Eli looks to Ethlet and Gracious, then past them to Fallow and the looming fog. Regret and sorrow crowd his gaze, but Lowri shakes her head gently. ‘No sadness, Eli. You will find your way back here one day.’
‘And I’ll be waiting,’ Ethlet agrees, eyes shining. ‘We all will.’
Eli nods. ‘Thank you for welcoming us, Ethlet.’
She rubs her eyes with her sleeve and gestures at the doorway. ‘You need to go, before it closes.’
With one last look, laden with so much loss and love, Eli walks through the doorway, pulling Lowri with him.
Together they step across other worlds, other places, different from before. A dark city with bright lights and hungry stares; then the edge of a tidal island, the sea slopping over their feet as it rushes over a walkway, a high gate before them with a K twisted into it. Then they step again, away into a town, a broomstick cracked in half on the ground beside them, a great cliff rising up on one side with what seems to be a huge city perched at the top of it. Then they step again, finding a path of night and stars. Eli grips Lowri’s hand tightly, pulling her sideways, and the world settles before them into somewhere familiar. Somewhere they both love. Somewhere that calls to their very souls.
Home.
Lowri looks at Eli and finds he’s staring towards Ennor Castle, hunger pinching his eyes, and hope. Someone opens the door. Then Eli drops Lowri’s hand, his breath hitching and he’s running, just as Mira chokes, running too, and they’re in each other’s arms. Tears stream down Lowri’s cheeks as she watches them both, her heart swelling in her chest.
They arehome.
He walked to Ennor, but he also walked to her. Mira Boscawen. The girl made of two halves, with a foot in each world. Just like him.
A meow that is not quite a meow echoes around her and she looks down to find Nova pouncing for her, clawing up her chest to settle round her shoulders. The warmth spills into her skin as a silent tear shivers down her cheekbone. ‘Nova.’
Never again, witch. It’s been too long. And what do I scent on you …? Did you meet a grimalkin?
Lowri laughs shakily, running her fingers through Nova’s fur. ‘He wasn’t a patch on you.’
‘Lor!’ a voice calls, and she looks up as Caden appears, then Brielle, both running for her. Nova jumps down, landing gracefully by her side as she opens her arms to Brielle, then Caden. She hugs them both, crying quietly, and knows she made it, at last. To her people, her family. Her true home.
somehow, i just know.
There was an absence in our world, a space where he used to be. Perhaps it’s in my heart, maybe it’s the ghost of the boy who moves through shadow, but, when the world shifts, I gasp. Pressing my hand into my heart, I feel the pull of him, like the moon lures the tide, like the ebb and flow of the waves rushing over shell and sand.
Eli has returned.
He’s found his way back to me.
I rush from my room, running through corridors, flying down the staircase, and when I step out of the front door, he’s there. I sob, tears already filling my vision, his smile swimming before me like sunshine, like my first breath of air in weeks. I run to him. I run to his arms and feel his own wrap round me. I’m home. At last, with his heart beating beside my own, I’m home. I reach up to his face and his lips meet mine, his touch sending trails of honeyed light through myveins. Everything that’s happened, everything we’ve been through, dissolves in this moment with his lips touching my own.
‘You found a way,’ I say, smiling through my tears.
‘And I brought you back what you asked for,’ he says, holding something out to me. A snow globe, perfectly formed, of a town with a dark cloud hanging above it. ‘The city of Fallow, a piece of another world.’
‘Your father’s world,’ I say in wonder.
‘Yes.’ He closes my fingers round it, then leans down, kissing me softly. I close my eyes, drinking him in. It’s home, it’s us, it’s me and him. We break apart and he takes my hand, tugging me gently into a pool of shadows. When we step out, we’re together on his favourite beach on the other side of Ennor, the waves lapping over shells, his hands at my waist, bracing me. He runs his palms down my sides, tracing my form, as though still not believing I’m real. That he has returned.
‘When I saw you in that doorway,’ he says shakily, ‘when those guards pulled you away …’
‘I know,’ I say, reaching up to run my fingers through his hair, to press my body to his. ‘But I’m all right. I escaped. Our friends, they helped me get out of there.’
‘I should have been there for you, rescued you. I should have got back sooner.’
I smile at him. ‘I do not need you to rescue me, Elijah Tresillian. I rescued myself. I fought for myself. I just needyou. To be alive, and whole, and returned to me.’
We kiss again, wrapped in each other, our souls cleaved as one, once more. But we both know it’s borrowed time, that this perfect moment, this reunion, can only be a temporary, fleeting thing. The ruling council will come for us and their revenge will be brutal. We must prepare to fight.
He doesn’t know everything that’s happened here. And, as much as I want to live and breathe in this slip of space and time, I have to tell him. He knows I was captured, but he doesn’t know the full story, or where it leaves us and his people. He doesn’t know that, even now, our enemies will be amassing their forces to wipe us out forever. That they intend to control magic and that they have their sights set on a bigger prize. The entire continent.
‘Eli, we have to talk.’
