Page 124 of Incoronate
But how? How were we going to find a way out of here when no one else had been able to do it? I knew there was a way. There had to be, since Alford had been able to do it. I just didn’t know what it was, or where to even start.
Think, Jemma. Think.
I tried to work it out, piecing together everything we knew about Sanguinarium, looking for some kind of seam or door between Realms that we could exploit. But what if we couldn’t find one? What if there wasn’t a door at all?
And then my mind snagged on something.
Last year, when the Roderick sisters had cast a spell that was supposed to allow Engel to day-walk…I’d Invoked in the middle of it, and instead of granting Engel the power to walk in the sun, their botched spell wound up weakening the walls around the Realms. Enough so that Sanguinarium itself was bleeding into our world, allowing Revenants from every walk of life to day-walk in the streets. The sisters hadn’t found or used any sort of door then. They’d simply used enough of their magic to destabilize the dimensional walls and cause a tear. If they had been able to do that without even trying, then it only stood to reason that with a little bit of effort, we could do the same.
Just like we did with the Barrier.
I’d been able to use my Nephilim abilities to destabilize enough of the barrier for us to get Tessa, Ares, and Gabriel through. Not because I was stronger than it, but because I was something it had never been built to resist in the first place. The magic holding that barrier together hadn’t known what to do with me. And frankly, it still didn’t, so who was to say I couldn’t do the same thing again here?
I stopped walking.
All we had to do was disrupt the magic for long enough to make it unstable. To create some sort of tear in the walls. An opening for us to slip through.
I looked up, my plan slotting into place like a key turning in a lock.
Both of them were watching me. Trace was still leaning against the wall, his jaw muscle ticking as he tracked every change in my expression, while Dominic had gone perfectly still, his eyes narrowed slightly, like he was trying to read the blueprint straight out of my head before I said a word.
“I know that look,” said Dominic, his eyes holding mine. “What are you planning, angel?”
I took a breath.
This was the part where I had to get it right. Not just the plan itself, but the way I laid it out. Because if I stumbled over it or made it sound half-baked, Dominic would pick it apart before I finished my first sentence, and Trace would spend the whole time worrying about me instead of trusting that I knew what I was doing. I needed them both certain, and that meant I needed to be certain myself.
Because the truth was, I had no idea what was going to happen when I pushed against the walls of this place. Whether it would draw the Order’s attention. Whether Cael and his people would feel it. I had one shot at this. One. And if it went wrong, or if someone came for us before we made it through, that was it. There was no backup plan. No do-over.
It had to work.
“I need to draw on you both,” I finally said, looking between the two of them. “I need everything you have.”
* * *
It hadn’t taken me very long to convince them.
I’d laid out my plan carefully, making sure to cover the logic behind it and exactly how I planned to do it, and they’d listened without interrupting—which was either a sign of their confidence in me, or just the wordless acknowledgment that we really didn’t have any better ideas. Probably both, but I was choosing to go with the former.
By the time I finished, I was fairly certain they were both on board, if for no other reason than they’d already arrived at the same conclusion I had the moment the pieces clicked together for me. That this was it. Our one and only real shot of getting the hell out of here.
Whatever the reason, I wasn’t questioning it.
We cleared what little space the room had to offer and lowered ourselves to the floor in a loose triangle, cross-legged, knees touching, the three of us forming a closed circuit in the dim of the quarters. The oil lamp Dominic had lit earlier burned at the center, small and guttering, throwing just enough light to see their faces by.
I rubbed my palms against my thighs, anchoring myself. “Ready?” I asked no one in particular, my skin practically buzzing with anticipation.
“Ready,” said Trace, his dimples popping on both sides for good measure. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“Remember what we said, angel,” said Dominic, his voice low and calm as his dark eyes locked on mine. “You’re not trying to bring the whole thing down. You don’t need to.” His gaze held mine, anchoring. “You just need to make a tear. Something big enough for Romeo to port us through the moment it opens.”
I nodded. “I know.”
“A controlled disruption. Not a demolition.”
“I know,” I said again, holding his gaze. “Trust me, Dominic. I can do this.”
The corner of his mouth lifted the barest fraction. He held my gaze for one more beat, then gave a single nod.
