Page 88

“You asked.”

“You could lie.”

“I don’t lie to you.”

I blink at him. “That is not the romantic statement you think it is.”

“I wasn’t trying to be romantic.”

Of course he fucking wasn’t.

We reach the rear doors of the barn, and Ezra throws them open. Cold night air rushes inside.

Thank God.

Beyond the threshold, the service road stretches toward the parking fields, nothing but empty gravel beneath the moonlight. No writhing vines. No screaming plants. No possessed fucking flowers.

Just a way out.

Relief hits so hard my eyes burn. “There.” I grab Ali’s hand, and Mariah takes my other one.

We step outside.

Nothing happens.

One step. Two. Three.

I breathe and glance back at the others. “See?”

No one looks convinced.

I keep walking. Five steps become ten, and with every foot of distance between us and the barn, the pressure in my chest begins to ease.

We’re leaving.

We’re actually fucking leaving.

Then the ribbon cinches around my wrist.

Pain explodes through my arm. I scream as something inside my body jerks me backward, not by my wrist but from somewhere deeper, like an invisible hook has lodged behind my ribs and yanked.

My knees slam into the gravel.

“SAGE!” Mariah drops beside me, but the pain tears through my chest before she can touch me.

I can’t breathe.

Fuck, I can’t fucking breathe.

Malakai reaches me first. “Don’t move her.”

Ezra drops to his knees beside us. “What happened?”

“She crossed it.”

“Crossed what?”

“The old boundary.”