Personally, I find the light shimmering from spiderwebs alarming in its own way. I imagine the Zora from thirty seconds ago would have agreed with me. It’s of no use arguing, though. Zora’s face is struck with wonder, her eyes shimmering with the weblight that dances in her bubbling tears.
She reaches out, as if to touch the dancing light on the cavern wall, but she withdraws her hand, remembering that, of course, it’s only a glow. Nothing tangible.
“Home looks like this, doesn’t it?” she whispers as she clutches her chest.
I don’t have the heart to tell her it’s only her prison, the room in which Abra has her locked away. That the beautiful speckles of light that glitter in through the glass windows are simply a sorry apology, the remnants of a cold female’s conscience, otherwise seared numb.
But then I remember a way it can be true.
“The land we’re from—it’s dreadfully cold,” I say. “Everyone stays miserable most of the year. But at night the sky lights up with swirls of color. Mother, our mother, always says that’s why the people in Mystral stay. Because we can’t bear thinking that there are parts of the world where the sky doesn’t shimmer with colors.”
“Our mother sounds painfully sentimental,” Zora says dryly, but she wipes her sleeves on her cheeks just the same.
“So you think we can get through this way?” I ask, unsure of where to go from here.
Zora tears her gaze away from the wall, then turns to face the web at the far end of the cave. As she approaches, she brings her sleeve to her mouth and chews on it absentmindedly.
When I examine the wall more closely, I understand why.
This web is much more intricate than the tangle of string that broke our fall. In fact, this web is a masterpiece.
The sparkling tendrils curve and cross and turn and pivot, all to form the likeness of a girl.
A girl who looks a tad too much like Zora for my comfort.
“Well. I guess that erases any doubt we might have had about this being the correct location,” I say, and even as I gaze up at the portrait, my chest begins to ache.
“I used to think it was the Fates who drew these for me,” Zora says, running her hand across the likeness of her fingers until she ends up pulling strands away and the fingers crumble to decay. “That they were trying to send me a message—a confirmation that I’d done their work during the times I struggled with doubt.”
Zora blinks hard, then turns back to me. “Now I know it was just a curmudgeon of a male who had nothing better to do than collect knowledge of worlds unknown.”
Something sharp lodges itself in my throat at the prickle of hate on my sister’s tongue. There’s a part of me that’s still horrified by what Gunter did to her, the fact that he hid the reality of her dream state from me all these years. I wish that I could go back and ask him why he did it, if he had a good reason.
But I can’t ask him. Not anymore.
“Nox? Nox.”
Someone’s shaking me, startling me back to reality, anchoring me until I can survive the storm of my memories, of what they say about me.
“How could I go back?” I whisper.
Zora frowns. “What do you mean, how could you go back? We’ve made it all this way. You have to go back. You have a girl to get back to, remember?”
A girl to get back to. Isn’t that what Farin had said when I’d woken on this island?
Isn’t that exactly the problem?
“Zora, I’m a monster where I come from. Where we come from.”
She crosses her arms, looking me up and down as she sticks her foot out for balance. “Yes, I’m aware of that. You’re my living nightmare, remember? A recurring one at that.”
I sigh, rubbing at the crease between my brows. “You have no idea how many people I’ve killed.”
Zora’s face goes blank. “I thought you said it was him—it was Farin who killed them.”
“Most of the time I had a difficult time distinguishing the difference. The line between him and me…it blurred over time. It’s why he couldn’t separate himself from my feelings for Blaise. It’s why, when I’m in that body, I’m so desperately hungry. It’s why I lose control.”
“Nox, you have to go back,” Zora says, resting her hand against my arm.
“There are people there…families…I’m the villain in their story, Zora. There, I hurt the innocent. I’m not good. But here…”
Zora smiles up at me, but it’s a sad sort of smile, the type that makes divots in the corners of her eyes and the middle of her brow. “In this life, you get to be the hero.”
I nod my head, and we stand in the silence for a while before Zora says, “I like them better, too. The lives where I get to be the hero. But that’s the thing, Nox. I used to think that with each life, I could only fit one role. What if that’s not how it works? What if you can be the hero and the villain?”
“I don’t think anyone gets to be both, Zora. Not at the same time, at least.”
She shrugs. “Maybe you’re right. But you’ve still got to go back. You might not be a monster here, but Blaise isn’t here either.”
We pause for a moment, and it’s the silence that frightens me most of all. The emptiness in the conversation where I don’t have a defense, where I can’t simply agree with my sister.
“What? You don’t want her?” Zora asks.
The words cut, and I shake my head. “No, of course I want her. I want her everything. Every stupid little crass joke, every bruise on her heart, every laugh. I want all of her, but…”
Zora raises a brow. “But what?”
“But I’m not sure she wants me.”
