Beyond the Rising Tide (40 page)

I take the wristband from Jerick, marveling at the power it holds. Is this what I really want? To be returned to my body? To the living world? I feel just as alive in this world as in the one I came from. And if I don’t use the wristband, I can stay with Kai. I look at him, at his hands beating into my chest, his face all torment and determination, and I know that it’s not what
he
wants. As always, he wants me to
live
. And I realize now that I want the same thing. I want to return to my body. I want my skin to turn pink, want my lungs to expand of their own accord, want my eyelids to flutter open as much as he does. Not only for my family, or the life I’ve yet to live, but because if I die now, then Kai’s sacrifices will be for nothing.

Slowly, I circle the wristband around my wrist and close the clasp. Then I step over to my body and kneel on the opposite side of Kai, facing him.

When he sees me, he doesn’t stop his efforts, only proclaims through labored breaths, “I’m not giving up.”

I hold up my wrist, showing him the wristband. “You don’t have to.”

He exhales heavily and rocks back on his heels, his chest heaving. “Well? What are you waiting for?” His hands are still over my body’s sternum, ready to keep pumping if needed.

I extend my hand, then pause. Seeing Kai’s hand there, so close to mine, sparks an idea. Jerick said the wristband could restore
any
mortal life. That all I had to do was lay my hand on the body. And in a way, in this moment, Kai has a body.

I glance at Jerick, who’s twenty feet away, holding his glowing scepter over the lapping sea. I don’t know what he’s doing, but as long as he’s nowhere near us, I don’t care. I turn back to Kai. He’s out of breath, anxiously waiting for me to take action. I don’t know if this will work, but as I gaze into his blue-green eyes and see the beautiful life he never had the chance to live, I know I have to try. After all he’s done for me, maybe this is how I can repay him, by setting things right for him. This may be the only chance I get to make restitution, and I’m not throwing it away.

“You don’t always have to be the hero,” I say, my voice catching. I lower my hand like I’m going to let it fall on my own chest, but at the last second I drop it over Kai’s hand. He must not realize what I’m attempting, because he doesn’t object like I thought he would. He must think I’m only giving him one last display of affection before I return to my body. His face softens and he surrenders to it, lacing my fingers through his and closing his eyes as he raises my hand to his lips.

I feel something warm blossom in the center of my being that has nothing to do with his lips on my skin. It feels very similar though. Like how I feel when Kai kisses me, or touches me, or looks at me. Like love. It grows and expands until I don’t think I can contain it anymore. And then it rushes out of me through my hand and into him.

That’s when he notices. “What are you doing?” His eyes fly open and he tries to wrench his hand away, but I grab his wrist and hold on with every ounce of strength.

“No!” he shouts, trying to twist out of my grip, but I won’t let go. Not this time.

This time I’m tying the leash of my fingers around his wrist with a thousand unbreakable knots.

He stumbles backward into the sand, and I fall on top of him. I can feel the power surging into him at every point our bodies connect.

“Avery!” he cries out, his voice heartbroken. “What are you doing? You’re going to die!”

The surge of energy weakens, and then I weaken. Kai wrenches my hand from his wrist and slides me off of him, and then he crawls back over to my body, where he restarts his resuscitation efforts with even more vigor. I roll onto my back, too drained to move. Something feels wrong. Incomplete. Fragmented. I’m slipping away, but I don’t know where to.

Jerick’s towering figure appears over us, his face as emotionless as ever. “She’s made her choice.”

“You can’t seal her death,” Kai growls. “It’s not too late.” He stops pumping for a split second to grab my hand and lay it on my mortal body, as if the wristband still has the power to save me.

But it’s too late for that. There’s a pulling sensation right in the center of my chest, as though I’m a hooked fish being reeled from the water. My vision goes bright, so bright I can’t see anymore. And then it feels like I’ve turned to liquid, and I’m being sucked down a drain.

very!” I search my surroundings frantically for Avery’s spirit. She was here a second ago, lying beside her body, and now she’s gone. I look at Grim. “Where did she go?”

“Right where you sent her,” he says flatly.

I don’t know what he means. But there’s no time to interrogate him when Avery’s lungs still aren’t breathing on their own. I seal my mouth over her cold lips and blow air in her lungs. From the corner of my eye I see her chest rise with each of my breaths. It’s not too late. I’m not giving up, not letting her die. Especially after what she just did—tried to give up her own life to restore mine. My throat tightens as I recall the look on her face as she circled her hand around my wrist. Fierce determination mixed with sorrow. She knew exactly what she was giving up. If only she’d known that it wouldn’t work. That my mortality is far beyond the point of reclamation. I’m not any more alive now than I was before she laid her hand on mine. And if I don’t revive her, both of our sacrifices will have been in vain.

Just as I’m about to go back to pumping her chest, all the energy drains out of me, like I’m a machine whose plug has been pulled. I haven’t felt physical fatigue since the morning I left Avery in Isadora’s cottage. But something is siphoning every last bit of strength from me, along with all my hope of saving Avery’s life. I don’t understand. I try to fight it, to fight for Avery, but I’m not strong enough. My limbs are shaking, my eyelids heavy, and I crumple into the sand beside Avery’s body, unable to move.

“Well,” Jerick says impassively, “I suppose my job here is done.” He turns as if to leave, but then pauses and turns back. He steps over and crouches beside me. “You’ve really outdone yourself this time, Zackai Turner.” He reaches behind my neck, where he unclasps the chain that holds my pendant. The light in the pendant slowly dims until the cavern turns dark. He stuffs the pendant in his pocket, then takes my hand and slides Charles’s ring from my finger. I want to object, to get up and keep fighting for Avery’s life, but my muscles are useless.

“Some have a talent for outsmarting death,” Jerick says. “And others succeed out of sheer stubbornness. But only a few are selfless enough to surrender their lives to win someone else’s.” He pierces me with a fiery blue gaze, and then like a candle being snuffed out, he disappears.

Using my last ounce of strength, I turn my head toward Avery. It’s dark now without my pendant, but by the moonlight seeping through holes in the cavern, I see her in deep shades of blue. Her eyes closed, her long eyelashes touching her cheeks. Her lips, slightly parted, but no breath breaking through. Her hair, wet and splayed out on the sand around her head.

My beautiful, brave girl.

Maybe I should have just been happy to be with her, no matter which realm she existed in. And now I don’t know if we’ll ever be together at all.

I’m losing substance fast, but I feel something warm under my hand. Avery’s arm. Avery’s arm, which should be cold. But it’s not. It feels like a flame under my hand. And then I smile. Because there, on the inside of her wrist, I feel a faint, rhythmic throbbing. And now I know where her spirit went.

t’s the same dream I always have. I’m in the middle of a wild sea on my surfboard, rising and falling over rain-pocked hills of water. I dive under the surface to find the boy who saved my life. And there he is, suspended in the dark water beneath me, face down. Only, he’s not just the boy who saved my life. He’s Kai. The selfless and gallant boy I love.

I swim down to grab his wrist, but I’m tugged back when I reach the end of my leash. His hand is so close that my fingertips brush his knuckles. But I can’t get close enough to grasp him because the leash tied to my wrist is too short.

This time, instead of returning to the surface for air, I stay with him. I reach up to my tethered wrist and untie the knotted lifeline that Kai put there.

And I’m free. Free to save him.

I turn back to him, and the water goes unnaturally still, as if I’m in the deep end of a pool instead of a churning ocean. Rays of sunlight break through the surface like fingers of a glorious hand, reaching out for Kai and wrapping him in a golden embrace. I swim easily down to him and hook his wrist in my hand, then tug him toward the surface. We gulp air into our lungs as we break the surface, then drape ourselves on opposite sides of my surfboard, facing each other.

The sky is lit up in gold, a fiery sunrise that stretches from horizon to horizon. The water is a still sheet of glass, reflecting the sky. There’s no sound, only the breaths moving in and out through our lips, whispering to us that we’re alive.

Kai gazes at me across the surfboard, his blue-green eyes blazing with light and life. And something else. Something that makes my chest swell with warmth.

He loves me. And he knows that I love him. And through squalls and tempests, through life and death, nothing will ever change that.

“Breathe, Avery,” he whispers. “Breathe.”

I open my mouth to tell him that I am breathing, but I can’t get the words out. Because there’s water in my throat.