“If you can get through us,” Nisha spat.
He cackled sourly. “Oh, come on, what are you going to do? Kill me?”
My heart leapt into my mouth. My suspicions were confirmed—Ezra had no idea that he was no longer immortal. The five of us turned to one another, exchanging subtle glances so as not to arouse Ezra’s suspicions.
“There!” Nisha whispered, pointing to a figure creeping between the trunks.
Signaling to each other, we edged through the dark cool of the forest, stepping carefully over the tangled roots of undergrowth that twisted and turned beneath our feet. Right now, I felt invincible, my eyes picking out different colors and tiny details, while my ears pricked to the sounds of creatures rustling. There was one particular sound that held my attention—the slow movement of something heavy and deliberate. My eyes darted in the direction of the noise and discovered a shadow ducking behind a bush. Keeping silent, I signaled for Navan and Nisha to go around the back, cutting him off. They nodded and hurried away, their footfalls barely making a sound.
Meanwhile, Ronad, Kaido, and I pressed on, creating a horseshoe-shaped line of defense. If Ezra thought he could hide from us, he was sorely mistaken. At five against one, we had good odds, especially now that I had superhuman energy flowing through every cell. Nearing the bush, I could hear Ezra’s fractured breathing. He wasn’t scared; he was excited. The difference in his breath was as clear to me as day and night. The bastard was looking forward to fighting us, safe in the false knowledge that he couldn’t be killed. Well, we were about to show him.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I mocked.
In the darkness beyond, I made out Nisha and Navan approaching from behind. Ezra had no idea they were there, his heartrate remaining the same—excited but not too perturbed by the situation. The poor guy thought he could win this.
“Any last words?” Ronad asked.
Kaido smiled. “Yes, perhaps you would like to give us your eulogy?” For trash talk from Kaido, it wasn’t half bad.
Before anyone could say anything else, Ezra lunged from the bush and launched himself at Kaido. Neither coldblood was armed, though the rest of us had the weapons we’d left the cabin with—guns for Ronad, a bandolier of knives for me, an axe for Nisha, and a saber for Navan. Kaido was the only one of us who had nothing to defend himself with, though he was a mean opponent when it came to hand-to-hand combat. He proved it a moment later when he twisted fluidly away from Ezra and jumped onto his back, bringing the flat of his hand down hard on the rebel leader’s neck. Ezra tilted away in time, wincing as the blow hit home. He reached to grab Kaido’s ankles, but Kaido had already somersaulted onto the ground in front of him, whirling around to punch Ezra in the stomach.
As he stepped back, rounding on Ezra, I saw the flash of a blade a moment too late. The knife hurtled toward Kaido, who appeared to see it at the very last second. He lifted his forearms to block the weapon. The blade sliced through his sleeves and across his gray skin. The wound was deep, leaving a pooling, bluish-black strike across both forearms.
Beside me, Ronad gasped as though the blade had hit him instead. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, pulling back from the fight. He stepped away, keeping his eyes fixed on the battle, his hands behind his back, as though he didn’t quite trust himself not to get involved.
“What do you mean, ‘sorry?’ We need you!” I snapped.
He simply shook his head. “I can’t… I’m sorry, I can’t.”
More of Orfaio’s cryptic riddles, or so it seemed. That Stargazer really did have the crappiest timing in the universe. Turning back around, I launched into the fray, coming to Kaido’s aid. From his arms, blood poured in thick globules to the ground.
“Get back to the ship and fix yourself up,” I told him.
“I will remain. I have a first-aid kit on my person,” he replied, making me frown.
“Where the hell are you keeping all of these things?”
“On my person,” he repeated.
I gestured for him to stand by Ronad. “Never mind! Go bandage yourself before you bleed out!”
He hurried away while my focus returned to the fight. Navan was in the middle of distracting Ezra, spinning his saber with his back to me. I snatched four knives from my bandolier and hurled them at Ezra. The blades sliced through the gaps in Navan’s saber moves. Neither of them saw it coming, the blades shooting through and pinning Ezra to the broad tree trunk behind him. He looked down in surprise, finding the knives sticking out of his shoulders and above his hips.
“I have to commend your skills, Riley, though I have to say the coldblood look doesn’t suit you. I much prefer you pale and weak; it makes it all the more satisfying to watch you beg for your life. I got quite the taste for it at the old base—making humans beg,” Ezra muttered, yanking out the blades. I had a weird urge to warn him, knowing the blood would come rushing once he took them out. It pooled out, soaking into his shirt and spilling down his pants. He didn’t seem too bothered, looking almost bored as he waited for the wounds to heal.
“Something wrong?” I asked, approaching him.
He narrowed his eyes. “No… why?”
“Shouldn’t you have healed by now?”
He glanced down in horror. “What the… What have you done?”
“The snow, Ezra. A sign of changes to come… just not the changes you were after.”
“How does that sweet anti-elixir feel?” Nisha added, peering around the tree trunk.
“No… No, you couldn’t have!”
I smiled. “We did, and we have.”
Taking the slippery handle of one of my knives, he lunged toward me. I darted out of the way in time, rolling across the undergrowth and back to my feet. When I stood, he was in front of me again, swiping the knife blade at my neck. I’d never seen such anger in a single person’s eyes. Ezra was beyond furious.
“You may have made yourself look like a coldblood, but you’ll never be one of us! You’ll never have the power to destroy us!” he raged.
“I already do.”
Nisha and Navan charged forward together, seizing Ezra by the arms. His focus was so intent on me that he barely noticed them. He simply writhed against their grip, struggling to reach me so he might slice the blade across my throat. No doubt he wanted some sort of fitting end for me, mirroring the death of his sister. I kept my gaze locked with his, watching every shift of emotion on his face. Understanding suddenly dawned on him, and now he knew the full extent of what we’d done. In the space of one snowstorm, we’d ruined everything he’d been fighting for. Fury bristled in the air between us.
“Others will take my place!” he roared.
“I don’t think so, pal.”
“You will make me a martyr! The people will rise up!”
I shook my head. “Again, I don’t think so. The people are done with you. You forget, during that last little speech of yours, we all saw your true colors. You were never in this for everyone; you just wanted to be the man on top of it all. The rebels will know you weren’t offering anything different than what had gone before, and everyone else will know you were full of crap. You wanted the throne and the crown for yourself, that’s all. Hell, you weren’t even willing to share it with Aurelius.” I paused, smiling. “Orion might have had a vision for an equal society, but you don’t. You’re a fraud, Ezra, and now everybody knows it. If nothing else convinces them, they saw you run.”
Ezra surged against his captors with my blade in his hands, striving for my jugular. With all their might, Nisha and Navan yanked him away, throwing him hard at the line of trees behind us. He hit the trunk of one with an almighty thud. A crack ricocheted through the wood, splintering it. Tipping backward, his eyes stared up in a daze. Slowly, he looked down to see what was sticking out of his own throat—a knife handle, in precisely the spot where I’d stabbed him once before. The blade had gone in by accident when he’d hit the tree, plunging deep. Ezra had stabbed himself with the knife intended for
me. His hands fought to remove it, but the life was leaving his body too fast.
His bloodied fingertips slipped around for a moment, desperate to get the knife out. There was nothing he could do. A minute passed until his entire body went still. His open eyes continued to stare upward in shock, confusion written across the last seconds of his mortal existence, seared onto his features.
Ezra was dead.
“Is he… gone?” Nisha asked, edging closer to the body.
Navan knelt, feeling for a pulse. “He’s dead.”
Kaido hurried up to where we stood, and the three of us stared down at Ezra’s blackening form. The metallic tang of ozone lingered in the air. Soon enough, he’d be nothing but dust, floating away on the air like gray snow. A sign of changes to come.
“Riley, I do not wish to interrupt this moment, as you are undoubtedly feeling congratulatory, but I must administer the vision-inducing serum before your strength fades,” Kaido said, binding his wounds with a strip of fabric torn from his shirt while he talked.
“Shall we head back to the ship?”
He nodded. “That would be optimal for my requirements.”
“We can leave Ezra here. The wind will take most of him, and the creatures will trample the rest into the dirt,” Navan said coldly.
With the first blackened flakes beginning to drift upward, we turned away from Ezra’s resting place and made our way back to the tundra, where our two ships remained untouched. The smoldering remains of the third ship sparked and flamed, smoke billowing as fire engulfed it. I imagined that, by the time darkness fell, there would nothing left to show what had happened here.
A shiver of trepidation gripped my chest as I followed Kaido, knowing that this was the last step. I needed to get Him to see me. If Kaido was right about the coldblood elixir that I’d taken, this time I might have the strength to hold His gaze, letting Him see me as I saw Him.
And if I could successfully complete my part in this, it would allow me to erase the knowledge of immortality altogether.
I wasn’t sure how making eye contact with the last Vysanthean god was going to accomplish that, but I’d long since stopped doubting Orfaio’s gifts. I’d understood from the Stargazer that it was possible, so it had to be… right?
Walking back, I noticed Ronad was still acting weird. I didn’t know why he’d pulled out of the fight and couldn’t even begin to guess what it had to do with Orfaio. So many pieces had already come together—what was left to do? Surely, once I put an end to the immortality knowledge, that was it, job done? It worried me, watching him retreat into himself.
“Hey, it’s totally fine that you pulled out of the fight,” I said, trying to comfort him. “I know it had something to do with Orfaio, and I know you can’t tell me. I just want you to know that, whatever it is, you’ve got us behind you. We’re here to support you through your piece of the puzzle, okay?”
Ronad simply nodded and flashed a weak smile, his eyes holding a faraway look.
Chapter Forty-One
Kaido tinkered with equipment in the pseudo-hospital that had been set up inside the main body of Szayan’s vessel. A few makeshift beds lay on the floor, fashioned from musty mattresses and piles of blankets. I sat down on the edge of one, tucking my knees to my chin. My skin remained gray, the vibrant energy still coursing through my veins.
“You look splendid,” Jareth complimented from the doorway. He’d come to investigate what Kaido was up to, drawn by scientific intrigue. The others lingered, too. I could tell the presence of an audience was making Kaido even more anxious, but he covered it well, making a show of collecting various implements on a tray.
“Thanks,” I replied.
“Honestly, it suits you. The two of you make a much more handsome couple, now that you’re the same as us.”
I didn’t bother to look at him. “Navan and I are fine how we are, thank you. This is only temporary.”
“A shame…”
Kaido brought the tray of items over and set them on the ground. Reaching for a portable heartrate monitor, he pulled it over and began to stick the nodes to my skin. There was a smaller monitor attached to it, to scan my brain activity, which he’d brought from his personal collection. I took a deep breath, struggling to relax. A strange tension bristled between Kaido and me—we were both anxious about what was to come.
“Now, allow me to clarify,” Kaido said firmly. “The reason the previous serums did not induce sharper visions, and you could not hold the gaze of this individual that you continue to see, is because you lacked the true Vysanthean strength. We share an ancestor, as I have explained to you, which may be why you are capable of accessing these visions. However, without the power of a true coldblood, you will not be able to hold the image. Formerly, for this reason, you have not been fully able to integrate with the vision.”
“And I’ll be able to now?”
He nodded. “That is the theory I have been working from, and it is a solid theory.”
“And you’ve added stardust to the vision serum?”
“I have added a larger quantity, indeed. This should help lead you to the image you require, as that is what the Stargazer wished you to see,” he said. “However, I have reason to believe that the stardust was given so that we might discover the missing link between our species. The physical substance has some bearing on the visions, but it is not as important as we imagined. What is more important is your genetic stamina, throughout the vision. I have bridged that gap between our species by bolstering your strength and transforming you into a true coldblood.”
I smiled nervously. “I guess, in this case, we actually are the inferior weaklings.”
“Indeed. I have been telling you this for some time. Do you think I expend words for my own amusement? I am extremely economical.”
“You’re nervous too, huh?”
“Is it so obvious?” he whispered. “I am unused to the sensation. Fear is induced when there is a threat, and yet the threat is not toward me. This fight or flight is wasted on me—it ought to be saved for you, should anything occur within your vision.”
“I think it might be empathy.”
He looked at me in surprise. “Empathy? I had not thought of that.”
“Anyway, how did you figure out what was missing?” Scientific chatter seemed to comfort him.
“It was your daughter who led me to this epiphany,” he replied. “She is a hybrid, and her blood resulted in the creation of the immortality elixir. Thus, I realized there was something to be said for human genetics, when placed alongside those of a coldblood. Utilizing the information you told me after your last vision journey, I came to the conclusion that more coldblood strength might be of benefit to you. As I said before, I hoped it might bridge the necessary gap, as your daughter’s blood did.”
“Is it weird that this makes sense to me?” I teased.
“No, it is not weird. It does make perfect sense.” He paused. “Although, I must admit, the entire process is something of a mystery to me. I do not understand how actions performed within a mere vision may determine a future outcome. It is like awakening to find that something you did in a dream has become a reality. When your dreams contain insects that reach fifty feet, you may begin to understand my trepidation over such matters. Moreover, I detest anything that lacks a scientific explanation.”
I smiled. “No insects here, just a god with burning eyes. And hey, maybe some things aren’t supposed to be explained.”
“I highly doubt that. That is a fantasist’s way of thinking. I am no fantasist.”
“I can’t even imagine what that might look like—Kaido the Fantasist,” I replied, chuckling. It seemed like a strange time to laugh, but the humor was keeping me sane.
“You are teasing me?”
I nodded. “Friendly teasing.”
“Most amusing.” He gave a funny bark that startled everyone in the room, making me laugh louder. I’d forgotten how unusual his laugh was. Navan was oddly silent, though h
is gaze was fixed on me. I could see that he was worried and that he wanted to say something, but he kept quiet and held my hand instead. He stroked nervous circles with his thumb, his eyes never leaving mine.
“So, how am I looking? Am I suitably hedgehogged up with nodes sticking out all over the place?”
Kaido frowned. “Hedgehogged?”
“A spiky creature on my planet. Has spines sticking out of its body.”
He smiled thoughtfully. “We have similar creatures called spinypines.”
“That is ridiculously cute. Do I look like one?”
“A little bit. A wiry-pine, perhaps.”
I gaped at him. “Was that a joke, Kaido Idrax?”
He flushed. “I don’t know… was it?”
“It was!”
He barked out another unusual laugh, before his face fell serious again. “We must hurry. I am most thrilled to have successfully delivered a joke, but we have no time for jest.”
“Then vision me up.”
“As you wish, Riley.”
The others huddled around me as Kaido lifted the vial of vision-inducing serum from the tray and handed it to me. At the same time, he picked up a syringe of brightly colored liquid and rested the sharp tip against the edge of my skin, in the crook of my elbow. Without asking if I was ready, he pierced the flesh with the needle, right down to the plastic, and pushed down on the plunger. Wincing, I downed the vial of serum and clutched Navan’s hand. I knew I had minutes until the vision took me.
“I love you all,” I murmured, looking at the faces of Navan, Ronad, Kaido, and Bashrik. Nisha and Jareth had retreated to the far end of the makeshift med-bay, looking on sheepishly. “If I don’t wake up, I adore you with all of my heart—every single one of you.”
“Whatever happens, you must not wake her,” Kaido warned. “She may say or do strange things, but it is imperative that you let the vision come to its own conclusion. Waking her from her induced trance may cause mass cranial hemorrhaging.”
“We get it… don’t wake her up,” Ronad mumbled, tears glittering in his eyes.