Out of nowhere came a familiar shimmer of moonlight on water. The unicorn was stepping between the trees, its coat luminous despite the overcast sky, its horn catching what little light there was and transforming it into something cleaner, something pure.
It looked at me — really looked at me, the way it had that first night in Welling Glen when I’d been a girl of seventeen watching something impossible emerge from the forest. I felt its consciousness brush against mine, ancient and wild and completely unconcerned with human notions of urgency or crisis. To a creature that had lived for millennia, our desperate struggle probably seemed like the frantic scurrying of ants.
But it came to help anyway.
The unicorn walked over to the spot where my father lay, its hooves making no sound on the wet ground, and lowered its head until the tip of its horn rested against Finn’s chest. I heard my mother gasp, felt Ben’s grip on my arm tighten, but neither of us moved to interfere. We knew better than to question what the unicorn chose to do.
Warmth spread outward from the point of contact — I could see it, could feel it through my connection to the ley line, a pulse of healing energy that sank into my father’s broken body and began to knit what had been torn. The wound in his back didn’t close entirely; whatever magic the unicorn possessed, it couldn’t work miracles in the span of a breath. But the bleeding slowed, then stopped, and some of the gray pallor faded from Finn’s face, replaced by something closer to his normal color.
The unicorn lifted its head and fixed me with that steady, unreadable gaze.
He will live, it seemed to say, although I couldn’t have explained whether the words came from the creature’s consciousness or from somewhere inside my own. But the battle is not over. The fire wakes.
I understood. The Dragon’s pain was still pulsing through the ley line, and Gregory’s drill was still boring into the heart of the network. The unicorn had bought us time — bought my father time — but the crisis we’d been running toward hadn’t gone anywhere.
“Thank you,” I said, not caring if the words sounded inadequate.
The unicorn dipped its head once, an acknowledgment rather than a response, and then turned and walked back into the trees. The shimmer of its passage lingered for a few moments after it disappeared, a trail of silver light that faded slowly into the rain-soaked darkness.
I looked down at my father. His eyes were open again, and there was wonder in them now, the wonder of a man who had spent his whole life on the margins of magic and had just been touched by something beyond his understanding.
“Did that really just happen?” he asked, his voice much stronger than it had been moments before.
“Welcome to my world,” I said, and managed a smile despite the exhaustion that threatened to pull me under. “Ready to see what else it has in store?”
He reached for my hand again, and this time when his fingers closed around mine, they were warm.
“Yes,” he said. “I think I am.”
Emily and Priya helped him to his feet, supporting his weight between them while my mother hovered anxiously at his side. He was still weak — the unicorn’s healing had stabilized him, but it would take time and rest before he was truly recovered — but he was alive. Against all odds, against everything that should have happened when that bullet tore through his body, my father was alive.
And for the first time in seventeen years, I was glad.
Ben took my hand as we started moving again, heading toward the portal site and whatever waited for us there. I knew we were running out of time to stop the cauterization that would destroy everything I’d ever loved.
But my family was together, my father still alive. And somewhere deep inside me, in the place where the phoenix fire lived, I felt something new taking shape — a determination that went beyond survival, beyond protection, beyond all the careful limitations I’d placed on myself since the merge.
I’d shown the mercenaries what I was capable of when I stopped holding back. Now it was time to show Julian Gregory.
The portal site was close. I could feel it pulling at me, calling me forward with a magnetic insistence that grew stronger with every step. Whatever came next — whatever price I had to pay to stop the drill and save the Dragon and protect the network that connected guardians across the world — I would face it.
And I wouldn’t face it alone.
Chapter Sixteen
The ground began to shake when they were about two hundred feet from the portal. Ben felt it first in his feet, a deep, subsonic vibration that traveled up through his legs and settled into his bones with an intensity that made every limb ache. The dimensional scars on his chest and arms flared hot, responding to something vast stirring beneath the earth, and he stumbled against Sidney as the forest floor heaved beneath them.
“What — ” he started to say, but the word was swallowed by a sound that wasn’t quite sound — a roar that seemed to come from everywhere at once, from the bedrock and the trees and the rain-heavy air itself.
The Dragon was waking up.
Not stirring, or dreaming. Actually, catastrophically waking up.
Sidney’s hand tightened on his with bruising force. Her scars were blazing gold, bright enough to cast shadows in the pre-dawn darkness, and her face had gone pale beneath the dirt and rain that streaked her skin. She could feel it, too, he knew — could feel it far more intensely than he, her connection to the ley line giving her direct access to the creature’s consciousness as it clawed its way toward the surface.
“We’re too late,” she said. Her voice was barely audible over the growing thunder from below. “Gregory’s drill — it finally hit something it shouldn’t have. The Dragon’s not waiting for the solstice anymore.”
Behind them, Finn stumbled and nearly fell, caught at the last moment by Emily and Priya. The unicorn’s healing had stabilized him, but he was still weak, still recovering from the bullet wound that should have killed him. Josie hovered at his side, her face tight with fear, while the two guardian women struggled to keep him upright on the trembling ground.