entered the pocket, where darkness prevailed. Soul was still working on the contents, I realized, as a room began to form around us. The wooden floors. The plaster walls, the flowery tapestry. Flickering sconces and old cherry wood furniture. It looked oddly familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.
“I’ve been here before,” Tristan muttered, turning around in confusion, trying to make sense of what he saw. “I’ve seen this somewhere…”
“It’s your old Shade house, the one that your grandparents, Anna and Kyle, built,” Soul replied, glowing with satisfaction.
“How would you possibly know this stuff?” I asked, utterly befuddled.
Phantom sighed. Clearly, this wasn’t the first trick he’d pulled. “Don’t go there, Esme. My brother has some exceptionally creepy methods. Believe me when I tell you that you do not want to know the details of how he got into your heads and latched on to one of your dearest memories. It’s what Soul does.”
“You’d use this as psychological torture if you had the chance, huh?” Tristan asked Soul, who offered an excited nod in return. “You’re crazy.”
“Nope. Merely a psychopath. There’s an important distinction,” Soul replied. “That being said, your haven is ready.”
Time etched various runes into the walls, each of them briefly lighting up once they were completed. When he was done, he turned around to face me. “Time flows differently here now, so let us return. Mere fractions of a second will have passed in the tower.”
I hugged my brother tightly. “You be careful in here, okay?”
“And you be careful out there,” Tristan said. “I’ll see you soon.”
Shifting my focus to Valaine, I gave her a hug, too. “Don’t give up,” I whispered in her ear. “Keep digging until you find the Unending. Tristan has seen her once. I know you’ll get her out, eventually.”
“Thank you, Esme.” Valaine gave me a weak smile. “And I’m sorry. I never—”
I cut her off. “Shush. Tristan’s right. Not your fault.”
Time took my hand in his, and we both stepped back at once. Everything warped around us, and I found myself standing in the room at the top of the northern tower. Soul appeared beside me and gave me a playful nudge.
“Don’t be a downer,” he said. “You’ve got more allies these days, vampire. Your odds are better than they were a week ago, for sure.”
“I’ll stop being a downer when Kalon is awake and healthy again.”
“That, I’m afraid, depends solely on Unending,” Time said quietly, and I hated him for being right. We’d done everything we could. The rest of the journey to find the Unending belonged to Tristan and Valaine.
Kalon’s life was in their hands, and I knew they would stop at nothing to get him back. I had no idea where this would all lead, but I’d formed a vision of the future, and it involved Kalon and me exploring countless corners of this vast universe. It held adventures and precious moments of love and peace. It offered smiles and light and everything that was sweet and wonderful about this life.
I didn’t envision some kind of heaven with Kalon. There were monsters ahead, too—and dangers and terrible risks. Evil wouldn’t leave this world. Someone would always find ways to hurt the innocents. But all these concerns were ephemeral because I wouldn’t face them alone. We’d face them together. Provided, of course, that what we’d set in motion here on Visio panned out before the Darklings got to us again.
Esme
I left the north tower with a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach. All our hopes hinged on Valaine’s ability to dig deep into her memories and past lives until she found the Unending. Kalon was in a deep sleep, stuck in a different time and tucked away between dimensions. We’d found refuge in Roano, but this place wasn’t entirely safe. We’d lost the Darklings for the time being, but I couldn’t be sure how long it would take for them to find us again. Their level of determination was terrifying, even to someone like me. The worst part was that Death was unable to help us because she’d given the Spirit Bender way too much knowledge of death magic long ago.
The pessimist in me insisted we were screwed six ways from Sunday. The optimist looked to brighter days again, putting perhaps a little too much faith in Valaine’s ability to overcome her current obstacles. The realist was stuck somewhere in the middle—unwilling to surrender but terrified by the thought of losing Kalon.
Ansel waited outside a structure that looked like