They are all here, their eyes open and trained on me, their lips cracked, expressions solemn. The whispers in my head grow to a roar, and I realize that the voices have always been their voices, the voices of those I have killed, growing and growing over the years as more have died.
What wolf? You’re a little lamb. This whisper was Dante’s voice.
Broken so easily. Enzo.
The dead cannot exist in this world on their own. Gemma.
You do not leave until I say so. The Night King of Merroutas.
Go ahead. Finish the job. My father.
All this time, the voices have been the whispers of the dead, growing in number, taunting me, haunting me, driving me to madness for their blood that stains my hands.
I stumble backward with a choked gasp. Magiano rushes to catch me before I fall in the snow. “Adelina!” he exclaims. The others stop to look at me too. “What’s happening? What are you seeing?”
“I see everyone,” I sob. “Enzo. Gemma. My father. My sister. They’re all here, Magiano. Oh gods, I can’t do this. I can’t go on.” My knees give way, and I sink, still unable to tear my gaze from the sight. This isn’t real, the rational part of me tries to say. All an illusion. Just an illusion. Just a nightmare. This isn’t real.
Except it is real. Except all of these people really are dead. And they are dead because of me.
“Don’t make me go in there,” I whisper, clinging to Magiano’s arms as he leans over me.
Raffaele approaches and kneels in the snow beside me, while farther ahead, Maeve, Lucent, and Teren look on. Raffaele takes one of my hands. As I struggle to regain control over my power, he begins to use his. I can feel his threads intertwining with my heart, seeking the panic and fear within me and pushing it gently down. My desperate stare goes from the hanging bodies to Raffaele’s beautiful face, his olive skin, and his black hair framed by snow, the ice lining his long lashes, the green and gold of his eyes.
“Breathe, mi Adelinetta,” he whispers. “Breathe.”
I try to do as he says. Raffaele is not Violetta—he cannot save me from my power. But slowly, gradually, his soothing begins to smooth over the raging tides of energy in my chest that threaten to drive me mad. I feel the energy settling, and with it, the bodies begin to fade. They look like ghosts, translucent and floating. Then they turn so faint, I can no longer see them. My breath fogs in the air. My limbs feel weak, like I’ve just been swimming for hours. I lean heavily against Magiano.
Finally, Raffaele stops. He looks exhausted too, as if it were harder to work his magic here against mine. I take a deep breath, then nod and draw away from Magiano. “I’m all right,” I say, trying to convince myself of it. “The energy here overwhelms me.”
Raffaele nods once. “It pulls at me too,” he tells me gently. “In a million different directions. This is not an easy place to be, a realm between us and the gods.”
Lucent walks over to me and offers me her hand. I stare in surprise. When I take it, she helps me to my feet. Beside her, Maeve nods at me once. There is something lighting her face, a sudden recognition. “Your sister,” she says. “You said you saw her back there, as an illusion. A ghost of the dead.”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“So that is why,” Maeve murmurs. “Of course.” She glances at Raffaele. “You said all of our alignments to the gods must be in the immortal realm in order for us to be here.” Maeve looks back at me. “We were able to enter without Violetta’s alignments.”
“Because her soul is already in the immortal world,” Raffaele finishes, understanding. His eyes soften at me. “In the Underworld.”
She is already here, I realize. And somehow, this thought sends a wild surge of hope through me. She is already here. Perhaps I can see her again.
“We can’t be far,” Maeve says, turning away from me and continuing again down the snowy path through the forest. “The pulse keeps getting stronger.”
The others all feel it too; I am not alone. We’re not far. We’re almost there. I repeat it to myself, letting it comfort me and calm my energy. We are not far from Violetta, where she waits for us in the realm of Moritas.
The others turn away, and I start walking after them. Magiano stays beside me, his hand now intertwined with mine. I try to concentrate on the warmth coming from him. I’m too afraid to look back at the treetops, for fear that I will see the dangling bodies again. I’m afraid that this time I might see bodies of those still alive, those who can still die.
As we go, the moons seem to move in the skies, edging closer together, growing ever larger until they look like they might hurtle right into us. They are going to align, I realize, each overlapping the next, when we reach the entrance to the origin point. At the edges of my vision, dark shapes still flitter through the forest, vanishing when I try to look at them directly. I grasp for the threads in my chest and then try to hold on as tightly as I can, to stop my unconscious weaving. The figures waver and vanish for a while. But they don’t go away altogether.
Finally, ahead of us, Maeve and Teren slow down. Through the forest and the night, a thin shaft of light shines in a clearing. I see it first. It glows against the bark of the trees, and as we round the corner, the glow intensifies, washing the landscape in an ethereal blue-white light. I squint. The trees grow sparse, then stop altogether. We step out into an enormous clearing of pristine snow. From here, we can see a valley nestled deep in the center of sharp, steep mountain ranges, with forests growing wild on either side.