Page 171 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

I pull him into my arms, wrapping them around the back of his neck and squeezing him close. He wraps me up in his embrace. One hand braces the back of my head; the other presses comfortingly at the center of my back.

“I’m sorry for being wrong. For not trusting you more,” I whisper against his ear.

“I’m sorry for being so careless—for making you think that I hold you in anything but the highest regard,” Bastion says.

He holds me out from him, cupping one side of my face. “You and Wren are the only family I have, Lillith. Everyone else? They’re all inside glorified jars in my study. You two... You’re everything to me. You know that, right?”

“I do now,” I say, sniffling. “I promise not to ever forget it again.”

Footsteps draw to a stop in front of us, and Wren kicks her weight to one hip. “You losers getting sappy without me over here?” she asks, before squeezing herself between us and drawing us both in for another awkward, three way hug.

Bastion takes to braiding the same cloaking spell into Wren’s hair. I’d probably find some amusement in our matching hairstyles if it wasn’t for the grave situation at hand. It somehow takes both entirely too long and no time at all before Aemon calls us over to open the portal.

Wren takes my hand and we walk together to where Aemon’s etched an unfamiliar casting circle into the loamy ground. It’s a quiltwork of all sorts of symbols and words that look unfamiliar to me. The magic coming off of it feels ancient—unwieldy. The same sort of wrongness that wrapped around my throat those couple weeks ago when the Aberrant’s creature nearly killed me.

It’s slimy and sticky on my senses. But we have no other options. And I’m not about to complain.

“Step into the circle please,” he says.

We do as instructed and Aemon exhales a tight breath. “Alright, you two should keep your hands clasped together as tightly as you can. It can get a bit rocky when I’m not around to keep things sailing smoothly.”

“You could always come with us,” Wren grumbles under her breath.

Aemon gives her a withering stare, but doesn’t respond.

Wren and I grasp onto each other’s hands like our lives depend on it.

The contact conjures memories of sleepovers in our teens, when we whispered to each other in the wee hours of the morning and made promises to always look after each other. And here she is, looking out for me. I turn toward her, grasping her other hand.

“Thank you for doing this,” I say only to her.

She smiles, her eyes a little sad. “I would do anything for you, babe. Anything.”

Aemon speaks in tongues, or at least in some language that means absolutely nothing to me. I can’t pick out a single consonant or vowel that resembles any of the romantic languages of our world. It must be some eldritch or otherworldly thing.

The circle around our feet shifts—not so much spinning—more like writhing. The ground itself seems to be a living thing, squirming and twisting like maggots. I squeeze a little closer to Wren, almost panicking that it’s going to slither up my legs. She grimaces, a chill of disgust traveling from her body to mine. I press closer to her.

Just as I do, the ground snaps up like the angry maw of a Venus fly trap.

Almost as abruptly as the ground opened its unnerving jaws, it closes with the force of a mousetrap, burying us in damp soil and sticky, thick clay.

What follows is the most terrifying twenty seconds of my life. The ground swallows us both whole while pulling us apart. We’re chewed up and slammed around. Tendrils of root systems squeeze between our hands, trying to pry us away from each other.

Seismic force tears us sideways. A wedge of stone divides us, requiring us to loose one hand, before dragging us down into a swirling vortex of choking mud.

I manage to grasp the remaining point of contact between us with both of my hands. And just when I think I might die—just when I think we’ve both been fooled into being buried alive by Aemon...

Moonlight. Fireflies.

Fresh air.

I cough and spit out a mouthful of dirt and gravel. Wren retches, her pinky still laced with mine despite the indignity of it all.

“What,” she pants, as she spits more mud from her mouth, “the fuck.”

“That wasn’t so much of a portal as it was a near death experience,” I wheeze.

“No shit,” she says, falling onto her back. “I’m going to fucking kill him for that.”