Somewhere in the melee, the Magician waits. I can’t see him, but I know he’s here. I can feel his sickness. His desire. He wants my blood, and he’ll take it—dead or alive.
We turn to run, but the dead are closing in behind us. In front of us. Everywhere.
The army marches on.
The ground rumbles with the sound of a thousand horses.
They’re closing in fast.
Baz doesn’t have the energy to portal us out.
With so many soldiers on the ground, neither he nor Kirin can bend the earth to our will.
There’s truly no escape.
Swallowing hard, I raise my Sword and grab Kirin’s hand. On his other side, Baz puts an arm around him. Doc stands next to me, one hand on my back.
Their love—for me, for one another—wraps me in warmth and peace. I feel the lightest touch of another mage, a brush of a kiss on my lips, and I know Ani’s with us too. TherealAni.
There are no declarations, no last words. We all know we’re going to die here—absent a miracle, that’s certain now.
But when we finally go down, we’ll be going down together. In light. In magick. In love.
Seconds before the Chariot barrels into us, a blinding white light flashes, and a burst of heat explodes in my chest. I suck in a breath and try to get my bearings, but the world is spinning away from me so fast, I can’t tell up from down.
Jareth.
His energy surrounds and fills me at the same time, yanking me away from the chaos.
But we’re not flying.
We’re just… gone.
Eighteen
STEVIE
I hit the ground hard and unbalanced, tottering on my feet with my mages at my side and Jareth spiraling away overhead.
“What the fuck was that?” Baz asks.
Kirin removes his glasses and squints up at the sky. “The owl can portal?”
“That… wasn’t a portal.” I suck in a deep breath and blink the stinging sweat from my eyes. “I think the realms are collapsing. The magick they used to open the rift must’ve…”
My words evaporate as the sight comes into full view.
We’re no longer in the burning meadow.
We’re on the burning campus. Not the Academy as we last saw it, with it’s pristine classroom buildings, lush Tarot fountain, and silver-and-black house flags snapping in the breeze.
No.Thisis the campus I saw in my nightmare visions.
Black smoke billows from the tops of the dorms. Fires burn out of control, devouring the landscape. The pungent scents of blood and metal and magick permeate the air. And everywhere we turn, Eastman’s mages are attacking students and faculty. Our friends.
“Get down!” Doc shoves me hard, crashing down on top of me as we all drop to our bellies, narrowly ducking a volley of flaming arrows.
“Chariot!” I shout, catching sight of her green cape in the distance. “She must’ve followed us. Move!”
