“Where are my friends?”
“You have six minutes and change. Tell me what you want to do. I am offering you life—or you can die and go unto the Fade to see yourshellan.”
“I have no choice—look at me,” he snapped. “So I need my friends to—”
“I shall tell them, of course. Whatever you wish.”
As she fell silent, her eyes stared back at him, challenging his decision.
“I don’t know what you’re offering,” he countered.
“I offer you life. All you have to do is host some energy.”
“Energy?”
“It’s what you’re losing because your vessel is so compromised. The energy I’m referring to needs a place and it will heal you if you allow it to stay.”
“Like I’m an electrical cord,” he muttered.
“No, like you’re a lamp.”
“That makes no sense.”
When she just stared at him, he dropped his eyes and looked down at himself. The burns on his chest were open, weeping, bloody in some places, debrided in others. And in the midst of the raw damage there were flashes of white, his rib bones, his sternum. Down below, his lower body was utterly shriveled, with no muscle left.
Flaring his hands, he held them up. He was missing some of his fingers on one side, and when he turned over what would have been his dagger hand, he had to swallow a surge of bile. The flesh of his palm had disappeared, the inner workings of things completely exposed.
“Are you sure you want to go unto the Fade?” the female asked. “When you are so worried about another who needs you.”
“Myshellanwaits for me on the Other Side.”
It was more a defiant protest than any statement of fact. But who was he arguing with? This ancient female… or himself?
As if she were prepared to settle the debate they weren’t putting to words, she rose to her feet with the grace of a younger female. Padding across to a steamer trunk, she opened the lid and rifled through some contents. The mirror she brought back seemed like something that had been passed down, its glass wavy, its frame pitted. And yet given the reverence with which it was held, it was clearly cherished.
Kane reached forward with his ruined hands. When she just shook her head, he thought, but of course she was right. He wouldn’t be able to hold it up in all likelihood, and moreover, why would she want his bloody stumps on her prized possession.
“Take a deep breath,” she murmured.
“How do you know I haven’t already seen my reflection since the explosion?”
He wasn’t surprised that she didn’t answer him. But given that he hadn’t actually gotten a gander at himself, he did inhale as she suggested, even though he doubted it was necessary—
Kane’s heart stopped and his lungs turned to stone. Strips of flesh hung off his chin, and one eye had no lid to speak of—which made him wonder numbly how he managed to turn off his sight. He had no mouth, just the whites of his teeth spearing into his gums, and his nose was nothing but two holes into his skull, what had once been shaped by cartilage and bone burned off.
He had almost no hair.
For some reason, of all the damage, the scruffy baldness, the patches of exposed skull, were the hardest to see—or perhaps his mind simply refused to grapple with what people had been looking at when they had sat next to his bed.
“Where have I gone,” he said hoarsely. “Why…”
Well, he knew why, at least when it came to the explosion. He had taken his restraint collar off, breaking the seal and igniting the charge so that two deserving souls who were in love could have a future.
A lifetime with the one who mattered most.
As he shifted his eyes to the old female, the expression on her face seemed odd to him. Then again, she was a stranger.
And he was in proper shock.