Judy was mumbling to herself. "Something's not right. Something's missing…there has to be another anchor point," Judy said, her mind clearly racing. "Something else holding the dimension stable. If we can find it?—"
There is. Talin's voice went hollow. Me. I'm the second anchor.
"What?"
When I threadwalked into Marcus's realm, when I connected to it directly... She paused.
"Talin?"
She didn't answer.
Talin!! This time the scream was in my head.
He bound part of my power there, she continued like nothing had happened. Used it to stabilize the dimension. He wanted me to come. I've never been the solution. I was always part of his trap. That's why it's so easy for me to find it now.
Her raw, unfiltered anguish wrapped around my guts, tightening with every breath until I could feel it tearing my insides apart. I felt wetness on my cheeks and burning my eyes, but I couldn't lift my hands from the floor.
"Come back," I told her. "Right now. I don't care if the fucking dimensions collapse or expand or turn themselves inside out. You have to come back."
If I do that, everyone dies. He'll kill everyone we love. Everyone in this city. Maybe everyone in the world.
"I. Don't. Care." Each word came out separate and brutal. "Let it all fucking burn. I'm not losing you."
You have to.
"Like hell."
Elias… I'm already lost…
"NO!" The shout echoed through the house. Through the bond. Through every thread connected to this moment. "You don't get to make this choice alone. YOU. ARE. MINE. So if you stay in that dimension, then I'm coming with you."
You can't?—
"Watch me." I started to rise, to break Judy's circle and follow Talin into whatever hell she'd walked into.
"Elias, stop!" Judy's power slammed into me, forcing me back down. "You break this circle and she dies for sure. You're her anchor. Without you, she has no way back at all."
"Then tell me how to fucking save her." I rounded on the High Priestess, my fangs fully extended, my control shredding. "Tell me how to pull her out of Marcus's trap without letting everyone die."
"I don't know." Judy looked lost. "I don't know."
The house shook again.
And through the bond, I felt Marcus's laughter, cold and triumphant, as he watched his trap finally spring closed.
Chapter 21
Talin
The cavern stretched around me in impossible directions, walls that curved both inward and outward simultaneously, floors that existed on multiple planes at once.
Was my body really here? I looked down and saw my legs and feet. Then the world shifted around me and I raised my head, fighting down the nausea.
Alex hung suspended in the center of the cavern, wrapped in chains of shadow and blood-red magic. His head lifted as I approached, golden eyes blazing with recognition and rage.
"Talin." His voice came out hoarse, damaged. "You shouldn't have come back."
"Shut up." I reached for the binding circles around him, my fingers passing through dimensional barriers that shouldn't have existed. The threads there were all wrong—twisted, inverted, knotted into patterns that made my head ache just looking at them. "I'm getting you out."
