Page 156 of Scarlet Wars
So I nodded, hollow and helpless, because the rest felt like flailing at the sky. “Five minutes,” I said. My throat felt full of gravel and glass. “If you don’t come back through?—”
“I will.”
Her eyes held every promise I wanted to hear.
I reached for her, fingers curling against her shoulder, holding on like touch alone could rewrite what was about to happen. It was nothing—a breath, a heartbeat—but it felt like sayingdon’t gowithout the desperation of words.
Then she turned away, light bleeding gold across her hands.
“Now,” the voice commanded.
She looked back one last time—Emma against the glow, face drawn, determined, human—and I wanted to stop her more than I wanted to breathe.
But I didn’t move.
She stepped forward, and the world broke apart into blue.
THIRTY-SEVEN
CADEN
As soon as Emma disappeared through the portal, reality snapped taut in her absence: the rising water vanished in an instant, the chains binding Jackson and James dissolved into thin air, and both men collapsed forward like their bodies had only been held together by the threat of drowning.
They groaned, dazed and blinking at the sudden stillness, looking wildly underwhelmed to still be alive.
A moment later, the door shuddered open with a long, echoing hiss, as if whatever asshole was running this show had finally lost interest in this whole shitshow and was now politely ushering us out.
As if I’d ever walk out without Emma.
James scraped himself upright, one hand sliding down the wall as he tried to reassemble his brain. The second he managed to focus on me, he recoiled like I’d materialized out of spite. “Colt? What the hell areyoudoing here?”
I gave him a crooked, pathetic excuse for a bow. “Is that really the way to greet your knight in shining armor?” I tried to sound flippant, but I rasped like I’d swallowed concrete; worry for Emma had sandpapered my throat.
Jackson blinked several times, rubbing at his temple as if trying to place himself back inside his own skin. “What…happened?”
“No clue,” I said, hooking an arm around him to keep him steady while he found his footing. “You were in contact with your husband during our trip up here, but by the time Emma and I arrived, you were both unconscious and the room was filling with water.”
“What?” James hissed, snapping upright so fast his joints protested. “Emma was here? Where the fuck is she?”
I jerked my chin toward the far wall, the one now perfectly intact. “Miss Stubborn decided to yeet herself into a glowing blue portal after some disembodied, magically enhanced voice claimed it was the only way to keep all of us from drowning.”
James turned on me so fast I felt the shift of air. “And youlether?”
I scoffed, raising my brow at James like he’d suggested we hold back a hurricane with polite encouragement. “Don’t think anyoneletsEmma do anything. Suggesting otherwise is…I don’t know, adorable? Delusional? Pick one.”
Jackson, clearly deciding he’d had enough of our impending pissing match, lifted a hand between us in the universal gesture forplease shut up.“Okay,” he stated evenly, “we wait until she’s back, and then we get the hell out of here. That about right?”
I gave a short nod. “Yeah,” I said quietly. “That’s right.”
The three of us settled into an uncomfortable silence as time stretched, slipping out of shape until I couldn’t tell if we’d been waiting seconds or hours.
My pulse filled the quiet, beating in time with the one thought clawing at me:Come back.
And then the portal tore open again, splitting the air with a violent rush of sound and light. Cerulean energy erupted across the walls like a tidal wave, flooding the room in blue fire, beforeEmma stepped back through, eyes instantly darting around the chamber as she did.
Relief punched through me so hard I almost staggered. She was here. Present. Whole. Back in my world instead of slipping into one I couldn’t reach.
I almost grabbed her and hauled her out of there caveman-style.
