The Dark Between Dreams | ✔️

Chapter 13 🔻 The King's Keep

What was the worst thing I'd ever done in life?

There were the growing stacks of embarrassingly overdue library books that I'd never returned. And there was that one time I stole the that frog from my high school biology lab; my one and only act of rebellion in school.

And then there was that one time my parents and I had fought. We'd never done that before, not as far as I recalled. My decision to move across the county with, as Mom had put it, "some guy I'd only known for barely a year," had changed that. They'd yelled, and I'd yelled back. I was an adult and was taking control of my damn own life, and I'd told them so as I'd slammed the front door behind me and left.

I'd spent a whole day crying under a comforter at Dominic's place after that one.

No matter how hard I racked my brain, I couldn't unearth any other moments with my parents after that. Had that been my last conversation with them?

My heart sank.

Yeah. That was probably the worst thing I'd done.

Until now.

Ignoring the vulgar graffiti on the wall I hugged, I peered around a corner. Blackburne's lit up before me. Breaking into someone else's home was completely unlike me. But, like Blackburne himself said, I wasn't human. I wasn't Skye. I was something else.

Throngs of hollows passed the backstreet I hid in, and they left armfuls of scavenged offerings and lux in the palace courtyard that was encircled by an imposing wrought iron fence. It appeared that inside the domed palace was forbidden to the public, and guards armed to the teeth stood on either side of the doorway. No getting in that way.

I pulled my scarf over my head and moved to leave the alley and join the crowd. For once, my small size came in useful. So long as no one noticed the Light in my eyes, I could just blend right in...

Someone grabbed me from behind and clapped a hand over my mouth. "Whatever you're thinking of doing," Webb hissed into my ear, "stop thinking it."

I shrugged him off me, then jabbed a finger in his face. "You followed me again!"

"Yeah, I do that." He put his hands on his hips. "Skye, what are you trying to do? This isn't about that stone you found, is it?"

"Blackburne has to know something about what it means and where it came from. I—" I almost spilled my suspicions about Crow and the Light. "I'm going to find out exactly what."

"Aaand you're going to do that by breaking into the palace?"

"He and his cronies are outside the wall! I just want to...You know..." I sheepishly toed a piece of gravel, "poke around for a few minutes. In and out. That's it."

Webb's eyes grew huge. "Oh, my God." He slapped a palm to his forehead. "Anchored ghosts really are insane!"

"Yeah. You should probably go tell Vale on me. I'll be here." I hadn't expected company. I glanced over my shoulder at After's red citadel. The king could return any minute.

The other ghost fixed me with a stabbing glare as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his old hoodie. The pommel of the sword strapped to his back caught the light as he loomed over me. "Nah," he said after sucking his teeth. "I choose option B, where I drag your scrawny ass back home. Let's go."

He reached for me. I slapped his hand away and leaped free from the alley. Webb shrank back from the curious gazes that turned to us. We were drawing attention—something neither of us wanted. I highly doubted any of these hollows would take too kindly to an anchored soul wandering too close to their king's palace.