“Josh. He commed me. Asked if I had any news from you.” She gulped in air. “We didn’t know what had happened to you. We thought . . . we thought Gregor made Remo kidnap you and destroy both your Infinities, so we couldn’t track you, but Gregor . . . he said . . . he said he never ordered his grandson to do that. He said that if Remo took you . . . it wasn’t on his orders.” Again she gulped in air.
I rubbed the spot between her shoulder blades, trying to soothe her. “Does anyone know you’re here?”
“Sook.” Her lower lip rose over her upper one the way it always did when her heart was about to break. “B-but that bagwa decided to follow me inside.” She shuddered.
“He’s here?” I swung my gaze around the mishmash of sand and train parts, looking for another body, but located none. Had he died on impact? Was he waking in the field of mud?
“Oh, Amara . . .” Tears tracked down her cheeks, thinning her blood. “He didn’t make it. He . . .” She choked, then let out a heart-shattering wail.
My blood became ice. “He ate the apple?” My tone sounded clinical.
She sniffled, then squeaked, “The apple?” She palmed her cheeks, making a mess of the blood. “No. He’s allergic to apples. The pistri got him.”
A smile knocked into my mouth, soon turning into an irrepressible giggle.
“A giant, three-headed—Why are you laughing? He’s dead, Amara. Sook is dead.”
“No, he’s not.” I tried to calm down. Really, I did, but my nerves were so shot that I couldn’t get a handle on them. “And I’m laughing because I’m never going to let Sook live down the fact that he got munched on by a shark.”
She frowned, her eyebrows almost colliding over her smooth forehead. “I saw him turn into smoke!”
“When you die in this place, you resuscitate. Interminably. Trust me. Been there, done that, came back.” I sobered up. “Unless you eat the apple. Then . . .” My gaze rose to the loose circle of cell mates. Kingston was still not among them.
Giya cranked her neck, finally noticing we weren’t alone. Her lips pressed into a tight line at the sight of Remo. At the sight of Cruz, though, they parted extra-wide. She whipped around and gaped at me, her gray eyes cartoonishly large in spite of her eyelids being puffy from crying. “Did I just see . . .? Am I . . .? Is that . . .?”
“Cruz Vega?” I supplied.
Her jaw unhinged farther. “Are you kidding?” she hissed.
“Nope.”
“Is he real?”
“Cruz?” I crooked a finger, calling him toward us.
At first, he didn’t even react to his name, but then he blinked out of his daze and strolled toward us in that slow, measured way of his.
“Can you say something to Giya, so she can come to terms with the fact that you’re not a figment of her imagination?”
He squatted, then extended his hand toward her. “Hi, Giya. I’m not a figment of your imagination. And it’s really nice to meet you.”
She stared between his proffered hand and his open face.
“I think she’s in a little too much shock to shake hands,” I told him.
She slammed her eyes back to mine, then back to his. “Why do you look like you’re . . . like you’re—like us?”
Sighing, he said, “I’m guessing magic.”
Her eyes widened, which I honestly thought was impossible considering their current width. “Nima is going to—oh, Great Gejaiwe, she’s going to . . .” She couldn’t seem to find the words to finish her sentence. “And my uncle. Oh, Skies . . .”
Cruz’s green eyes glided over her face, smiling even though it looked painful for him to do so. Was it talk of Lily, or the fact that, in spite of having inherited her father’s more chiseled features, darker hair, and honeyed skin tone, her eyes and bow-shaped lips were the same as her mother’s?
“How many cells ago did your brother die?” he asked.
Her eyebrows writhed as though she were about to break down again. “Two.”
I tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “You went through an entire world on your own?”
Her bloated lids closed, and she shuddered. “Oh, Amara.” When her lids swept back up, her eyes gleamed silver. “It was so horrible. Plus, I thought . . . I thought Sook was gone. Forever. And I didn’t think I’d ever find you, and—” She