Page 26 of The Unseelie War
“Ava?” Serrik was beside her instantly, his arms steadying her. “What's wrong?”
“Tired, that’s all.” Though she could feel it was more than that. The power she'd been wielding so freely was taking its toll. She needed rest, needed time to recover before she accidentally reshaped something important. “I think…I think we need to stop for a while. Find somewhere safe to regroup.”
“This place is stable enough.” Serrik glanced around at the walls. “And it has only the one main entrance. This will do for a shelter, once I secure the remaining side entrances.”
“I can try to…reality-magic us up some supplies.” Ava rubbed a hand over her face. “Unless you think you can, Serrik?”
“Hm. I am not sure which of us is more of a threat at the moment.” He smirked. “If you have the strength, I hate to admit you may be.”
“I’ll do it.” Reaching out with her power one more time, she began to weave reality around them. Nothing grand or impossible. Nothing life-saving or strange. Just some comfortable chairs and warm light and a kitchen that would provide whatever food they needed.
And a few private rooms where they could actually justsleepandrest.
A sanctuary in the storm, a place to catch their breath before facing whatever came next.
As the last details settled into place, Lysander collapsed into one of the chairs with a groan, finally allowing himself to show how exhausted he was. “This is perfect. It almost feels like home.”
“That was the idea.” Ava settled into her own chair with a sigh of relief. For the first time since waking up in the merged world, she felt like she could actually relax. Outside, she knew the world was still chaos.
“So,” Bitty said, perching on the arm of Lysander's chair, “what do we do now?”
“We rest.” Serrik was already heading toward the doors that led into the rest of the opera house, likely to secure it against interlopers or to kill anything else that might interrupt them. “We recover our strength and determine how we locate more allies.”
“And after that?” Lysander asked, betraying his nervousness.
Ava looked around at her unlikely family—two dreams given substance and an ancient spider exile who'd learned to love. It wasn't what she'd planned to do with her life, that was for fucking sure, but it was what she had.
And somehow, it felt like enough.
Now she just had to figure out how to salvage it all.
“After that,” she said, “we figure out how to fix this. All of it. We either un-fuck these three realities, if it can be done…or if it can’t? We figure out how to make it work.” She smiled tiredly. “We figure out how to build something better than what we started with.”
It was an impossible task. The scope of it was staggering, the potential for catastrophe enormous. But as she looked around at her friends, Ava felt something she hadn't expected in the midst of all this chaos.
Hope.
They would find a way. They had to.
Outside, three realities were either learning or failing to coexist in ways that had never been imagined. But inside their sanctuary, surrounded by people who cared about her—real or constructed, it no longer mattered—Ava finally allowed herself to believe that maybe, just maybe, she hadn't broken everything after all.
Maybe she'd just created the opportunity for something new to grow.
Or maybe she was very, very wrong.
Time would tell.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ava slept for a few hours in a room that was…an approximation of something comfortable. But she couldn’t sleep for long before some part of her subconscious would jolt her awake and send her rolling over in a fit of uncomfortable semi-awareness.
She knew what was keeping her up. It was simple—she was afraid to dream.
Sitting up in the bed she had created out of nothingness, she rubbed the back of her neck with a sigh. It didn’t help she’d woken up alone. It was funny, really. She’d only spent one night with Serrik beside her, and she’d instantly become used to it. But in a way, that wasn’t true. All those nights in the Web, she had spent with Serrik beside her while she slept. Even if it wasn’t in the most traditional sense.
It just felt empty, waking up with no one there, in a bed that wasn’t her own. In a bed that wasn’trealin the traditional sense. Letting out a breath, she got up, combed her hands through her unruly hair, pulled her clothes on, and decided she was going to go see where exactly the spider had gotten himself off to.
The opera house-turned-whatever-the-fuck was quiet. Lysander was asleep in kitty form, curled up on Bitty’s lap. Bitty was also curled up asleep in a ball on a sofa by a fire that was burning low in a living room that Ava didn’t honestly fully remember making.
