Chapter Five

“One absynthe,” said the bartender gruffly, setting down the glass with a clank. The emerald-green liquid sloshed around, giving off its own ominous glow like a strange deep-sea creature that had never seen the light of day. “That totals to . . . eighteen.”

Harry dragged the drink toward him with his elbows perched on the countertop, and took a lazy sip. “Cheers.” Then he rotated on the stool and leaned back against the countertop’s edge, his half-lidded eyes sweeping the underlit bar. Sickly sweet smoke from cigars and ember spirits wafted to the ceilings, swirling around the black lights in a haze of purple and gray. A small crowd had gathered around the pool table, and Harry watched as a gorgeous, serpentine seishi arched down with a cue stick, ocean-green hair slipping across one shoulder as they lined up their shot. There was a crack, like all the knuckle bones in a hand shattering all at once. The seishi blushed as a web of fractures spread across the cue ball. They glanced up and caught Harry’s eye, smiling prettily, but he only lifted his glass to the mystical being before turning back around.

The bartender slung their towel over their shoulder. “You need to pay up,” they grumbled as Harry raised the glass to his lips once more. “Absynthe doesn’t come cheap, you know.”

Harry inhaled long and deep, savoring the hellish burn that raced down his throat. He blinked back tears and reached into his pocket, blindly pulling out a handful of gold notes. He plucked two from his palm and tossed them into the air. “Here.”

A black tongue shot out of the bartender’s mouth, twisting over itself to catch both coins just before they hit the counter. The tongue darted back into the mouth, coins and all. The bartender bit down hard on the gold and let out a low laugh. “So what, you’re the real deal, eh?”

Harry drained the glass, slammed it back down, and prodded it away. “Another, please.”

The bartender raised a bushy eyebrow. They looked like any mortal, but that tongue could asphyxiate a human faster than the tightest choke hold. “You sure about that? That’s some strong stuff, you know.”

Harry forced himself to inhale patiently. His fingers curled around the pendant hanging from his neck. It heated at his touch, as if to comfort him.

He wanted to throw it into the Jade River.

“Another, I said.”

“A’ight, a’ight, coming right up. Immortals be good.” The bartender began preparing his drink with a gravelly chuckle. “I’ve seen beasts thrice your size pass out after a dozen of these. It’s the strongest stuff on both sides o’ the river, after all.”

Of course I know that, Harry sulked to himself. That’s why I’m drinking it, damn it all. His body flushed out toxins too quickly for most liquors to have any effect on him.

And tonight he was drinking to get drunk.

One hundred days had passed since he had begun searching for Orion. One hundred days since he had delivered Rose and a comatose Quinlan back to Eradore. One hundred days since he had summoned a portal to the Immortal Realm, without even hesitating to catch his breath. That had been his first mistake—not only had he shadow traveled halfway around the world three times in a row, but he’d torn a rift between the two realms. That first moment back in the Immortal Realm, when he’d hit the ground of his front yard in Dusk District, his legs had folded like wheat stalks and he’d face-planted directly into the grass.

Luckily for him, Soraya had been watering her lawn next door. His anygné neighbor dropped her garden hose and rushed to his side before dragging his ass into her house. He lay gasping on her fluffy rug, unable to summon even a thank-you to his lips. She pinched his chin with one manicured hand and force-fed him nectar out of a jar with the other, scolding him all the while, the delicate silver bracelets on her wrists jingling melodiously.

“Mark my words, Harry,” she said, shoving another spoonful of nectar down his throat. Her wayward shoulder-length bob bounced when she shook her head, the raven-black strands glinting lavender at the tips when the lantern light hit her just right. “You’re going to break yourself in half one day.”

Harry only moaned around the spoon and swallowed. Sweet, golden bliss. A tingling buzz spread through his veins as the nectar revived him, healed him, warmed him to the core. He always forgot how good it was—sadly, it turned to ash when brought to the Mortal Realm.

Once he had regained some semblance of strength, he wobbled toward the window. He breathed in the comforting aroma of cinnamon and spiced ginger, a scent that had always clung to Soraya despite the absence of either in her home. Just another stubborn remnant of the eldest anygné’s past, perhaps. Harry wondered fleetingly what remnants he brought with him from the Mortal Realm whenever he returned home—if this was home, though he still didn’t quite know.

He ran his hand along the smooth varnish of Soraya’s furniture as he strode toward the window, his fingertips hopping from one pale-wooded surface to the next. He always marveled at her eye for aesthetics. This century, she had transformed her home into a rustic wonderland, from the exposed stone walls and trestle tables to the tiny faerie lanterns skirting the oak beams that crisscrossed the ceiling.

In comparison, his home looked like an abandoned, dreary cave.

Peering out the living room windows into the indigo horizon, Harry asked, “How long was I away?”

Soraya joined him, cupping a steaming mug of nectar tea. She blew at the steam and wrapped her worn shawl tighter around herself with her free hand, the shimmering fabric woven with intricate whorls of feathers—her only memento of a life abandoned millennia before. The light in her eyes was teasing when she spoke. “Shall I give it to you in mortal days?”

“It wasn’t that long,” Harry groused.

Her face sombered. “Maybe not in mortal days.”

Harry pursed his lips, still waiting.

Eventually, she took a long sip before answering. “Two thousand six hundred and twenty-five.”

Harry’s eyes widened. “That’s not possible. It couldn’t have been more than a year!”

She clicked her tongue. “I’ve been around far longer than you could ever comprehend, little shadowling. I’m never wrong.” She pointed at the heavens, at two little specks of red. “The stars refuse to lie. There is mine, and there is yours.” A third speck twinkled a few constellations away. “There is Lady Killian’s.” Her finger traced an arc through the sky. For each day he and Killian spent away from the Immortal Realm, their stars inched their way westward. When they departed the Mortal Realm, their stars vanished from the west and reappeared in the east to begin the journey anew. “This time, yours made it all the way past the third prong of Lord Tidus’s trident.”

Harry followed Soraya’s gaze outside, where beyond Dusk District’s four perfect emerald sprawls of grass lay the Jade River, and just past it, on the other side of the misted banks, rose the city of Rèvé—four times the size of Axaria, but still small by Immortal Realm standards. Its jewel-hewn dwellings glittered in fiery, psychedelic polychrome, almost too dazzling to look at. A few of Rèvé’s younger inhabitants were playing in the shallows, dunking each other’s scaled faces into the river no one could ever drown in.

“It won’t be much longer, then,” said Harry softly. “Until the next eclipse.”

Soraya sighed. “And not much longer until the fourth house will finally have an occupant.”

Centuries had passed since Dusk District had last expected a new inhabitant, and nearly two mortal decades since the fourth house had appeared on their street. A new house marked the birth of a new future shadowling. And though Harry didn’t dare mention it, he had a sinking feeling that he knew exactly who it was meant for.

Soraya turned away from the window and raised a hand to brush a stray curl behind his ear. “I’m worried for you, Harry. You and Killian both. Our worlds are changing. There are darker, worse things than nightmares, and they are getting ready to crawl out into the light. You must take care.”

Dread rose fast like bile in his throat. He thought of Orion. “Soraya, have you heard any rumors recently?”

She gave him a long, hard look, her ancient gaze clear as glass and undulled by time. “Of what sort?”

He chose his next words carefully. “Anything . . . peculiar.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Care to be a little more specific?”

“Anything about a young mortal man.”

“You opened the portal to the Pit when you first returned, didn’t you?” she whispered. “I felt it. And then something else—or rather, someone else—followed you, like a hiccup. An accidental ripple across the wrinkle between the realms.” Her brow knitted. “I’m sorry, Harry. I wish I could tell you otherwise, but it’s been quiet on my end.”

He inhaled, quelling a sudden flare of panic. If Soraya of all demons hasn’t heard anything . . . no. No way would he lose faith before he had even begun his search. “Well, the Immortal Realm is huge. There’s hope yet.”

At that, Soraya smiled and reached out to ruffle his hair. “There’s always hope, sweetheart.” She set down her mug and reached behind her neck to unclasp the precious pendant that she had worn for as long as Harry could remember. A single black diamond hung from the chain Eoin had gifted her when she retired from his service. And not just any diamond—her nebula diamond. She coiled the chain into a spiral before taking Harry’s hand and pressing it into his open palm. “Take this. It will amplify your powers.”

“I can’t take this from you,” said Harry immediately, staring at it in shock.

Soraya snorted. “Well, I’m not giving you a choice. I have a feeling that you’ll need it.” Her eyes twinkled. “To reject it would be a most unforgivable offense.”

“Won’t Eoin notice?” he asked.

She shook her head. “So long as you don’t wave it in front of his face.”

Even then Harry hesitated, but at her wink he finally obliged and fastened it behind his neck. “How, exactly, will this amplify my powers?”

“Who am I to say?” she mused. “All of our powers differ so vastly. Perhaps it will help you with fatigue from shadow jumping.”

And how could he turn down an offer like that? Harry grabbed her hands and pressed his brow to her knuckles. “A million thanks, Soraya.” With a sigh of dread, he released her. “I suppose I ought to go and find Eoin now to tell him that I’m long overdue for a vacation.”

“Nonsense,” she said, ushering him toward the front door. “You have no time to lose. I will speak to him on your behalf.”

An enormous weight slid from his shoulders. “I owe you, Soraya.”

She waved him away. “Just water my grass sometime, sweetheart.”

Harry yanked the door open before the anygné could even finish her sentence. He leapt off the porch and shifted midair, shedding human skin for silken fur, a whole new world of sensation, and of course, wings. With a few mighty flaps, he shot into the sky, a great hulking beast that instilled fear into the hearts of every being that happened to glance up as his shadow devoured them from above.

From that moment onward, he had practically ransacked every city, forest, cave, town, pub, inn, and prison without rest, hunting for leads, no matter how minuscule. Soraya crossed paths with him once to deliver the message that Eoin had granted him an astonishingly generous one hundred days to rest. Of course, Eoin’s so-called generosity was always a curse in disguise. Although Harry had never taken a day off before, the Ruler of Darkness would probably add a few decades to his indenture in exchange for the borrowed time. These one hundred days would cost Harry dearly—but he was willing to pay any price if it meant finding Orion.

He searched Rèvé first, and then flew to Glassfall, with its crystalline towers that climbed farther than the eye could see, then to Llyrio, a city full of hoarders and hunters of wares from every corner of the Immortal Realm. Next came Vathalin, where he had to plug his ears with molten wax to prevent the Vathe’s hypnotizing chants from siphoning his soul away. He even dared to search Oentheo—the home of the Council of Immortals, the city where the nine gods and goddesses played kings and queens in Highcourt Hall. The city where neither he, nor Eoin, nor any of his subjects would ever be welcome.

Harry snuck in anyway.

At the end of the first week, he paid a visit to Saint’s Market, where he forked over a century’s pay for the most powerful tracking stone he could get his hands on.

The stone led him to a forest of silver sterling trees. A patch of frost coated the bark of one tree, unmelted and perfectly intact. Mortal magic.

And more importantly, ice magic.

After combing the area for days, Harry spied a cluster of wilting blood blossoms and picked up a scent. Orion’s scent. Riding on the sheer elation of his discovery, Harry scoured thousands of miles worth of nearby land, and yet, somehow . . . all other traces of Orion had completely vanished.

He chose to spend his last ten days in Harangirr, a terrifyingly immense desert metropolis of blue sand. The tracking stone proved useless after it had led him to the blood blossoms, and Harangirr was his last true hope. Because while cities like Harangirr and Glassfall and Rèvé were already impossibly huge, there was one place, one underworld that utterly dwarfed them all.

The Pit.

It was the eternal, inescapable grave Harry had thrown Priscilla into. The infernal hellscape real monsters called home. And with the exception of Eoin and his shadowlings, no living creature entered the Pit and ever returned—dead or alive.

Orion couldn’t have ended up there. He just couldn’t have.

Yet with every street Harry prowled, every building he broke into, desperately seeking out Orion’s scent . . .

The more it seemed like Orion might truly be gone forever.

And now, Harry’s hundred days had ticked down to zero.

The bar spun around him as Harry flagged down the bartender for his twentieth shot of absynthe. Each inhale ripped through his throat, ragged as a knife wound. But he still kept drinking until he slipped into murky oblivion. Vaguely, he noted that the seishi had won their game. They grinned a full mouth of pointy piranha teeth at him. He could only stare back.

Harry hadn’t just let himself down. He had let Asterin down, too. He had promised her that he would find Orion.

Orion, his Orion, lost and alone and likely dead by now.

He finished his thirtieth-something glass and rubbed his face, too numb to even feel his own touch. The bar lights had faded to fuzzy neon blotches.

“Pardon me,” Harry slurred to the bartender. He winced at the nauseating pressure building at the back of his skull and fished out a few more gold notes, too wasted to bother counting them out, and slid them across the counter.

The bartender snapped the coins up only all too happily. They didn’t count them either.

“Could you—” Harry hiccuped. Three iridescent bubbles floated out of his mouth. “Could you please summon a sleijh for me?”

The bartender chuckled. “Sure, son. Where to?”

“The Shadow Palace,” he managed to murmur just as his eyelids drooped shut and his body sagged onto the counter. He inhaled a sharp whiff of the poor creature’s terror, but by the time Harry thought to offer some words of comfort—not that he really had any—the absynthe had already dragged him deep down under.