Page 32 of Shannon in Sombra

As though she knows exactly what I’m thinking, she says, “You would do it for me. If it were my baby… I know you would, Shannon.”

She’s right, too.

“Okay.” I give in if only because I know, no matter what, Loki will put Kennedy’s safety before anything else. So long as he’s with her, she’s untouchable. I one hundred percent believe that. “But only if you’re ready. I’m leaving now.”

“We’re coming with you, too,” adds Billie, gesturing at her chest, then at Glaine’s. “We’ve survived the shadows before. Glaine has his sword.”

“I also have Duke Haures’s orders to see that the spawn is unharmed while I am in Nuit,” Glaine says, shocking the shit out of me.

Then again, maybe that revelation shouldn’t be so surprising. After all, Alana is supposedly the child of a prophecy that might lead to the end of this world as we know it. Who knows what would happen if she was harmed or… orworse… before the prophecy came to pass?

No.No. Nothing will happen to her because, instead of waiting for someone else to offer to come with us, I start tugging Mal away from the house. If they want to come, come. Whatever. The more the freaking merrier at this point, so long as they’re willing to help me get my daughter back.

I get two steps before I discover that Glaine’s pronouncement isn’t the biggest shock I’ve gotten in the last couple of seconds—or that I need to be careful what I wish for.

Otherwise, I just might get it.

The more the merrier…

“The human women must all accompany the first,” intones Lucian, his voice deep and his words clear.

The first? Does he mean Alana, or me? Because I’m not the first. That’s Susanna… unless it’s something else he’s referring to. Like, oh, being the first human woman to procreate with a Sombra demon?

Tandy lays her arm on the crook of Lucian’s elbow. “Even me?”

His tone turns regretful even as he says, “Yes. Even you, dear one. Your mates are, of course, welcome to join you. Damien and I will be there to keep Tandy safe from that which might hunt us in return.”

Hope looks up at Sammael. “I’ve been in there before. It was terrifying, but I was alone.”

“And I was in chains, doing everything I could to get back to you. Now you’ll never be alone, Hope. We cannot defy the doppelseers. You’ll go, and I’ll go with you.”

Sierra shrugs. “Well, count me in. You, too?”

Dagon tucks his mate against his side, red eyes blazing out of his solid face. A hint of water dots his ridged brow. His long hair is shoved behind him as he nods. “I know what the bootprints belonging to the human look like. I don’t like the idea of you going in there with our spawn, but I would’ve offered my help in tracking either way. Now I can keep you safe and out of this blasted rain at the same time.”

There’s that lump in my throat again. Shit. I’m getting emotional again and for a totally different reason now. I… I don’t know what to say. Sure, Lucian made it clear that we have to go—and I can only imagine what it is he has seen that made him know that he had to risk the mate he waitedthreethousand years for alongside his twin—but even if he hadn’t… they would’ve come. I know it.

We’re our own clan within a clan. Alana being born without shadows of her own doesn’t mean a damn thing to them. Neither does her being the child of the prophecy… they want to help her because she’s an innocent child, and because she’s mine and Mal’s.

And I will never, ever forget it.

As a group, Dagon takes us back the way we came. I have to hold back, resisting the urge to take off so that I can feel like I’m doingsomething. It’s only as we’re back among the bleached skulls and the damp ash that I realize that running into the shadow is about as far as my plan goes.

I’m okay with it, but I have twelve other people—humans and demons—that I feel responsible for. We need a plan.

And, as strange as it seems, we get one from the usually quiet, always prophetic second doppelseer.

Speaking for the first time all day, Damien suddenly intones softly, “Float on the air, lead the way.”

Huh?

Obviously, his twin has some idea what Damiens means. While I’m confused as hell, Lucian sucks in a breath as he follows his brother’s gaze somewhere behind the rest of us. “Faripoz.”

I turn, doing a double-take when I notice the glowing white… shit. I don’t know what it is. It looks like the outline of a wingedthing, the striking glow surrounding it the only way to tell its shadows apart from the impenetrable black shadows at the end of Sombra.

It flutters, the wings moving so quickly it’s hard to make out its shape, but as the word ‘flutter’ pops in my worried brain, I realize exactly what I’m looking at after all.

It’s a butterfly.

---