Josiah’s smile doesn’t budge. “I love a challenge.”
“Alright. Fuck it.” I drag a hand down my face. “My mother’s going to figure out I just distracted her, and she’ll be back here any minute.”
“Aaron.” Kade’s hand comes up flat between us. “Don’t do this.”
“Please.” I hold her eyes. “Even you know I’m the only one who can stop Eric.”
She hisses, but it isn’t a no. She holds the look a moment, then breaks it first. “Hurry the fuck up.” She throws a finger at Josiah, whose eyes have flashed bright red at the prospect of all of it. “You’re going to have your hands full in there with this one. Witches and warlocks can’t stand vampires.”
I lift my hand and call my magic up. It sparks at my fingertips, blue-gold crawling across my knuckles and pooling hot in my palm, and I pull Mara back a step with my other arm before I let it go. The magic leaves me in a hard rush and slams into the chained door. The links scream. My magic floods the white of Tiana’s old seal, the two colors twisting and fighting,and the chains crack apart down the center and peel back just far enough to leave a path.
Kade watches the path open in the chains. “This is a terrible idea.”
“I know.” I let the magic die back into my fingers. “But I don’t know my father well enough to stop him.”
She groans. Josiah turns to her, hands sliding into his pockets. “Don’t worry, Mother Kade. I’ll see to their safety.”
“I don’t believe a single thing that comes out of your mouth.” She huffs, and Josiah chuckles low at the back of his throat.
The light flares almost blinding, my blue-gold tangled up in the last of Tiana’s white, and then it dies all at once. The opening behind the broken links goes black—a flat, depthless nothing where the inside of the cottage should be.
Kade exhales, and her face sets hard. “Please. Please be careful. This might be hard for you to believe, but all of Wintermoon cares whether you come back.”
I can’t help the smile. “Oh, I’m not going in there alone with Josiah.” Her brow furrows. I point at her, and the grin gets away from me. “You’re coming with me.”
“No the fuck I’m not!”
I almost laugh, because she’s said that exact thing standing in this exact spot before. I was small enough then to be holding my mother’s hand, and Kade swore up and down she’d never set foot in the Glen.
“I remember you saying that the last time,” I tell her. “You still came.”
“Motherfucker!” She stomps one boot against the ground.
“This is exciting.” Josiah rocks on his heels, taking in the black doorway. “A trip to another realm. ‘The threshold you are warned away from is the one with your answer behind it.’ Chapter thirty.”
“Please shut the fuck up about that book.” Kade stalks over to him and gets in his face, her voice dropping. “Layla is going to flip her shit when she wakes up and you’re not there.”
Mara’s ears perk forward at that, and Kade catches it. She turns to us, and a laugh comes out of her that breaks in the middle, her glance cutting back to the black doorway. “You think Josiah’s bad? Ohhh.” She shakes her head. “That damn Layla Dupree is far worse.”
Josiah’s head turns slow at the sound of it. “Layla Dupree.” He savors the name. “I’ve never heard anyone address her so formally. It’s lovely.”
“Oh, please. Shut up.” Kade pinches the bridge of her nose, then drops her hand and looks between me and Mara. “Let’s get this over with. Find what you need and get the fuck out. The place is a wasteland now. Far worse than you remember it.”
I narrow my eyes at that, because I don’t understand it. The Glen I remember was the most alive place I’d ever stood in. But Mara’s hand finds mine, and when I look down at her she’s looking up at me with all the love I don’t deserve sitting right there on her face, and whatever question I had goes quiet. She squeezes my fingers and gives me a small nod.
Kade steps through the black first and is gone. Josiah doesn’t hesitate behind her—he walks into the nothing and the dark swallows him whole.
I turn to Mara and steal a kiss before we follow. She doesn’t deny me. She leans up into it, soft, her mouth warm against mine, and when I pull back her eyes stay closed a moment longer.
“I love you,” she says, and I pull her through.
The black takes us. There’s no inside to it—no ground to stand on, no air to pull in, no up or down for me to fall through. For a stretch I can’t put a number to, Mara’s gone. My hand isstill shut hard around hers and I can’t feel a thing where she should be.
Then the black lets us out. It’s daytime on the other side—bright, the air cool and still, a street running off ahead of us between rows of buildings. The light is flat and gray, and nothing in the sky is making it. Kade’s already a few steps ahead. Josiah’s beside her, turning a slow circle with his chin tipped up.
Nothing moves on it. No wind, no voices, no footsteps but ours—a whole town and the only sound is the four of us breathing. It’s the kind of quiet that makes me want my back to a wall.
I know this place. The last time I stood here I was a kid with my mother’s hand clamped around mine, and it was the most alive place I’d ever been. The runes in the street moved under me, lit from the inside. The air hummed, a sound I felt as much as heard. Witches passed in robes with their hands full of light, and things flew over the rooftops. At the center of it stood the Heart Tree, taller than any building, burning gold from the inside—and everything the realm ran on came off of it. I tipped my head back until my neck hurt, and I still couldn’t take it all in.
