Page 64 of Cherish

“You’ve been here before?” Jaxon asks. “I mean, to this exact place?”

“We have,” Hudson answers. His eyes are already on the mountains, and I know if the rest of us weren’t here, he’d already be there, looking forher.

“Let’s go,” I say, shifting into my gargoyle form so that I can fly. Because now that I have my breath and my wits back, I realize that giving Hudson time to adjust might have been a bad idea. It feels like making him wait is torture.

“Go where?” Eden asks as she picks up a fistful of purple dirt and watches, fascinated, as it runs through her fingers.

“Toward the mountains,” I say, heading that way. “There’s a farm there.”

“A farm? Out here?” Flint asks incredulously. “What do they grow, nightmares?”

“All kinds of things, actually, like porocli and purrots and paiz.”

“Purrots?” Jaxon repeats, then shakes his head. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. Trust food in the Shadow Realm to be even stranger than in our world.”

“I swear it tastes good,” I tell him. “At least most of it does.”

“Well, thank God for that,” Flint says dramatically. “If I have to eat something called porocli, I really want it to taste good.”

“Pouspous is Grace’s favorite,” Hudson interjects slyly from his spot several feet in front of us. Which has every single one of my friends turning around to stare at me with wide eyes.

I wait for the questions, but only Flint is actually brave enough to ask, “I’m sorry, did he just say pouspous?”

“It’s a grain-slash-vegetable thing,” I tell him.

“Yeah, well, it sounds like an obscene grain-slash-vegetable thing,” Heather tells me.

“It sounds like it, but it’s not.”

Flint snorts. “I guess we’ll see about that.”

Then Flint and Eden shift—Eden lowering a leg, which Macy shows Heather how to use to climb up before she hops on Flint’s back. Jaxon chooses to fade with Hudson, and we all take off.

Part of me wants to tell Hudson to go ahead and fade to the farm as fast as possible so he can see if she’s there, but another part of me is terrified. What if she isn’t? What if our ideas about the timeline are wrong and she’s not actually okay?

No way do I want him to have to be alone when he learns that.

Hudson must feel the same way, because every time he gets more than a few yards ahead of us, he slows down and waits for us to catch up. It’s rare that I can feel the anxiety in him—he’s usually much better at hiding it than I am—but right now, it’s so obvious that it breaks my heart.

Which is why when we’re about half a mile away, I shift back to just plain Grace. I may be slower like this, but I can walk beside him and put my hand in his. Whether he realizes it or not, he is going to need a moment to prepare himself for what may—or may not—be waiting for us at the farm.

He looks startled when I slide my fingers between his, but he doesn’t pull away. Instead, he grabs on like it’s a lifeline and smiles down at me. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but then, I don’t expect it to. Not now, when we’re both so nervous I feel like we might explode any second.

“It’s going to be okay,” I whisper to him.

He shrugs in response. But his grip on my hand gets a little tighter. And for now, that’s all I can expect.

“Is that the farm?” Jaxon asks suddenly. His eyes are narrowed as he stares far into the distance, and my stomach twists. I would be lying to myself if I didn’t recognize how hard this must be on him as well. All of this must seem like the place where he lost me.

His gaze swings to mine, slides down to Hudson’s and my joined hands before sliding away, and I want to go to him and tell him how sorry I am. But then he turns to Flint, who is flying straight toward us, one wing dipping at the last second and nearly sweeping Jaxon’s feet out from under him.

I gasp, expecting Jaxon to yell at him, but he surprises me and laughs instead, shaking his head as he mutters affectionately, “Asshole.” Then he takes off in a run, jumping up and shifting into a giant amber dragon at the last second—and chases after Flint, who is now flapping his wings like his life depends on it.

Macy is laughing so hard on Flint’s back as he swoops hard left, then right to avoid Jaxon, that I think she might fall off. Eden joins the impromptu race, swooshing easily between the two male dragons in a here’s-how-it’s-done flyby that has Heather screaming like she’s on the best roller-coaster ride of her life.

“Good God,” Hudson murmurs. “They’re all overgrown children.”

I squint up at the dragon silhouettes racing against the bright sun and say softly, “Flint is good for Jaxon.” I pause, then add, “Do you think they’re going to be okay?”

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