Page 208 of Ex Somnis

What if this is the last time I see any of them?

The moonstone on a chest that isn’t mine has started to warm, a low heat against the breastbone that I have learned to read as danger, danger, danger.

“Okay,” I say to the four Tessas behind me. “Now you have to let go. Just enough. Just for tonight.”

Nobody moves.

Ridge looks at the black doorway. “This is a terrible idea.”

“You’re coming anyway,” Paul states.

“Unfortunately,” Ridge scoffs.

Then nobody speaks as the waves keep rolling onto the shore. For one stupid second, I want to turn around. Want one more minute, one more joke, another hug.

One more chance not to do this.

Once we walk through this doorway, nothing is guaranteed anymore.

But instead of doing what I really want, I put my hand on the door, and it opens onto nothing.

“Universe, be good.”

It’s black.

Not dark. Black. No floor, no ceiling, and no edges. If there’s a room, it’s been swallowed whole, along with my voice, when I question, “Everyone here?” The words come out and stop, as if the dark ate them before they finished.

Behind me, the door swings shut with a sound like a held breath, and then there is nothing, no up, no down, just five of us standing on a floor I can’t feel in the dark and can’t see through, holding our breath.

Then comes light.

From no source at all, a hard circle that defines the ground beneath us and shows me four other Tessas with their faces pale and their eyes wide.

And him.

Lucien is standing at the edge of the light with his back to me, but then he turns and looks at all five of us.

He scoffs. “And what is this?”

One of the Tessas steps forward. Paul. I know it’s him because of how he plants himself half in front of the rest of us.

“This is the last-ditch effort,” he says, in her voice, and it’s good, it’s so good I can’t even tell the difference. “I’ll let go of Lennon. I’ll untether from her completely, do the soul contract, and step into elsewhere with you. For good, if you can prove that you love me.”

Lucien tilts his head, the faintest curl tugging at his lip. “And why now? Why would you agree to untether from her, after all this time refusing?”

“Because she’s not alone anymore.” It’s the real Tessa who says it.

I feel it land before I understand it, a blade going in clean under the ribs of a body I’m only borrowing.

She’s not alone anymore.

“I’m not her only tether anymore,” Tessa goes on. “She’ll be fine without me.”

Did she think about this?

Did she actually think about leaving? Then why hasn’t she?

Because deep down, she doesn’t want to, says a quieter voice in my head, the one that watched her let Derek hold her hand on the beach and not pull away.