"Daryn! Daryn, no!"
She glances over her shoulder. There's no uncertainty in her expression. She knows what she's doing.
What's she doing?
Is she going to open the portal for him?
The roaring noise in the clearing lessens noticeably as the Harrows disengage from our battle. They retreat and cluster in groups. In less than a minute, it's nearly quiet and they're crouched together like bats. Watching us. Waiting to be unleashed again.
Without them to fight, my path to Daryn is clear.
I cue Riot and he gives me everything he has, flying toward her. "Daryn, don't!"
She whirls around at the sound of my voice. "Stop!" she yells. "Don't hurt him!" She stands in front of Samrael, her arms wide, using her body to shield him.
I check Riot. Seconds later Marcus, Jode, and Bas thunder up beside me. They look like they want to rip Samrael apart as badly as I do.
"Trust me," Daryn says. "I know what I'm doing."
She's addressing all of us, but her eyes are on me.
If I trust her, I could lose her.
If I don't trust her, I will lose her.
She turns to Samrael again. The way he looks at her, with adoration, sickens me.
"After I betrayed you … more than once. You're granting me freedom?" he asks. "You're forgiving me? Giving me a chance?"
"No," Daryn says. "You're going to do it." She slips the orb from her jacket pocket and holds it out in front of her.
"Gideon," Marcus says. I feel his desperation to make this stop.
It doesn't stop.
Daryn begins the process of opening the portal. The orb rises from her palm and dissolves, solid becoming light and color that tumbles around us. I wait for it to break into the network of threads that show everything-fields and oceans and stars-but seconds pass with no change. Then the light intensifies, growing brighter, growing heavier. Light that gains power. That passes through me, a gale whipping at the blood inside my veins.
It's a sandstorm of light.
It swallows the stone house in the distance. Then it blots out the clearing with the Harrows lurking along the edges.
Everything washes out.
Samrael and Daryn disappear, eclipsed by the brightness. Even Marcus and Ruin, who are three feet to my left, disappear.
When I can barely see Riot's ears anymore, the white glare slowly begins to recede.
"Gideon, look," Jode says.
The earth beneath us is cracked and bleached-to the dirt that should be there. As the light continues to dim, I no longer see the clearing on the hilltop in the Rift. There's no stone house, or wall in the distance. No Harrows crouched together, waiting to attack.
Night desert stretches out around us.
I know this place. It's the Nevada playa, with the ring of mountains silhouetted in the distance. Above, the sky is loaded with stars. So many stars that they give the night a glow.
It's exactly like the place we left behind, with one difference: this desert is bisected by a barrier.
The threads that have always whirled around us in our crossings are here, but they're pulled straight. They run in parallel lines that vibrate like exposed electrical currents, stretching into the sky and out across the desert as far as I can see, forming a living wall with no vertical or horizontal end.
The world-at least everything I can see-is now divided.
There's my side and the one across the barrier, and they're mirror images.
Daryn stands beside me-but she's across from me too, opposite the barrier.
And so am I.
I see myself on the other side.
I'm right there. So are Jode, and Marcus, and Bas. Our horses.
I keep waiting for this glitch to fix itself, but it doesn't. There's two of everything.
Then I see it: there's only one Samrael.
He stands at the dividing line, looking one way and then the other, his movements setting the threads of the barrier rippling out like waves. "What is this?" he asks.
"It's what you asked for," says Daryn-the one on my side. "You wanted this, Rael. You wanted a chance to prove you're worthy of leaving." She falls quiet and now the other Daryn speaks. "But I won't be the one to decide. It's up to you, Rael. You decide your own fate."
It dawns on me: Daryn's doing this.
She created all of this.
Samrael doesn't know where to look. He doesn't know which Daryn to address. Then I can almost see him decide: Pick one and stick with it. He chooses the Daryn on my side.
"I don't understand," he says. "Am I to choose which side is real? Am I supposed to blindly guess which is which?"
"No-I'll tell you. I'm real," says the girl beside me. "This side is your freedom. This side is your forgiveness."