Page 118 of Realm of Dreams & Shadows

“You were amazing.” He cups my cheek. “I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

For a moment, I go tense, once again remembering those trees and candles. But there are other memories too, like all the times he rescued me in the Nightmare Realm. How many chances he’d had to kill me, and all the times he’d chosen to let me live.

With a sigh, I lean into his touch, still breathing hard. Still reliving the last few moments. Tonight, I’d been the one fighting. More, I’d won. How freaking cool was that?

And then I remember. “One got away.”

“And so did we,” he says, his arm still firm around my waist. “Because of you.”

“It’s time to finally be me, isn’t it?”

“You’ve always been you, Cora. Now, it’s time to learn what that means.”

“I can live with that,” I say. “And the second thing the new Cora is going to do is get Uncle Finn back.” I glance out at the swirling dream-sky, feeling the weight of power humming in my blood. “And then we make Kali pay.”

Chapter

Thirty

The world blurs as the dragon dips beneath a sweep of star-black clouds. One moment I’m clutching Chase’s arm, the next I feel the air shiver—like the pause before thunder. Intellectually, I know that St. Augustine and The Griffin’s Nest still exist, and probably close by too, because we’re now in another dimensional plane that I can’t quite wrap my mind around. But none of that matters. For right here and right now, this is the only world that exists. This hard and dangerous realm.

The wind fractures into shards of hot and cold, and Chase mutters something sharp, his fingers flexing like he’s reaching for something just out of sight. “We’re close,” he says. “Whistler’s waiting. Hold tight.”

He reaches up toward nothing, as if to pull a blade from the sky. Except this time, it’s different. This time, the air splits, light bending like it’s being forced to obey, and when Chase yanks his arm down hard, reality screams. The sky tears—and a dragon bursts through the rift.

I gasp, then gasp again when I see that Whistler’s on its back, crouched low, his hair whipping around his face. For just an instant, he’s distorted, like a photo with too few pixels. The next moment, he’s solid and gasping, pulling his dragon into formation beside ours. I hear myself yell his name, thrilled to see him, but also shocked that he’s out here with us, instead of us going back to him.

Before I can ask, the air convulses. The dragon shudders beneath us, wings faltering as a crushing pressure rolls through my chest while the world twists sideways—or maybe it’s me. “What’s going on?” I manage to choke the words out, but they scatter like leaves in the storm.

“They know we’re here,” Chase calls back, his voice fighting the twisting of the wind.

The horizon tilts. The dragon roars and plummets as air burns past my face. For a second, I feel the fierce grip of Chase’s arm around my waist. Whistler shouts something drowned by wind—and then the sky collapses, tumbling us down, down, down until we crash into something that seems only partly solid, like the world unmaking itself around us. Heat, sand, gravity. All slamming in at once.

I’m thrown forward, my bare arms scraping over coarse grit before Chase catches me, shielding my body as we tumble.

When the motion stops, I’m on my back staring up at a rust-colored sky. The dragon is gone. So is the wind. Everything smells scorched, electric.

“Cora.” Chase’s voice is raw. He’s kneeling beside me, blood smeared on one side of his face. But those gorgeous golden eyes are clear, and I reach up to stroke his cheek, the smidgeon of lingering anger about the park and the Brides now buried under the flurry of our hellish landing and my delight at still being alive.

The corner of his mouth curves into a smile, as if he knows what I’m thinking. Considering all his surprises, maybe he does. “You’re good?” he asks. “You’re sure?”

“I—yeah.” I push upright, spitting sand. “Whistler?”

A few yards away, Whistler rolls onto his side, then coughs as he waves one hand. “Still breathing.”

“Then we’ll call it a victory,” Chase says.

The landscape stretches empty in every direction—sand and jagged rock, dunes birthed from cruel angles. Heat waves shiver like something alive.

“We made it? We’re really in the Nightmare Realm?” I whisper the words as a question, but I know the answer. I may not have seen this part of the realm, but I know its essence.

This is it. This is Adric’s home.

“We’re in one of the dead zones,” Chase says. “Nothing grows here. And nothing sane can survive here.”

I shoot him a sideways glance. “Aren’t you a ray of sunshine?”

“This realm has no sun. Just the five orange moons.”