“Ready?” I asked.
“Wait,” Cole said. He looked me in the eye. “I always knew you’d change my life.” He glanced away, briefly, and shook his head at some unknown memory. “You know, a psychic once told me I would have no other Forfeits after you. That you would be my last. At the time, I let myself believe that it was fate that we would end up together, ruling the world. And if it was fate, why fight it? It gave me license to do whatever I needed to do to keep you.
“But even then I knew. Deep down I knew you would be my beginning and my end. My moral consciousness began taking shape the moment I met you. In that way, my own soul began. And then when I fell in love with you, my own heart began.”
“Cole, we don’t need to talk about this now,” I said.
“We do,” he said emphatically. Then he took a deep breath. “I mean, we’re finally alone. We have nothing tying us together anymore. It might be our only time to say these things.”
I hadn’t thought about that . . . that this might be the last time I saw him. I was sure he would form a new band on the Surface, but really, there was no reason we would see each other.
But I’d never liked good-byes. “We’re not going to say good-bye. We’ve been through too much for good-byes. Besides, we’ll see each other.”
He gave me a sad smile. “Still, just humor me. If you have anything you want to say, say it now.”
If I had anything I wanted to say. What did I want to say to him? He had taken me to the Everneath. Fed on me for a hundred years.
But he would say he had saved me from my own pain. Made the loss of my mother bearable.
He had betrayed me in the Everneath. Tricked me into feeding on him three times so I would be forced to become an Everliving.
But he would say he was simply giving fate a little push.
“I don’t know what I want to say to you,” I said. “Maybe, after some time, I’ll know. But not now.”
He frowned and nodded. “Okay. It’s okay.”
He lifted his eyes skyward, and was it my imagination or was he blinking back tears again? He let loose a shaky breath. He seemed so disappointed not to know right at this minute. I put my hand on his arm. “I promise I’ll tell you one day,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, bringing his eyes down to meet mine.
I stood and reached my hand toward Cole. He took it and I pulled him up beside me. I held the compass out again. “Ready?”
He closed his eyes. Squeezed them shut. Why was he so scared? It wasn’t as if breaking our hearts would literally hurt us. He should know this. Breaking our hearts would make us mortal. Wouldn’t it?
He squeezed the pick, bending it.
And then suddenly I knew.
“Cole,” I said.
He stopped. I thought about the queen and how she had died when I had broken her heart. She had basically turned into an old lady and then transformed into dust before our eyes. I’d thought she had just died a dramatic death because we had destroyed her world.
But before she had died, she’d said I didn’t know what really happened when Everliving hearts were broken. Cole was scared to break his own pick, but he didn’t seem as worried about me breaking mine. If he thought it would be painful, he’d be comforting me right now. I knew enough about his love for me to know that.
But he wasn’t concerned about me. How was breaking my own heart different from breaking his? And how were we different?
Besides the fact that he was about a thousand years older than me.
A thousand years old.
“Cole,” I said. I spoke slowly. “What happens when we break our hearts?”
He gave a nervous smile. “You know what happens. We become human.”
I sucked in a gasp of air and tried to pry the pick out of his hand, but once I started to fight against him, he closed his fingers around it tightly.
“What are you doing?” he asked, accusation in his eyes.
“Give me your heart, Cole,” I said, my voice catching on the word. “Give me your heart. I know what happens. I know why you’re scared.”
He blinked a long blink. “No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. Breaking your heart returns you to your natural state. And your natural state is . . .” I gasped as my voice drifted off. I didn’t want to finish that sentence.
Cole finished it for me. “Over nine hundred years old.” He nodded.
I started shaking. “No. We can’t do this.” I tried to pry his fingers open, but the stupid Everliving was strong. I dug my fingernails into his skin. He winced, but he didn’t budge. “Give me your heart.”
He slowly shook his head.
“Give me your heart!” The tears sprang to my eyes, and my lower lip trembled violently.
“Nik, you know we have to finish what we started. And that will only happen when every heart is destroyed. Every. Heart.”
The other Everlivings hadn’t simply gone to the Surface. They’d grown old and turned to dust.
I was having trouble breathing. “Please. There has to be another way. Our hearts are the only ones left. We’re the only Everlivings left. We can just go on. I’ll break my own heart. But you . . .”
My hands shook. Cole grabbed them. Held them still. Looked me in the eye. “We see it to the end. We don’t stop until it’s done.”
I bit my lip to keep it from trembling. “Give me your heart,” I said.
He tilted his head, leaned forward, watching my eyes the entire time to make sure it was okay, and kissed me lightly on the lips. “You already have it.”
I heard a faint snap, and I wondered for a moment if an actual broken heart made a sound.
The lines around Cole’s mouth became deeper. The skin of his eyelids sagged a little lower.
“Cole?”
He held my gaze for a moment longer before his knees gave out, and he began to sink to the ground. I went with him, supporting his weight as we sank. I put my arms around him and held him tightly, and then in front of his face, I snapped my compass back, breaking the hinges.
“We do this together,” I said.
He nodded. And then his hair started to go lighter, turning white and thinning out; and before either of us could say another word, he collapsed in my arms.
Moments later he was dust. My hands were empty. And I was alone.
THIRTY-SEVEN
NOW
The Everneath.
The moment the last two hearts in the Everneath were broken, the Underworld—what was left of it—began to swirl around me. Darkness around the edges began to encroach on the land. Piece by piece, acre by acre, the Everneath was being swallowed up by the vast nothing surrounding it.
I put my hand against my chest and pressed it there, and as a faint beat began pulsing beneath my skin, I shot up into the sky.
I had my heart. And at the same time, I’d lost it.
Jack and Will were waiting for me at the Shop-n-Go. When I landed on the floor, Jack scooped me up in his arms and held me tight against his chest. Will smiled, sighed, and then walked out of the store to leave us alone.
Jack dipped his head and kissed me, and then he caught the look on my face. In one split second he knew.
“Cole?” he said.
I nodded and collapsed against him. He crushed me close and held me together, rocking me back and forth. “I’m sorry, Becks. I’m so sorry.”
Jack and I stayed in each other’s arms for a long time after that, days maybe. Each of us had a heart in our chest. Each heart beat for the other. And for the first time in a century, we had a future. Together. Jack and me. No ticking clocks.
I thought of how far we’d come from that moment I’d first Returned to the Surface after the Feed. How the Tunnels were coming for me. How impossible everything had seemed.
I had believed there was no such thing as redemption. I knew now I was wrong. Cole had shown me that. Redemption had not come from grand gestures of dashing bravery. It had not come from successfully completing twelve impossible labors. Instead, redemption transpired from the small, quiet places: in the palm of his hand, in the flick of his fingers that had snapped a guitar pick.
My dad returned home from his futile search in Los Angeles. The level of his anger was exceeded only by his relief that I was still alive. Tommy returned home from my aunt’s house, and our family reunion was marred only by the fact that I would be spending the next six months in rehab, per my dad’s request.
Six months. I could do anything for six months. As long as I knew that a long, healthy, mortal life was waiting for me on the other end.
A long, healthy, mortal life with Jack.
Jack came over to help me pack for rehab. As he smushed my suitcase shut and zipped it up, he smiled at me. “Do you think rehab will stick this time?”
“I think I’m finally ready to make the commitment.” I smiled. “Maybe someday I’ll actually try the vices I’m supposedly recovering from.”
Jack shrugged. “After everything we’ve been through, I don’t think I’ll ever have a desire to artificially mess with my emotions again.”
He leaned back on my bed and put his hands behind his head. I fell on top of him and nestled my nooks in his crannies. His heart beat softly against my ear.
“We have a lot to do when you get home,” Jack said.
“We have time to do it.”
He sighed. “Time.” He said the word as if it was something we’d fought for. Something we’d risked our lives for.
Time.
“I love you,” I said.
He kissed my head. “I’m Ever Yours.”
And I was Ever His.