“I’m here. I’m alive. We’re all alive. Come back to me! Come back to us!”
His throat worked, a pained sound escaping, but his eyes remained vague and haunted.
“He can hear, but it’s not real to him.” Zane let out a frustrated exhale.
Brumous circled us anxiously before pressing his nose to Casimir’s temple, sniffing intently as if trying to locate the source of the wrongness, as if he wanted to chew it out. He knew. Even better than I did myself, Brumous knew how it felt to have Arabesque digging around inside his head. I pictured her now, imagined her cunning smile as she taught her daughter this particular torture, and white-hot rage surged through me.
“Of course it isn’t. He didn’t just imagine our deaths. Helivedthem,” I explained quickly. “Experienced every sensory detail, every agonizing moment. A Harrow illusion specialty.”
I dropped my head to Casimir’s chest, listening to his rapid heartbeat, feeling the silent sobs wracking his body. What could I do? I didn’t have my magic, had nothing to counter this other than love and stubbornness and fury.
“Listen to me. Focus on my voice.” I touched my lips to his forehead, his cheek, the corner of his mouth, leaving a trail of desperate kisses. “I love you. I need you to come back.”
Still nothing in those eyes. Not even a glimmer of the man I knew.
Sitting up, I wrapped my shaking hands around the buckled straps criss-crossing his chest and shook him as hard as I could.
“Wake up!Right now,Simmy Cimmerian!”
His body jolted violently beneath my hands. A spasm rippled through him from head to toe, his back arching off the floor.
“Simmy?” I whispered, wild hope blooming. “Simmy! I’m alive. Koa and Zane are alive.You’realive.”
Something in his face shifted, and I couldseehim fighting, clawing his way back one painful inch at a time.
“That’s it,” I coaxed, gentler now, leaning close enough that my lips brushed his ear. “Follow my voice. Find me, Simmy. Find your love, your little wife.”
And his eyes changed. Still unfocused and wild with terror, but seeing now. Seeing me and his brothers.
“You’re alive?” A hoarse, broken whisper.
I nodded, my tears falling onto his face and mingling with his.
“Yes. Yes, we’re all alive.” I pried my fingers out of his vest to gesture at Zane and Koa. “See? We’re all here and alive.”
Casimir’s trembling hands hovered in the air as if he was afraid to reach for me. Afraid I might dissolve at his touch. I grabbed them and held them to my face, pressing them there with my own palms.
“Feel me,” I commanded. “See and hear me. Touch and taste me.” I leaned down and brushed my lips against his, feeling the salt of tears. “I’m real. I’m alive. I’m here, Simmy, and I love you so,somuch.”
In his eyes, doubt slowly gave way to fragile hope, then wonder, then something too enormous to contain.
“Seri?” His voice broke on my name, the sound small and vulnerable in ways I’d never heard from him before.
“I’m here.”
And Casimir Cimmerian shattered into deep, wrenching sobs that tore through the foyer. His arms wrapped around me with crushing force, pulling me against his chest as his whole body shook.
“I saw—” he gasped between sobs. “I couldn’t save— You were—”
“Shhh.” I dropped kisses all over his tear-streaked face. “It wasn’t real. None of it was real.”
His fingers dug into my arms, my back, my hair, as if checking that every inch of me remained intact.
“You were gone. All of you. And I couldn’t—”
“We’re here,” I whispered against his neck. “Koko, Zoodle, let him feel you.”
Koa laid down on one side, his chest heaving with his own sobs as he stroked Casimir’s hair. Zane fell on our other side, his head on Casimir’s shoulder and his tears flowing faster than the blood leaking from his cotton-packed nose. Even Brumous wedged himself into our puppy pile and nuzzled Casimir’s arm, whining softly.
