Chapter 32

THIRTY-TWO

COLLINS

It was different flying with Jada’s body instead of Bash’s, even while it was Bash. His hand was smaller against my waist and his skin wasn’t as warm. He didn’t have that spicy vanilla scent of his that I loved so much. The long white hair was almost the same color as his but obviously wasn’t. There wasn’t a big, muscular shoulder to lean into and his face was so much closer.

I kept distracting myself from this by staring at the two gaping holes in the sky. They looked like something straight out of an Avengers movie. It was horrific and I couldn’t look away. I’d jinxed us. I’d thought to myself earlier that something would undoubtedly go wrong, and there it was, the giant something wrong.

Red and purple lightning shot through the army rolling in, but it was the hydra of armies, they just kept coming in through the holes. I couldn’t see Shylock or Weston in the thick snow, but I saw flashes of green and blue, so I knew they were there. We had to get this done before Tephine caught on to our trick because there was no running back to First Realm anymore. If we couldn’t sever the bond, then I was taking this whole damn realm down with me.

We lowered toward the ground so the winds slowed. That was when I felt something wet pressed against my side and dripping onto my arm. “Are you bleeding?”

“No—”

“Why are you suddenly wet?” I tried to look but we were still in the air, and everything was so damn white.

The second my feet hit the ground, he released me and stepped back. He held his arms out and looked at himself—with Jada’s body. The white turtleneck top clung to Jada’s curves like it was wet. Beads of sweat rolled down her temples and neck. Even her hands had a shimmer to them.

“Is that sweat?”

He nodded. “I don’t know, I just feel . . . hot? I wonder if this is a reaction to the potion we took.”

I gasped. My heart stopped for a second. “What if . . . could it be . . . that flower?—”

“No.” He frowned. “No. I didn’t go near Nickel, no more than anyone else did, and no one else is hot and sweating. And I drank Maren’s potion. If she thought us in any danger, she would’ve said.”

I just stared, trying to see my soulmate through Jada’s hazel eyes.

“Listen, I highly doubt it’s the flower,” he continued. “I told you I’ve been warmer lately, remember we talked about it?” He waited for me to nod, then he nodded back. “Right, so this is probably that. But either way, we locked the portal. Araqiel did, actually, so there’s no getting out. The only way out is to kill her.”

I walked up to him— her —and grabbed her sleeve. “Don’t you dare sacrifice yourself because you think you’re dying from that flower, you hear me?”

Fake-Jada’s face fell. “I won’t.”

“If you start to feel a single other symptom, then you tell me. We just have to kill her fast so we can get back out. Got it?”

“Got it,” he whispered.

I blinked through tears. “Okay, let’s do this then. Lead the way, please?”

He turned and the sight of the gold and turquoise wings put my anxiety on edge. I knew it was him in there, I did, but it was hard not seeing him when we were doing stuff like this. However, when I spotted the quiver for her arrows that I knew carried the staffs, all of my other concerns went out the door.

When Crystal Henge came into sight, I sucked in a deep breath. The first time I ever saw it, there was barely a hint of snow on it. The second time, it was covered in a thick layer, making it nearly impossible to see—or so I’d thought. Now, it could have been a garden of snowmen. That was how thick the snow was. In my mind, I pictured it like the first time. It was a circle of crystals exactly like Stonehenge in First Realm. They were all different sizes, shapes, and colors. The gusting air shimmered and moved where it touched the crystal configuration. Thick, golf-ball sized snowflakes that were blowing sideways seemed to move in a different direction when they got close to the crystals. Color burst from under the layer of snow and shot up toward the sky. It reminded me of the northern lights.

The crystals pulsed with light, each of them flickering and glowing bright, beautiful colors—the brightest blues, most vibrant greens, softest yellows, and deepest pinks. My magic rose to the power of this place. Tiny puffs of aqua drifted up from my fingers, and the stones vibrated in my pocket. I knew we were in the right place. I stepped into the middle of Crystal Henge and all the stones glowed brighter. I felt their magic pulsing deep under the layer of ice. The stones in my pocket vibrated to be free, but I was afraid if we set them free now it might alert Tephine, because last time it sent up colored spotlights. So, they had to wait.

I patted my pocket. “Soon. I promise.”

My other pocket jiggled, then Bart popped his head out and looked up at me with big eyes and an inquisitive sound.

“No, no, my friend. You have to stay in there so you’ll stay safe.” I rubbed his head. “This might get crazy, so hide in there for me, okay?”

He let out a happy sigh, then wiggled back into my cargo pocket on the side of my thigh.

Bash dropped the bag of staffs at my feet, then pulled out Riven’s note. He scanned the paper with Jada’s hazel’s eyes. Her wings flapped. Every part of me wanted to take the reversal potions and just be us again, but I knew that was not smart, so I had to sit the urge down.

“The diagram is from the sky, so I’m going to go up a little bit and you’ll throw me the staffs one at a time, okay?”

I nodded. As soon as he was flying up, I dove for the bag and unzipped it. The first staff was the one with moldavite. That volatile stone needed to be locked away. He held his hand out— Jada’s hand —so I threw the first stone staff to him. He caught it mid-air and checked to see which one I’d given him, then conferred with Riven’s note. With a nod, he flew over and slammed the tip of the staff into the thick layers of snow. The staff itself turned to a light aquamarine.

The next staff was the wands. When it was buried in the snow, the staff turned purple and then shot purple lightning straight out and across to the first staff where it crashed into aquamarine lightning. The next staff out of the bag was Augustine’s, so I made sure to be extra careful with it. He clearly had the same concerns because he lowered to grab it. That staff turned red before it even touched the snow. Red lightning shot out and hit the other two. It was reminding me of the Ghostbusters movie when they crossed the streams.

The staff with the Nephilim feathers turned gold and sent out gold lightning, which was surprisingly the prettiest of them all. Each new staff in the ground got me excited to see the colors. I was expecting Vic’s black Pegasus feathers to change that staff black, but it didn’t, it turned a bright, gorgeous green. Those five staffs were nearly in a circle among the stones of Crystal Henge, with colorful lightning streaking out and crossing the others. It was quite pretty. I found myself slightly mesmerized.

But there was one more.

Bash lowered down and carefully took the one with the dirt inside, then floated back directly over the top of the crossing streams. He scanned the note one last time and looked to me. I nodded. It was time. This was it. We were severing the bond. After this, Tephine could be killed. The monster was about to be mortal again.

He shot back to my side and scooped me up off the ground. “I think you have to handle this last one.”

“Why?”

He took off into the air without answering me. He waited until we hovered directly above Crystal Henge, then pointed down. “You see the single spot where all five streams intersect?”

“That’s where the sixth has to go?”

He nodded and held the staff out to me. “I think it’ll be best if you lower it into place.”

I gripped the staff and pushed my magic into the crystal. It was eager to listen to me. Like a golden retriever, it wanted to play. I unclasped my fingers, but the staff remained floating. Ever so slowly, I began lowering the staff toward its destination. I wanted to be sure I did this right. When it was only about a foot above the others, I slammed it into the ground.

A bright white beam of light shot straight between me and Bash and into the snowy sky. I had barely enough time to even look up at it when the whole world exploded, and everything went white.