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“Insolent wretches,” Mordon snarled.

Angel called out to me with a long, drawn-out meow. I hurried over to her. She’d snagged a long, twisted, glowing strand of indeterminate origin.

“What is it?” I asked her.

She meowed.

“No, I don’t think it’s a mouse tail,” I told her. “Actually, I think it’s the thread that Cadence told us about.”

The glowing strand moved, like someone was pulling on the other end, retracting it. Angel pounced on it. I dove, gripping it too. It pulled us along for the ride.

“Guys, over here!” I called out to the others. “Help me grab this thing before it gets away!”

Nero and his parents were beside me in a flash.

“I think we found your thread,” I told Cadence as they all grabbed on to it too.

“So it would seem,” Cadence said. “We need to pull together.Hard. We need to detach it.”

“I thought you said we need to follow it,” I said.

“Yes, detaching it is how we’re going to follow it.”

I frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. How can we follow this thing to its origin if we yank it free of its origin?”

“Trust me, Leda. That’s how this works.”

“Well, ok.”

Over the years, I’d seen a lot of weird things that didn’t make sense. So why not one more?

“We need to pull together, all at once,” Damiel said. “On three. One…”

A low, whining whistle screamed in my ears.

“Two…”

Mordon’s head snapped in our direction. “What is going on?” He blinked at us like he could almost see us. “Who’s there?”

“Three!”

We all pulled together as one. I felt the thick vine break loose on the other end. The rope sped toward us. But instead of falling backward, we shot forward, worlds flashing past us, one after another after another…until it was just one world in front of us, big and blue. A magnificent castle perched atop a cliff, covered in a gold, glowing light. Waves crashed hard and furious below.

“I know where this place is.” Cadence’s voice was dreamy, detached. “I can sense its location.”

“Good,” I said, gritting my teeth. “So does that mean we can let go now?”

The rope was jerking wildly, shoving us back and forth. I saw soldiers marching inside and outside the castle. So many soldiers. A massive army many millennia in the making.

“Yes,” Cadence said. “Let go. And get ready to grab Sierra.”

We released the rope, and the spell flung us back. The dream cave was fading, disappearing. I scrambled to my feet, sprinting toward Sierra.

She was facing down Mordon.

“Mommy beat you,” Sierra told him, puffing out her chest with pride. “Daddy beat you. And Sierra beat you! The end. Bye-bye, bad guy. You gone.”

I grabbed Sierra, and then we tumbled in a mass of feathers and fur into our living room.