Evertrue

THIRTY-SIX

NOW

The Everneath. The vault.

The ground beneath my feet rumbled, causing me to lose my balance. I fell to the dirt as the rumbling turned into swaying. Jack pulled me up. “Run!”

The walls lurched back and forth. Granite-like boulders from the highest wall began to fall to the ground. The Everneath was deteriorating around us, and there was no place we would be safe.

Actually, there was one place.

“Go to the lake!” I screamed. The lake was where the Tunnels were hidden—maybe the Tunnels would be the only place we could find refuge. We ran along the wall until we found a hole large enough for us to squeeze through. I could see the lake up ahead.

“Are you sure?” Jack said.

I forgot he had no idea why we were about to jump into the lake.

“The lake is the entrance to the Tunnels!” I said.

He didn’t even hesitate. He just followed me and Cole.

I paused for a split second, remembering the last time I’d jumped into this same lake. I’d held Cole’s hand. We’d counted down together and jumped together.

Here we were again. Full circle. And for a split second I looked into Cole’s eyes. He stared back at me with the depth of that memory behind his eyes, and then I knew. I knew he was remembering that same moment. He was reliving it, just as I was.

His memory was back.

I didn’t have time to dwell on the revelation, or wonder if he was on our side anymore. Besides, the Everneath was in ruins. There was nothing really left to rule. We jumped into the lake just as the nearest wall of the High Court crumbled and fell to the ground.

“Dive,” I shouted to Jack as I braced myself for the impact of the water at the end of the long fall.

The impact didn’t hurt as much this time, probably because I hadn’t done a total belly flop. We swam to shore in the pitch-black and waited.

The rumbling went on forever, as if the ground had swallowed something it didn’t like, and its intestines were twisting and turning, trying to rid itself of the object.

Cole flicked on his lighter, illuminating the giant cavern sheltering the lake we’d just jumped into. Rocks and dirt fell to the ground all around us.

A particularly large jolt sent shock waves through the cavern. We heard a giant crack coming from above.

“Nik!” Cole shouted. He dived toward me and tackled me to the ground just as a boulder the size of my bedroom fell from the ceiling.

He’d landed on top of me. I breathed hard, knowing he’d just saved my life. Again. “Thank you.”

Jack ripped Cole off me. “We have to get out of here! It’s not safe.”

Cole grabbed our hands and zapped us back up to the High Court just as the last rumbles faded away.

At least it was supposed to be the High Court. But the entire thing was decimated. The flames of the inner ring of the labyrinth had been doused, leaving a circle of scarred ground behind. As far as I could see, everything had been flattened. There was no labyrinth left.

In the middle of what used to be the High Court stood a pole, with a single flag swaying in the wind. A green flag.

“It’s the same green as your eyes,” Jack said to me. He raised a hand to touch my cheek, but just before he made contact, his hand became blurry around the edges. I blinked, trying to clear away the film from my eyes, but it wasn’t a film. The blurrier his hand became, the more I could see through it.

I looked up at his face.

“Jack!” I said. His face was doing the same thing. I could see the landscape behind him through his translucent skin. I reached out for him, but I only touched air. I panicked, grasping and straining to make contact.

“It’s okay,” Cole said. “I expected that. There’s no energy left here to keep humans. He’ll be waiting for you back on the Surface.”

I released a breath of relief and then shook my head and looked around me.

“Where are the other Everlivings?” I said.

Cole frowned, somehow exhibiting a look of both extreme grief and extreme relief. “We destroyed their hearts. They’re probably back on the Surface by now.”

“Why is there anything left? Shouldn’t it all be gone?”

Cole came up beside me. “There are still two hearts left to destroy.” He pulled out his guitar pick and my compass. The one he had stolen that night from my bedroom. The one he swore he couldn’t find.

A flash of anger rose in my chest. “Where did you—”

“I always had it, Nik. Ever since we went back to look for it at my condo. I found it in a guitar case, and I took it, even though at the time I didn’t really understand what I was doing.”

“What about the compass that the queen had?”

“That was just another compass I’d found in the vault. Apparently compasses are common objects for hearts to be turned into.”

Cole had my heart. He’d had it the entire time. There had been no reason for me to come down and kill the queen, because she never held my compass. It was always in Cole’s possession.

“Why?” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?” And then I realized why. My breathing became frantic. My earlier suspicions were right. Cole had regained his memory. “You lied to me. You wanted me to take over the throne. You wanted me to feel like I had to kill the queen.”

“No,” Cole said. Then the carefully crafted blank facade of his face cracked, and with a deep frown he revealed a rueful expresson. “But for a moment, after my full memory returned, I wondered what I really wanted.”

I crumpled to the ground. “Did I just do what you’ve wanted me to do all along?”

Cole sank to the ground beside me. “My memory started to return right after the Feast. After I saw the band get murdered before my eyes. I didn’t get my full memory back, though, until we’d broken into the vault of hearts. When the queen showed up, I grabbed the closest compass I could find. There were literally like twenty compasses to choose from.” He looked down. “I also remembered getting tortured by the queen. Remembered when she leaned over me with her hot poker; the token hanging around her neck fell out of her dress. I saw what her heart looked like.”

“Why didn’t you tell me right away?”

He looked up and gave me an impish grin. “Forgive me, Nik. For a weak moment I remembered what I used to want. And I wasn’t ready to give it up.” He reached toward my hand and closed my fingers around my compass. “But look. Now your heart is in your own hands. And you can do what you want.” He paused. “And just so you know your options, you’re in charge here now. The Everneath, the little part that’s left of the Everneath, will obey your every whim if you want this life. You are the queen.”

I looked all around at the rubble and the desolation. There wasn’t another Everliving in sight. There were no structures. No labyrinth. No High Court. But even if there had been . . .

“No,” I said. “I don’t want this.”

Cole nodded. “I know. Then are you ready to break your heart?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “You know, if I had known how this was all going to end . . .”

He frowned and closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them again, I would’ve sworn they were watering. He blinked and cleared the tears away. “Nik, think about it. You’ve always known how this was going to end.”

He touched my face lightly. I didn’t stop him.

It was just me, and Cole, and the tiny patch of land we were on, and each of our hearts in our hands.

He held his pick, ready to snap it in between his forefinger and thumb. I held my compass. It had a cover, like a pocket watch. I bent it backward at the hinges.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Wait,” Cole said. He looked me in the eye. “I always knew you’d change my life.” He glanced away, briefly, and shook his head at some unknown memory. “You know, a psychic once told me I would have no other Forfeits after you. That you would be my last. At the time, I let myself believe that it was fate that we would end up together, ruling the world. And if it was fate, why fight it? It gave me license to do whatever I needed to do to keep you.

“But even then I knew. Deep down I knew you would be my beginning and my end. My moral consciousness began taking shape the moment I met you. In that way, my own soul began. And then when I fell in love with you, my own heart began.”

“Cole, we don’t need to talk about this now,” I said.

“We do,” he said emphatically. Then he took a deep breath. “I mean, we’re finally alone. We have nothing tying us together anymore. It might be our only time to say these things.”

I hadn’t thought about that . . . that this might be the last time I saw him. I was sure he would form a new band on the Surface, but really, there was no reason we would see each other.

But I’d never liked good-byes. “We’re not going to say good-bye. We’ve been through too much for good-byes. Besides, we’ll see each other.”

He gave me a sad smile. “Still, just humor me. If you have anything you want to say, say it now.”

If I had anything I wanted to say. What did I want to say to him? He had taken me to the Everneath. Fed on me for a hundred years.

But he would say he had saved me from my own pain. Made the loss of my mother bearable.

He had betrayed me in the Everneath. Tricked me into feeding on him three times so I would be forced to become an Everliving.

But he would say he was simply giving fate a little push.

“I don’t know what I want to say to you,” I said. “Maybe, after some time, I’ll know. But not now.”

He frowned and nodded. “Okay. It’s okay.”

He lifted his eyes skyward, and was it my imagination or was he blinking back tears again? He let loose a shaky breath. He seemed so disappointed not to know right at this minute. I put my hand on his arm. “I promise I’ll tell you one day,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, bringing his eyes down to meet mine.

I stood and reached my hand toward Cole. He took it and I pulled him up beside me. I held the compass out again. “Ready?”

He closed his eyes. Squeezed them shut. Why was he so scared? It wasn’t as if breaking our hearts would literally hurt us. He should know this. Breaking our hearts would make us mortal. Wouldn’t it?

He squeezed the pick, bending it.

And then suddenly I knew.

“Cole,” I said.

He stopped. I thought about the queen and how she had died when I had broken her heart. She had basically turned into an old lady and then transformed into dust before our eyes. I’d thought she had just died a dramatic death because we had destroyed her world.

But before she had died, she’d said I didn’t know what really happened when Everliving hearts were broken. Cole was scared to break his own pick, but he didn’t seem as worried about me breaking mine. If he thought it would be painful, he’d be comforting me right now. I knew enough about his love for me to know that.

But he wasn’t concerned about me. How was breaking my own heart different from breaking his? And how were we different?

Besides the fact that he was about a thousand years older than me.

A thousand years old.

“Cole,” I said. I spoke slowly. “What happens when we break our hearts?”

He gave a nervous smile. “You know what happens. We become human.”

I sucked in a gasp of air and tried to pry the pick out of his hand, but once I started to fight against him, he closed his fingers around it tightly.

“What are you doing?” he asked, accusation in his eyes.

“Give me your heart, Cole,” I said, my voice catching on the word. “Give me your heart. I know what happens. I know why you’re scared.”

He blinked a long blink. “No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do. Breaking your heart returns you to your natural state. And your natural state is . . .” I gasped as my voice drifted off. I didn’t want to finish that sentence.

Cole finished it for me. “Over nine hundred years old.” He nodded.

I started shaking. “No. We can’t do this.” I tried to pry his fingers open, but the stupid Everliving was strong. I dug my fingernails into his skin. He winced, but he didn’t budge. “Give me your heart.”

He slowly shook his head.

“Give me your heart!” The tears sprang to my eyes, and my lower lip trembled violently.

“Nik, you know we have to finish what we started. And that will only happen when every heart is destroyed. Every. Heart.”

The other Everlivings hadn’t simply gone to the Surface. They’d grown old and turned to dust.

I was having trouble breathing. “Please. There has to be another way. Our hearts are the only ones left. We’re the only Everlivings left. We can just go on. I’ll break my own heart. But you . . .”

My hands shook. Cole grabbed them. Held them still. Looked me in the eye. “We see it to the end. We don’t stop until it’s done.”

I bit my lip to keep it from trembling. “Give me your heart,” I said.

He tilted his head, leaned forward, watching my eyes the entire time to make sure it was okay, and kissed me lightly on the lips. “You already have it.”

I heard a faint snap, and I wondered for a moment if an actual broken heart made a sound.

The lines around Cole’s mouth became deeper. The skin of his eyelids sagged a little lower.

“Cole?”

He held my gaze for a moment longer before his knees gave out, and he began to sink to the ground. I went with him, supporting his weight as we sank. I put my arms around him and held him tightly, and then in front of his face, I snapped my compass back, breaking the hinges.

“We do this together,” I said.

He nodded. And then his hair started to go lighter, turning white and thinning out; and before either of us could say another word, he collapsed in my arms.

Moments later he was dust. My hands were empty. And I was alone.