A few hours later, when Pandora was practically asleep on her feet, she remembered that cats weren’t so bad. At least, not this one. Some cats were soft and fluffy, making the perfect mattress for an escapee on the run without a whole lot of time to settle down for a nap.
“Try not to bite me this time,” she quipped as she wrapped her arms around Naya’s neck. The jaguar bucked, kicking out her hind paws, nearly sending Pandora to the ground. “All right, all right. I mean, thank you.”
Naya purred.
Pandora rolled her eyes.
We have a very strange thing going on here, she thought, amused, as she dropped her head between Naya’s shoulder blades and tried to adjust to the gentle, repetitive motions of the walk. Given her exhaustion, it didn’t take long.
Sleep devoured her.
And then the nightmares came.
She blinked, adjusting to the bright sunlight as she stepped through the clay doorway, dipping low, careful to keep the meticulously beaded headdress from slipping to the side. She’d been preparing for this day her entire life—her sole purpose, her one obligation. She wouldn’t let weakness overtake her, no matter how hard her heart pounded, how vigorously her legs trembled, how tight her throat closed.
Her family was waiting outside.
She paused, swallowing thickly, as her mother stepped forward.
“My child,” she murmured, eyes glistening, wet with tears she refused to shed—tears she’d been holding back for sixteen years. “Bless you.”
She knelt as her mother slipped a few strings of carefully hand-dyed clay beads around her neck—white for purity, red for the blood oath, black for her power.
Her father came next. He was silent as he stretched forward, unable to speak as he slipped another garland across her shoulders. This time blue for honor.
Then her sister, crying silent tears that slipped to the ground beneath their feet, then dried instantly on contact with the burning red dirt. In her hand, she clutched a string of green leaves, carefully picked for their bright colors, a sign of the peace her sacrifice would bring.
When her sister couldn’t move, she reached forward, being strong the way she needed to be as she carefully peeled back her sister’s trembling fingers one by one and placed the string around her neck. Then she squared her shoulders, turning away from her family as she breathed deep, trying her best to remain calm.
The rest of her people waited in two long rows, leaving an open path down the center for her to walk through. And though the robes draped over her shoulders were heavy in the hot summer sun, she ignored the sweat dripping down her spine and walked on. Her eyes grew blurry, moist, but she blinked it away. Flowers cascaded over her, well-wishes and thanks, praises and promises, celebrations and remembrances. Sprinkles of water splashed her cheeks, her hands, but she hardly felt them. Incense filled her nostrils, but the herbs smelled like ash.
The shadows waited at the edges of her vision.
She would not call upon them.
Not today.
The dais loomed larger the closer she traveled, ringed in the image of her people, a circle with twelve points and one center. Somehow, she found the strength to lay her body upon it as her robes were repositioned to fan over the edges. Their leader followed behind, but she couldn’t hear his words. Her ears had started to ring, and the tone was deafening. Her vision grew black as her power called out to her, begging her to fight. But she closed her eyes.
It did nothing to help.
He was still there, in the edges of her memory.
He brushed his fingers over her cheeks, traced her lips.
Haunting. Alluring.
Her heart burned, trying to break free, trying to run to him even if her body would not. She could feel his lips on her lips, his hands digging into her hair. Could hear the promises rolling off his tongue.
Stay with me.
Be with me.
Choose me.
But she couldn’t.
The back of her neck began to burn. She opened her eyes to find the world was awash in a glittering cerulean haze. A blade glinted in the sun, hovering in the space above her chest. Her fingers rattled against the stone, but she didn’t flinch, didn’t move. The prayers rose in a cacophony around her, lifting to the sky in the same moment the knife struck.
Metal sliced between her ribs.
Once.
Twice.
Over and over.
Her blood poured out.
The world grew dark.
But in that moment, she smiled. Because she was done. She’d made it. She’d remained strong. By the time they lit the fire, her body was already gone. She felt no pain as the flames rose all around her, washing the world in angry red. She was separate, something else, somewhere else.
“Next time,” he whispered as her world darkened. Because of course he was with her in the end, with her in the ebony slowly closing in around the fire.
Was it the sky or his blue eyes that watched over her?
Was it fire or his caress that burned her cheek?
Was it the sun or his golden hair that broke through the coming night?
“I’ll always find you,” he murmured. “I’ll always be with you.”
In her final moment, the visions came. Fire and lava and rivers running red. Teeth cutting. People screaming. Babies crying. Wicked laughter. Savage hunger. The shadows rolling back. The harsh truth streaming in. Blue, blue eyes, disappearing behind an opaque curtain of ruthless flames. Tears sizzling until they stained. And the echo, repeating over and over into eternity, the horrible echo of—
“Ahh!” Pandora shouted as she slammed against rock and dirt, rolling over and over, tumbling down a hill. She dug her fingers into the ground, searching for a handhold, something, anything to grab.
She tore through a bush.
Her fingers clenched around a stray branch.
Her body snapped.
And she stilled, collapsing as her muscles gave out.
Two seconds later, Naya came bounding down the hill, leaping from rock to rock, more like a dancer than an animal as she pranced to Pandora’s side. Her eyes were bright with concern, and she nudged her soft fur into Pandora’s hand, questioning.
“I’m fine,” Pandora muttered. Taking a deep breath, she sat up and eyed the cat, whose jaw had just slipped open. “Don’t even think about licking me.” And then she glanced around, looking over her shoulder at the path of debris her body had made on the side of the mountain. “Luckily, it wasn’t that steep.”
Pandora knew these mountains, and she knew there could have been far worse places to fall. In fact… She narrowed her eyes, gaze roving across the forest. They were still relatively high up. Pandora had managed to break her fall before she’d traveled too far from the ridge, and through the trees, she spotted a peak she recognized.
One that signaled home.
“Naya,” she said quickly, extending the shadows to shroud them both. The jaguar shrank back, transforming into a kneeling girl.
“I’m sorry,” Naya said almost immediately. “I was trying to watch your dream, and I slipped, and then you slipped and, well, yeah.”
Pandora snapped her head toward the medium. “You saw?”
She nodded. “I saw.”
And just like that, the dream flooded back. The beads. The family. The flames. The knife. All the air left her chest as she gasped, realization dawning now that she had a waking moment to process what she’d seen. “I was a sacrifice, a willing sacrifice.”
But that didn’t make sense.
Did it?
“Why do the titans want to kill you?” Naya asked softly, hesitant and curious.
Pandora squeezed her eyes shut, trying to hold on to the tendrils of the fading memory, trying to see what she missed, trying to find reason. “I don’t know.”
“Why won’t they tell you?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered back, dropping her head into her hands. “That’s what I’m trying to find out. That’s why I need to speak to my mother.”
“And what do you think she’ll give you?” Naya asked in a calming voice, like the meditative girl Pandora had met in the prison, serene and commanding.
“Answers.”
“And what if they’re not the answers you want?”
Pandora snapped her head up. The ground suddenly felt very cold beneath her, as though frost were seeping through the mud and shooting through her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Naya paused, leaning closer. Her irises turned dark, expanding, seeming to reach inside Pandora, seeming to see right through to the very heart of her. “What if you find out they’re right?”
Pandora swallowed, blinking, but she couldn’t look away. The medium’s eyes started to glimmer gold, swirling with a power that dug under Pandora’s skin and stayed there, demanding truth, demanding honesty. Her throat turned dry, scratchy.
“I don’t know,” she croaked.
What am I?
What am I?
The question was always there, always lingering. For some reason, she always saw herself as the hero of her story. But what if she was wrong? What if they were right?
After all, the odds were against her.
Why hadn’t she stopped to think if she could handle the answers—all of them, not just the ones she wanted to hear?
Stay with me.
Sam’s words fluttered across the edges of her memory.
Let us be enough.
He didn’t want her to find the answers. The titans didn’t want her to find the answers. Yet every fiber of her being demanded to know.
Naya’s eyes loomed large, glimmering with magic, studying her, dissecting her. The air warmed, tingling as it brushed over Pandora’s arms, sizzling with an unseen current.
“Your soul is so old,” the medium murmured, almost to herself, gazing deeper and deeper. Her brows pushed together in a hard knot. She pursed her lips and winced. Then she blinked, clearing her expression as she leaned back, breaking her stare.
Pandora looked away, looked at the leaves scattered across the forest floor around her, at the sky looming bright between the branches, at the peak in the distance telling her she was almost home.
“If they’re right, I’ll do what needs to be done,” she said, inhaling sharply after the words spilled from her lips. Because they weren’t hers. They were her father’s. And yet, in that moment, they felt right.
Terrifyingly right.
“Done for you?” Naya asked.
“Done for everyone,” Pandora answered, finally looking up. Those amber eyes watched her closely, intensely, as though seeing her in a new light. They were as unsure and probing as the first time Pandora had popped into her cell. “You promised.”
“I’ll keep my promise,” Naya said. But deep grooves cut into her forehead as she looked away, face filling with worry lines Pandora couldn’t recall ever seeing.
“What did you mean when you said my soul is old?”
“That you’ve lived many lives, just like we said before.”
But Pandora shook her head, taking in Naya’s troubled expression. “No, this was different. Your tone was different.”
Naya’s expression was hollow when she lifted her head. “Your soul is old, very old, the oldest one I’ve ever touched.”
“Why are you saying that like it’s a bad thing?”
“Because.” She sighed, rubbing her hand through her hair, brushing out the stress. “To have lived so many lives and to have never found peace? To have never passed on to the sun god’s kingdom? Your soul is untainted. There’s no reason you haven’t moved on, none that I can sense. Which must mean it’s a choice. And I can’t think of any possible reason you would choose to spend eternity like this.”
But she didn’t choose this.
Did she?
It was a curse. A trap. A cycle she was stuck in.
Or was it?
Stay with me, Sam had said. But did he really mean choose me?
If it were that simple, why hadn’t she done it already?
There was only one way to find out.
And she was staring right at it.
“The enclave is over that ridge,” Pandora said, changing the subject, turning their focus to the jagged peak no more than five miles away—incredibly close by their standards. A five-minute run, maybe less. “I can get my mother’s brush and be back in thirty minutes.”
“And then we’re even?” Naya asked. But the way she said even made other words spring to mind—then we’re done, then we’re through, then I’m gone.
Pandora didn’t answer because a crack echoed through her ears, another little piece of her breaking. She didn’t really know why. They’d only known each other for a few days—a partnership of convenience. But the rejection hurt. It stung. A lot more than she thought it would. “What else do you need in order to connect me to my mother?”
Naya lifted a wry brow. It oozed with dark humor. “A sacrifice.” Pandora shot her a pointed look. The medium hastily continued her explanation. “Your mother’s been gone a long time, and we don’t have a body, only cells from her hair, barely any tissue at all. If you want to speak with her, truly speak to her, you need to make a sacrifice to the sun god. You need to send an innocent soul to his kingdom so he’ll release hers. There’s a reason people don’t talk about necromancy lightly, why I hardly ever use that part of myself. It isn’t clean or pure. It’s dirty and messy and dire. But it’s what you asked for.”
Dirty and messy and dire? Pandora thought, resigned. Yeah. That about sums it up.
Naya didn’t let her respond. “I’ll find the sacrifice. An animal of a certain size will do. All I need from you is a knife.”
Pandora’s gut clenched painfully, twisting in a wrenching motion at the thought of an animal losing its life for her. But she nodded despite the nausea rolling through her. Because she needed answers. She wasn’t even sure she wanted them, but she needed them.
“Okay,” she said, voice slightly airy.
“Okay,” Naya confirmed. And then she crouched, reaching her arms around her head and pressing her face to the ground almost as if in prayer.
By the time Pandora blinked, the jaguar was back, black as night. Those glowing eyes nailed her to the ground. In one swift motion, Naya leapt and disappeared into the forest, a predator on the hunt.
Pandora turned around, taking a deep breath as her focus turned to that familiar mountain peak—one she never thought she’d look upon again.
And then she launched into a sprint.
Full titan speed.
Giving her mind no time to think, no time to second-guess, to turn around.
Because there was no going back.
Only forward.
Just as she’d always done.