Then she saw him, a boy alone in the center of the forest, the shadows a hungering predator around the tight shield he’d pulled around himself. He was trying to hold it off—trying to keep himself from succumbing to the corruption—but it was a losing battle. Sparks scraped against his shield from their claws and teeth.

She thrust her hands into the dry earth and focused, all that anger inside of her spilling free at last. Distant howls of rage as the creatures were flung away from him, scrambling and twisting to right themselves.

“You have to close the rift for good,” Rebeka called to Liam as he raised his head. “It’s the only way to stop this. To save yourself—and the rest of our world.”

“I—I can’t.” He tightened the darkness around him like shadowy armor. “Someone has to control it—it’s me or the Nazis.” His eyes flashed bright with red. “Don’t you see?”

“We can still stop them.” She looked up: the behemoth was nearly upon them now, and she felt its pull, as though it were sucking the air from her lungs. “We can still fight the Third Reich—but we don’t have to destroy both our worlds in the process.”

Liam’s shoulders started to fall, the armor thinning. But then, with a roar, he swelled, darkness surrounding him once more. “I have to control it! It won’t let me break free—”

“You can never control the things you fear.” God, but she knew that—her terror for her brother squeezed around her throat every single day, and no matter how she tried, she couldn’t dissuade him from throwing his life away. “You can only choose not to be afraid.”

Liam stared at her for a long moment. The behemoth was upon them now, looming over them, mouths stretched wide as it hungered for more and more. There were too many, so many more than she’d tried to handle before. For all her familiarity with the shadows, she still felt their pull, their demand that she sacrifice everything in the name of escaping from whatever terror gripped her. She couldn’t let Liam look at it. If he looked, he’d surrender for sure.

“Liam,” she shouted over the gale of wind and whispers and cries. “You can be so much more than this.” She thought of her brother. Of a new day dawning. Of fear, and fighting through it anyway. “You already are.”

He clenched his hands into fists, and she braced herself for a blow—but none came.

Instead he lowered the shield, exposed now, vulnerable. Embracing the fear.

She took his hand.

“You’ll lose your connection,” he warned. “And so will I.”

She set her jaw. “Good.”

EVANGELINE