I nod in agreement. This is where Theo goes when he isn’t safe for anyone else. He takes himself out of the equation before he hurts anyone. The whispers in So Far Away of his presence are true, but the farther we press toward him, the more he retreats as if he’s terrified of what we’re offering. Me. He’s frightened I’m not real.
The others spread out, scanning. But he won’t show himself until he’s ready.
Malachi studies the ridgeline as if he expects it to move.
Nash says nothing. He hasn’t for the last turn.
I glance at him. His jaw is tight, and his eyes are darker than usual.
“You’re brooding,” I tease.
“I’m assessing.”
“That’s brooding with vocabulary.”
He doesn’t smile. That unsettles me more than the vast mountains. Something’s going on with my dark knight. One rescue at a time. Theo is more urgent. Then, if I have to pin Nashdown until he confesses all his secrets, I’m sure his brothers will help me.
I look back out across the peaks. We are past the land of So Far Away. Past the forests that know our names. This place is raw. Untamed. Untapped. Ripe with possibility.
And scorched in places. Like the rock nearest to me, which is charred along one side. I step toward it and press my palm against the blackened stone. It’s warm.
“Now,” Hart says, in a quiet yet forceful demand. “Now you reach.”
I swallow, unsure of the power he believes exists inside me. I close my eyes and tilt my head back, the wind clawing at my hair. With the part of me that’s always known him, I pull. Theo. My dragon. My knight who stole a piece of my hair and my heart from the moment we met. My last unclaimed piece.
At first, there is nothing but a cold and vast distance. A yawning void stares back at me, daring me to step into it. I hesitate and then push forward.
Fire licks through the darkness against my soul. Not physical. Not visible. But alive. Angry, hurt, lost. It hits me like a body slamming into a wall, and heat explodes behind my eyes. A roar tears through my skull in an all-consuming grief, as strong as a storm and as deep as the ocean. It crashes into me, and my breath leaves my body in a broken gasp. He’s alone. Furious. Burning in guilt.
Stop, Theo. None of this is your fault.
He’s grieving me and the moment I died, the silence that followed, the helplessness of it, the certainty that he was not fast enough, not strong enough, not there. The weight of that belief drags at me, pulling me downward into him and into the fire he has built from it.
I see flashes of wings beating against a storm, claws tearing into the earth, mountains cracking beneath the rage of hisbreaking heart as snow hisses into steam around him. I see him circling endlessly, searching and searching and searching for a body that no longer breathed. The grief becomes flame, the flame becomes wall, and when I crash into it again, it burns. I cry out as the heat sears through me, and I drop to my knees.
The connection snaps like a severed cord, abrupt and brutal, and the world rushes back in all at once. Hands are on me immediately—Hart’s first, steady and sure; Malachi’s second, firm and grounding; Nash’s slower, hesitant, as though he’s unsure if he’s allowed to touch me. I cannot have that. He cannot pull away. Not now. Not when everything else is burning.
“What happened?” Hart demands.
I can’t speak for a tempo as I drag clean air into my lungs and force out the smoke that isn’t real.
“There’s a wall,” I manage at last. “He’s built a wall of fire.” Around himself. Around me. Around the memory of what happened.
“He doesn’t know you’re back?” Malachi asks.
“He knows,” I whisper. That’s the problem. He knows, but he’s afraid to look.
I press my palm to my chest, as if I can physically steady it. His grief is still there, clinging to me like ash, heavy and suffocating.
“You can’t force this,” Hart says.
“I know.”
It feels like drowning in something that used to love you.
I drag in a breath.
The mountains press closer.
