“Simmy!” I croaked in warning.
He must have felt it because he pivoted and slashed downward, but it was too late. In a fraction of a second, the shadow wrapped itself around him and drew him into the nearest conjoined mass.
“NO.” My voice rolled out of me like the rumble of thunder.
And I slipped into the darkness one more time.
This journey was more falling than walking. The shadows no longer felt like pathways, but like a maze of thorns, each second spent in them tearing something vital from me. I couldn’t find the moon’s thread at all and navigated by instinct and desperate need alone until Ifound that indomitable spirit no shadow could dim. Digging my fingers into it, I clung with all my might and hauled it along with me, more out of defiance than strength.
We crashed hard, Casimir rolling to shield me from impact. I’d returned us to Koa and Zane, who were now standing back-to-back, surrounded on all sides by a wall of shadows.
“Seri!”
Strong hands caught me, and suddenly I was cradled against Casimir’s chest, his heart thundering beneath my ear. My limbs dragged like they were made of stone, my breath came in shallow gasps, and his arm around me was the only thing keeping me upright.
“No more shadow travel! We’ll find another way out!”
“If Ko throws Seri over them, she can get herself out—”
“They’ll just stretch and catch her,” Casimir cut Zane off. “Besides, look at her! She can’t shadow walk anymore, and she’d never outrun them to the SUV.”
“We’re running out of options,” Koa rumbled.
“There’salwaysan option.” Casimir’s jaw clenched, his eyes scanning for any weakness, any opening. “Make a door.Now.”
“The fuck you think we’ve beentryingto do?!” Zane boomed.
I want to go home.
The thought crystallized in my mind, sharp and clear despite the numbness hollowing me out from the inside.
“I’d like to go home now, please,” I whispered, just a puff of sound, but my mates heard.
Koa growled, Zane hissed, and Casimir tightened his arm around me as something in his eyes shifted from tactical assessment to raw determination.
“Efforting that. Stay with me, my love.”
Thensomethingbegan to rise from the fire pit, something awful and wrong, and I knew we didn’t have time for him to find a solution. With the last bit of strength I had left, I did what I had to do.
Latching onto the moon’s glittering thread one more time, I clung to it and reached for Casimir, for Zane, for Koa. Not their physical forms, but the bright sparks of their essences, the true nature of who they were beneath flesh and bone. I gathered them close, wrapping myself around all three to keep them safe, and took a breath that felt like swallowing glass. Then I stepped into the closest shadow.
It clawed at me. Thin, grasping tendrils curled into my ribs, leeching warmth, strength, self, but I refused to give andpulled.
Shadow walking all four of us through Dark-corrupted shadows was like trying to drag the ocean through the eye of a needle.Worse because this ocean fought back. The darkness closed over me like a tomb, heavy and absolute. The demon cores didn’t just follow; they coiled around my arms and throat, sinking into my skin like ink bleeding into water. They tried to tear my boys from my grasp, tried to yank them away from me.
No. They’re mine. You can’t have them.
Time and space stretched. My consciousness began to fragment, pieces of myself unraveling, pulled loose like yarn in an old sweater. I was everywhere and nowhere, too thin in some places and too thick in others.
I focused on Evermere. On the feeling of safety and belonging in every corner of our home. The apple orchard. The library. The kitchen. Zoodle singing to me. Koko reading to me. Simmy lecturing me. It all coalesced into a lighthouse, and I swam toward it, sheltering my loves with the last of my strength.
For one terrible moment, I felt myself slipping under, weakening as the demon cores pulled at me. I had nothing left. They’d taken everything I had, wrung me out past empty into something less. I was losing them, losing myself—
Brumous, my heart whispered.Patient, loyal Brummy is waiting for you all to come home. You can’t disappoint him. Who will love him like you do?
All right, then. One last push. It would have to be enough. It was all I had left…
With a sound like tearing paper, we erupted out of the shadow realm. Above, the pergola full of green leaves. Beneath, cool flagstones. Around, the scent of apples ripening.
