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And talk about better late than never!

“Get her out of there!” I said, remembering the ease with which they could move objects from place to place in the blink of an eye.

But Hilde shook her head.

“We’ve already tried. We came in on the other side of the glade, saw what was happening and tried to shift her out. But the portal is attached to the ley lines—”

“And?”

“And they’re not of this world. They flow around it, but they aren’t in it.”

Rhea nodded. “And our power is tethered to Earth. It cannot leave it.”

“Then you can do nothing?” I asked, before having to pause to haul Marlowe back, who was trying to scramble back in there.

“Let me go!” he snarled. “Damn you, let me—”

“You can’t help her!” I yelled, and got a leg over him. Not that it was going to be enough.

“I’ll do it,” the librarian said. And before any of us could ask what she meant, she flowed underneath the few inches of open space and entered Gillian’s body, disappearing inside her skin.

And suddenly there was a fight, all right, there was a huge one. Gillian abruptly fell to the ground, convulsing, and Marlowe reached an arm through the barrier to try to grab her, only to have it cut off. I dragged him back, the wound seeping blood rather than spurting, because his heart wasn’t pumping, and yet he was still fighting me!

And I was also essentially one armed, thanks to my injured right hand. But the rest of our group took that moment to arrive, with Mircea and Louis-Caesar grabbing the hysterical vampire. But like with me, they didn’t try to drag him away.

“Gillian!” Kit yelled, and she turned her head. And I was fairly certain that it was his lover staring back at him this time. The blue cloud that had been in her eyes a moment before was missing, and then the librarian stumbled out, appearing dazed.

“That’s all I can do,” she gasped. “And it won’t hold!”

“No, it won’t,” Gillian whispered, looking at Marlowe.

“Listen to me,” he told her intensely. “We can fix this. We can—”

“I can fix this.”

“No! Listen—”

“You listen,” she said, and smiled slightly, her eyes full of tears. “You like to talk, but this time, you’ll hear me. If I stay, I’ll falter. I’ll lose to Morgan, or I’ll give in to temptation and save Rand, and change who knows what in the process—”

“No!”

“—or I’ll win but she’ll survive, and we’ll do this all again. We’ll do it forever. There’s only one way out—”

“I’m coming in there,” he said, and somehow managed to break the hold of two master vampires, one of them first level, something I would not have believed if I hadn’t seen it.

And expected it, and tethered him to the ground while he was distracted, using one of the spelled restraints from the belt.

He stared in disbelief from it to me, and then to Gillian. I did look away then, feeling a variety of things, the foremost being shame. I knew that he couldn’t help her by dying with her, yet it was his right.

But it wasn’t his destiny.

So, I didn’t see his face when he spoke, but I didn’t have to. If ever I had heard anguish in a voice, it was then. “Please. There are predators here, ones who eat spirits; I’ve seen them in the woods. We can—we can find some, and force her out, and—”

“How?”

“—and she’s powerful! They’ll be drawn to her—”

“She’s too powerful. They would run from her.”