Here, the air was warmer, scented with strange flowers, with honey and pine.
Here, the dust kicked up, motes sparkling blue before falling back to the ancient stone.
Here, I could feel the gazes of creatures even older than the Hush, spirits of the mountains, the underworld.
Did the dark gods watch our progress? Did any god?
That, I was sure, didn’t matter. All we could do was follow our instincts, our hearts. All we could do was hold each other through the darkness, doing what we could, doing the hard thing to keep the vulnerable safe. To find a child who was not a child, and her Shadow who was not a shadow, and return them to the sky.
Time slid by in all the shades of blue. I was still too new to the living world to intuit time, but this felt endless. There was nothing but our swift steps down a twisted path, each breath stretching out, dreamlike.
And then—
—a crack of thunder—
—the tunnel opened into a magic-drenched chamber—
—light flared, died—
—and Abbi stood up, her face tipped toward us, though her eyes were blindfolded and hands bound by gossamer cloth. An intricate design carved a circle into the floor around her.
“Brogan?” she asked. “Lula?”
“Yes,” Lula breathed, not moving any closer to the circle that licked with smoke.
This was a trap. We knew it. The Hush had told us so.
“Give me a minute,” Val said. He and his wolf floated a circumference around the chamber.
I touched Lu’s arm. “Val.”
She nodded.
“I can’t see you,” Abbi said. “I thought I could get Hado free. But they had threads. I don’t like their threads.” She scowled and a watery white glow radiated around her.
“They watch,” Thrum said. “Faster. Free her faster.”
The hunters pulled up on either side of us.
“What’s the hold up?” Elmer griped.
“Thrift store man?” Abbi asked. “Are you angry? I promise I won’t bring trouble to your store.”
“If I cared about that, I wouldn’t have yelled about it,” Elmer said. “Looks like a demon trap. Didn’t think a demon trap could hold a Moon Rabbit. You stuck, Moon Bunny?”
“Oh, no, I’m not trapped. But if I cross the spell lines, the gates of darkness open. Then the Hush will devour the land and blot out the sky. So.” She shrugged, and looked very much like a child bored with explaining the mystical as the mundane.
“Is that true?” I asked Thrum.
“Why do you think I’ve thrown in with you against the Mother,broken heart? I have reasons to want the darkness to remain where it is. I have reasons not to want more Hush upon the land.”
“Or blotting out the sky,” Abbi reminded him.
“Yes,” he said, “or that.”
“I can’t see any magic holding her,” Val said.
“I just said there isn’t,” Abbi complained. “Just that demon spell. But Hado is caught. There’s a hook thing.”
