Page 115 of Realm of Dreams & Shadows

This part’s familiar now—the way the world thins if I let it. The trick is not to fight the slide or chase it. Just open. Just allow.

A shiver of sparks runs down my arms. The hair at the back of my neck lifts.

I close my eyes and picture Finn’s face—his crooked smile when he catches me stealing fries off his plate. The way he pinches the bridge of his nose when he’s thinking. Anything for an anchor.

My breath wants to quicken, and I force it back into pattern. In. Hold. Out. Rinse, repeat.

I’m not sure how much time has passed, but after a while, the floor under the mats stops feeling like a floor and starts feeling like the idea of floor. At the same time, the pressure around my ears increases like we’ve driven fast up a mountain.

“Cora,” Chase says, nothing else, just my name as a tether.

I squeeze his hand once. The sparks jump again, bigger, running up my forearm like static looking for a storm.

Don’t think of him in the park. Don’t think of candles snuffed out. Think of the now. Think of the next step. Think of the way he’s rescued you time and again from the sand monsters. The scorpions.

Adric.

Kali.

I can almost feel their nearness.

The thud of my heart syncs to the pulse in Chase’s wrist. Whistler’s grip tightens, a single click of reassurance.

“You’re good,” Tia says, her breath tickling my ear, both in this realm—which realm am I in now?—and another. For a second, I smell damp stone, and a thought rises before I can stop it—the cave, the kiss, the way Adric looked at me like I was the answer to a question he’d been trying to remember for centuries.

A surge of heat hits low in my belly—want and wrong all mixed together—and I slam a door on it. Not now. Not this.

“Cora,” Chase says again, his voice soft, as if drawing me in.

I almost tell him to stop saying my name like that. That he lost the right to even think my name.

Then, I almost tell him to never stop saying my name like that.

Instead, I stay silent.

I breathe, letting myself know that I’ve got this. That this is who I was meant to be.

I feel warm. In control. I even feel powerful. And in that moment, I know with absolute certainty that the mission will be a success.

That, of course, is when it all goes to hell.

Chapter

Twenty-Nine

I’m standing in the library again, surrounded by those impossible shelves that stretch into starlit darkness. The golden orbs floating overhead have dimmed to a soft glow, casting everything in warm, honeyed light that makes the space feel different. More intimate.

“You came back to me,” Adric says, and I turn to find him emerging from between the stacks. He’s dressed more casually than before—dark pants and a white shirt open at the throat—but he’s no less devastating.

“I didn’t mean to,” I say honestly.

“And yet your presence here means that you wanted to.” His smile is warm. Welcoming. “It’s irresistible,” he says. “This tug between us.” He moves closer, silver eyes soft with something that might be affection. “I’m glad. I was hoping we could continue our conversation.”

I remember the way he’d kissed me. The way it had felt so real, so right. Guilt twists in my stomach, made worse by the lingering satisfaction of last night with Chase, tempered by the cold memory of all those trees—monuments to so many fallen Brides.

Where the hell is he now? For that matter, where is Whistler?

I frown, looking up at Adric as I try to stay calm. I may be alone, but I’m not helpless. Well, not entirely. “I need to see my uncle,” I say. Since I’m here, I’m not about to pass up the opportunity. This wasn’t the plan, but it was the goal. So, I might as well leap all over that.