There were so many things going wrong that I almost didn’t know what was right. Every step and each time we flashed felt like trudging through melted marshmallows, slow and sticky.

All the things we thought were truth were now muddled in a puddle of lies and murky half-honest tales. I was wrong about who I was and what my purpose was. My ego had overridden my heart in telling me that the powers I possessed were only my own.

Yeah, I had an ego. Who knew?

My brother.

Apparently, he knew everything.

Sanctum was a skewed version of me, which was the hardest part for my ego to admit—the fact that he was anything like me pierced me. He had my powers—almost. He had a vast knowledge about this world I’d never dreamed of, and he was running schemes I could never think of if given a lifetime. In some ways, my brother was more powerful than I was, even though most of what he could do was no more than magic tricks in our world.

Dangerous tricks that had the power to kill people and drain them completely of their gifts.

Yet, we were the ones running from him.

We, the ones who had been ordained of the Almighty, were running from him.

Running from him, cowering, pissed me off to no end and made me shrink back in the knowledge that maybe there was a mistake—a big one. The Almighty had chosen the wrong person to carry out His wishes, and there was nothing I could do about it but what we had to do.

On top of everything else, there was the matter of my mate. Colby was living the life I’d always cringed about when I thought about telling her about my powers in the beginning. She was flashing from place to place, desperate to get away from anyone who wanted a piece of what we had so they could take us down. She wasn’t flashing because she loved it, because of the thrill it gave her, or the way she embodied light when she used her gift.

I bet she didn’t even think of it as a gift anymore—or me.

She was flashing out of a sense of survival. Colby should have never been thrust into this environment of pure survival. It wasn’t that she wasn’t built for it—she was—but a female like her had never had to experience what we were experiencing now.

I should’ve left her alone when I had the chance.

She was out of breath, but not from the flashing—from the tremors that life shook her with.

With a hand placed against her chest, she said, “I think we lost him for a bit. Or at least for a minute. Maybe even the devil’s dealer needs sleep too.” She dusted the sands of Saudi Arabia from the bottom of her white dress with a grimace. I’d always groaned at Colby’s high-maintenance attitude, but in times like these, I wished for one second that she’d have the luxury to be like that again.

I’d bring her to whatever store she wanted in a heartbeat, buy her everything.

I looked in all directions. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Sanctum popped up from one of the enormous mounds of sand and roared like that mummy guy from the movie. “I don’t know. It seems like every time we think we’re ahead of them, we’re, in fact, just a few steps behind,” I said, running a thumb over the top of her cheek to remove some of the desert particles before they got in her eye.

The problem we were facing was not unique. It was a time-tested problem that every race and species went through. The struggle for power was one that would never be overcome, no matter how long the world turned. My brother was not exempt. I knew the truth about what he was now. He was just another power-hungry individual who allowed it to go to his head, even though he claimed to be just a minion for the one who really wanted dominion.

I didn’t believe him for one second. That man I once knew as Torrent had the devil in his eyes.

When she bit her lip, I knew she was thinking. “At this point, I don’t even care. I just don’t give a damn about it right now. I’m exhausted. I need some sleep—even if it’s in a tent with goats or whatever animal they have around here. Are there camels? I freakin’ love camels.” She turned in a circle to survey the area, realization dawning on her face that there were no tents or even goats around to keep her company for a bit of sleep. There was only sand and wind, with wind blowing the sand and sand blowing in the wind.

Her smartass comments were at an all-time high today.

Somehow, they multiplied with her level of stress.

She hated camels.

“I’m sorry,” I breathed, scooping her up into my arms so that at least her feet might find some rest. We landed in several places, some of which weren’t the smooth, slick marble that her feet were used to padding on. We’d gone to her favorite tunnel in Tokyo. She’d cut one of her toes on the corroded middle of the rails, and she’d nicked her arm on one of the mountains in the Appalachians. And when we landed in South America, I had to catch her before she fell directly into a volcano. Apparently, we’d come across an older Google map.

It felt like she weighed a little less, but it was nothing to worry about. We’d both missed a couple of meals here and there.

“It’s okay.” She struggled and wriggled until I could hold on no more. My resolve had faltered as the time went by about when I would be able to get back into the Fray. This was how weak I had become—how weak I was in general. I couldn’t even keep hold of Colby when she needed me most. I found that while the Fray no longer drained me completely of my energy as I traveled between our world and there, that the longer I stayed away, the frailer I got. I contributed it to the number of souls that were still getting stuck there. The numbers were increasing as we gave the powers back to our Lucent brothers and sisters who had been stripped of them so mercilessly.

Someone needed to teach them the rules—as much as I hated them. It was like we needed to put out a pamphlet titled ‘You Got Your Powers Back. Now What?’.

In the meantime, there was nothing I could do to help the situation. I feared that one day, Colby would turn around, look me straight in the eye like she did the night of her eighteenth birthday, and tell me it was over.

She should’ve done it a while ago.

“It’s not okay. I’m failing again. I know how much I try to balance all of this, but then something falls astray and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”

I hated this part of me that had come to fruition as I came into my powers and recognized them for what they were—a blessing and a curse. They were a blessing in that I could help our species to become who they needed to be regardless of the powers that stood against us. It was a curse that my mate, Colby, would always be the person who fell to the wayside as I strived to do the best I could to save people. As much as I loved giving the people back their powers, when it was done, there was nothing more I wanted than to give my gifts back to the one who gave them to me in the first place. I wished sometimes that Sanctum would strip me of my powers, leaving me to only one duty—to Colby.

Winking at me, she tried to make light of the situation. She tended to do that lately, but it seemed insincere when it wasn’t laced with sarcasm. She was either too much of a smartass or over-the-top nice.

“Hey, hey, we don’t have time for that. There will be time for wallowing in the regret soon enough, but today is not that day.” She was quoting Aragorn, and I loved her for it. I certainly felt like we were in the last battle.

All this time, I thought I would be the stronger of the two in our coupling because of my gift. But as she grew more in strength and knowledge about who she was and what the Almighty had put her on this earth for, I knew that, as with all Lucent men, I was the weaker of the two of us.

I would always be weaker than her—most of the time, I didn’t mind.

And the fact that she recognized my wallowing in self-pity just made it all the worse. It was funny that when I was ordinary, I wished for more. I wished to give her a normal life—at least as normal as a Lucent life could be. We could be together, traveling the world and maybe even the universe for the rest of eternity together. But now that I had it in my hands—this power that was once only reserved for the females of the listed species—all I wanted to do was give it back.

“You know what’s crazy?” she asked, taking my hand and pulling me in a direction that neither of us was certain where it would lead.

“No.” I was too exhausted to even conjure up any sarcasm for her at this point. There was sand on my tongue and my lips were wind chapped from the constant hot air coming off the desert floor.

“I’m not feeling him anymore…” She paused, her steps halting in the sand while still holding my hand as tightly as possible. “At all. I can’t pinpoint his location.”

“I don’t know if that’s better or not.” I thought about it for an instant, finding I was relieved not to have him with me anymore. He was like a tick buried deep in my skin. I knew exactly where he was, but, for the life of me, I couldn’t remove him. But then the thought of not knowing his location scared me more than knowing where he was at every moment.

“Let’s not think about it right now. The only thing I want to think about is a place to sleep and water on my tongue,” she said, practically dragging me over a mountain that never seemed to end, yet when I looked back, it never seemed to begin.

Her hair blew in all directions and it reminded me of why I loved her once again.

Even though she’d changed, that part of Colby showed itself once in a while. It was the part that was unruly. It was the piece that remained of the teenager who would do anything for what she wanted. She was wild and impractical. She wanted what she wanted, when she wanted it, no matter the cost or how it came to be. Every once in a while, that beautiful girl would show herself to me once again. However, she was nothing compared to the woman, the female in front of me who had somehow agreed to be my mate for the rest of eternity.

“Where’s the Viking? Where are the others?” she said more to herself than to me. Another thing that had changed about Colby was that she was constantly concerned about the welfare of others. She could be trusted, just as she wholly believed in those who she now called her confidantes and friends. It was those few people we could depend on above all others.

“Collin is in California,” I said, coughing with my hand over my eyes to shield them from the ever-blowing sand. “He’s on the beach near Los Angeles. Probably Venice or Santa Monica. I’m all foggy. That’s the best I can do. Everything is starting to meld together.”

The Viking was probably bug-eyed at the barely there bikinis and California girls. He was probably advising them to cover up. Ari tried to wear a shirt that was open in the back one time, and he ripped the tablecloth from the dining room table and covered her up. She looked like a lazy kid who had dressed up like a ghost for Halloween.

Colby stopped and sighed. She did a lot of that lately.

“You’ve been gone too long. It’s been weeks. You forget that I can now feel the longing. I know that it’s not your personal longing, but the guilt that keeps you here with me and yet calls to you from the place where you are needed.”

I changed my mind. That was the worst part. Since we’ve bonded, she now knew when I was longing to be in the place that my mind didn’t really want to be. She knew—connected with me like our souls were smaller pieces of one.

“It’s okay. I won’t leave you unprotected from Sanctum and the Synod. It’s not that bad anyway.”

There was a time when her snark would’ve cut me wide open, but now was not the time. She knew it felt like the Fray was ripping my chest out through my skin since I couldn’t be helping people in that place where souls were aimlessly wandering.

Instead, I was running from my idiot, once-upon-a-time brother.

“Do they all want to get to Paraiso?” she asked.

I stopped dead in my tracks. What was she thinking? Of course they all wanted to go to Paraiso—where else would they go?

My voice was clipped as I answered, “They certainly don’t want to stay in the Fray for eternity”

Her jaw moved as she chewed on the inside of her mouth. “But some of them are children, right? What if they just want to be returned to their families? I know the ones you brought across before had been there so long that their loved ones had moved on, but what about the new ones? Maybe they just want to go home. Maybe…”

“What?” I was so stupid.

“Nothing. I just thought maybe—I wish we knew how Torrent came to be Sanctum.”

A needling of anger went through me. Colby and I had still not discussed the events that occurred the first time I was in the Fray. I knew from Collin that Sanctum and Colby had gone off together, apparently planning the murder of the Synod, but beyond that, we had been a little too busy to talk about it.

“Why? What does that have to do with the Fray?”

She shrugged. “Nothing. I was just wondering. Knowing what happened to him might give us some insight—if those without powers can be given them back—Torrent can be good again.”

She didn’t understand. Since this restoration of powers to people had started, she thought everyone could be restored. The thing was—some people were too far gone for it to work.

Even my brother.