Francine coughed again—purposefully—and he tensed at the thought of what might have ended up in her lungs, what might have happened toallof her, if she’d taken another step past the light.
“It’s not getting any closer,” Francine said after a tense minute.
“No,” he agreed, although every instinct was telling him to get out of here. To getherout of here.
“And we haven’t seen this anywhere else.” She hissed in a breath. “The prison—if this room is on the outer edge of the enchantment, it must be—”
“No. The prison is the magical core of the fortress. It will be the last to disappear.”
She shuddered. “Has this happened before?”
“No.”
“Lucky us,” she said hollowly.
He stared ahead. How much of the shadow dragons’ history was already lost, as the ancient enchantment that kept the fortress alive disintegrated around them?
Was there any point to saving what was left?
After a moment, Francine looked down. “Claws, Julian.”
He followed her gaze—to where he was gripping her to him, one hand around her wrist, the other her waist. Hands tipped with draconic claws.
“Excuse me.” He withdrew his claws—but didn’t let her go.
“And?” She prompted him. “You don’t need to hold on to me so tightly. I’m not about to run back into—into that.”
She made no attempt to move away from him. Perhaps he was imagining it, but she nestled closer into him instead, her warmth and weight so much more real than anything else in these empty halls.
“We should check the rest of the fortress. Find out if there are any other weak spots.” Francine’s voice was cool and smooth and betrayed nothing even close to fear—which was a giveaway in itself.
“Yes,” Julian replied at once.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I was agreeing—”
“You didn’t say it as though you were agreeing with me. You said it as though it didn’t matter what you said, so long as it was what I wanted to hear. I amveryfamiliar with that sort of tone.” Her shoulders stiffened. “I’m not—I’m not the person I was being on the ship. You don’t have to obey me. Or act as though you are and then do your own thing. Just please—tell me.”
Vulnerability might have been in his nature once, but it had long been beaten out of him.
Julian looked at the precipice before him, closed his eyes, and stepped off it.
“It’s not that we do not need to check the rest of the fortress. There are just so many things we need to do.” They all weighed down on him, all the weight of history and the fateof the world, and for a moment he thought he would crumble beneath them.
With Francine in his arms.
“I know.” Her voice trembled. “One thing at a time.”
“The fortress is collapsing.”
“Eloise and her friends are closing in.”
“Which would neatly cancel one another out, except we need to keep the Soul-Eater contained but not dead. If the fortress fails, the Soul-Eater dies and is reborn somewhere out there.”
“We need to stop the others before they get here.”
“We need help.”
