“Now?” Trowbridge asked softly.
I slid the tear into my brother’s palm then gave him a nod. Cordelia and Biggs helped us stand.
Then, I called to my magic. My Fae’s essence flowed upward, but this time—for the first time—it followed the pathway of my arteries and veins with a solemnity that bordered on respectful. Once at the ends of my fingertips, my magic waited patiently, and when I gave it leave, it streamed to the portal and found an anchor hidden in the depths of that fog-wreathed floor.
I felt the tug of that floating gates all the way up to my shoulder.
Just like Lexi had done the night before, I wrapped my cable of magic around my fist, over and over again. Slowly, bit by bit, the stately castle of dreams and mist rose to the edge of the crumbling cliff. One last twist of my bandaged wrist. There. Now it was just one easy step from one world’s soil to another world’s gates.
Trowbridge went down on one knee to pick up my brother, and with a gentleness that made the knot in my throat swell, lifted my twin in his arms.
Cordelia gestured to Lexi’s bag, and asked, “Should this go, too?”
I spared the black satchel a quick glance. Leather bulged and flexed. “Yes, but take out the ferret.”
“Dibs,” said Biggs in a low voice.
“Hurry,” I told them as Lexi’s squirming pet was extricated.
“Shit!” cursed Biggs as the ferret turned unexpectedly feral. “I’m trying to help you, little—”
An ache gnawed at my shoulders. “The portal’s heavier than I expected, you really, really need to hurry.” Lexi had made reeling in the portal look easy. That, plus my own arrogance, had made me believe that the Gates of Merenwyn were as light as the vapor it resembled.
But in truth, the portal was a lead weight.
Trowbridge turned to me, a question in his eyes.
“I will hold,” I said. “That’s what we do.”
A muscle tightened in Trowbridge’s jaw. He turned toward the portal and stared at the columns of myst, the round hobbit window with its view of Merenwyn. Then he drew in his breath and stepped onto the floor.
No answer in my head. Trowbridge laid Lexi on the myst-covered floor.
Cordelia stepped across the gap, her chin lifted in its most obstinate tilt. She sank to her haunches, reaching with her big-knuckled hand to pick up Lexi’s fisted one. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper that perhaps she thought I couldn’t hear. “The Fae will lose the bag and the Fae tear the moment the wind catches him.”
“He’ll revive in there,” said Trowbridge grimly. “Just slip the strap through his arm.”
Once she had done so, my mate turned to me, waiting for me to give him lead.
Why was this harder than sending Trowbridge? Was it because I’d seen the gray that swallowed white hope? The dark that waited to pounce on those with too bright dreams?
I nodded to Trowbridge.
“Now,” I said.
My mate slid my brother through the mouth of the gates. A wind tugged my twin upward and teasingly held him for my inspection, his head slumped, his body upright, caught in the embrace of her cold and cruel current of air.
Suddenly, my brother gasped. His back arched. His eyes shot open.
Honeysuckle sweet, she whisked him away.
I listened hard—was there a scream? An echo of a cry?
But all I heard was the distant chime of bells.
My wrist throbbed.
Breath held, I watched for the surface of the gates’s window to Merenwyn to ripple like water does when a pebble is tossed into it, but it remained flat. Placid. The pastoral scene beyond the gate unmoved and unchanged by the events from this world. The same grasses sighing. The same patch of yellow flowers gently bobbing to Merenwyn’s fragrant breeze.
So. I’d done my job. I’d fed my brother to the beast.
It had swallowed him, and for the moment, my part was done.
Face set in her trademark scowl, Cordelia walked away from the portal as if it were her stage. Back straight, hips swaying, head lifted.
Trowbridge turned to the pack. The columns of pink fairy myst were an unlikely background for a man who’d seen hell and come back from it.
“It’s done,” he told them. “We have sent a message back to the Fae. Do not come here, hoping to take that which is ours.”
“Oh yeah!” shouted someone from the back.
Rachel Scawens pivoted and said, “Shut your mouth.”
And he did. They all did.
“It comes down to this,” said Trowbridge. “We stand united or we don’t stand at all.”
An Alpha’s light sparked in his eyes.
“We are the Werewolves of Creemore. This is our land. Our lives. We will stand for what we have. We will protect what we own. We will handle each threat delivered to us with the same speed and ruthlessness—be it from the Fae or some asshole from the Council who wants to squeeze us for some more tithes.”
His flare carried across the field and painted each one of their faces with his own tint of Trowbridge blue.
A girl moaned.
Then he said simply, “Now go home to your families.”
With that, they left the field. Quietly. Hats were pulled from back pockets and replaced on bowed heads. Arms were crossed against the fall chill. They left, not really looking like a feral pack of wolves, but more like a group of everyday people who’d suddenly seen their world picked up, shaken, and put back down again—the townsfolk streaming out of the high school following the big vote; the church group heading to their cars after a service that had shaken them to their core.
Harry touched Cordelia’s arm, and she smacked Biggs’s shoulder.
They left, too.
And still I held the damn gates.
“Tink, let it go,” Trowbridge said softly.
“I will in a second.”
“He’s not coming through,” he said. “You need to close the gates.”
“You took a long time to come through the other side. I watched and I watched and then just when I thought you hadn’t made it, Cordelia said that I had to wait a little longer—”
“I’m sorry I took so long, sweetheart.” His scent touched me, tentatively.
“What if Mad-one didn’t place the Old Mage’s soul in our tree and Lexi’s lost in a hook-back?”
“There’s no way of knowing that until I bring you to Daniel’s Rock.”
“What if the Black Mage gets him when he crosses into Merenwyn?”
“Then we’ll rescue him.”
I tore my gaze from the hobbit window to look at my mate. “How can you have so much faith? I went to Threall thinking that I could solve things, and I only made it worse.”
“You didn’t make it worse. You just made it different.”
“Why would you rescue the man who ordered your back flayed?”
“Because he’s part of you.” His gaze locked on mine. There was no shield, no mask. “And you are part of me. I’m not letting anything come between us again.”
