It was nothing like the journey in. Where before I had moved alone through the mist, now I was part of a procession, a river of consciousness that flowed toward the gap in the veil. I felt the others around me, my mother and grandmother closest, their presences warm and familiar, and behind them the growing tide of guardians who had answered our call.
The mist began to thin as we approached the boundary. I caught glimpses of the clearing through the gap — the blazing stones, the golden moss, Ben’s face pale and strained as he held the connection open. The physical world rushed toward me like the surface of a pool rushing toward a diver, and then —
I slammed back into my body with a force that drove the breath from my lungs.
For a moment, all I could do was gasp for air, my hands clutching at the moss beneath me, my scars burning with residual energy. Ben was next to me, his arms around my shoulders, his voice calling my name from what felt like very far away.
“Sidney. Sidney, come back. Are you okay? Sidney — ”
“I’m here,” I managed, although my voice came out as barely more than a croak. “I’m okay. I’m — ”
The words died in my throat as the portal flared behind me.
I turned just in time to see them emerge.
My mother came first, stepping through the gap in the veil as if she were stepping through a doorway. One moment she was light and energy and consciousness, and the next she was solid, physical, real — standing in the clearing with moss beneath her boots and tears already streaming down her face.
“Sidney,” she breathed, and then she was moving toward me, her arms opening wide.
I met her halfway. The impact of her embrace nearly knocked me off my feet, but I didn’t care. She was here. She was real. She was home.
“Mom,” I said, and the word felt like a prayer, like a promise, like everything I’d been holding onto for nine months finally finding its release. “Mom, you’re really here.”
“I’m here, baby. I’m here.” She was crying openly now, her tears soaking into my hair as she held me tight enough to bruise. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry we left you. I’m so sorry — ”
My grandmother emerged next, and then the other guardians, stepping through the portal one by one until the clearing was crowded with people who should not have been able to exist in the same space. Rebecca had emerged from her position at the edge of the clearing, her weapon lowered, her expression caught somewhere between professional alertness and complete bewilderment. And Finn — my father — stood frozen at the tree line, his dark eyes fixed on my mother with an expression that made me ache all over again.
But I couldn’t focus on any of that. Not yet. Because my mother had pulled back slightly, her hands moving to cup my face, and then her gaze had dropped to my arms.
To the scars.
“Sidney.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “What…what happened to you?”
I looked down at myself and realized that my sleeves had ridden up during the embrace, exposing the full extent of the dimensional burns. In the blazing light of the standing stones, they were almost beautiful, delicate patterns traced in gold and silver, glowing faintly with residual energy. But my mother wasn’t seeing beauty. She was seeing damage. Evidence of everything her daughter had endured while she was gone.
“It’s okay,” I said, reaching for her hands. “Mom, it’s okay. I’m okay. It doesn’t hurt anymore — ”
“It shouldn’t have happened at all.” Her voice broke on the words, and I watched her face crumple with a grief that went deeper than tears. “You should never have had to deal with any of this alone. If we had been here, if we hadn’t left — ”
“If you hadn’t left, I never would have become strong enough to bring you back.” I squeezed her hands, forcing her to meet my eyes. “Mom, listen to me. I’m not the same person I was nine months ago. Everything that’s happened — the shadow stalkers, the phoenix, the Dragon — it changed me. But it didn’t break me. I’m still here. I’m still your daughter. And now we’re going to face whatever comes next together.”
She stared at me for a long while, her gray eyes — so like mine — searching my face for something. Whatever she found seemed to steady her, because she took a deep breath and nodded slowly.
“Together,” she repeated, and it sounded like a promise.
My grandmother appeared at her shoulder, her sharp gaze taking in the gathered guardians, the blazing portal, and the two armed figures at the edge of the clearing. Her eyes lingered on my father for a moment, and something unreadable passed across her face before she returned her attention to me.
“Well,” she said, and there was something almost like a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “I suppose you’d better introduce us to your young man. And then you can tell us exactly what we’re up against.”
I looked at Ben, who was staring at the assembled guardians with an expression of shell-shocked wonder. Then I gazed at my mother, still clutching my scarred arms like she was afraid to let go. And finally, I glanced over at my grandmother, steady and unshakeable as she had always been.
My family. Whole again, for the first time in nine months.
“Yeah,” I said, and despite everything — the deadline, the danger, the impossible task still ahead of us — I felt myself smile. “I guess I’d better.”
Chapter Nine
I kept glancing over my shoulder as we walked back to the house, half-expecting the guardians to dissolve back into the mist, for my mother and grandmother to fade like dreams upon waking. But they remained stubbornly, wonderfully solid — my mother’s hand clasped tight in mine, my grandmother walking beside us with her usual brisk, purposeful stride, and behind us a procession of impossible people who had stepped out of legend and into the damp October night.