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Moving in the shadow realms, with my body shifting between solid and shadow, felt more like I was stretching out into some sort of weird black hole then snapping back to my regular form. Or maybe it was more like being Gumby.
“Baz, are you okay?” I stretched and snapped my way over to him.
“Where are we?” He rubbed his eyes and looked around before focusing on me. “You look like Nic.”
“Yeah, we’re in the shadow realm right now. Apparently, they grabbed us to keep us from going into the nothingness.”
“Damn it.”
I chuckled. “Yeah. Guess they didn’t see it going very well and thought we would get destroyed.”
“Oh.” Baz stood, his own body stretching weirdly as he did, though he didn’t fade in and out of shadow like I was.
I reached out my hand and he clasped it, bringing the back of it to his lips for a moment before realizing what he’d done and jerking away. “My apologies.”
“Baz, it’s okay. I know we have some things to get over, but you can touch me.”
He shut his eyes and inhaled deeply. “I’m sorry, Ember. It’s just… I don’t exactly have memories from the being who impersonated me. But I get brief flashes of feelings or images that must have imprinted on the piece of my essence that he held. None of them are good, and I’m having a hard time sorting through it.”
“Oh, shit.” I held out my hand, then dropped it to my side. He may not want to be touched after all.
“It’s simply difficult to know what my feelings are and what are not, right now.”
“I understand.” I hugged myself. “Okay, so we need to get out of here before the shadow people decide to hand me over to Effie.”
“Why would they do that? She’ll just destroy everything.”
“Well, she’s doing that without me. They said that the nothingness is just a really strong dream.”
Baz nodded. “Not altogether surprising. Though if that’s the case, it might make everything that much easier to restore once we defeat her.”
“Do you think we can?”
“Yes. Actually, I do.” This time, he held out his hand. I held it and he gently pulled me close.
After a brief hesitation, I leaned my head against his chest and let him wrap his arms around me. We stood there together for a moment, and I listened to his heartbeat.
“I’ve missed you.” Baz rubbed small circles on my back. “When they told us we couldn’t return until you were older, I was devastated. They mentioned you wouldn’t remember us until later so that you wouldn’t start asking questions or even really miss us. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, either. I was glad they sent the knight to watch over you.”
“He—”
“Relax, Ember. It’s fine. I’m not sure how I feel about anything right now, except this. I’m grateful he’s been able to keep you safe. My brothers have accepted him and that will have to be good enough for me. I suspect I would have had a harder time of it if circumstances were different, but they aren’t.”
Some of the tension left me. “Thank you.”
He tightened his arms. “Thank you for saving me.” He spread his hand out between my shoulder blades and held me tightly.
“So, what do we do now?” I asked after an extended silence.
“Get them to let us go?”
“Yeah, they won’t let me go into the storm without a stronger tether so I can escape.”
“Ahh.” Baz seemed to understand what that meant and didn’t push the issue.
“So, next plan.” Before I could try to come up with something else the slippery edges of our prison wavered.
I glanced at Baz.
