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Mia is standing there, dark hair loose, her long black dress, so reminiscent of those worn by Ophelia, sucking in the light. She looks beautiful and dangerous, but her eyes betray her—uncertain, worried. Her mouth trembles. Her eyes are wet.
“She’s back on our side,” I breathe and we all surge forward to put our arms around her.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers over and over, reaching for us, “so sorry, her enchantment caught me, I don’t believe those things of you, I don’t…”
And at that moment, as she turns in the circle of our arms, touching our faces and whispering her apologies, something changes, something clicks into place. All that tension locked inside me relaxes, the knot in my gut unwinds. I thought she’d left us, I really thought she believed us to be murderers, to be rotten to our cores—like my family thinks of me, like the world thinks of me.
But she doesn’t think that. I lift locks of her hair, draw in her scent of flowers and sugar, and find myself smiling. I swear I feel magic flowing through us just at her touch, a jolt as if I’ve jammed my fingers inside a socket. The world lights up with currents of energy and weariness sloughs off me like snakeskin, leaving me blinking.
She came to free us and it’s going to be okay.
There’s so much to say, to ask. As we walk out of the file room, I glance around in fucking wonder at everyone standing there—my gang, but also the others’. Fae, vampires, werewolves, and demons came through for us, all of them sporting cuts on their wrists or palms from which the demonblood that broke the spell keeping the door closed came.
Percy. I nod at him and he nods back, smirking. Then he nods at the rest of the gang as if to say, “See? They’re here for you.”
Received loud and clear. “Thank you all,” I say, hoping my face says the rest. “Is there a plan?”
“To get you out of here,” Percy says. “Off the Academy grounds. Last chance.”
“If you’re away from here,” Anala is saying, “then there will be no Golden Moon ritual. You only need to not be here when the moon rises. She’ll have lost her chance.”
“Sounds good enough to me,” Jason says. “Only problem is how to get out. You’ve used up your blood to get us out of here.”
“We’ve saved some,” Elijah, Jason’s second, says. “We’re not complete idiots.”
I snort.
“We need to wait until midnight, when the portal is at its weakest,” Anala says. “We’ll hide you away until then.”
I have one arm around Mia’s waist, the other boys crowded close, each one touching her in some way. “Any news from the hospital, any news about my brother?”
“He’s out of danger, boss,” Percy says. “He will be discharged soon.”
The news almost sends me to my knees, relief bowling me over. “That’s great. You…” I have to take a deep breath, swallow hard. “You’ve been a true friend, Percy. You didn’t believe I killed someone then?”
Percy clicks his tongue. “I believe you could.”
“Oh damn.”
“If you had to. To protect your own. But not in cold blood.”
I release a shaky laugh. “Thanks, man.”
“You’re welcome. Now come, let’s get away from here before any guard passes by.” He shoves the door closed, smears more blood over the handle, and chants a locking spell. “Let’s hope they won’t realize you’re gone for a while longer.”
So much rests on hope, I think. On chance. On possibility.
But most of it rests on our faith in one another.
It’s almost like a miracle, a new convergence of the spheres.
Don’t trust it, a faint voice in my mind whispers. You know that good things don’t last, good moments are fleeting. Don’t trust in anyone, least of all yourself.
But hope is more powerful than any spell I’ve ever seen...
The room we’re led to is in a basement, somewhere inside the bowels of the stadium. A storage room, sports equipment hanging on the walls or placed on metal shelves.
The guys pull old mattresses to the floor and others carry over a load of blankets. It’s so cold down here that my breath hangs in the air. I thought the walk from the admin offices to here was bad enough, but this room is like a meat locker.
