Shadow lifted his head, his eyes closing as he sent power into the world. “I feel a gathering of power to the east. Maybe close to the lava chasm in the Concordes. There’s a decent chance that Dannie has taken the creatures there since they’re her children. It would be a last resort to destroy them.”

“You’re her child,” I shot back at him, rage welling up faster than I could stem it. “I was all but a daughter to her. And she thrust us out of her world and away from each other without a second thought.”

She didn’t kill you, Galleli reminded me. And she could have without a second thought.

His common sense halted some of the molten rage powering through me. “Yes, you’re right,” I said, sucking in a deep breath. Galleli had given me a sliver of hope that my creatures might still be alive, which I held on tightly to. “Let’s go find her.”

Inky formed a huge transport blanket to take us to the Concordes. No one wanted to use their energy to get there themselves because even though we were all powered to the hilt—me less so than the others, but I was part of the team, so it averaged out—we knew we’d need every ounce of our strength to best Dannie.

As we started off, all I could think about was my creatures, wondering if they were okay. “We forgot the shadow creatures in the prison realms,” I said suddenly, remembering that we’d been planning on bringing them through as a power backup.

Shadow grasped my hand, calming my racing heart with that one simple action. “You can call them whenever you need. You bonded the lot of them to you in that school basement, and if you need them, they’ll be there.”

“Midnight too,” Angel added from where she was perched uncomfortably on the edge of Inky. She did not like to be carried, in any way, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see her fly off soon. “I believe that when you really need your mist, the true strength of your bond will destroy the barriers between you.”

Her eyes held memories of our time apart, and how she’d been resistant to me at first.

“Hopefully, it won’t come to that,” I finally said. “Hopefully, Dannie will be reasonable.”