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ALANA

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER

The butterflies find me everywhere.

For as long as I can remember, the gentle, peaceful creatures enjoy fluttering around my head. When I’m in a playful mood, I bat my hand at them, knowing that they find it a game to dodge my fingers so they can perch on the tiny nub of one of my horns.

I always hoped my dainty horns would grow into something more pointed and as powerful as my father’s. Even the demonesses in our village—most of them born in Soleil and moved to Sombra—have long, delicate horns that make them fiercely beautiful.

And then there’s me. With my mom’s colorless skin, her pale yellow hair, and inch-long black nubs that make it obvious that I’m way more human than demon…

Today, two of the three butterflies that came to keep me company hover over my head, shadowy wings sending my hair wafting in their slight breeze as usual. The third settles on the skirt of my dress, antenna twitching as though asking me how I am.

Been better, I muse, holding out my hand.

The butterfly leaps from my thigh to my outstretched finger. Its glow makes my pale skin gleam beneath its shadows.

I sigh.

I’m delaying the obvious. I know I am. It’s only a matter of time before I’ll have to confront my parents again. I’m not worried about Dad’s reaction. He’s always been happy to let Mom take the lead where I’m concerned, both as a kid and now as a grown half-demoness. And though I’m already a quarter of a century into my immortal life, she still treats me like I’m a child.

Like the butterflies being my constant companions, Mom’s overprotective side is just something that’s always been. I’m used to it, and considering I was abducted as an infant, I understand it—but that doesn’t mean I like it.

I’m a shadow traveler. I can’t help that any more than my mom can help her desire to keep me coddled and safe. While not all demons in Sombra have a magical gift—unless, well, you’re a mage—something about having one human parent and one demon parent has meant that me, Stevie, Rafe, and Clara all do.

Stevie takes after her human mother. With a voice like an angel, and a persuasive lilt to the sound that makes her a siren, she can talk you into anything with a few sung words.

Rafe was born with a mage’s purple eyes, just like his demon dad. He’s not the greatest when it comes to spells, though he can intuitively create a protective barrier made of shadows that protects anyone inside of it—and blocks anyone on the outside from breaking in.

Clara is younger than the rest of us. Barely a decade, we weren’t sure if the daughter of the head of the duke’s guard had a gift until she disappeared into her shadow form so completely, not even her mother could find her.

I wish I had that gift. I don’t even have a true shadow form, not like the others with Sombra demon blood. They can go from their solid forms to their black shadows before fading away, leaving only a shimmer to indicate they’re there. I can turn to mist sometimes, but that’s just when I’m around people who don’t believe in demons.

If you know I might be there, you’ll see me. If you’re sure I can’t exist, I’m never there.

I think that’s why my mist only works on my infrequent travels to my mother’s home world, Earth. Duke Haures’s first law says that the mortals from that plane aren’t allowed to know about Sombra unless they, like Mom, are fated to belong to a Sombran. I’ve lived my whole life in this realm. I am a Sombran, and I know better than to let some human be the reason I’m sent away in chains to stay in the duke’s dungeons.

But that’s the problem. I don’t have a shadow form, but my gift? I can make shadows work for me. I don’t need to be a mage to create portals out of magic. As a shadow traveler, a shadow walker , I can move through the darkest patches and end up in a whole other world.

I’ve discovered three previously hidden neighboring realms over the last few years simply because I was curious, and, truthfully, because Rafe gets his kicks egging me on.

He did today, and we ended up lingering longer than I meant to in Brille Rouge. My mom spends most of her afternoons at the library with the clan mother. As long as I grab Rafe by his collar and drag him back to Sombra, I won’t worry her too much with my excursions.

I’ll worry her, of course, but not too much… unless I return home hours after we should’ve and, instead of facing my parents, I’m sitting on a lump of burnt wood a few homes down from where Rafe still lives with his parents.

His mother, Kennedy, is just as protective of Rafe, something that’s only gotten worse since she realized that Loki knocked her up again.

Knocked her up … it’s such an odd expression. Growing up in Nuit, I knew what the gold moon meant for bonded mates long before I had any understanding of what the act of mating was. Now, at a quarter of a century, I do, even if it’s the mechanics only. Still, just because I’m a virgin waiting for my mate doesn’t mean that Rafe and Dani and I don’t fantasize about the demons or demonesses who the gods have chosen for us. But knocked up ? Loki didn’t hit Kennedy. He fucked her, and if that’s another word I’ve learned from my mother’s native human language, I like the sound of it better than mated .

If it’s up to my mom, I’ll never have a mate?—

“Alana? Alana. Ah. There you are.”

Another sigh, and I brace myself before turning to look over at Mom. “How did you find me?” I ask, the words out before I can even think to hold them back. “Binx?”

She doesn’t seem to mind. Her pretty face eases as the worry slips away. Moving purposely toward me, plopping down on the log beside me, she bumps my shoulder with hers. “I followed the butterflies.”

That makes sense. Binx is too loyal. He would lead Mom all around the village before he brought her to me when I obviously wanted to be alone.

But the butterflies? The don’t know better, and now I have more company.

To outsiders, most might consider us sisters instead of a mother and her spawn. My father’s essence has frozen my mother at the moment they finalized their mate bond. She’s closer to sixty in human years, but looks to be the same age as I am.

When she gives me that knowing look of hers? She’s pure Mom .

“I missed you today, baby,” she says, and I don’t even bother reminding her that I’m no longer a spawn. I’m Shannon’s ‘baby’, and even after centuries have passed, I’m sure I always will be. “Where did you go?”

Shit. It’s another human word, a curse from her old life that doesn’t have a direction translation in Sombran, but it matches my feelings well.

I don’t lie. Not to my best friends. Not to my parents. Not to the clan leader and his mate. Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes improve the truth a little, but if Mom asks me a question like that, I’ll answer her even if I really, really don’t want to.

Trying to tell her that I didn’t use my special power to go exploring is useless. She knows.

She always knows.

With a casual shrug, I tell her, “Just for a walk.”

A shadow walk.

Mom nods. “I thought so. You didn’t go to Earth, though, did you? ‘Cause I’m sure I mentioned that it might’ve changed since I lived there.” Under her breath, she says softly, “Every time I go back, it does.”

I give my hand a tiny shake, letting the butterfly take flight so that I can lay my fingers gently over my mother’s.

Mom has always wanted me to have some idea of the world that half of me is from. That’s why, over the years, she would go back with Dad and me, showing us around while we followed the duke’s decrees and stayed hidden in the shadows. I used to enjoy those trips as a family, but the last time we went, Mom discovered that her parents were gone.

Humans don’t live forever. Neither do demons since, one day, we might choose to end our endless existences on our own. But humans? They barely get a century, and my mother’s parents didn’t even have that before they were gone.

That hurt her, but she admitted to Dad that she always knew that was a possibility. Actually, what upset Mom almost as much was finding out that something she called the Beanery had disappeared as she was once again walking the same streets she’d left behind before I was born.

The Beanery… I don’t know why a shop devoted to selling only legumes would’ve left such an impact on Mom, but there are sides to her that I’ll never understand, even half-human as I am.

She mourns a world she’s no longer a part of, even though she swears—and shows—that she’s happy living in Sombra. And yet, as worried as she is that I’ll run off to the human world alone, she slips her hand out from under mine, patting the top of my fingers, and says, “If you ever want to go there, just tell me. I’ll go with you. Probably not back to Jericho… not like I think anyone from the old days will remember me…” She pauses thoughtfully. “It’s been twenty-five years, but you know what? Mrs. Winslow is probably too nosy to die yet so, with my luck, she’d see me if I did go back again.” Mom shakes her head, soft yellow, nearly white hair the same color as mine swaying with the motion. Behind her, a butterfly flutters at the same time, mesmerized by the sway. “Screw New York. Let’s try Paris. Or London. You’d like that. With your powers, Alana, we can go anywhere.”

That’s another problem right there.

Not that Mom is trying in her heavy-handed way to appoint her and Dad—because wherever Mom goes, Dad will surely be right there, forever her shadow—as my chaperones. She is, and this isn’t the first time even if she insists that she doesn’t mind my adventures with Rafe, but it’s the idea that my gift makes it so that I can visit any and all worlds.

Until today, I thought that was possible.

And then, on Rafe’s urging, I tried to open a shadow portal to a new world we heard about while we were in Brille Rouge. In between his flirting with one of the seamstresses he thinks he might convince to be his fated mate, she told us all about how a cadre of soldiers from a nearby fire realm have been marching through their villages, searching for… something.

Katrin thought they were looking for mates. She wasn’t sure, and with a shy smile sent toward the charming Rafe, she admits that the demonesses in Brille Rouge prefer Sombra demons if they can’t find a partner among their own people.

Hearing that part of my confession to where I did go today, Mom’s smile returns. “Everyone wants to belong to a Sombra demon.”

She’s a prime example. My parents have been mated for nearly three decades—almost as long as my human mother was alive before she summoned my demon father to her—and they couldn’t be more in love.

I nod. “Katrin has her pretty pink eyes on Rafe, too, but as soon as she told him they were looking for something, he wanted to go check out their world. We’ve never heard of it, and… you know Rafe.”

“You can’t tell that boy no,” Mom agrees. “Sometimes I wonder if he got some of Loki’s feral side in him.”

Honestly? I grew up with Rafe, and I wouldn’t put it past him to be as wild as his father. Our village mage spent a century in the shadows, something I can respect, and while Rafe avoids them like he would the mate sickness, he’s more like his father than he’ll ever admit.

“So I tried. If only to get him to stop pushing me to do it, I tried to open a portal to Noctavara.”

Okay. Like me, Mom is basically colorless.

Right now? She goes suddenly white .

“Alana. Where did you try to go?”

The strange note to her voice tells me that she doesn’t mean my trip to Brille Rouge earlier.

“That’s what’s wrong,” I admit, looking down at the ash beneath my boots. “I don’t know. It was… closed.”

Nothing’s been closed to me.

I failed. I don’t like to fail. Even after my nose started dripping dark blood and Rafe told me that it wasn’t worth it to sate his curiosity, I pushed and failed .

That’s why I slunk around the back of his house, dropping down on the burnt log, and stewing over my failure as I dug a hole in the ash field with the tip of my boot. Because while Rafe gave up on spying on these unfamiliar fire demons, something told me that I had to get past the block.

I had to break through it.

I had to go to?—

“The name. What did you call that place?”

Oh. Right. “Noctavara.”

In Brille Rouge, their demon dialect—that they call Brilliant—is similar enough to Sombran that there are rarely any miscommunication between Katrin and her sisters and Rafe and me. We understand each other far better than if we went there, speaking in our mothers’ human language. Noctavara might mean something else to Katrin, but that’s what she called the realm.

Huh. Is that why I couldn’t break through? Maybe… maybe that’s not its true name?—

“Don’t go.”

My head jerks, looking from the ash to my mom’s face. She looks even paler, her dim blue eyes so different from my glowing gold ones. “Mom?”

“Don’t go,” she repeats, easing her hand away from mine. She swallows roughly, hiding the sudden concern behind a shaky smile. “Not until you’re ready.”

That doesn’t make sense. Wasn’t she listening? I told her I couldn’t go. That it was blocked. She heard that, right?

Why doesn’t she ever listen to me?

I open my mouth, but before I can say another word, she tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear as she rises to her feet. “I have to go talk to Mal.” Dad . “Dinner’s in the fridge.” The icebox that Rafe’s dad spelled to keep our food cold in a mimicry of something Mom had back in the human world. “Don’t stay out too long, sweetheart. Okay?”

She bends over quickly, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. The butterflies scattered as she lowered her face down to mine, but as Mom makes her excuses and basically bolts back in the direction of our home, they return to flutter in front of me.

My mouth is still open, the words stuck in my throat.

I swallow, then ask the butterflies, “What did that mean?”

But they don’t know, and neither do I.