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Dressed in a stained white gown, she lay with her head in the female’s lap. Her face white and bloodless, streaked with infection and tainted blood. Though her human didn’t hesitate to stroke her cheeks, trying to bring her comfort in her final moments. I caught a fresh handful of my blood and dribbled it over the queen’s mouth, expecting her to immediately revitalize. Perhaps even feast on me. Which sent my mind screaming back into the darkness for several moments, until I waded back to the present.

But she didn’t stir. Not like the others.

“Shara, please, come back to us,” the woman whispered, stroking her cheeks. “Why isn’t it working?”

The biggest man I’d ever seen in my life lifted his head, pulling the limp queen fully back into his arms, even though he himself could not yet rise. “She looks. For us. On the other side. She doesn’t know we live. Sekh. Go get her.”

“I can’t,” the other non-Aima retorted. “I can’t See her. Wherever she’s gone is beyond my sight.”

SHARA

I’ve died enough times to know this place wasn’t right.

A billowing gray of nothingness met my gaze. Everywhere I looked. There was no rising pyramid or blowing sands to draw my gaze. Coatlicue’s jungle was gone. Not even the Mother’s dark cleft deep in the earth. No whispers of goddesses gathered for judgment.

Only maddening silence.

Perhaps I’d angered Coatlicue so much that She banished me from even crossing the Veil to Isis’ embrace. Penance. For refusing to let Her claim my twins.

Rage burst to life in me all over again at the thought of being separated from any of my Blood. I thought She of all the goddesses would understand. My twins were of Her line. They meant too much to me to leave them behind, even at Her throne.

“Itztli! Tlacel!”

They had to be here. Somewhere.

I wasn’t crossing to the Great One until I had them. Until I had them all.

Sometimes I’d walked dreams with Xin’s silver wolf in a place like this. Though as I walked, what I needed to see or know began to reveal itself through the fog. I quickened my step, stumbling, turning in circles, looking for a spark. Any sign at all.

“Xin!”

What I wouldn’t give to feel his fur beneath my hand.

The sense of wrongness increased. I wasn’t supposed to be here. The silence weighed heavier. My steps dragged. I struggled to move through nothing at all, as if my hair had snagged on invisible snarls and thorns, trapping me. Though the long tresses I’d inherited from my mother still lay wrapped in a thick braid down my back.

“Esetta! Where am I supposed to go?” I sank to my knees. Shivering though it wasn’t cold. I felt nothing but emptiness and gnawing, suffocating grief. My chest felt so heavy. As if Rik sat on top of me.

Gathering the last few drops of my will, I screamed until I ran out of breath. “RIK!”

Silence. Not even the echo of my voice returned.

My greatest fear. Dying. Alone. Never finding my Blood.

I wouldn’t mind dying. As long as we were together. Forever.

Crying, shoulders slumped, I closed my eyes. “I promised.”

Gray swallowed me. I couldn’t even see my hands in front of my face. Sinking. Or was I falling? Soaring? I couldn’t tell.

A sound finally rolled through the endless fog. So faint and distant I couldn’t quite identify it, though my mind immediately latched on to the faint tremor filtering through the gray. Desperate. Eager for anything to break the monotony of nothing.

It came again, a deep, rolling bay. A hunting dog. On the trail of his prey.

Hope surged inside me, fluttering frantically like a trapped bird. “Itztli! I’m here! I can’t find you.”

He howled again, not mournful but deep bellows of joy. A sound that bounded through the wafting gray, parting the wisps of fog until I could see him.

My giant black dog. Running across the waves of empty gray. Straight into my waiting arms.