I remembered the exact stone, turquoise and white and lavender, the words painted in Sophie’s tiny, perfect letters.
I couldn’t even speak.
He pressed his lips to the top of my head, whispering into my hair. “Tell me how to make this better.”
I shook my head. The tears kept falling, but not for the reasons Asher thought.
It wasn’t the fire or the loss of Sophie’s things. It wasn’t the way her beautiful art had been reduced to a smudge of paint on the rocks he’d brought back for me.
It was that he’d brought them back for me at all.
Twenty-Eight
GRAY
The dirt was cool and damp beneath my bare feet as I picked my way through the tangled path. Since my last visit, the flowers had become so overgrown it was nearly impossible not to crush them.
“Sorry,” I kept saying. But they never said anything in return, and eventually I made it to the meadow and the lake, the water nipping at my bare toes.
The brambles were gone.
I hadn’t meant to come to the realm. I’d fallen asleep on the couch next to Asher, and somehow, I ended up here.
I wasn’t afraid, though. Jonathan’s presence was gone—at least for now. There was just me and a million stars floating in the fathomless lake of my unconscious mind. I tried to count them, but I kept losing my place.
“How many times have I told you,” a familiar voice said, “you won’t find the best rocks on the shore? You have to wade in there. Work for your art, girl!”
Sophie…
My heart swelled, and I turned around to see my dearest friend, her red hair shimmering in the starlight, her smile bright and contagious.
“Are you going to hug me, bitch, or is this about to getsuperawkward?”
I laughed, throwing my arms around her and pulling her close. The scent of her strawberry shampoo washed over me, so real it brought tears to my eyes.
“I miss you,” I said, squeezing her a little tighter. I knew it wasn’t Sophie—not her form, not her soul—just an image my magic conjured up because I’d fallen asleep thinking about her. About our home. About everything we’d lost.
But right now, none of that mattered. She was my best friend. Her death didn’t change that. It didn’t end our relationship. A part of her would always live on in my soul, so who was to say this image, this memory, this mirage wasn’t any more real than her physical form had been? Who was to say shewasn’tcommunicating with me on some level?
Stranger things had happened in the realm.
“Can I sit with you?” she asked. “I brought my cards.”
I beamed. “Of course you did.”
We found a comfortable spot on the shoreline, close to the water’s edge. The water was warm and dark, rippling gently every time one of us dipped our toes in.
“So, what’s new?” she asked brightly, and my smile faltered. I didn’t want to tell her about the house. About everything we’d lost tonight.
But somehow, she already knew.
“It’s just stuff, Gray.”
“I know. But it reminded me of you.”
“As if I’d ever let you forget me.” She rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue, her funny faces slowly coaxing my smile back to life.
Sophie shuffled the cards—the same deck she’d always used—then laid out five cards in a row between us, face down.
