“Yay! Let’s eliminate a few more.”
He winks. “I’m game for that.”
Five minutes later, the front door swings open. Orion hurries inside, his ebony hair disheveled, his jacket slung over one arm. There's a scrape across his cheekbone and dirt smudged along his jaw, but he's whole.
I'm on my feet before I realize I've moved.
Asher gets there first.
Him kissing the stuffing out of his sexy shifter boyfriend trumps me hugging my childhood bestie, so I wait my turn. Thankfully, I don’t have to wait long.
"Hey, Pop-Tart.” He wraps one arm around me, his other still firmly being claimed by a panicked Asher.
"We were worried." I pull back, scanning him for injuries. "What happened?"
He grimaces, running a hand through his hair. "Izzy and I got caught sneaking away from Ashcroft after the spell. A couple of coven witches spotted us and dragged us inside to be interrogated."
Asher sits up straighter. "Interrogated? Seriously? You were one of them for years."
"Yeah, but Laurel is pissed about our defection. She was yelling about unauthorized magic, disrespecting the coven, all that. Then that weird pulse hit."
Wylder straightens. "You felt it too?"
“Everyone did.” Orion tosses his jacket onto the back of a chair. “You should have seen Laurel’s face when it hit. It was like she was waiting for something or someone to explode through the door.”
My chest tightens. "Did she say anything?"
"Not to us. She dismissed everyone and told us to get out. Do we know what it was?"
“Sadly, yes. Sebastian said Tharuzel has breached the first barrier of his warding.”
Orion's jaw tightens. “That explains the ick of evil crawling under my skin."
Rowan nods. “Yeah, he’s not even free yet, and that released a wave of dark magic.”
Orion follows Asher to the couch and tilts his head back against the cushions. "So we save the town, and Tharuzel is strong enough to break free, anyway."
“Pretty much,” Wylder says.
Silence settles over the room like a weighted blanket.
Rowan's shadows curl tighter around her wrists. "If he's breaking free, we need Mica to find the Cinderheart Crucible and forge some weapons that can send him back to Hell.”
“Agreed.” I take out my phone to check in with Izzy, and then Mica. “And the sooner the better.”
The voices start before I'm fully asleep. They’re soft at first, whispers threading through the darkness like silk pulled taut.
Come outside, Poppy.
Come to us.
Come home.
The floorboards are cold on my feet, but I don't remember standing.
The hallway stretches longer than it should, the walls pressing inward. Shadows pool in the corners, thicker than night, moving when I'm not looking directly at them.
I’m not lost in the dream—the protections on me keep my mind my own—but that awareness isn’t helping to stop my body from obeying.
