“I don’t know,” she admits, and as much as I hate it, it makes sense.
“Where are you?”
“You tell me,” she grumbles, casting her gaze at our surroundings, and I shake my head.
“Not here. Where are you actually?” I clarify, and she huffs, tightening her arms around her middle.
“I don’t know that either.”
I’m surprised by her truth. “Give me what you can,” I order, and her brows furrow as she glances around me once again.
“Is this not real?”
“Elodie,” I warn, and she turns to me with an air of sass only she can muster.
“Thorne,” she mocks, and I shake my head.
“I don’t know how much time we have,” I murmur, wiping a hand down my face, and the furrow of her eyebrows deepens.
“Why?”
I grab her arms, crowding her space. “Elodie, focus. Tell me what you can,” I repeat, and she yanks back, tearing out of my hold as her hands ball into fists instead of slamming into my chest like I half expect.
“Like you don’t know,” she bites, disdain tainting her features as she takes another step back from me.
“Excuse me?” I blink at her, confused, as she tilts her nose up an inch, glaring at me.
“Kael knows. Why don’t you go and ask him?” she hisses, and I shake my head slowly, lifting my hands slightly in surrender.
“He doesn’t,” I mutter, and she snickers, the sound hollow as she inches back further.
“Right.”
Holding back a sigh and the frustration I’m harboring toward Kael, I persist. “He might not know how to disobey his brother, but he definitely doesn’t know where you are.”
Her lips purse as she continues to glare at me, but it’s more than that; I can sense her searching for something in my gaze. I don’t shy away from the silent interrogation, though. Instead, I welcome it. I don’t have anything to hide, and I’m more than happy for her to see that if it means she’ll hurry the hell up and focus.
She clears her throat, moving her hands to rub up and down her arms. “All I know is that Jude is bat shit crazy,” she mumbles, and I huff in agreement.
“Are you still in The Vale?” I ask, hoping to take control of the situation a little more, but it seems that in her presence, it’s not as easy as I would like.
“No, we’re somewhere else entirely,” she breathes, rocking back on her heels as I read between the lines of what she’s not saying.
“So he does have his own bubble of reality,” I summarize, hating that it’s gotten worse than we anticipated.
“If you want to call it that,” she replies, uncertainty circling in her eyes as she rakes her teeth over her bottom lip.
“Where are we?” she repeats, signaling around us, and I sigh.
“Elodie.”
My warning goes unheard as she cocks a brow at me. “I answered you, now you can tell me in return.” She’s not bargaining, she’s taking control.
I consider calling her bluff, but there’s something inside of me that wants to share. “We’re in a dream,mydream, and this ismyhomeland.”
Her jaw falls slack as she fully turns away from me to take in our surroundings. I should push for us to figure out where she is so I can find her, but instead, I take a moment to watch her, desperate to see this world through her eyes.
Once upon a time, there was the real world, filled with humans, hopes, and sins. Parallel to that, there were the Shadowlands and the Higherlands. Three worlds that co-existed. The human world never knew of the other lands, but the latter two knew everything. The fight for control and power enabled the creation of bubble worlds like The Vale, controlled by The Sanctum, and now Jude’s world of pain.
