Page 199 of Cherish

And while I do want to shatter the Shadow Realm to pieces, the last thing I want to do is hurt anyone. So whatever I do to destabilize it, however I choose to take on Jikan’s magic, I know that I’m going to have to be very, very careful.

How does chaos beat time? How does earth magic trump the flow of the universe?

It doesn’t, I realize, even as I smash the walls surrounding the Shadow Queen’s fortress to rubble and let my magic—my vines and flowers and branches—pour out into the world. Or at least, it doesn’t all by itself. It needs help. But what kind of help is the question…

All of a sudden, my chest starts to burn. It’s a strange pain—a fiery, searing sensation that has me gasping for breath.

“Are you okay?” Hudson asks, voice thick with concern.

I nod even though I’m not so sure. The heat is getting worse until it feels like my heart and lungs are actually on fire.

I lift a hand to my chest, start to rub the spot that hurts the most. And that’s when it hits me. The part that’s hurting, the burning in my chest…it’s the answer to my question.

Hudson told me he thought the reason I forgot everything about my time in the Shadow Realm was because I was hit with the arrow of time. It yanked me out of the timeline and sent me back to Katmere and, more importantly, to our world—where I’ve been ever since.

I haven’t given the arrow much thought since Hudson shared his theory—I guess I figured it just dissolved or something when I made it back to my realm. But now, with this sudden kindling in my chest, I’m beginning to think that it’s been lying dormant inside me all this time.

More, I think it just woke up.

It’s as if it knew I would need it—andwhen.

It sounds foolish to even think such a thing, but the more I sort things through, the hotter the arrow burns.

As the world shakes and shatters around me, I keep my focus on the problem. When I was first learning to use magic, Jaxon took me to see the Bloodletter. She taught me—unsuccessfully, thank God—how to wall up Hudson in a corner of my mind. But when she was teaching me, her focus wasn’t on the wall. It was on using magic with intention.

As long as I use it with intention—with an understanding of exactly what it is I want to do—magic can do anything. Especially magic as powerful as the freaking arrow inside me.

So what is it I want to do right here, right now? I want to bring down the Shadow Realm and reunite the Shadow Queen with her daughter. I may no longer be able to separate the twins, but I can bring them back together, at least healing Lorelei by reuniting her with the drained part of her soul. Not because of some promise I made or a bargain I struck to save Mekhi but because it’s the right thing to do. And given how Mekhi was wearing Lorelei’s talisman, I think it’s what he wouldwantme to do, too.

My grandmother suffered for a thousand years, as did Alistair and my people. The Shadow Queen, too, has suffered for a millennium. What’s the point of being the gargoyle queen, of having power in the first place, if one can’t use it to finally—finally—set things right?

So, once again, I close my eyes. I reach inside myself, and this time, I don’t build a wall. This time, I grab Hudson’s hand, not because I need his power but because I wanthim. My mate. My partner. My everything.

He holds on just as tightly, and I feel him all around me, in every part of my soul. Cherishing me and the world we’re going to put to rights. The new world we’re going to build together.

My friends move closer, gathering around us, as my power flourishes inside me. They surround us with their friendship and their laughter and their love. And as they crowd around me, I realize it’s up to us to let go of the bad things that have happened to us, to let go of the old lessons we’ve learned at the hands of people and gods who ruled by fear and jealousy and rage. And to find our own lessons, our own truth, in the world we want to build. The world we want to rule.

Damaged in our own right, powerful in our own time, we have spent far too long at the whims of other people. People who have used us fortheirpower, who have abused us totakeourpower. People who have hurt us time and time and time again in the name of their own ambition.

That ends here.

That ends now.

We are from here to eternity, and our aim is true.

One more breath. One more clasp of the green string inside me. One more moment to think and dream and be. And then I exhale and let the arrow go.

112

Dream On

The world around us quite simply implodes.

The darkness falls.

The light flows in.

And the shadows stream behind us where they belong.

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