When she turns around, there’s a sparkle in her eyes. “There’s something I want to give you.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Give me? Mom, I just need you.”

“Just follow me.” She walks the three steps across the living area to the door to the bedroom that my sister and I shared with my parents. The door is hanging by a single hinge. My mom pushes it aside and enters. When I slip in behind her, I’m surprised to find the bedroom mostly intact, although there is glass everywhere from the shattered window.

Using the hem of her tunic, Mom brushes the glass from atop the bed and motions for me to sit down. I do, wondering what in the Tri-Realms she could possibly want to give to me. I watch her while she scans the ground, as if looking for something she dropped, and then bends down. She uses her fingers to pry at a loose stone in the floor, which wobbles and then lifts. The gray rectangular rock is heavy and I see her straining at it, so I get up and help her lift it out and roll it to the side.

Beneath where the stone used to be is a wooden box. When I look at my mom, she offers me a slight smile and then reaches down to retrieve the chest. It’s small and looks like it couldn’t hold more than a few marbles at most. However, when she lifts the lid, I see a slight sparkle under the glow of the flashlight I’m holding. Using a single delicate finger, she lifts a necklace from the box. I gasp. Its band is thin and silver, polished and gleaming and well cared for, but that’s not what makes me gasp, nor is that what sparkled when she first opened it.

Dangling from the end is a gem, big, perhaps the size of a gold Nailin, beautifully cut and a brilliant green hue that seems to catch every bit of light offered and then shine it all back tenfold in a dazzling array of green slivers. An emerald.

“Mom, I…I don’t understand. Whose is this?”

“It’s yours now,” she says, handing it to me.

“But this must be worth hundreds—no, thousands—of Nailins. Where did you get this?”

Mom’s smile is almost as brilliant as the emerald I’m holding. “It was your father’s gift to me after you were born. I don’t know where he got it and I didn’t ask. When he saw those emerald-green eyes of yours, he just knew you were going to be something special, so he gave me this necklace as a keepsake, something for me to pass down to you.”

My eyes are watering. “But this is too much. I can’t accept this,” I say, knowing that I will.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Tristan

While Adele is away with her mother I worry about her. Not because she’s not capable of taking care of herself—I’d have to be an idiot if I didn’t know that she was by now—but because there’s some truth to what she said to me earlier. Awfulness does seem to follow her around. But I guess these days terrible things are happening to everyone.

I also feel somewhat lonely because she’s not here. Trying to kill time, I rummage through my pack, organizing my stuff. As I toss out a few bags of dried meat and a dirty tunic, my hand brushes against something hard. The diary. Ben’s diary. Well, not his diary, but the one he let me borrow. I never gave it back. And now he’s gone. As I flip through the brittle time-yellowed pages, I remember him. His calm, solid demeanor; the ever-present twinkle in his trustworthy eyes; his rare combination of optimism and realism: he was a good guy. The best kind of guy. A friend, in the end.

He deserves some words from me. Something to honor him.

“Ben,” I say, glancing uncertainly at the cave roof, as if he’s above it somewhere, “I wish you were still here. You were…you were everything my father never was.” Were. Such a simple word but with such an awful meaning. I choke on my words, my eyes brimming with tears. I fight them off, take a deep breath, determined to finish my personal eulogy. “In just a short time, you were my role model, mentor, trusted adviser...” The words are sticking in my throat; the pale tears overflowing and tracing lines to my chin. “You were my friend. I’ll miss you so much.”

I cry lonely and silent tears for him.

Ben should be alive and my father shouldn’t. The world is broken, turned all upside down. Evil seems to conquer good again and again.

* * *

I spend a few hours with Elsey, who manages to cheer me up with her stories about her and Adele as kids. She’s an amazing little girl. I should be the one cheering her up considering all she’s lost, but it’s the other way around.

When Elsey’s shattered body gets tired after sitting up for only an hour, I go to find Roc. I’m walking down a random street in subchapter 1, hoping to run into him, when a shadow falls over me. Spinning around, I only have a split-second to react before a large, dark hand grabs me by the tunic and lifts me in the air, slings me against a rock wall.

It’s Ram. Come to finish me off. After everything, I’m still not worthy of his trust.

“Thanks for that,” I choke out smartly.

“My pleasure,” he says, his lips curling into a broad grin. It’s not his usual I’m-going-to-get-great-enjoyment-from-hurting-you grin. I look at him oddly.

“Am I missing something?” I gasp, trying to suck air through my crushed windpipe.

“I’m just messing with you, man,” Ram laughs, lowering me to my feet and straightening out the collar of my tunic. With that, he walks away.

As I gulp in the air I chuckle to myself; I guess being friends with Ram isn’t that different than being enemies with him. But I’ll take it anyway.

Still smiling, I go to find Roc.

Roc’s been spending so much time with Tawni that I don’t see him much, but that’s cool, because it’s nice to see that they’re getting on so well. Just before Adele’s expected to arrive, however, I manage to corner him as he’s returning from somewhere with Tawni. She gives his hand a slight squeeze and leaves him with me. She’s a perceptive girl—always seems to know what’s going on in the world around her. Right now, she knows I want to talk to my best friend.

“Hey, man,” I say.

“Hey,” he says. Roc’s grinning from ear to ear.

“Things going that well, eh?”

“We have a lot more in common that you’d think,” he says. “I really like her, Tristan.”

“I’m happy for you. How are you really doing though? I mean, after everything…”

At first his face shows surprise, but then it falls and I see sadness in his eyes. “It’s tough. I mean, we just met Ben and he was such an amazing guy, and now….now it’s like he never existed. And Elsey—Tristan, I feel so bad for her. She didn’t deserve any of this.”

“I know. I feel the same way. Adele was a mess when she left with her mom. I just feel like there’s nothing I can say or do that will help.”

I’m surprised when Roc laughs. “I know how that feels,” he says. I feel sheepish, because I remember how many times Roc tried to talk to me, to cheer me up, after my mom disappeared. But I just kept pushing him away, sort of like Adele’s been doing. At least she finally let me hug her, finally talked to me, even though her words were filled with grief.

“I’m sorry,” I say. It’s too late for it, but I still feel like I should say it.

“It’s okay. I understand. And maybe your mom’s out there somewhere,” he says. “I hope we find her someday. She was my mom too.” Gravity takes his words and pulls them through my ear canals and all the way down to my toes. They are heavy words. The heaviest.

“Roc, I just want to say again that I’m so sorry about what my fath—”

“Our father,” he corrects. “And it’s okay. I’m not sad anymore, just angry. So angry that if I ever see him again, I think I’ll kill him, Tristan. I really mean it.”