Sully slowed, turning. “What the hell—?”
The portal yawned open behind her, a ragged tear in the world, edges fraying, a furnace of blue-white fire burning at its core. Blackened grass curled around the wound; the nearest stones crumbled to dust with each pulse. Celeste hovered before it, channeling every ounce of her power, the smell of ozone and lilies choking the air.
Scarlette swore. “It’s unstable. We need to go—”
Before she could finish, the rift howled. It drowned out sirens, horns, even the wind—a choir of every church bell ever tolled. Maeve and Nora dropped to the ground, hands clamped over their ears. Moab doubled over. Scarlette staggered into a crouch. I shuddered all the way down to my bones.
Celeste screamed, “It’s not done!” Her eyes flashed black, then blue, then nothing—and the sky itself seemed to inhale, pulling us back toward that blazing maw.
Sully yanked me around, planting himself between me and the light. “Hold on,” he grunted—but the gravity was wrong. Each step away felt like wading through quicksand.
Then I saw him step out: a man lit from within, sash tattered, boots sunk in scorched grass. Captain Rowan Hale. I’d prayed never to see that face again—pale, grinning with triumph. He leveled a pistol at me but didn’t fire. He hurled it instead, barrel-first, smashing it into my cheek. Stars exploded behind my eyes. Before I could cry out, his ice-cold hand yanked my wrist and hauled me toward the rift.
Panic burned in my throat as I clawed at him. My nails raked his cheek; he howled but held firm. The blue light seared brighter—like dying in flame. I kicked and twisted, but it did no good.
Then Sully was on him—a whirlwind of muscle and desperation. They crashed to the grass, trading blows. Halefought with cruel precision; Sully just fought to save me. Bones cracked; sweat and blood mixed with the ozone stink.
“Let her go!” Sully spat.
“Not for all your devils!” Hale snarled.
I tried to crawl away, but the rift’s pull was a living thing. Hale seized my ankle. I screamed.
Sully surged again, ripping Hale off me and throwing him back. He lunged for my hand. Our fingers locked—his grip like iron. For one heartbeat, we were together, and the world was nothing but pain and love and light.
Then the portal collapsed.
The roar inverted—blue light snapped inward like the sky exhaling—and Sully and I were ripped free of everything: the city, the dawn, the earth. Only cold and rushing silence swallowed us, and then—nothing.
Catherine
We hit the ground so hard it knocked the sky loose. I tasted earth before anything else—wet, ferrous, thick with the rot of last autumn’s leaves—and the echo of my scream stuck in my teeth. The world righted itself with a jolt, and I blinked, expecting blue fire, a second shock, the rage of the rift clawing for more. But there was only stillness, and the taste of my own blood.
Dawn hovered at the edge of the graveyard. No city. No sirens. No future. Only the cold bones of home, ancient and small, and the waking chorus of blackbirds in the distant larch. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe, not because of Sully’s hand clutching the back of my neck, but for the empty, sucked-dry hush in my chest. I spat, wiped mud from my mouth, and looked up.
He was already standing—how did he always do that?—shoulders hunched, eyes sweeping the horizon like a wolf tornfrom its pack. His face was pale and raw, split at the lip, flecks of blood still beaded at his nose. He looked down at me, then at the world, then back to me, as if trying to decide which was more likely to shatter.
I thought maybe we were alone. But then I saw the body. It hung on the far fence, just visible through the mist—a man impaled on the black iron, arms splayed wide, his coat flapping wet and heavy in the morning wind. The spikes of the fence had been hammered dull by centuries of moss and rain, but the corpse wore them like a crown. The blood was almost beautiful, bright against the rust, running in a dozen clean lines from belly to groin to boot. I didn’t need to see the face to know who it was.
Hale.
I don’t remember standing or how Sully got me across the yard. One moment I was slumped at the stone, wrecked, and the next I was walking, his arm under mine, guiding me past the twisted gate and the body pinned to it. The cold bit harder as we passed, the blood on the iron already crusted dark, and I turned my face into Sully’s chest so I wouldn’t have to see.
He led me to the far side, a patch of grass pressed flat between two old oaks, their trunks bent from a lifetime of wind. The moss here was softer, the shadows long and blue. Sully knelt, knees leaving perfect impressions in the dirt, and pulled me down to sit with him.
He held my face in both hands, thumbs scraping the tear tracks clean. For a while, we just breathed together, not looking at each other, not looking at anything. My heart thudded hollow in my ribs, a thump so loud I thought the trees might hear.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and it sounded like he meant it for every dead thing in the world.
I shook my head, words rattling in my throat before I could spit them out. “They’re gone,” I whispered, the truth of it a splinter in the back of my mouth. “They’re really gone.”
Sully said nothing, just let his hands cradle me until the shiver stopped. The first sun cracked the ridge, and the tips of the grass glowed gold. It didn’t feel like light—more like the world had bled out all its heat, and this was what was left.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said, voice small. “If I can’t—if they’re not here, what’s the point?” I expected him to tell me to be strong, or to say he loved me, or to give some speech about starting over. Instead, he just rocked back on his heels and let his head fall forward, the stubble on his jaw scraping my forehead.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” he said. “Any of you.”
“Then why—” My voice cracked. “Why did you take me from them?”