Soul Seekers03 - Mystic Read Free Page A

on to me—sees right through my charade?
    “You gotta have a goal, Daire. You can’t hit a target you can’t see.”
    “The door.” I tip my head toward the large wooden doors with elaborate carvings as though I just now thought of it. As though I haven’t spent every waking moment imagining my palms pressed hard against them, pushing toward freedom.
    I slide a slow foot before me, careful to keep my weight evenly distributed. No use injuring myself further just to prove a point. Aware of Axel shadowing me, his moves perfectly mirroring mine. Until the next step when my gait falters, my legs quiver in protest, and he slips a steady arm around me and props me hard against his chest.
    “You’ll get there, Daire. Not to worry,” he says, as I sigh in defeat, allowing my body to sag in surrender as he lowers me back to my sickbed and tucks the blankets around me. “It’s just going to take a little longer than you’d like, that’s all.”
    I give an obedient nod and slide my lids shut. Appearing to be lulled back to sleep by his whispered promise of soon, very soon …
    Until the door closes behind him and I leap from my bed.

 
     
    two
     
    Dace
    Dark.
    The word sounds in my head. Drums in my ears. Jolting me out of the sweet anesthetized void, and back to the harsh glare of wakefulness again.
    Like a leaky faucet, it pauses, gathers, and then drops once again.
    Dark .
    It’s the first word I’ve heard for … how many days? It’s impossible to tell. With no trace of sun or moon, with only a dreary canopy of sticky gray sludge hanging overhead, time isn’t marked here in the way that I’m used to.
    Still, I’m glad for the company. Glad I’m no longer left to fend for myself in this strange, foreign land.
    I try to crack an eye open. See who has joined me. But a thick coating of crud has glued my lids shut, and it takes a bit of digging with bloodstained fingers to break it all up.
    “Who’s there?” I call, my voice coarse and strange. A result of the festering wound on my neck. “Show yourself!” I roll to my left and survey my surroundings, only to find no one there. Then I roll to my right and confirm the same thing.
    It’s just me.
    Only me.
    With nothing but this bleak and barren landscape for company.
    Dark.
    I heave a deep sigh and flop onto my back. Tempted to laugh at my foolishness, but the mirth just won’t come. It died along with all the other virtues I once held in high regard.
    Things like faith, hope, charity, and love have no place here.
    Though love was surprisingly stubborn. It put up a good fight.
    Long after the others were lost, it’s love that held on.
    Determined to stick well past the point when my heart became a cold, bitter stone.
    Long past the point when my memories of Daire railed against me, turning into an enemy existing solely to taunt me. A crafty, cunning adversary with a surplus of patience, willing to wait for just the right moment—when exhaustion turns to despair—to strike hard and fast. Able to devastate with a few happy images that are welcome at first—quick takes of Daire laughing, Daire loving, before fast-forwarding straight to the moment when her eyes shone with fear once she saw how I’d changed. Accurately guessing the embarrassing truth of the reckless choice that I made. How I sacrificed my soul in an attempt to save her, by becoming like Cade.
    Still, it was her face I clung to when death came to claim me.
    It was her face that cushioned the fall.
    But now that I’m no longer at home with the living—now that I’ve no place among the dead—it’s her face that haunts me.
    Daire is gone.
    Dead and gone.
    In my attempt to save her, I failed her. And now, in the place where my soul once thrived, lives only regret.
    Dark.
    I bite hard on my tongue. Cover my ears with blood-caked hands. Still the word sounds again.
    And that’s when I get it.
    That’s when I realize that it doesn’t sound from outside of me—it’s a word conceived in my