The mountain was huge. Climbing it hadn’t seemed like the feat of the century but covering the horizontal length from its center to its edges via the underground seemed to take longer with daemons on our trail. The only upside was that we were going in a straight line.

I didn’t go as fast as I could, since that would’ve meant leaving my team behind, but, after more than a day spent in that Dhaxanian ice, I relished the ability to simply sprint. The underground current brushed against my cheeks, and I welcomed each breath with newfound delight. Freedom felt so good, there was no way I’d let daemons trap me, or my friends.

Nevis kept his promise, too. Five minutes put about half a mile between us and the daemons. It was a healthy head start, but we could still hear them roaring and thundering through the tunnel after us. Cason was probably foaming at the mouth, eager to get his claws on us.

Tough luck, daddy’s boy.

“That went better than I’d expected,” Avril breathed, running in front of me.

“Yeah, I’m sure your boyfriend is pleased,” Heron shot back from behind, prompting me to chuckle. I could almost hear Patrik’s eyes rolling in his head, and I couldn’t wait to catch him alone, in a moment of peace, so I could hold him in my arms and feverishly kiss him. It was one of the thoughts that added fire to my heels as we continued to make our way through the tunnel.

“Oh, don’t be grumpy! You know where my heart is!” Avril replied. “So, I tugged a little at his and got us out of there. A ‘thank you’ would suffice.”

“Not only that, he decided to help us,” I said. “After all those hours spent in his frost, I almost lost hope.”

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. We are not dying in this place!” Avril persisted, and I loved her even more for it. Her resolve and resilience were truly out of this world. Even when everything came tumbling down and smacked us over the head, she could still find the strength to stand up and tell the universe that she wasn’t done yet.

Admittedly, I’d played a little part in this. As soon as I had made Avril aware of the fact that Nevis had a soft spot for her, she had gone straight for the feels. And she had played her cards right.

“How much longer, do you think?” Patrik asked.

I briefly stole a glance at him over my shoulder, then looked ahead, my gaze finding Avril’s.

“I think we’re close,” she said. “I’m getting an Iman scent, but it’s faint. We’re definitely on the right track. We need to keep this speed up. Otherwise our horned friends back there will catch up.”

We didn’t ease up at all. We kept running until Avril came to a sudden halt. I nearly bumped into her but managed a last-minute swerve and stopped several feet farther. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“They’re somewhere right above us,” she said, frowning as she looked up. “But they’re not alone. I’m getting more scents.”

“Hostile?” Patrik asked, touching the tunnel walls on both sides, looking for weak spots. He used a piece of chalk from his supply belt to draw spell symbols in specific sections.

Avril shook her head. “I don’t think so. They’re also Imen. They’ve got a distinctive trace, like I’ve smelled it before.”

“Okay, cool. Where are we on the exit strategy?” Heron interjected, looking at Patrik. “I’ve had enough of the Nerakian underground to last me a lifetime.”

“Almost there,” Patrik replied, drawing a series of interconnected lines on the ground, and on the ceiling. Once he completed the first stage of his spell, he took a few steps back, and motioned to Hundurr to move as well. “Everybody stand back,” he said. “Timing is everything on this one.”

“Why? Blow the damn place up, and let’s get the hell out of dodge,” Avril chuckled.

Patrik gave us a devilish grin as the daemon roars grew louder. I could see them coming, less than two hundred yards away. Their rapiers were out, blades thirsty for our blood. As expected, Cason was leading them, his red eyes reduced to vicious slits as he set his sights on us.

“There’s no point in running back to the surface if the daemons are just going to keep coming after us,” Patrik said. “I’ve set something up to slow them down a bit, and it will probably knock their numbers back. But I need them closer.”

“Ah, man, we are seriously playing with fire here,” Heron muttered, drawing his swords.

Patrik raised an eyebrow at him, then nodded at his swords. “Put those away and get ready to jump. Once I set this spell loose, we’ll have a clear way to the top.”

“Ugh, babe,” I said, staring at the incoming throng of daemons. “I know you need them close for this to work, but how close is that, exactly? Because I can almost smell their breath on my face, and I’m no Avril.”

“Hold on just a little longer,” Patrik replied, then reached his hands out to the sides, his fingers touching two of the symbols he’d drawn on the walls.

We stood a couple of feet behind him, waiting. My heart was stuck in my throat. The closer the daemons got, the higher the rush. Hundurr growled, his hind muscles trembling with anticipation. My body bucked, and I held my breath for what seemed like an eternity.

“Get ready. Once the spell kicks in, it’ll disable at least fifty yards of tunnel,” Patrik warned, and I shifted my weight onto my right leg, ready to move as soon as he gave us the signal.

The daemons ran faster, their armor jingling and their boots stomping in an almost rhythmic series of thunderclaps. Cason sneered at us, his sword drawn as he led the charge. There were only twenty feet left when his sly grin faded, and he realized that something was about to go horribly wrong.

“Five. Four.” Patrik started counting, and we braced ourselves. “Three. Two… One.”

A split second later, he muttered the activation spell. Bright golden light shot out from his fingertips, spreading through the symbols like incandescent ink. Within seconds, the entire spell design lit up, shining brightly and bringing Cason to a screeching halt. His eyes widened as he figured out what came next, while his daemons bumped into him.

“Hold!” he snarled at them. “Stop!”

Too late.

One by one, the symbols that Patrik had drawn over that tunnel section snapped like fireworks. Pop. Pop. Pop.

It all came down. Cason staggered backward, horror twisting his features into a grotesque expression. “Get back! Get back! Get ba—”

Much too late. Chunks of rubble pummeled him and his daemons into the ground. The tunnel collapsed, and dust billowed toward us. The rumble sent shivers down my spine. I watched the daemons disappear behind a pile of boulders.

I could hear them grunting, some screaming in pain, as the entire section collapsed. We’d taken down at least two dozen of them, and they had plenty of work cut out for them, if they wanted to keep coming after us.

Rays of moonlight came down, like milky beams cutting through the thick rolls of dust that made it difficult to breathe. “This is it!” Patrik said, looking up.

A large hole had opened above, where his spell symbols had been. Where the tunnel had been. He climbed up first, as there were plenty of chunks of stone piled up to aid in the ascent. Hundurr scrambled after him, and I followed, with Avril and Heron right behind me.

We made it to the surface, welcoming the sight of a starry sky and two of Neraka’s moons shining overhead. I wheezed and coughed, eager to get the dust out of my system, doubling over. Heron fell on his back in the snow.

“Thank the Daughters,” he gasped, then laughed with pure, unadulterated joy. Avril dropped to her knees next to him, joining him in that brief moment of celebration.

I ran straight into Patrik’s arms and held him tight, my heart thudding as relief washed over me. “We did it,” I breathed, feeling his lips on the top of my head.

The moonlight brought out the white of Dhaxanian snow around us, with its pearlescent shimmers. The winds were still. The blizzards were gone. If not for the gaping hole behind us, one would’ve never guessed what had just happened—what we’d managed to escape.

“Oh, wow!” Dion’s familiar voice made me turn my head.

Twenty feet away, on the edge of the pine forest, sunk up to their knees in snow, were Dion and Alles, next to our indigo horses. They looked stunned and exhilarated at the same time, their cheeks red and their lips purple from the cold, despite the layers of fur with which they’d covered themselves.

I couldn’t even begin to describe how happy, how relieved I was to see the two of them—not to mention our indigo horses, our fastest tickets off Athelathan. But, as Avril had noted earlier, they weren’t alone. I counted ten more people right behind them, all Imen.

Avril and Heron got up to get a better look at them. Hundurr sniffed the air, cautious but curious. Then my gaze settled on a pair of pale green eyes. I’d seen them before. That heavy fur hood couldn’t deceive me for another minute. I felt my heart grow a couple of sizes in an instant, as I recognized her.

“Arrah!” I yelped.

She chuckled softly, and I ran toward her with my arms wide open, ready to give her the biggest bear hug she’d ever experienced.

Out of all the places in this crazy world, this was where we were meeting again.