Page 243 of Lana Pecherczyk

Her head snapped up. The birds were flying into the workshop window. Glass spider-webbed outward from an impact point, distorting her father’s reflection into fragments. The cracks spread across the surface. Through them, she glimpsed black wings beating frantically against the glass.

BANG. BANG.

“Bloody nuisance!” Her father slammed his fist against the cracked window. “Mad as a cut snake, that one. Needs to be put down. Step aside, Bloss. Let me handle this.”

“No.” She stepped between her father and the broken glass, arms spread wide. “Stop.”

“Blake, move. I need to protect you.”

“I said, no.” Her voice grew stronger. “I’m not a child anymore.”

She reached for the window latch despite his protests. Outside, Scarface flinched but didn’t flee.

“It’s okay, little mate,” she cooed. “Don’t listen to him. You’re not a nuisance.”

Scarface landed on her outstretched finger, and the world exploded into color. Blake gasped as heat zipped up her arm. Every surface in the workshop shifted. Wood grain became rivers of gold. Dust motes transformed into diamonds. The air itself turned prismatic, fracturing light into impossible spectrums.

“Can’t fix stupid.” Her father’s voice softened, and when she looked back, love filled his weathered features. Understanding. “Such a clever girl. I should have listened to you the first time.”

Outside, the crow’s cawing grew urgent. It wanted in, too. It swooped closer to the window, inside. Another crow arrived. Then another. Black feathers swirled through the open window, separating her from her father’s fading image.

“Dad, what’s happening?”

“Two feet and a wingbeat, Bloss?”

The birds circled faster, their cries layering into a symphony. Voices pierced through the whirling darkness, calling her name, but she was losing sight of her father.

“No! Don’t go,” she cried. “Don’t leave me alone.”

The male voice, desperate and raw.“I saved this one for last. You said, ‘I’m bloody well yours, arsehole. I’m not going anywhere.’ Neither am I, Blake. I’m waiting right here until you wake up.”

“River?” She gasped as the name came to her.

She remembered. Remembered everything.

She shouldn’t be here.

This wasn’t real.

Blake was somewhere else. In a bed. Sick.

A baby’s wail pierced the air, followed by a man’s off-key, rusty voice singing a lullaby.

“Hear that?”River murmured near her ear.“You made that happen.”

“River?” she called, tears in her eyes. “Where are you?”

He wasn’t here. But she could feel him against her skin, holding her. He was everything right in the world, and he’d waited. He believed in her enough to trust her, trust that healing her sickness could wait because she wanted—needed— to prove something … that she mattered.

But she always had.

“You don’t need to fill your cracks with something glittery, Blake,”River said, a smile in his voice.“You are the glitter. You are the shiny glue that makes broken things whole.”

Scarface pecked at her scalding hot skin, pulling away pieces that fell like ash. It didn’t hurt. It helped. It relieved. It revealed something bright blue and sparkling in the cracks. Not flesh. Something beautiful.

“Fly home to me, Sparkles. For the love of the Well, fly home to me.”

Other voices joined in, each telling her to listen to her mate, to come home. Aeron and Trix, Ravi and Talo, Sera and Lark, Jasper and Ada. All of them waiting. All of them wanting her back.