Stranna’s eyes snap to mine.
“What have you done?” She doesn’t spare a moment for the drop of my jaw at her accusation. She bolts up the corridor, away from the noise.
I follow, but the sounds get louder and as my confusion fades, I piece together the clamor. Metal rustles against leather, the same sounds I heard in the Arena and training areas. The yips are from some sort of nightbeast, similar to the ones surrounding the wheat field.
Someone—rather, multiple someones—has breached the catacombs. And they’re after the Spores. They’re after the kids.
I find Stranna swiftly ushering the children into different alcoves. Erik and the other Spores emerge from their room at the noise. I glimpse James the Vetter for a brief moment. He is alive. And despite the current state of panic, he seems energized and focused. Not bitter and trembling—like when I first met him.
Stranna tries to keep the kids quiet, but they’re protesting as the basketball is left behind. Straining against her.
I scoop up a little girl in one hand and shove the basketball into Everett’s arms.
“Follow Stranna, and take this with you.”
“There!” A shout comes from behind.
I glance over my shoulder. A clump of tirones surges through the tunnel with sickly skin-and-bone dogs on leashes straining against their chains to get to us.
The kids scream. Stranna screams.
The tirones release the dogs.
The children bolt up the tunnel while Erik and another Spore move their way toward the tirones, wielding mistblades, to meet the dogs. James cuts one down. Erik stabs another, then holds up his hands toward the tirones. His magical sword stays in its sheath.
“We are not your enemie—”
A tiro thrusts a gladius through Erik’s heart.
I watch stunned as he crumples to the ground. A child wails from an alcove next to me. Heidi. She witnessed the whole thing. And I told her she’d be safe here.
Something within me snaps.
“Stop!” I bellow, dropping down next to Erik, but he’s already gone. Pale and lifeless. Stranna’s past words echo in my head: “We don’t kill, Cain. We die.”
“That’s him!” One tiro points to me. “Icarus!”
Several of them rush me and grip me from all angles, dragging me away from the group. The others swarm up the corridor after the kids.
Tiny little spark sounds sprinkle the air, like a dozen people trying to start lighters at the same time. As the tirones catch up, kids start disappearing left and right. Some squeeze their eyes tight and then simply snuff out like an extinguished flame, and tirones grope at air.
They’re waking up. Going back to the Real World.
A tiro grabs Everett, and he shouts, yanking against the man. Everett squeezes his eyes shut tight, but nothing happens. He tries again, then looks around in panic.
“Stranna! I can’t do it! I can’t do it anymore!”
Stranna leaps at the tiro, drawing her sword, but it falls from her hands at the briefest deflection. She collapses against him like a damp towel, giving a valiant fight but having no strength or energy because of the weakness of her physical body.
Four men carry me up the corridor away from the attack, one on each limb. My injured shoulder shoots blinding pain through me. My own weak body can’t resist.
Stranna crawls away from the tiro attacking her, shooing the remaining children around the corner. The tiro lifts his sword and hurtles after her.
“No!” A bend in the path blocks the fight from my view.
So much for saving Stranna. So much for getting Heidi to a safe place. So much for starting a new life. Somehow this is all my fault.
But why aren’t the tirones killing me? I look like a traitor to the Emperor. And maybe I am—I’ve been found with the Spores, delivering a child to them instead of to Luc. I strain against their holds as my emotions build. Smoke curls from my body. I egg the emotions on.
C’mon. C’mon, saber-toothed tiger!
“Look out!” one tiro says. “Knock him out before he creates something!”
One of them drops my arm, and my left shoulder thuds to the ground. I scrabble for someone’s ankle or weapon, but a sword hilt finds my temple first.
I’m still in the Nightmare when I wake. It feels like ages ago that I was in the landfill with Stranna’s unconscious body. When am I going to return to the Real World? Everything is still clear in my mind since Stranna stabbed me, and I do the math easily.
It’s because my wake times are so short in the Real World. Next time I wake up, I’ll have only two hours left awake. That’s the last leg before permanent Sleep. I’ve been in Tenebra for a couple days since falling asleep in the Jeep. I’m probably close to waking up, but there’s no way to tell how close.
I’m in a dark cell made of close-set blades instead of bars. They alternate between silver metal blade and mistblades. I expect that’s to guard against any sort of creature I might create from nightmist. But they don’t need to worry about that. I’m empty. Even when the tirones hauled me out of the catacombs and my emotions throbbed inside my mind, the nightmist felt far away.
Why?
Is it the weakness from my physical wounds or is it from all the time I spent with the Spores?
“Cain.” Emperor Luc is at my cell door. It’s his voice, but he’s not the same Emperor I met when I first arrived in Tenebra. He sits in a chair on the other side of the bars—a crude wooden chair with carved wheels half the size of wagon spokes. Almost like a wheelchair. He’s thin and bent and paler than a corpse.
