Theo closes his eyes. “Restrained. Overseeing the work.”
Stellan goes perfectly still.
The kind of still that comes right before violence.
“Then we get her back,” Wes says, quiet but absolute. “We tear it down.”
“With what?” I hear myself say. “We’re half-dead, Bree’s unconscious, and we’ve been gone ayear. They’ve had time to fortify. To plan. To turn everything she built into—”
“Into a weapon,” Thane finishes. His silver eyes shift to Bree’s unconscious form draped across Gray’s back. “Against her.”
The familiars pulse brighter, impatient, pulling us onward.
No one moves.
“And then pancakes,” I say.
Everyone turns to stare at me.
I shrug. “What? We save the world, we liberate the sanctuary, we overthrow the Council—and then we make pancakes. It’s called having priorities.”
Rhett’s mouth twitches. Almost a smile.
Wes exhales something that might be a laugh.
Even Theo’s expression softens just slightly.
“Pancakes,” Stellan repeats flatly.
“Blueberry,” I confirm. “With real maple syrup. None of that fake nonsense.”
“You’re insane,” Thane says.
“And yet here we are, following smoke foxes through hell because they told us to. So who’s really the crazy one?”
The tension breaks—not shatters, but cracks enough that we can breathe again.
Gray shifts Bree’s weight, then starts walking.
The rest of us follow.
The corridor opens ahead, light rippling faintly at the edges. The familiars drift faster now, shadows streaked with silver, like they’re close to something.
I glance at Theo. His eyes still glow faintly, Sight not quite faded.
“We’re running out of time,” he says quietly.
“Then let’s stop walking like ghosts.”
The air feels lighter. My chest doesn’t.
You can’t joke away a vision like that. Can’t laugh off the image of our people in chains, the sanctuary we’d bleed for turned into a mine, Riley sitting with the Council like she belongs there.
But if I stop joking, I’ll start thinking.
And if I start thinking, I’ll remember that hope is dangerous.
That walking toward light in the Void probably means we’re walking into a trap.
