Shadow drew me along with his power, low chuckles spilling from his lips. “She will never hurt you, Mera. Angel might not remember you, and I might not be able to penetrate the magic of her land to release her memories, but when she sees you, your connection will remind her. I’m sure of it.”

He sounded sure, but then again, he always was confident. Maybe if I channeled some of that confidence, I’d feel the same way. With that in mind, I forced my anxiety down and followed him across the land.

When he ground to a halt, I ran straight into his back, but he must have expected that since he was already twisting to catch me before I bounced onto my ass.

“There’s a break in her power grid here,” he said as he set me on my feet.

Before I could ask what the fuck that meant, he reached down to the golden land, and as he ran his fingertip along a small section, it sliced open, like a knife through paper.

Was he shitting me right now? “Peel away the layers” had been a literal statement.

He was going to take us into the beating heart of Angel’s world.

30

There was no adequate way to describe the sensation of stepping through the fabric of a world, and when we emerged under the first layer of Angel’s territory in the Honor Meadows, I was basically speechless. Again.

A rarity that amused Shadow to no end.

“In time you’ll come to expect that much of what you see is an illusion,” he said, chuckling at the gobsmacked expression I wore. “We all wear masks and use power to disguise parts of ourselves.”

I swallowed roughly. “Yeah, I mean, I know that in theory, but to see a world turn from a twilight expanse of golden fields into a sunlit realm of clouds and waterfalls, after you cut through that golden field layer, is not really an everyday occurrence. I mean… how in the actual freaking illusion are they doing this?”

It was as if Shadow had peeled a layer of a painting away to reveal a completely new scene below. Or maybe it was like peeling an orange to find a pineapple below. This layer looked, felt, and smelled different to the one above, and I was really starting to understand the many layers of Angel herself.

“It’s just magic,” he told me. “Your eyes see what you’re told to see, and it’s only if you look closer that you’ll notice the delicate edges waiting to be peeled away.”

I thought on this as I followed Shadow along a white fluffy expanse of cloud, marveling at how we weren’t plummeting through it. “Would my wolf have seen the edges?”