AUTUMNAL EQUINOX, MIDNIGHT
I came to under another glittering crescent moon.
Black night, black ground, blackness in my head.
I turned toward the gate still writhing in the air like a mirror.
Please turn black, I begged. Send her through. Send her back, to me.
Please.
The gate seethed, shifting and rolling, billowing mightily as if a battle warred within. But the color didn’t shift. No black, not when I was desperate for it.
The ground rocked. A warning shift.
Thad grabbed my arm. He hauled me away from the gate, as he pressed athletic shorts into my hands.
“Rives! This rock is shaking. Let’s go!”
I shook off his arm as I slid on the shorts. Professor Bracken stood nearby, arms crossed, gazing at the gate, grief written all over his face. I couldn’t meet his eyes.
I’d broken my promise to him.
I whipped my head back toward the gate. I’d made a promise to Skye, too, and I damn sure wouldn’t break it.
SKYE!
“Rives!” Charley cried. “You have to come!”
“No.” I stared at the gate. “I promised Skye. I won’t leave her,” I said. I promised her she wouldn’t die alone. I didn’t count Nil as company.
In my mind, Nil didn’t count at all.
I dropped to my knees. I would stay with Skye to the end.
Skye!
The gate writhed, still open. Still taunting me with hope.
“Rives!” Thad shouted. “We have to go, brother!”
I didn’t move. With Skye in my soul, I focused on the gate hanging a few meters high, thinking of all I couldn’t see; I thought of the darkness, real and cruel and hell-bent on keeping her; I fought it like Skye had done for months, only now I fought for her.
Skye!
Pushing through that blackness, I reached for Skye with my mind, willing her to hear me. To feel me, to give her strength, to show her that she wasn’t alone.
I hit a wall. Invisible and unyielding, it pushed me back. Repelled me with shocking force.
And my heart told me Skye was trapped behind it.
SKYE!
I love you with all that I am. I am with you, always.
Skye.
I breathed her name, reaching for her with my soul, knowing this was it. My final shot. For her to hear me, for her to beat Nil.
For her to find her way back.
Because if anyone could find a way out, it was my Skye.
Tick.
Tock.
The gate’s iridescence surged. I shielded my eyes from the flash. The writhing doorway glowed like a white-hot ember in the night, burning more brilliantly than I’d ever seen. Not reflecting the crescent moon above but lit from within—like a fragment of the surface of the sun.
Something terrible was about to happen. I took a step backward as a crisp thought slashed through my head:
RUN.
I ran.
Still writhing in midair, every speck of the gate turned a brilliant orange-red. Fire red.
And then the gate exploded.
The force of the blast blew me back. I slammed into the ground as flames shot from the gate; they blew past me with a powerful rush of air unlike anything I’d ever felt before. Noise rumbled like a freight train as the ground shook; my ears rang, then an equally massive surge of air roared back the way the first one had come, sucked back into the gate. Branches and rocks and a cat flew past, toward the gate; I grabbed hold of a tree, bracing against the snarling rush of air. Lana slid past me, her hands scrabbling along the ground as she tried to stop her slide. I caught hold of her ankle and held it tight
Abruptly, the wind surge stopped. The mountain was half destroyed; its top, gone. The platform itself had split in two; a jagged crack mutilated the ground, the intricate rings destroyed.
The gate was gone.
Skye!
Hauling myself to my knees, I searched for Skye, first scanning the platform’s perimeter, then closing my eyes and reaching with my mind.
Nothing. Just me, in my own head. No darkness, no remnant of Skye.
Around me, trees crackled, their tips on fire.
“Skye!” I screamed. It came out a choked rasp.
“Rives!” the professor yelled. He sounded far away. “We have to go!”
“No!” I threw off his arm. “Not when Skye’s still there!”
“She’ll take the next one,” he said, his iron grip insistent. “She has time!”
I stared at him, stunned. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know Skye brought fire into the gate. That Skye sacrificed herself for humanity’s future.
That she was gone.
“This island is unstable, and it’s on fire.” His voice softened. “It’s time to go, son.”
“He’s right.” Thad’s quiet voice sounded behind me. I turned to find him flanked by Lana and Charley. The pair wore matching expressions of shock and grief. “Skye would want you to go. She would want you to live.”
I’m asking you to live, Skye had told me, tears in her eyes, resolve in her heart. To walk into that gate and let me go.
I’d left her behind. She’d asked me to, but the choice was mine.
Her choice was selfless. Mine had felt forced. And yet I’d have to live with it, with Skye’s death on my hands.
The heat intensified. Around us, the trees spat flames.
I stared at the platform until Thad ripped me away.
And then I ran. Through the trees, away from the platform, toward the water and the waiting boat.
Away from Skye.
The mountain rumbled. Behind us, billowing steam filled the night sky, obliterating the stars. The Death Twin burned.
I’d lost.
Skye was gone, forever.
Live, she’d said.
How could I live without her?