However, he’d heard his mother’s grief-stricken sobs and almost taken a magical knife to his chest with the distraction. Seeing her up on the hill, cradling his father’s body in her arms as Odette sobbed at their side … Elijah’s legs almost buckled.
Niamh’s voice came again.
Elijah, grieve later, brother. We have a world to save.
Her words were gentle but stern.
Grieve later.
His mind reeled and a sob of agony caught in his throat.
So he tore his gaze from his parents to Echo who’d reached them first. Their eyes met. Her sorrow was clear. But so was her strength.
If it were her, she would pull her shit together to do what needed to be done.
Elijah channeled his mate’s fierceness, tightened his hands into fists at his sides, and marched in the same direction as Thea and Rose.
To meet Niamh in front of the terrifying gate that had opened to another world.
To Faerie.
As they grew closer, he knew they too must feel the pulsating energy. It was like a powerful wave, pushing at their shins, threatening to take them under.
It was as loud as a crashing wave too.
“We have to close it before the other side realizes it’s open!” Niamh shouted, her hair whipping around her face with the force of the gate’s energy.
“Is she dead?” Rose shouted back.
Niamh nodded, her expression mournful. “This was the only way! I saw a thousand paths, and this was the only way!”
“What do we need to do?” Thea yelled.
“She took blood from us all to open the gate!”
“Will our blood close it?” Elijah shouted, his eyes stinging against what felt like hurricane-force winds.
Niamh shook her head. “The light! The golden light we all have within us! It’s stronger once united! Pure energy! Enough energy to heal the fracture between universes!”
Thea looked panicked. “I don’t have it anymore!”
“You do!” Niamh seemed so sure. “I promise, you do!”
“I’m still fae?”
“You’re something new!” Niamh smiled, reaching out for Thea.
Clearly shaken by the revelation, Thea accepted Niamh’s hand. Elijah numbly stretched for Rose’s and then took Thea’s other, the four of them united.
“Call on that golden light!” Niamh cried. “Whatever it takes! Pain, grief, rage … call on the light! We don’t have much time now!”
Determined, Elijah faced the gate, staring into the world beyond, to the ethereal forest beckoning in the distance. Alienplants and flowers of a vividity his brain could hardly process. It looked beautiful.
Beautiful, but deadly.
He didn’t need to look over his shoulder to see his parents in his mind’s eye. His devastated mum beside his beloved father who had died to protect the people he loved. Grief tore through Elijah and he felt Echo’s too. The loss of her birth mother, a woman she’d barely gotten to know. The guilt of bringing her into this mess. Of bringing Elijah’s parents into it. Her pain for her mate. For him.
The death at his back.
