Wildblood

Chapter 56

56

Miya

When Miya slipped her hand through the fissure between worlds, she didn’t know what to expect. She saw the seam from within the fog—a jagged line scoring a path to the physical plane. Gavran had led her to another doorway, and although she had no sense of time in the dreamscape, she hoped it worked in her favor.

Her body moved through space like liquid through cupped hands. Fog gave way to florescent lights, the ground shimmering with the gleam of porcelain tiles. Miya reached and reached until she fell through that crack in reality, tripped over a faucet, and hit the floor.

A bathroom.

Gavran croaked next to her, prodding her with his beak. Miya grimaced, the bandaged cuts on her arms, legs, and hands stinging from the collision. As she clambered to her feet, she turned toward the mirror—pristine save for a pinprick. She stared into it, and that one point erupted into a spider’s web that fractured her reflection, the epicenter overlapping the dream stone.

“Let’s go,” she said to Gavran, then snuck out of the bathroom.

What awaited her was not a compound but a mansion, more museum than home. High arches, floor-to-ceiling windows, soulless décor. A rich man’s home, to be sure. Had Pyotr stashed Kai somewhere in his own house?

“Gavran,” Miya spoke to the raven on her shoulder, “where are we?”

Exactly where we need to be.

Miya doubted that. Pyotr was smart; he’d keep his business affairs separate from domestic ones. She tilted her head toward her familiar. “Why didn’t you take me to Kai? To Caelan?”

It will accomplish nothing , Gavran insisted. You need both halves to see the whole.

He didn’t normally communicate like this; it sapped his strength, but this wasn’t right. Apprehension coiled in her middle. She was losing time. “Gavran, stop?—”

There is a way, but it cannot be seen when the parts are disparate. You must bring them together.

She ground her teeth together. “What does that even?—”

“Who the hell are you?”

Miya whirled around, her heart stuttering to a halt. Behind the staccato of her pulse, confusion deafened her.

Caelan stood before her, knife clutched in one hand.

“Answer me!” The girl adjusted her grip, thrusting the blade forward.

No, not Caelan. Alina. Miya lifted both hands. “I’m sorry! I’m not here to cause trouble.” What was Gavran thinking, bringing her here?

Alina frowned, her gaze drifting from Miya to the raven on her shoulder. “Why the hell do you have a bird?”

“He’s helping me find someone.” An honest, if cryptic, answer.

Something flashed across the girl’s expression—curiosity, or perhaps understanding. She lowered the knife. “I know you. You were with the fetch.”

Miya’s mouth worked. She was stunned Alina had puzzled it out so rapidly. “You remember me?”

“The mess from the park, yeah?” Alina sighed and slumped her shoulders. “Bits and pieces. Besides, you’re not the first weirdo from Team Fetch to bust in here.” She shot Miya a sideways stare. “The last guy was sneakier, though.”

Miya dreaded to think she meant Kai.

“Do you know where she is?” the teen asked.

The question caught Miya off guard, but she hadn’t the heart to lie. “She was taken by someone who works for your father.”

The girl’s expression sank. “So, you’re looking for that asshole, then.”

“By asshole, I take it you mean your dad?”

Alina turned and ambled into the kitchen—a white marble masterpiece that boasted more counterspace than Miya’s entire apartment floorplan. She set the knife down, then faced her uninvited guests as they tentatively joined her. “I know where he is. I can take you to him.”

Miya squinted at the girl. “Or you can tell me where he is and stay out of danger.”

Alina shook her head. “Take me with you. I know it sounds reckless—crazy even—but I can’t spend another second here.”

“You could die?—”

“I want to die.” Alina recoiled at her own words, as though the admission struck a chord she hadn’t known was there.

Miya almost flinched. She was no stranger to mental anguish—insomnia, anxiety, and a simmering existential dread that’d uprooted her whole identity, robbed her of motivation to seek joy or even contentment. It was debilitating. Yet even at her worst, she never considered dying. She’d fantasized about disappearing, going someplace no one could find her, but a world in which she didn’t exist never appealed to her. The weight of Alina’s words settled in her marrow—sticky, stubborn—and for the first time in a long while, she didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry,” she tried when nothing else came to her.

“Don’t be.” Alina sounded so morose, so defeated. She wrung her hands together, scratching viciously at her knuckles. Miya saw they were scraped raw from the habit, probably a form of self-soothing. “My dad doesn’t give a shit about me. He thinks he can bide his time because I’m locked up here, under watch like some prisoner. As long as he’s in control, he doesn’t care about how I feel.”

“You’re probably right,” Miya agreed. Pyotr treated her more like heirloom china than a human being. “He’s not fit to care for anyone.”

“The point is, my life is meaningless.” Alina’s lips contorted into a rictus, and she flung her arms out as though she could cast off her despondency. “It’s impossible to have friends because I’m barely allowed outside. I had a boyfriend, but he just dumped me because he got sick of sneaking around. Every move I make is sanctioned by Pyotr .” Her voice wobbled as she spat her father’s name, but she quickly regained purchase. “It’s death or misery. If I’m going to die, at least let me help someone while I’m at it. My whole life has been in this gilded cage.”

“But there’s no sense in you coming with me.” Miya ignored the persistent rap of Gavran’s three-pronged claw on her shoulder. “You could help by telling me where your father is, and once this is over, you can start that search for meaning. Live on your own terms.”

Alina drew her shoulders back, her spine rigid. “I won’t tell you unless you take me.”

“That’s just obstinate, Alina?—”

You need both halves to see the whole.

Fury sparked the teen’s eyes. “I never asked for your help. Who are you to decide my fate? Whatever it is you’re doing—how does that help me? Am I to sit here and rot in this mansion until you give me permission to leave? Let me take my life in my own hands!”

There is a way, but it cannot be seen when the parts are disparate. You must bring them together.

Gavran’s words echoed in Miya’s her mind. She understood now: Alina and Caelan were two halves of the whole. He wanted Miya to bring them together—the very thing they’d fought to circumvent.

Miya sucked in a sharp breath. She knew intimately what it meant to be powerless, to have others dictate your course. If she acted as arbitrator in the name of Alina’s safety, then she was no different than her father. A far lesser evil, perhaps, but of the same ilk, nonetheless. Alina would see her only as another dictator presuming to know what’s best. What she wanted—what would make her happy—didn’t matter.

Miya had no desire to be that person.

“All right.” Miya nodded with a slow swallow, and Gavran’s scratching abated. “You can come with me. But you should know that I’m not a friend to your father. I’m going in there as his enemy. I just…” She hesitated, searching the teen’s eyes. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

A wistful smile crossed the girl’s lips. “My father has already hurt me plenty.”

The words were a curved blade hooking through Miya’s chest. Pyotr wasn’t just a menace in the underworld; he was vile in his own home too. As Alina dressed for the outdoors, Miya wandered toward the foyer, whispering to Gavran, “How do I fix this?”

A low rattle reverberated in the raven’s throat, his blue-black plumage ruffling as his head canted. Eyes like tiny pools of ink fixed on the girl who’d summoned the reaper in her own likeness.

There is no fix, Dreamwalker, but there is always a bargain. You simply may not wish to pay the price.