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more resolved to go than I’d been a moment before, I stared at Liam. He shook his head.
    “You know we have to go.” I touched his face, while he vibrated with worry. “Even if Laerni hadn’t been helping me these last few months and I hadn’t started to care about her, we’d still have to go.”
    “Then you stay, and let us go,” Liam said, his tone desperate and pleading.
    I stole away some of his anxiety into myself and soothed him with my quiet voice. “You said whatever happens in the future, we are in it together. Lock stock. We gave our oaths.”
    His gaze fell again toward our son. “I know, but … things are different now.”
    I understood, but I couldn’t do nothing after the gains I’d made with the fae. With myself. Not to mention that to do so was just plain wrong. “I have to face them sooner or later. The Magi, I mean. I will not stand aside and watch the elves fall while I’m capable of doing something about it. Nor will I let them hurt our son. I need to know you’ve got my back on this.”
    Pinching the bridge of his nose, Liam drew in a sharp breath, let it out, and stepped in close. “You know I do. Know this, though. I will not hesitate to kill or die to protect my son. And my wife.”
    My heart throbbed and tears pricked my eyes. I’d never heard him call me that before. With not a clue what to say to that, I kissed his chin. “For now, pull any heroics on me, and I’ll knock your head in. We get in; we fix this; we get out.”
    When I focused on Brígh, she glowered at me, but I forced my Will into her, having no time for an argument. “Go back inside. I told you I’d hide you under my bed if I had to, and I meant it.” I turned to Neve. “Would you please stay and make sure she doesn’t do something stupid?”
    After a longing glance at Andrew, she straightened. “Sure thing.” Her eyes said, keep my man safe .
    I nodded and hoped she’d read my unspoken promise: I would bring him home, or else.
    Cursing up a storm, Brígh made a few nasty gestures to me but returned to the portal—Neve on her tail.
    I thrust out my empty hand. “Everyone touch me.”
    Three hands reached out and gripped my arm, their owners’ eyes glimmering with the same fear I imagined mine did.
    “Are you ready?” I asked.
    “Do it,” Andrew said in a near snarl, his gaze locked onto me with intensity I couldn’t read. Fury, maybe. Or fear. I wasn’t sure. Some emotion that came from deep within, gaining momentum and power as it rose to his surface.
    A deep breath centered me as I squeezed the cold stone and summoned an image of the light fountain in the town square of Freymoor Wood. Instead of making me feel like a ball in a bingo mixer, the way the transporting medallions had, the sensations washing over me were more like being pushed face first through warm honey.
    I emerged to cool air and a din of bone-rattling screams. Not just fear. Agony. I clamped down my senses, so I could still hear but not feel what went along with those cries.
    “Fuck me sideways,” Andrew said, as Liam tugged me closer. Prickles of magic danced along my skin. “Is it supposed to look like this?”
    “It is most definitely not supposed to look like this,” Liam shouted, crouched and tense at my side.
    Everywhere, oak trees littered the ground, having erupted through stone paths. They dwarfed all of the strange metallic trees that were there before. How had they grown up so fast? Not naturally, that was for sure. I had a fleeting thought that we stared into our own future before shaking it off.
    One thick willow grew up out of the center of the fountain, destroying the flow of light. Its wispy branches coiled and floated around its head like Medusa’s snakes. Instead of water in the stone trough around its base, a crimson pool shifted with the giant moons’ tidal push and pull. Around the perimeter, the large trees, where we’d first met and been entertained by Alogason and Laerni, were all dark, not even a