Page 214 of Ex Somnis

“Let me go, Ridge.” The calm is finally cracking out of Paul’s voice. “You don’t understand what he’ll⁠—”

“I understand fine. You did this once already. You decided you got to be the one who paid, and you didn’t ask me, and I am not…” the shadow cinches tighter, “… doing that again.”

“It isn’t the same.”

“It’s exactly the same. If someone gets to be the martyr, it’s me.”

And while they snap at each other, two grown men arguing over who gets to be the sacrifice, the thing in the cage of green and black starts to laugh.

It’s not a big laugh. It’s the soft, tired sound of a man watching children fight over who has to do the dishes.

“Can the three of you please decide who is sacrificing himself for whom? It’s touching. Truly. It’s also getting tiring.”

Paul and Ridge both turn to look at him, as he comes apart from the cage, as if it had never held him, as if he had only ever been waiting for us to get distracted enough to stop feeding it. The vines snap and the shadow shreds, and then he’s loose, and the light is full of moving bodies.

It happens faster than I can follow.

Ridge throws a shadow, and Lucien is already not where it lands. Paul slams up a wall of green, but Lucien is behind it before it finishes rising. They fight him together, the first thing they’ve done as a unit all night. Ridge is building the nightmares, and Paul is reading the rhythm of the man inside them, but it is still not enough. Lucien moves between their attacks like the gaps were cut to fit him.

Then a thorn opens Ridge’s cheek, and Paul takes a hit that folds him sideways.

And I stand here, unmoving.

In the middle of the light, heart slamming, watching the three of them tear at each other, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help.

Every plan I walked in here with is dead on the floor.

Think.

They won’t let me do a soul contract with him. Paul made that catastrophically clear, but I can’t stand here and let them do this either. I can’t watch one of them get worn down, caught, and dragged off into the dark while I count crystals in my head.

Lucien needs one opening. If one of them trips up for half a second, he’ll be ripping their subconscious to shreds doing the thing he does best.

Fuck, what if Lucien agrees to choose one of them instead?

Think, Lenny. There has to be⁠—

“Lemon.” Nevan’s voice cuts straight through the noise.

He’s still wearing Tessa’s face, still lashed by Paul’s vines, white-knuckled and straining.

“My left hand.”

My gaze drops automatically.

“Other left.”

My eyes dart to his other hand. His little finger is lifted off his thigh, crooked toward me.

A pinky.

Held out across a circle of light, in the middle of a fight none of us are winning.

My gaze snaps back up to his, and he mouths, rule number four.

Oh.

Oh.