Page 52

“And how will any of you track him when none of us can?” Xavier snapped back.

He had a point. A demigod and a bunch of supernatural badasses, and what were we? A group of misfit mortals. None of them had any real tie to Ivan.

But I did.

Not just because I was his brother, but because I’d wrapped my protection spell around him, too. The same way I’d wrapped it around Angel and the team.

That thread was still there. Still mine.

I turned my focus inward, past the static of the Veil, and searched for the anchor I’d woven not out of duty, but love.

There.

Faint. Perhaps not even in this realm. But a single, shimmering strand of me, tied to the vibrant pulse of him. It led into a space that felt ancient and unnervingly alive.

The dust motes swirled around me, agitated, as if they too could feel the pull of that thread. They pressed closer, clinging to my ghostly form like they were afraid I’d vanish without them. Maybe they were right to worry.

I hesitated. The last time I’d yanked on a thread this hard, I’d nearly unraveled myself. Every stitch I made, every tear I closed, every thread I pulled — it all burned through what little remained of me. And this? This felt bigger. Older. Like reaching for something that had been waiting for me long before I ever knew how to weave.

If I did this, there might not be enough left of me to come back.

But Ivan was out there. Alone. Scared. Maybe hurt. And I’d promised him that I wouldn’t let anything happen to him.

I yanked on the strand.

The world folded. Angel’s profile melted into streaks of light and sound. I was a ghost on a wire, sliding through layers of reality, the dust motes streaming behind me like a comet’s tail of forgotten memories. The thread burned in my grip, hot and insistent, pulling me faster and faster, until⁠—

I hit the ground hard.

The impact jarred through me, rattling what few threads I had left. For a long moment, I just lay there, staring up at a sky that wasn’t quite right. The constellations were wrong. The colors were wrong. And the air smelled like earth after rain. Like things growing in the dark.

I pushed myself up, dust motes swirling around me in a protective cloud, and found myself at the base of a tree so enormous it seemed to hold up the sky.

The air hung heavy and damp, saturated with the rich, decaying perfume of wet leaves, night-blooming flowers, and an odd, earthy sweetness, like honey mixed with soil.

Around me, the forest floor was a wild, tangled tapestry. Vines thick as my wrist snaked over mossy stones. Ferns unfurled in the murky half-light. Gnarled roots arched from the earth like the bones of the land itself. Above it all, the colossal oak rose, a living pillar, its trunk broad and twisted, its canopy a vast, shadowy ceiling lost to the fog.

And there, nestled impossibly high among the branches, was a structure. A cottage, with a slanted roof, a chimney, and windows glowing with a soft, buttery light. It looked grown, rather than built.

I blinked, trying to clear the fog from my vision. The sky above wasn’t the mortal worlds. It was the deep, swirling indigo of the Veil-side, speckled with impossible, drifting constellations, though the ever-beating heart was nowhere to be seen. A pocket within the Veil?

This felt like a sanctuary. Calm, yet powerful. Waiting with the ever-present hint of danger, ready to snap should trouble arise.

Why?

Was Ivan up there? Safe in that strange cottage?

The whole scene felt pulled from a storybook. A really ominous Eastern European one, where houses stood on chicken legs and witches asked if you’d prefer to be a guest or the main course.

At this rate, I was half-expecting to end up in a stew pot.

Behind me, the dust motes drifted through the fog, clinging close like they knew something I didn’t.

22

JUDE

The air pulsed thick with energy, and the motes flickered with pops of color, almost like I imagined will-o’-the-wisps from a storybook.