Sometimes, I talk to those I’ve killed. In my head, I hear them whisper back—not accusations, but their hopes, their wants. I wish they would curse me instead. It’s worse, somehow, to hear all that would have been had I not killed them.

East. Elias, go east. It’s the only logical thing I can think. But sometimes, lost in the horror of my future, I forget about going east. Instead, I wander from body to body, begging those I’ve killed for forgiveness.

Darkness. Daylight. The fourth day. And soon after, the fifth. But why am I counting the days? The days don’t matter. I’m in hell. A hell I’ve made myself, because I am evil. As evil as my mother. As evil as any Mask who spends a lifetime relishing the blood and tears of his victims.

To the mountains, Elias, a faint voice whispers in my head, the last shred of sanity I have. To the mountains.

My feet bleed, and my face cracks from the wind. The sky is below me. The ground above. Old memories flit through my head—Mamie Rila teaching me to write my tribal name; the pain of a Centurion’s whip tearing into my back that first time; sitting with Helene in the wilds of the north, watching as the sky swirled with impossible ribbons of light.

I trip over a body and crash to the ground. The impact shakes something loose in my mind.

Mountains. East. Trial. This is a Trial.

Thinking those words is like pulling myself from a pool of quicksand. This is a Trial, and I must survive it. Most of the people on the battlefield aren’t dead yet—I just saw them. This is a test—of my mettle, my strength—which means there must be something specific I’m supposed to do to get out of here.

“Until you conquer your fear, the dead will remain with you.”

I hear a sound. The first sound I’ve heard in days, it feels like. There, shimmering like a mirage at the edge of the battlefield, is a figure. My first kill again? I stagger toward him but fall to my knees when I’m just a few feet away. Because it is not my first kill. It’s Helene, and she is covered in blood and scratches, her silver hair tangled as she gazes at me with empty eyes.

“No,” I rasp. “Not Helene. Not Helene. Not Helene.”

I chant it like a madman with only two words left in his mind. Helene’s ghost comes closer.

“Elias.” Skies, her voice. Cracked and haunted. So real. “Elias, it’s me. It’s Helene.”

Helene, on my nightmare battlefield? Helene, another victim?

No. I will not kill my oldest, best friend. This is a fact, not a wish. I will not kill her.

I realize in that moment that I cannot be afraid of something if there’s no chance it could ever occur. The knowledge releases me, finally, from the fear that has consumed me for days.

“I won’t kill you,” I say. “I swear it. By blood and by bone, I swear it. And I won’t kill any of the others, either. I won’t.”

The battlefield fades, the smell fades, the dead fade, as if they had never been real. As if they had only ever been in my mind. Ahead, close enough to touch, sit the mountains I’ve been staggering toward for five days, their rocky trails curving and swooping like Tribal calligraphy.

“Elias?”

Helene’s ghost is still here.

For a moment, I don’t understand. She reaches for my face, and I flinch from her, expecting the cold caress of a spirit.

But her skin is warm.

“Helene?”

Then she’s pulling me close, cradling my head, whispering that I’m alive, that she is alive, that we are both all right, that she’s found me. I wrap my arms around her waist and bury my face in her stomach. And for the first time in nine years, I start to cry.

???

“We only have two days to get back.” These are the first words Hel’s spoken since she half-dragged me out of the foothills and into a mountain cave.

I say nothing. I’m not ready for words yet. A fox roasts over a fire, and my mouth waters at the smell. Night has fallen, and outside the cave, thunder reverberates. Black clouds roll out from the Wastes, and the heavens break open, rain cascading through lightning-edged cracks in the sky.

“I saw you around noon.” She adds a few more branches to the fire. “But it took me a couple of hours to come down the mountain to you. Thought you were an animal at first. Then the sun hit your mask.” She stares out at the sheeting rain. “You looked bad.”

“How did you know I wasn’t Marcus?” I croak. My throat is dry, and I take another sip of water from the reed canteen she’s made. “Or Zak?”

“I can tell the difference between you and a couple of reptiles. Besides, Marcus fears water. The Augurs wouldn’t leave him in a desert. And Zak hates tight spaces, so he’s probably underground somewhere. Here. Eat.”

I eat slowly, watching Helene all the while. Her usually sleek hair is matted, its silver sheen faded. She’s covered in scratches and dried blood.

“What did you see, Elias? You were coming for the mountains, but you kept falling, clawing at the air. You talked about . . . about killing me.”

I shake my head. The Trial’s not over, and I have to forget what I saw if I want to survive the rest of it.

“Where did they leave you?” I ask.

She wraps her arms around herself and hunches down, her eyes barely visible. “Northwest. In the mountains. In a spire vulture’s nest.”