Chapter 248

Ava’s POV

“Hey, wait up!” I shouted, trying not to slip as I hopped from stone to stone, attempting to catch up. This was beyond weird. I had seen her before—this other version of myself. Usually, she taunted me, spouted cryptic nonsense, or generally made my life more frustrating. But this time, she wasn't here to mess with my head. Not yet, anyway. She wasn't showing me something painful, sneering with that all-knowing smirk. No, she was simply… walking. Leading me somewhere. That's what felt wrong. Okay—not as wrong as the fact that I was having a full-blown conversation with myself.

I finally caught up, panting slightly. She sighed dramatically, shaking her head as if offended by my lack of endurance.

“We’re inside your unconsciousness, genius,” she said flatly. “Do I have to teach you everything? You could have just thought of a car to get us there faster. It would have appeared. All you have to do is focus on what you want.”

I paused, staring at her. “That works?”

She gave me a slow blink, deeply disappointed.

I exhaled, shut my eyes, and focused. A car. I need a car.

Silence. I cracked one eye open. Nothing.

I frowned, confused, only to find her biting her lip, struggling not to laugh. Then she lost the battle, doubling over, laughing so hard she had to grip her stomach. “Oh my goddess, you are so gullible.”

My glare could have melted steel. “That’s not funny. I actually believed you weren’t going to be a pain in the ass this time.”

She wiped an imaginary tear and rolled her shoulders, unfazed by my death stare. “Yeah, well. You should know better by now.”

I exhaled, forcing myself to let it go before I punched myself—literally. Instead, I followed as she continued walking through this endless, fog-covered terrain.

After several minutes of silence, I sighed. “How much longer until we get there?”

She shrugged, without slowing down. “No clue. But we will know when we are there.”

I gave her a look. “That is the least helpful answer you could have given me.”

A smirk played on her lips. “Try summoning a car again. Maybe that will get us there faster.”

I groaned. “You’re the worst.”

“And yet, you’re still following me.”

I scowled but said nothing. We walked a little further before I hesitated. Then, softer this time, I asked, “Do you really think we can get him back? Even though it’s been a week?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

The confidence in her voice sent a flicker of hope through me, but I swallowed it down. “How? How could he not be… gone?”

She sighed, as if she had already explained this a hundred times. “Because when people like us die—werewolves, witches, vampires—”

“Vampires are real?” I blurted out.

She stopped walking and turned to me slowly, her face blank. I immediately regretted interrupting.

“This,” she said dryly, “is why you don’t understand anything. You never let me finish.”

I clamped my mouth shut. She shook her head, muttering under her breath before continuing, “When supernatural beings die, they don’t immediately pass on. They go to the In-Between—a place between your world and the afterlife. There, they have to accept they are dead to move on. If they refuse, the universe forces them to go. But Grayson… he is still there. Which means he is holding on. We just need to reach him before he gets shoved into the afterlife.”

I nodded, absorbing that information. “If you knew he was still here this whole time, why didn’t you come for me sooner?”

“Because I can only reach you when you are in a deep state of unconsciousness. And in case you haven’t noticed, you haven’t been sleeping. You’ve been running on fumes. Your body finally gave out, and that was my opening.”

I didn’t argue. She wasn’t wrong. Instead, I changed the subject. “The essence… is that what’s been causing me pain?”

She didn’t miss a beat. “Yes. You were born with it—to end the curse of the Blackwood bloodline, or it was transferred, or whatever. But you are not meant to carry it alone. You are supposed to bond with a Blackwood—your anchor. Without an anchor, the power inside you has no balance. It has become too much for your body to handle. The longer you go without binding to one, the worse it will get. So, not only is the fate of the realm riding on us not failing, if you don’t get your anchor, it will continue eating at you from the inside, and each time the pain will only get worse until it destroys you.”

I swallowed hard. “And you knew all of this? You knew everything and didn’t tell me?”

She smirked. “Technically, you knew it. I’m just the part of you that understands it better.”

I gave her an unimpressed look.

“Fine,” she huffed. “I like to bask in being a know-it-all, but I don’t actually know it all. I find things out the same way you do, but I live in your unconscious, and deep down, you already know all these things. You just have a hard time grasping them in reality, but for me, they’re as clear as day.”

I blinked at her. “So you didn’t know Grayson was stuck for a week?”

She hesitated for half a second before casually saying, “No, that I did know. A vampire told me.”

My eyes widened. “A vampire?!”

She burst out laughing, shaking her head at me. “Your gullibility never gets old.”

I groaned and smacked my forehead. “One of these days, I swear, I’m going to ignore you.”

She grinned. “No, you won’t.”

I hated that she was right. We kept walking, the eerie landscape stretching endlessly before us. I wasn’t sure where we were headed, and she wasn’t offering any explanations. My mind drifted, thoughts swirling in the strange stillness of this place.

After a while, my thoughts spiraled. What if we were already too late? What if Grayson had moved on, and I was walking into nothing? I had spent the last week drowning in guilt and pain, convinced I had lost him forever. And now, suddenly, there was a chance to bring him back? It felt too good to be true.

I glanced at my other self, as if she had all the answers. She didn’t look concerned. If anything, she seemed a little bored.

“Do you even know where we’re going?” I asked.

She smirked. “Nope.”

I stopped walking. “Wait, what?”

She took a few more steps before realizing I wasn’t following. With an exaggerated sigh, she turned to face me. “Look, I told you already. We’ll know when we get there.”

“That is not reassuring.”

“You’re the one who wanted to come,” she pointed out.

I threw my hands in the air. “You dragged me here!”

She shrugged. “Same thing.”

I groaned but kept walking. There was no use arguing with myself—literally. For a while, we walked in silence. The more we walked, the more my mind filled with thoughts I wasn’t sure I wanted to face. I was so lost in them that I almost didn’t hear her speak.

“You’re overthinking again,” she muttered, side-eyeing me.

I didn’t bother denying it.

“You don’t,” she grinned. “It’s part of your charm.”

I sighed. We walked in silence for a long while before I spoke again. “What if I fail?”

She stopped. Really stopped. Then, slowly, she turned to face me, her gaze steady. “Then we both fail.”

I blinked.

“We’re in this together, Ava. You and me. So if you fall, I fall.”

Something tightened in my chest. She gave me a rare, serious look. “But we’re not going to fail. We can’t. We’re going to get Grayson back and we’re going to break this damn curse.”

I swallowed hard, then nodded. She smirked, and just like that, her usual humor returned. “Now come on. Move your scrawny ass.”

I groaned. “We have the same ass.”

“Eh,” she shrugged. “Mine’s better.”

I rolled my eyes but followed her. We kept moving, the air around us growing warmer. Then, I felt it—a tugging sensation in my chest. It was like something—or someone—was calling for me.

“Do you feel that?” I asked.

She nodded. “We’re close.”

A shiver ran down my spine. I wasn’t sure if it was excitement or fear. Probably both. Then, out of nowhere, the ground beneath us shifted. The sky above darkened. A strong wind swept through the air, my hair whipping wildly around my face.

“Okay, that’s new,” I muttered.

She looked around, her expression unreadable. “We have to move faster.”

We broke into a run, though I had no idea where we were going. I just followed the pull in my chest, hoping it would lead me to him. The landscape around us blurred, the world shifting in strange ways. One moment we were running on solid ground; the next, it felt like we were running on water. My feet didn’t sink, but each step sent ripples outward, distorting everything around us.

Suddenly, a blinding light surrounded us, and just like that, we were falling—together. The last thing I heard was my own voice, whispering in my ear, “Told you we would know when we got there.”