“Then we should find a way out of here,” she said.
“Agreed.”
The question was, which way to go? Actually, the better question: how the hell had I pulled this off? The Dark Room wasn’t famous for being gentle, at least not the Dark Room I knew. It was built for flaying, and killing, and even as the one person to have spent more time in it than anyone else in the universe, I still treated it with a distant, cautious reverence. It was like a wild animal – naturally feral and vicious, at times oddly tame and obedient.
Until it wasn’t.
The mists around our feet began to stir, swirling in clouds around my ankles, around Mona’s, shifting the thin cloth of her smock. The Dark was curious, reaching tendrils up against her fingers, curling against her skin. She flinched at their touch.
“This way,” I muttered urgently. “Hurry.”
And I don’t know, exactly, how I knew to head down that direction, only that something in my heart told me it was the right way to go. My scar, the same one from when Thea had plunged her sacrificial blade into my chest, had been an indicator of many peculiar things before.
It hurt when I used my dark magic, or when the agents of the Eldest were near, and in a subtle, quiet way, it now felt as if it was tugging, like a lodestone, showing me the path back to our world. It pulled, as if a piece of star-metal, of the verdigris dagger had been left lodged in my heart. I stumbled along, Mona’s wrist in my grasp. It pulled, and I followed.
The mists staggered. The loops and tendrils of dark smoke sharpened into knives, into blades, like the fangs on a guard dog protecting its master. But I was the Dark Room’s master. It should have listened.
“Don’t hurt her,” I shouted, the void dampening the volume of my voice. “She’s a friend.” She’s with me, I thought. I had to protect her.
Mona kept pace as I ran, her breath coming in stuttering gasps, the air so insubstantial in the chamber. I was winded too – it was the first time I’d ever brought anyone into the Dark Room with me, the first time I had to share its supply of not-air with anyone else. Frankly I was far more surprised by the fact that she’d survived shadowstepping with me. I wasn’t going to wait to see how long.
“Run for it,” I shouted, guiding Mona towards the mote of light before us, watching as it grew into a pinprick, a hole, a doorway. The mists washed over me harmlessly, but I could taste the frustration in their gleaming, velvet waves, their hunger for blood. Mona disappeared into the brightness, and so did my body.
I grunted and fell to the ground, wincing as I skinned my palm on a stone floor. I watched as the stone grew dark when a drop of my sweat dripped onto it. Beside me Mona panted, her body burning hot from the exertion.
I looked around. More shadows around us, but this darkness was different, pierced here and there by the warm glow of magical firelight. We were in the Boneyard, in one of its corridors. We’d made it. I fell onto my back, sprawling against the floor, relishing the cold of the stone against my sweat-slick skin.
“Where are we?” Mona muttered, looking around her, clutching at the hem of her smock.
“Home,” I said, my eyes shut tight and stinging from sweat. Footsteps clapped across the floor, just down the corridor, and I opened my eyes towards the source of the commotion.
“I heard noises,” Sterling called down the hallway. “And voices. If you’re an intruder I hope you’re ready for me to collect your teeth. And your heart. And – ”
He skidded to a halt when he caught sight of me, his words stuck in his throat, his mouth half-open.
“Did you,” Sterling started. “Did you just shadowstep all the way in here?”
I ran my hand across my forehead, blotting the sweat. “I’m just as surprised as you are.”
“Oh my God,” Sterling sputtered, finally recognizing our guest. “Oh my God.”
“Hi,” Mona said.
“I know this is a bad time,” Sterling said, getting to his knees, offering Mona his hand, which she gingerly took. “But I have to ask. Can I get your autograph?”
“Do you have a pen?” I heard her say.
I spread my limbs across the floor, content to fall asleep there, resisting even when Sterling nudged me in the ribs.
“Get up,” he said.
I laughed, hardly believing that we’d made it in one piece, that I’d succeeded at shadowstepping miles – no, that I’d crossed the very dimensional barriers of the Boneyard itself in a single bound. And I’d done it without killing Mona. She covered her mouth and chuckled, the relieved, delighted titter of someone who was happy to be alive.
“What’s so funny?” Sterling barked, looking between us, a bemused expression on his face.
I laughed even harder.
Chapter 18