The Essence
Page 53

I wondered, too, if any of it was real at all.
When, finally, I inhaled sharply, my gaze shot over to Brooklynn. I was relieved to find she was still asleep beside me, her breathing even. She, at least, wasn’t gasping or suffocating within the confines of her own body.
She wasn’t terrorized by dreams that didn’t belong to her.
I wished I could sleep half as soundly.
I sat up slowly, carefully, quietly. It was strange to be in this room now, knowing what I knew. Seeing what I’d seen.
It was definitely the same place, the same room from my dream. And unless Sabara was playing some sort of trick on me, she’d unwittingly revealed a part of her past she’d probably hoped would have remained long dead and buried.
Yet here we were, the two of us, under the roof of the palace where she’d taken the body of one girl, and violently killed another.
All in an effort to remain on a throne—any throne—forever.
I moved to the place I’d seen in my dream, to where the opening in the floor should be. Unlike in the dream, where a table blocked the way, there was only the rug there now.
I reached for a corner and tugged.
It barely moved, and I tugged it again, this time harder.
The rug scraped across the floor, and I cringed, looking again at Brooklynn. She was still asleep. I pulled again and again, and it moved in increments. It was heavier than it looked, and I made slow progress. My heart was pounding when the corner of the trapdoor finally came into view.
I collapsed onto my knees, peeling back the corner of the rug to reveal the rest of the opening.
I reached for it.
My chest ached with hope as I lifted the recessed rung. It squeaked, and I wondered how long it had been since someone had used this passage.
But despite the rusty handle, the door pulled open with a sigh.
Cold air rushed up from the duct below, hostile and unwelcoming. I shivered but took a step inside anyway.
The first few steps were easy; I found my footing by the light coming from the bedchamber behind me. But as I left the stairs and entered the tunnel beyond, my steps grew more hesitant.
The only light remaining came from me, and it was barely enough to see in. There was only the cold, and a vague recollection that I’d been there before. . . . A memory that wasn’t my own.
I counted my steps, not knowing how far it was, but finding that focusing on such a mundane task made the notion of being down here—alone—less unnerving. When I stopped, it was almost on instinct. I wasn’t sure why, exactly, but I felt like this was the place. That I’d gone as far as I needed to go.
I reached out blindly and felt the walls around me.
It was there: the door.
My chest wall could barely contain my beating heart as I pressed my ear up against it. There wasn’t a single noise coming from the other side as I reached for the handle. My breath caught in my chest for an entirely different reason now.
Nothing happened. The door was locked.
I wasn’t sure what to do next, so I did what Sabara had done, I tapped on it and waited.
After a moment, I started to feel foolish, realizing that I was chasing ghosts. That what I’d seen couldn’t have been possible, despite finding the hatch. Despite navigating through the passageway.
It had been yet another illusion, something Sabara had meant for me to see.
I wrapped my arms around myself, wondering if I should simply go back.
That was when I heard it, the whisper-soft knocking that came from the other side. Just like in the dream. Only this time, I wasn’t the one opening the door.
Inside of me, Sabara awakened, and I could feel that this was what she’d wanted all along. I was a pawn in a children’s game, manipulated by a master.
But when I saw him, the reaction was my own. I gasped for the second time.
It was him.
He wore the same face he had in my dream.
The same face he wore in this very moment—decades, maybe centuries later—as if nothing had changed.
Niko Bartolo.
We stood there for moment, and then several more, just staring at each other. I panted, the cold air making my chest ache. His eyes conquered me.
I wanted to say something, to tell him that I knew who he was . . . and what he’d done. What they’d done.
But when I opened my mouth, there was nothing. Just silent longing that I couldn’t explain.
“It’s you,” he said, finally breaking the spell. “Isn’t it?”
I knew what he meant.
Sabara. He meant that I was Sabara.
“No.” But I was nodding my head, my actions at odds with my denial. “I mean, sort of.” I fumbled over an explanation, but there was no time.
He closed the distance between us, and in the light that came from behind him, I could see that his eyes glittered from something other than the cold and his hands closed around mine as he fell to his knees before me. His voice, when it found its way out, was barely a breath. “I knew you were in there.”
My heart nearly broke. This time I was shaking my head. “She’s here,” I tried again, even as my hands clutched his harder than they should have. “But I’m not her.”
His head fell forward, over our shared grip, as if he was praying. To whom, I had no idea. And then his shoulders started to shake, and my stomach fell, plummeting in a way that made me feel choked.
I tried to untangle my hands from his, to pull away so I could breathe again. His pain was almost more than I could bear.
He threw his head back then and laughed, so loud I swore the ground beneath me rumbled. Or maybe it was my own heart. “I knew you were in there. I knew you weren’t dead!”