I’m going to sound like a broken record, but what the hell?
It looks like it cost a fortune. I have never owned anything like this in my life. Even on my wedding day, Mark and I rented my dress. It was more practical, and I didn’t have to feel guilty about spending money on something I’d wear once.
And this one is even better than what I wore back then, the fabric richer, the stitching cleaner, every detail too perfect to be real.
My hands start to sweat just thinking about putting it on.
I do it anyway.
All at once, it hits me that I don’t really have a choice. My guys went to such lengths to prepare this for me, and now I feel obligated to accept it, no matter what it is.
It feels serious.
It takes me ten minutes to get it on properly, to zip it up, and to find the confidence to march out in it. I keep my shoes the same, flat black boots, though the fabric falls over them so completely that they cannot be seen at all.
When I am finally done, I leave the room.
Talon is waiting in the hall, and the second he sees me, something stunned and wicked flashes across his face. He offers his arm without a word. I take it.
“Remember,” he murmurs, “it’s a good thing.”
I believe him. He would never hurt me. And even if he wanted to, I think I would let him. I would let him take me all the way to the end of the world, into whatever is waiting for us there. So I close my eyes anyway, trusting his hand at my side, and let him guide me toward whatever surprise he’s planned.
And what a surprise it is…
“Open your eyes,” Talon tells me.
I do as he says and find myself standing at the hospital exit, right in front of the automatic doors. The glass gives me a faint reflection of my gown and the tiny stars scattered across the fabric, but I barely take it in. None of that matters. What matters is what waits beyond the doors.
Outside in the night, a path of candles stretches out before me. Hundreds of them glow low and gold against the darkness, their flames trembling in the breeze. The line of light curves gently away from the hospital entrance and trails toward the forest.
“Talon,” I whisper. “What the hell did the three of you do?”
The sight overwhelms me, and for a moment I am almost afraid to step outside. I cannot imagine what waits for me at the end of that glowing trail.
“A little something,” he replies, cocky as ever.
The tone of his voice tells me it is anything but little. Whatever he and the others prepared, he is proud of it, and it shows in the way he stands beside me. I was gone for nearly the entire day, wandering alone at the forest’s edge and waiting for the Grims.No wonder they had to bring Hailey and Lila into their scheme just to keep me from noticing what they were doing.
“Shall we?” he asks as he looks down at me.
His milky eye and the unreal color of his hair make him look like something conjured for Halloween, a creature that slipped through the cracks for one night only. Except it isn’t Halloween, and he isn’t a demon, and I have no right to feel the chills skating over my skin.
Whatever this is, it’smeantfor me.
I nod and let Talon guide me through the doors and out into the cold night. The temperature doesn’t bother me. It glides over my skin in a way that feels almost familiar, and I fall into it without thinking. Talon’s hand is the opposite, burning hotter with every step, just like on the bus when I touched him in my vision. He felt impossibly warm then, or maybe I was impossibly cold, finally brushing against the edge of my power.
The same sensation coils through me now.
We walk until we have rounded half the building, then move deeper into the shadows, toward the spot where I waited for Rhea and her girls. That is where I see Cassian and Nathaniel. They stand beside something on the ground, both in suits, watching us approach.
They look just as unreal as Talon.
For a moment, I have to keep my eyes on the grass. If I look at them too long, I feel as if I might slip out of myself entirely. The danger in their eyes seems heightened tonight. The quality that usually makes Nathaniel look brooding and artistic now sharpens into something otherworldly, as if a lethal creature is wearing a human face. Cassian’s broad shoulders and solid frame, mixed with the quiet confidence they all share, turns him into someone who should belong in a film rather than in front of me.
I can hardly process it.
Ever since I met them, I have had the quiet thought that we would never have crossed paths if I had stayed alive, that we belonged to different worlds and would never have existed in the same orbit. Now that thought returns with more weight, expanding until it fills every corner of my mind.
