Daniel’s lips parted as they held each other’s gaze. Had Liam only imagined it earlier, when he felt Daniel’s fingers running through his hair? When Liam admitted who he was—who he really was, not the boy on whatever dossier Dr. Kreutzer had been fed. The darkness inside Liam’s heart, his desperate need for control, his brutal search for more and more power. And his fragile truths too: his vulnerabilities, the wounds inflicted on him by his father, by his schoolboy infatuation, by every step of his life. Liam had told and shown him all those things in just the few days they’d known each other, and still Daniel stood at his side.

Still Daniel looked at him like he was a mystery worth unraveling.

Still Daniel’s breath quivered between them as Liam moved closer, bringing them nose to nose, heart to heart.

“Daniel,” Liam exhaled. He was at once a churning sea and deathly calm. “I—”

Liam . . .

Liam jolted back as the whisper rattled through the trees.

“What was that?” Daniel asked. The trunks shifted around them, crowding in. Insects shrieked in the foliage. The mud gurgled beneath them, growing warmer and warmer.

“We have to get back to our world before the rift closes.” Liam reached for Daniel’s hand. “Now.”

The outline of their world was growing fainter by the second. Liam steered them east, out of the muddy banks of the shadow world and the stream east of Hallenberg, into the thickened heart of the forest. The woods drew closer around them, the tree trunks like bars.

Oh, Liam. There’s no point in running anymore. The words echoed all around them.

“I’m not running from you,” Liam muttered under his breath. Not that either of them believed that.

We have the manuscript. We have the power. And soon, all the world will see.

They wove through dense, bristling vines. Up ahead, Liam spotted a patch of bushes with razor-sharp leaves tangled together, and jerked Daniel away from them just in time. A tendril of thorns stretched out for them, then snapped back, disappointed.

Will you help us usher in a new age of darkness?

The earth rumbled under their feet. To their right, tree branches split and shredded apart—a massive shadow loomed overhead. The behemoth was nearby, the behemoth that had descended on them the first time he brought Daniel through the gates. “Don’t look,” Liam hissed back to him.

Oh, yes, run! We already know how much they like Doyle blood.

Laughter rose all around them like sulfurous stink. Through the trees, red eyes drew closer. Unblinking. The tree branches rattled as darkness slithered and coiled around them, poised itself, readied for a strike.