“No,” she whispered hoarsely. “Not Poppy. Not her.”
Mingxi exhaled shakily.
Caelan stiffened. “Then who?”
Lysandra’s voice cracked. “I don’t know her face. I only know she matters. To you.”
Caelan exhaled once, hard, and Lysandra clutched his coat with trembling fingers.
“So many currents… your path splits. Two futures. One bright. One dark. And she—your tide—your anchor—she hasn’t arrived yet.”
She sagged in his arms, gasping.
Caelan looked shaken in a way Mingxi had never seen, and he focused entirely on the girl in his arms. Poppy had gone cold. Not dangerously—just inward, too far inward.
He angled his mouth near her ear. “Yueguang,” he whispered, voice low and frayed. “Stay with me.”
Her brow furrowed faintly, and he felt her inhale before she whispered back, barely audible, “Don’t… leave.”
Mingxi closed his eyes, a breath of relief shuddering out of him. “I’m not going anywhere,” he promised. “Not ever.”
Another tremor rippled through the ground—silent but heavy, the kind of danger only magic could detect.
Lysandra lifted her head weakly. “Too late…” she whispered.
They ran until the forest changed color.
Chapter 74
Moonlight gave way to the thin gray of approaching dawn, a pale wash filtering through the branches. The ground turned from blue-shadowed earth to frost-kissed gold. The cold deepened. The girls weakened.
Mingxi carried Poppy close to his chest, her heartbeat faint against his skin. Her breath misted in shallow bursts, too slow, too soft. His stride never faltered, but his jaw tightened with each uneven inhale she took.
Caelan followed closely with Lysandra slung across his back in a way that would have been undignified for anyone else. She drifted in and out of consciousness—sometimes whimpering, sometimes laughing, sometimes whispering about things none of them understood.
“The trees are wrong,” she murmured once. “The shadows are folding.”
“I know,” Caelan muttered. “Hold on.”
They made it another mile before Lysandra’s body convulsed with a shuddering breath. At the same moment, Poppy’s fingers spasmed weakly against Mingxi’s sleeve.
Both men stopped instantly.
Mingxi’s voice was calm, but the calm that comes just before something breaks. “We’re stopping.”
Caelan nodded sharply. “Yes.”
They chose a hollow between two boulders just off the deer path, sheltered from the wind. The moment Mingxi set Poppy down, her head lolled, body folding like exhausted silk.
“Yueguang,” he whispered, catching her cheeks between his warm hands. “Stay with me. Just a little longer.”
Her eyelashes flickered once, the barest acknowledgment. It was enough.
Caelan gathered fallen branches. Mingxi conjured foxfire, coaxing it beneath the dry tinder until it flared in a controlled burst—blue-white, warm, steady. The fire spread in a ripple of light across the clearing. Mingxi watchedas Poppy instinctively curled toward it, her body seeking warmth even unconscious.
Lysandra groaned as Caelan settled her near the flames. Her eyes were wild around the edges, darting frantically, staring at something unknown.
“I can’t tell what’s now,” she whispered, trembling. “Everything’s layered. Too bright… too loud…”
