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Iwould’ve liked nothing more than to stick around and find out who Regine was and what she was doing here. But this second Valkyrie’s arrival was a stroke of good luck we had to take advantage of while we could. Our friends weren’t here, so we’d have to search every other glass house until we found them.

“Leave! Now!” Myst said, eyeing Thayen and me. This was her way of telling us that she and Regine would handle the Berserkers.

Haldor’s shadow hounds turned their focus to us. They couldn’t get too close because of the light emanating from within me, plus Jericho would throw fireballs at them if they tried. But we couldn’t lose them, either. Not for long, anyway. We would need more than the Valkyries to keep the dark beasts at bay, now that Haldor had set them on us.

“Go on, scram!” Regine added, raising an eyebrow at us.

Torrhen laughed. “The meat sacks understand their predicament better than you do. There is no point in running, darlings.”

“Besides, my boys here will be more than happy to eat them up. The half-Daughter’s light won’t last forever, and the Daughter is still under the influence of runes. Useless…” Haldor added, a mixture of humor and disgust twisting his thin lips.

Irritated by his remark but also frightened by the truth of it, I inched closer to Myst and Regine. I touched their blades, allowing the liquid light to flow from my core and into their beautiful swords. Green fires burned in the emeralds, and red flames danced inside the rubies. The diamonds glowed white as the blend of steel and gold began to shine brightly.

It made the Berserkers curse and the shadow hounds move back, their phosphorescent blue eyes shrinking to slits. The shining swelled and swallowed this entire stretch of the fake Shade’s extension, providing the window we’d needed. I grabbed Thayen’s hand and moved away from the melee. Jericho and Mom followed closely. “Come on,” I whispered and swallowed another invisibility pill.

By the time we almost bumped into the incoming clones, we’d already gone invisible, hiding between the glass houses as the grunts ran past us and toward the fight we’d just left behind. There were enough shadowy nooks and dark corners for us to move around undetected. Myst and Regine were putting on a flashy show behind us, their light cutting through the empty, starless sky.

“What in the world do we do now?” Jericho asked as we stopped on the edge of the extension, overlooking the dark waters of this false ocean with its false waves crashing against the heavy black iron of this equally false platform with false glass houses. Absolutely everything here was fake, and it was pissing me off.

“We find our friends,” I replied, gritting my teeth. I’d had enough of it all. Enough of Brandon’s murky allegiance. Enough of the clones and the weird devices and the unknown agendas. Enough of the Berserkers and their shadow beasts and weird third eyes. Enough of everyone and everything, Valkyries included. Our lives had been torn and tossed and plunged into chaos, and we couldn’t even save our friends without running into one form of trouble or another. Yeah, I was tired and angry. Fed up. “We find our friends, and then we keep forging ahead with the mission. We get to the truth, and then we stop these bastards from doing anything else to mess with our world and our people.”

“I wholeheartedly agree,” Thayen said.

Mom cursed under her breath as a throng of clones darted past the glass house, catching up with the others who’d gone after Myst and Regine and the Berserkers. I could hear the clanging of blades from here. It was loud and sharp, cutting through my soul and making my skin prickle.

We took advantage of the chaos outside and started opening the door to every glass house in our path. Not all the doors were locked, but we didn’t have time to inquire why, assuming that HQ relied on security and the Berserkers to keep their assets in place. We startled those inside—clones of our witches and scientists—none of whom had enough speed of thought to put on red lenses. Where the doors wouldn’t open, we smashed the locks or broke the windows to look inside, still searching for our friends. As we moved further down the extension, the noise from the Valkyries and the Berserkers grew fainter, but I still heard the shouts and the screams, the splashing of doppelgangers being thrown into the water.

“They have to be here,” Jericho whispered as we continued with our search. “They have to.”

“We’ll find them,” I replied, still firm in my beliefs and driven by a surging determination to survive. Moments later, I opened another door, and a clone jumped on me. It was a copy of Corrine, only she seemed… incomplete. Baring her teeth and hissing like a wild animal, her features were smudged as if someone had wiped her prominent cheekbones and bright eyes with a sponge, leaving only faint impressions behind.

“Astra!” Thayen managed, but I shot the witch-clone with my pulverizer weapon. Silvery ashes settled on me. I huffed and puffed and coughed some of it off, but I got back up, and we went on with our search. We didn’t waste our pulverizer pellets, using them only where needed. I realized that the witch-clone from earlier had jumped at the door, not me specifically. The creatures that were held here must’ve been dazed, and with the violence currently unfolding around them, I imagined they’d be confused and desperate to get out.

“They have to be here,” I murmured, mostly to myself, five minutes later. We were still pushing doors open and bumping into dazed doppelgangers who couldn’t even see us. “They have to…” I took a moment to look at Thayen. He was getting better with his glamoring—or at least his recovery periods were getting shorter. I hoped he’d be able to do more, soon enough. I would’ve liked a proper spirit-bender to help us with the powerful Berserkers, at least.

We spread out, each of us taking a glass house along the way until finally I heard Isabelle’s frightened squeal and my mom’s cry of pure joy, followed by laughter. It must’ve been weird for Isabelle and the others to have their souls “checked” without even seeing Mom. By the time Thayen, Jericho, and I reached her, she was inside another unit, visible and with her arms thrown around a groggy Isabelle who’d just gotten out of bed. Voss and Chantal were with her, IV needles piercing their forearms.

“Finally!” I groaned, then revealed myself and swiftly kneeled beside Voss’s bed. He gave me a curious look as I pressed my hand through his chest, his soul tickling the tips of my fingers. “It’s him,” I told Thayen, who took my place and gently removed the hawk-wolf’s IV. I checked Chantal and Isabelle while Jericho cleared their arms of needles and gave them plenty of water to drink so that the medication would leave their systems as quickly as possible.

It was the one thing I couldn’t help with. They weren’t ill or hurt, so I had nothing to heal. We would have to wait for the drugs to pass naturally through their bloodstreams and wear off.

“Can you stand?” Thayen asked Isabelle, who could barely keep her eyes open. She shook her head slowly, and he put an arm around her shoulders to help her up.

“This isn’t the holding section,” Jericho noticed, looking at some of the boxes filling this particular glass house. “This is storage.”

“They were using Isabelle, Chantal, and Voss to get to us,” I said. “They knew we were coming for them. They knew Myst or even Brandon would spot them here, and that they would bring us to this place.” It had been a ruse from the very beginning. But we’d found them. That was all that mattered.

Thayen took Isabelle, Jericho handled Voss, and I had Chantal. The three of them were drowsy, their knees weak and eyes drooping. “Come on, it’s time to go,” I said, looking at Mom. She was frozen in place, her eyes wide and cold purple as she stared at me. “Mom?”

A low growl slipped past her, wisps of black coming from her back like steam rising. The shadow hound behind her reared its ugly, shapeless head. Only then did I see the obsidian claw extending from its crooked, smoky hand and up to the side of her neck, where it threatened to pierce.

“No…” I mumbled, my blood running cold, the horror suddenly too real. “Let her go.”

The shadow beast hissed, and I felt the light growing inside me. It screeched and tightened its grip on my mom, hiding behind her while its claw broke the skin and drew a generous drop of blood. It was its way of telling me to stop or it would do much worse before I could get it off her.

“There’s only one of you,” I said firmly, though my voice trembled. I wasn’t sure it was enough to deter the fiend, but I was desperate to get my mom out safely. “This isn’t going to work.”

The creature growled, its jaw dropping, and I could see the pitch blackness in the back of its throat, an abyss that hungered for my flesh and my soul. Mom tried to stay calm, not moving a single inch. “Don’t provoke it,” she said. “Take a deep breath, baby.”

“Why don’t you zap away from him?” Jericho asked, holding Voss close.

“It’s got another claw in my back,” Mom replied. “I can’t risk it. He’ll feel me as soon as I prepare to vanish, and he’ll cut deep…”

This was unbelievable. Unfair. We’d made it so far. For once, I would’ve liked a more significant victory against these monsters. For once, I would’ve liked the truth, devoid of any complications. For once, I would’ve liked those I love to be safe and out of harm’s way. Was I really asking for too much?

The shadow monster shrieked in agony as a dark mass appeared behind it. The black shimmer of a blade cut through the fiend, and it let go of Mom, scattering away in wispy ink strips that splashed onto the wooden floor. Brandon emerged from the dark mass, twin swords out and thirsting for violence. “Go on, Pink Lady. Take your little one and her friends away from here,” he said to Mom.

“Little one?” I shot back, raising an eyebrow for good measure. Seeing Brandon here wasn’t that surprising, though it did fill me with unexpected joy. I hadn’t faulted him for leaving, but I sure as hell thanked the heavens he’d returned.

Brandon smiled faintly. “I do like how you light up when I poke you one way or another. Now, leave. All of you. It’s time.”

“Why’d you come back?” I asked, as Mom came over and wrapped her arms around Chantal and me.

“He took us,” Chantal mumbled against the leather of my GASP uniform. She pointed a finger at him. “He… he’s the one who took us…”

I looked at her, then at Brandon. “Them, too? Seriously?”

“This really shouldn’t come as a shock anymore. There’s no time for this! Just go!” he snapped. “Go, before more shadow hounds find you!”

“He’s right, Astra. There’s no time,” Thayen interjected, moving closer with Jericho and the others so we’d be physically linked. “Viola, we need to get out of here.”

Brandon had gone to a lot of trouble to get here and to save us. He’d risked Hammer’s destruction, though I dared not imagine what that would be like. He’d described it to me, sure, but imagining it was something else entirely. Not for the faint of heart. And Thayen was right. This wasn’t the time or the place to demand additional explanations. Brandon had done enough for now. I doubted I could fully trust him as long as the Berserkers still had Hammer, but at least I knew he meant well. That had to count for something. I’d make sure he told me everything else I needed to know the next time we saw each other. I made it my mission. Intel and DNA samples clearly weren’t the only things he’d stolen from our Shade. Brandon had stolen my other friends, too, not just Isabelle. He’d neglected to tell me that little detail.

But for now, I was thankful he’d returned in time to tear the shadow hound off my mother. Her bright pink light engulfed me, and I found myself smiling as we disintegrated into thin air. I saw Brandon disappear into the pink light, his eyes having captured mine in a long and intense gaze. Yes, we’d speak again. We had to.