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We might have both been outsiders in our own way, but in that moment, at least, I felt invincible at his side.

“I stand a better chance of opening it than any ofyou, don’t I?” he asked Marek.

Lord Marek scowled, but he couldn’t seem to think of a retort to this.

“And if the gate fails to yield to us?” asked Lady Zara. “What then?”

“Then it fails to yield,” I replied, tersely. “And we sit and wait for our demise.”

“As opposed to doingnothingand sitting and waiting for our demise,” Thalia added, pointedly. “Even if all of these plans fail, are youreallycontent with the alternative of doing nothing? Of continuing to live as you are now, with your cities full of wraiths just barely clinging on to what makes them human? The end approaches either way. We have a chance to shift that ending in our favor, and we must take it, whatever the odds.”

A solemn hush fell over the crowd, until my brother said, “The time has come for action, clearly. No one can argue that.”

There was a general murmur of agreement, however reluctant it might have been.

“The gate doesn’t open without these two working together,” he continued, nodding toward Aleks and me. “It requires a delicate balance of magic, as Lady Zara pointed out. As for the Light King? He has sworn his allegiance to Nova. That’s good enough for me. And so all that remains is to decide on a plan.”

Chapter Forty-Seven

Aleksander

Hours later—aftera series of tense discussions and difficult decisions—the Nerithys Gate loomed before us, a towering archway of weathered stone with a dark wooden door encased in its embrace. The intricate symbols etched into the door caught what remained of the dreary daylight, shimmering like eyes slowly blinking open, awakening at our approach.

The air was thick, saturated with a scent that had become all too familiar—ash and dry earth. It clung to everything Lorien and his magic had touched, I was noticing. It had lingered in the chamber where we’d found Nova days ago. It had been present this morning, too, when he tried to invade her mind. I hadn’t told her, and I wouldn’t, but I couldn’t ignore how the smell seemed to have twisted even her natural clean, floral scent. Now there was a smoky undercurrent, a subtle but undeniable mark left on her—another scar to accompany the ones Lorien had left on her skin.

Days had passed since he had physically moved within this realm, but his presence remained, an ever-present shadow that only thickened the sense of unease surrounding us.

There were no signs of life here, save for our own, but soon, a low, hissing wind stirred the heavy stillness. Faintly, almost imperceptibly, I thought I heard a voice drifting within it—a whisper that swelled and ebbed, sometimes rising to a note that made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

I couldn’t tell if it was beckoning us forward or warning us to turn back.

“Do you hear that?” Nova asked, softly, her hand steady against Phantom, who stood alert, his ears flattened, fur bristling with dark energy that spiraled from his coat like smoke.

“I was hoping I was imagining it,” I said, gaze fixed on the gate ahead.

“It sounds…angry.”

The other leaders of our group soon joined us, their anxious chatter drowning out whatever wind-swept whispers we might have otherwise heard.

Our small army folded around us as well. I resisted the urge to count them again; the number grew no more impressive, no matter how many times I added them up in hopes that they might have miraculously turned into more. The crumbling, increasingly useless spells over the palace had left fewer and fewer souls standing as the day had pressed on; by the time we left out, only three dozen soldiers had been deemed fit enough to make the journey with us.

All together, we totaled less than fifty.

Less than fifty souls standing against the greatest threat the realms had ever known.

I breathed in deeply through my nose, trying to settle the squeezing sense of panic that kept trying to rise up and take hold of my heart. Again and again, I settled it. Glancing at the scars on Nova’s skin proved helpful, too; the sight of them reignited my furious, burning resolve every time.

We would make our way to Nerithys—to Lorien—even if it meant I had to pry this damn gate apart with my bare hands.

“The gate opens easiest at Equinox, of course,” Thalia said to the crowd pressing closer to us. “But enough magic can open it atanygiven time, and it gets progressively easier to do this with every day closer to Equinox. So…”

“So we’ll manage,” said Nova, moving closer to the gate.

I stepped forward alongside her, masking my usual skepticism; it wouldn’t do us any good, now.

She took a deep breath before cutting her eyes toward me. “Together?”

“Together.”