The screams died suddenly, taking the pain with them.
“It’s over,” Araz said softly. “We made it.”
“Fecking hell,” Blue whispered against my ear.
I carefully disengaged myself from Araz but remained in the circle of his arms. The mist was gone, but the specters remained, dotting around the sanctum that contained the throne. At least it had contained the throne; now it held a glowing white doorway where the throne had once sat.
Pashim stood to one side of it, his body bathed in ethereal light, an expression of wonder on his beautiful face.
“I feel it,” he said. “The vastness of time. Of possibilities.”
“It is not ours to traverse,” the older specter said. “This is as far as we go.”
Pashim nodded. “Yes.” He looked across at me. “This is your path, Leela. And yours alone.” His gaze flicked to Araz. “You cannot go with her, brother.”
Araz tensed. “You do not know that.”
“I do,” Pashim said. “And so do you. You feel it, and yet you hope if you ignore it, then it will not be so.”
My heart sank, my stomach knotting as I looked up into Araz’s face. His clenched jaw and the fire in his eyes gave me the answer I needed, but I asked the question anyway. “Is that true?”
He growled softly and shook his head before exhaling heavily. “Yes. It is true. But I will try. I must.” He gripped my hand tightly.
But he probably wouldn’t make it. I turned to the doorway. “If you don’t make it through, and if I don’t come back out, then?—”
“No.” Araz cupped my shoulders. “I will make it through, andwewill come back out. Together.”
He said it with conviction. As if it was a fact.
I allowed it to settle within me.
“We’ve got this,” Blue added, tapping the tiny sword at his waist.
My eyes heated. “You stay close, and no heroics. We have no idea what’s on the other side.”
“I got ya back, Leela.”
“And so do I,” Araz said.
“We’ll be waiting,” Pashim said, his tone soft.
I gave him a quick hug, then slipped my hand into Araz’s. “Let’s go, big guy.”
White light stole my vision,and the same sense of displacement filled me. I reached for Araz, squeezing his hand to anchor me, but my fist closed in on itself.
He was gone…
Panic flared bright and sharp as the light died, leaving me standing on a silver cobbled road beneath a cosmic sky streaked with the light of a thousand dying stars and the glow of three proud moons.
Long black grass swayed on either side of me, stretching as far as the eye could see, but it was the structure in front of me that grabbed my attention. Its presence was like a hand at my throat.
“Oh feck,” Blue whispered softly.
I reached up to touch his back, wanting to ground myself as I stared at the monolith spiral sitting on its side. It reached for the sky, gleaming dull silver and obsidian as it slowly turned with a whirr that hummed in the air and vibrated through the ground.
The sound pressed into me, traveling through the soles of my boots and into my blood.
A sense of wholeness, a sense of arrival and belonging bloomed inside me, and my knees threatened to weaken. I locked them, breathing through my nose.
