Heading out the front exit, I pad past the house spirit shells, veering away from the main path and down the wooded slope, where I can hear a creek trickling through the rocks. Finding a particular mossy stone beside a gnarled pine with lots of good holes for hiding in, I set the rabbit-fox down. She looks around, neck and ears twisting about as she takes in her surroundings. Then she looks back up at me and chirps.

“I hope you’ll be ok now,” I say, kneeling and reaching out again to scritch her one last time. She makes an odd sound—a purring, yipping sort of noise that reminds me of a laugh.

“Oh, you’re so cute. And kinda weird,” I smile, and for some reason, that triggers more tears. “Leon would’ve liked you.”

She sniffs at the air, then hops off the stone—disappearing into some underbrush and tugging my heartstrings along with her.

I’m disappointed that I couldn’t keep her. It would’ve been nice to have someone to cuddle with right about now. Maybe E.J. will let me get a cat.

I stand and wipe at the corners of my eyes, getting up to head back.

That’s when the wind turns, and I sense it.

It’s still a ways off, but moving fast. Something big that smells of fur and scales but more than anything else—of storm.

Freezing on the spot, I stare into the woods in the direction of the thing.

A glowing darkness breaks through the foliage first, and then the greenery parts to reveal its source.

An enormous dragon-stag. A real one. But Stormstruck.

It stops several paces away and pauses before turning its head to fix one dark eye on me. Umbral power pulses outward in a corona of dark, steady brilliance all around it. The Static Trance.

My jaw goes slack. Distantly, I’m aware of my body moving as the beast grows closer. Of my hand lifting up towards its face, pleadingly. For what exactly, I don’t know.

It’s not as though by touching the creature I can gain this vaunted, this legendary ability. Total balance, total command of one’s Umbral energy. No wild flares. No unwanted storms. Just controlled, directed power.

The last known human Stormstruck to attain it died eighty years ago.

But as my fingers near its velvety nose, the dragon-stag doesn’t budge. And then I’m touching it, its power flowing around and into me, cascading from cell-to-cell until it suffuses my entire essence. It’s like sitting at a fireside on a cold winter’s night and jumping into a cool lake at the height of summer...all at once.

The stag blinks and then closes its eyes, stretching ones of its iridescent, golden-green wings as it dips its head closer to me—antlers dripping with moss and lichen.

But there are things making their way towards us through the forest, drawn by our Umbral power. Predatory things. I can smell the blood from their last kill still in their fur. Boon, who’d followed so silently up until this point that I’d practically forget he was there, begins to trill in alarm.

“Ashwyn! Get back to the Lodge! Please!”

Reluctantly, I pull away from the beautiful beast, whispering my thanks as I meet its glassy gaze. I turn around, and the rabbit-fox reappears from the underbrush—some bits of half-eaten mushroom dangling from her mouth. Her nose twitches, ears settling back in fear as she scents the same things I have. Chirping, she scampers after me as I rush back down the trail, and I pause to scoop her back up.

Behind us, the creatures run faster—and I pick up my own pace. But as they close in on the area I’ve just left, there’s a flash of darkness from behind me, and something yelps and whimpers. I turn long enough to see the dragon-stag rearing up, its Umbral power pulsing as three wolf-like somethings cower in the undergrowth before it.

Relief sweeps over me as I step past the spirit shells at the main entrance. There’s no sign of pursuit from the creatures. I drop onto the stairs with a huff, leaning back to take a deep, steadying breath. The rabbit-fox now curled in my lap, my hands go to rest on the stone to either side of me. It’s not as though I couldn’t have defended us, if I’d needed to. But I had—still have—an overwhelming instinct to contain the energy gifted me by the dragon-stag. To absorb it.

“You’re free to go back into the woods whenever you want,” I tell the little creature in my lap. “But...I won’t stop you if you decide to follow me inside.”

She tilts her head, looking up at me. Her whiskers twitch.

“Ashwyn.”

I practically jump out of my skin, sending my new friend hopping off down the stairs before she turns to chitter up at me scoldingly. I blink around, trying to determine the source of the voice—my mother’s voice—and finding only the spirit shells. Out of the corner of my eye, a light flashes as Boon begins to record.

“It’s so strange,” her voice continues as the hairs on the back of my neck raise on end. “You never could make any friends growing up, but now I seem to run into friends of yours everywhere I go.”

My blood turns to ice as I look back and forth between the two spirit shells, her voice issuing from both at once. Scrabbling to my feet, I back up towards the door. The rabbit-fox scampers up after me, twining around my ankles, fur raised as she growls and spits at the stone dragon-stags.

“Leon, say hello to my daughter,” my mother’s voice goes on, coaxingly.

“Ash, don’t listen to anything she says! Don’t come here. I—“

My legs weaken beneath me at the sound of Leon’s voice, but all too soon, it cuts off.

“He’s right here,” my mother’s voice says, taking over once more. “Standing right beside you—just on the other side of the veil. The true Otherside. Come get him, Ashling. He needs you.”

Just then E.J. bursts through the doors—expression absolutely feral, Somi bobbing in the air over her shoulder.

“Richelle?” She roars, dashing up to the spirit shells. “How the fuck are you doing this?”

My mother’s laughter rings through the air. And then it stops.

“Richelle? Richelle?” E.J’s teeth grit in frustration, until finally she curses again and whirls around, charging back up the stair towards me.

I swallow. “Wha—what just happened? I don’t understand. I...If she’s got Leon somewhere maybe that means we can bring him back. Bring everyone back. But how can she even—”

E.J. shakes her head. “I have no idea what the fuck’s going on, Ashwyn. I really don’t. But I’m going to find out.”

"The Gate," I gnaw my lip, casting my eyes away as a thought occurs to me. "If an Umbran goes back through—they're gone, right? Always?" It’s what we’d been counting on, after all, when she’d sent her people back to the island the night of my crossing to dispose of my mother’s remaining followers by shoving them back through.

She comes to a halt and stares down at me, hand pausing halfway on its journey to run compulsively through her hair.

“So if they’re all actually going to a place when they disappear, they’re probably all going to the same place, right? But is it possible to come back through?” My teeth grind deeper into my lip, and the taste of blood swells against the tip of my tongue. Shit. Sometimes I forget I have fangs.

E.J’s expression is unreadable. “No one ever comes back through. You know that. Everyone knows that.”

“But we can find a way, right?”

I look up to meet her eyes, but she’s staring back at me like I’ve gone mad. That look sparks something in me—and suddenly I taste a bitterness at the back of my throat.

“You used to be the one who made anything possible. But then you just gave up on controlling yourself. Gave up on me. Gave up on fixing the Gate.” Rage and sorrow boil up from my gut in an acidic, toxic slurry, spilling into my words. “What happened to you?”

For a moment, she’s like a statue. Unmoving. Unblinking. Then she takes a step forward. I shrink back against the wall as her lips curl up to reveal canines not unlike those of the creatures I’d just escaped.

“I am going to find out where your mother is, and how she’s doing this.” She takes another step forward, chest heaving as she drags in breath after livid breath. “I am going to get to her. And when I do, I will bring the others back, and then I will send her to a place she can’t come back from. Can’t raise her voice from. Ever again. Even if I have to make that place myself.”

She’s looming directly over me now, fury rolling off of her in waves. I hold my breath, rigid against the wall as I stare up at her. Then her eyes refocus, catching on the rabbit-fox in my arms. “Let me guess. You’re keeping it.”

“I—“

Then she drops to her knees, catching me off guard. “Ash. I promise you. What I just said, I’ll make it happen. If it’s physically possible, I will make it happen. But you have to promise me not to try to go back through that gate on your own. Let us solve this the right way. The smart way.”

I swallow back the first few retort that comes to mind. Would you say the same, if it were me or Beatrice on the other side? Her eyes narrow as she watches my reaction, and I can’t help but wonder if she’s guessed what I’m thinking.

After a moment, I sigh. “Alright. I promise I won’t try to go back through the gate on my own.”

Her brows come together for a moment, but then the tightness around her eyes eases somewhat. “Thank you.”

Perhaps if she wasn’t exhausted and preoccupied, she might have considered wording her request more carefully. Or perhaps she just trusts me enough not to worry about loopholes. Whether or not that trust is misplaced, even I don’t really know.