reactivate the invisibility cloak,” Tristan reminded me.
I nodded, then hugged Kalon as tight as I could. He kissed me, and I felt my courage blazing again, energy coursing through my veins as I braced myself for what was yet to come.
“You’d better come back to me,” Kalon said, his blue eyes drilling into my soul. “I didn’t come this far to lose you now.”
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” I replied, planting a kiss on his cheek. “Just take care of Sofia and the others, and I’ll see you soon.”
“Wow, you make it sound like you’re just going down the road to get a loaf of bread,” Tristan muttered, but Valaine took him in her arms and held him close, whispering in his ear.
“Don’t be negative,” she said. “You’re the one who told me we shouldn’t invite the universe to screw us over, yet you’re doing exactly that.”
“I’ll be back, Valaine,” he replied, cupping her face. I could see the love in his eyes, and I worried. Where would it end for them? Would he be able to cope if we lost Valaine? I didn’t want to think about such worst-case scenarios, but I had to. We’d all been to hell and back already, and we’d all lost someone or something precious over the years—but there was something about our experiences on Visio that promised terrible heartache if we failed. The kind we’d never felt before.
Maybe my instincts were wrong, but my feelings weren’t. Everything seemed more intense here, and I feared that Tristan was going through something similar.
“I’ll be back, and we’ll clear your name,” my brother added, and Valaine gave him a soft smile. I wasn’t sure she believed him, but she definitely looked like she wanted to.
Tristan and I got into the shuttle and took our positions in the pilots’ seats. Pressing a few buttons, we watched the windshield’s display come to life in bright amber lines and digits. The engine hummed somewhere behind us as we prepared the controls and readied ourselves for takeoff.
The invisibility cloak was still active, though we’d disable it as soon as we were safely away from the hilltop. Outside, I could see Sofia and Thayen, Kalon, Ansel, Trev, Valaine, Amal, and Amane. They all looked hopeful and concerned at the same time—I didn’t know why I’d expected to see something else. There were only two ways this was going to go.
Either we’d succeed and grow our team with Ridan’s crew, or we’d fail and go down in flames. I was determined the latter would never happen, but I couldn’t fail to acknowledge the possibility, despite the soul-crushing heartache that came with it.
As we waited for the shuttle’s systems to fully activate and for the inherent magi-tech to reach its full potential, I felt my brother’s eyes on me. He was smirking. He rarely smirked, so I knew he wanted to say something.
“What?” I asked, my tone flat.
“You’re hopelessly in love with him, aren’t you?”
I wanted to say yes, but I knew he’d tease me for it, as a means to get his mind off the trouble we were about to get ourselves into. I had a better way to distract him, though. Mimicking his deep voice, I fluttered my eyelashes at him. “I’ll be back, Valaine. I promise I’ll be back. I’ll be back, my love, so we can longingly look at each other and do nothing about our feelings while your planet burns at the hands of the Darklings.”
Tristan gave me a horrified look. “Whoa, sis… that was dark.”
“And that’s what you get for butting into what is generally described as none of your business,” I quipped, turning my attention back to the windshield projections. The systems were all up and running, and we were ready for takeoff.
A moment passed in heavy silence as we both stared ahead.
“I love you, sis,” he said.
“I love you, too,” I replied. “Now, let’s go piss off some Aeternae.”
As we pressed the right buttons and maneuvered the controls, the shuttle took off, pumping hot air onto the ground beneath. It pushed the others away, and they squinted as they tried to look up. They couldn’t exactly see us, but they could at least hear the humming of the engines, since the cloaking didn’t do anything about the engine sounds.
We were on our way to stir up some trouble in the skies of Visio. And for some reason, while I was genuinely scared by the prospect of failing, I also felt like the