Rachel pushed herself away from her desk and dropped her head into her hands as soon as Matt left the room. Thoughts raced viciously through her head - memories of Lyrian, of the war, of Jason, of everything she had tried so fruitlessly to leave behind.

  She remembered Darian’s prophecy. Rachel had to leave. Jason had to stay. Otherwise, Lyrian would fall. She thought of the ever-shifting timescape between Lyrian and Earth and, not for the first time, wondered how long that prophecy would stand for. If she arrived years, or decades, or centuries later, would her existence still doom Lyrian to fall?

  Was it selfish of her to want to see Jason again?

  “Here,” Matt’s whisper slipped through her consciousness, snapping her back to reality. Rachel held her hand out, into which Matt gingerly placed the envelope.

  Rachel nodded, more than a little surprised. “You took good care of it.”

  Matt brought a fist to his mouth and took a deep breath. It wasn’t obvious, but Rachel could hear him shaking.

  “It’s all I have left of him,” Matt sighed. “It’s not even real.”

  Rachel stopped to ponder. Of course, the letter was perfectly real. It would, however, be intensely problematic if anyone realized that fact.

  “Are you-” Matt started, but Rachel cut him off with a wave of her hand.

  This was it. She had already anticipated that telling Matt the truth would mean never letting him out of her sight again. But, the longer she lived, the further she drifted from Lyrian, the more of a risk she would pose as well.

  “How committed are you to this?” Rachel asked, turning to face Matt, who had faithfully remained standing.

  “Is Jason alive?” Matt countered.

  Rachel raised her eyebrows, a thin twinge of respect worming its way through her chest. “You’re sure you want to-”

  “Is Jason alive?” Matt hissed with an uncharacteristic fervor.

  Rachel took a deep breath, then let it go.

  No turning back.

  “Yes.” Rachel stopped herself there, knowing that now was not the time to explain Lyrian’s strange position in time.

  Matt’s face almost darkened. “So the letter is true.”

  “Every word.” Rachel finally motioned for Matt to sit on her bed. “I took that envelope out of his hands six weeks ago.”

  Matt dropped his head into his hands. “So what do we do?”

  We disappear, Rachel thought. We return to Lyrian. We find Jason. I find Jason.

  But she didn’t even know where to start. Gateways between Earth and Lyrian were only growing more scarce. As far as she knew, she couldn’t even trust the hippo anymore.

  Wait.

  Maybe she could. An idea formed in her mind, dangerous yet tantalizing.

  Then, guilt attacked her stomach like a rabid dog. She had only just come home. Her family had barely even started piecing itself back together. She hadn’t even told them the truth. They hadn’t asked. They knew how hard it could be to remember, even though they had no idea what she had been through.

  She loved her family. Her chest burned at the thought.

  “Don’t cry,” Matt whispered, shifting on the bed but not reaching out. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”

  Rachel shook her head. “Not your fault. God, I don’t know how Jason did this twice.”

  Matt frowned. “Twice?”

  Rachel wrinkled her nose. “What do you think?”

  “He went to Lyrian twice,” Matt inferred, face reddening. “Wait. Does that mean…”

  Rachel was already rummaging through her desk. She quickly pulled out a pen and paper, then pressed them together.

  “I don’t know.” Rachel started scribbling, trying and failing to normalize the fancy, looping handwriting she had inherited from Farfalee at the Celestine Library. “We’re going to try.”

  Matt shook his head. “No, no, we can’t. I can’t just-”

  “Just what?” Rachel sniped, dropping her pen on the desk. “Lyrian exists. It’s out there. You can’t ignore it forever.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Matt stopped to ponder. Rachel resumed her hasty note.

  “Just because I know Europe exists doesn’t mean I want to move there,” he said.

  Rachel forced down an admittance that he had a point. “Would you be able to keep it a secret forever? To lie to your best friend’s family every day for the rest of your life?”

  “I’d rather do that than disappear.” Matt sniffled, but furiously wiped at his eyes before they could produce any tears. “You have no idea what they’ve been through. They took me under their wing when my dad started drinking. Treated me like their own son. If I disappeared too…”

  Rachel was too late to stop another upwelling of tears. “Then we had better hope this doesn’t work. Will I fit in your car?”

  “We’re not-” Matt protested.

  “Yes, we are,” Rachel insisted. “You’ll drive me back to Vista Point. We’ll talk to Jason’s parents. I’ll… try to help.”

  “And then what?”

  Rachel folded her now-finished note and tucked it into her pocket, along with her phone and wallet. She didn’t even have her own bank card, but at least she had an updated ID.

  “We’ll cross future bridges when we get there,” she said simply. “Let’s go.”

  Matt was evidently too overwhelmed to object. Rachel led him silently out of her room, stopping to drop her little note on the kitchen counter before slipping out the back door and jogging to Matt’s car. The inside of the little Mazda was strangely clean - though the pristine state of Jason’s envelope should have told her that much. Still, it was going to be a hell of an effort to survive the trip to Colorado. She had barely closed the passenger door before her legs began to yearn for freedom.

  Matt ducked into the driver’s seat and shut the door. The little door light winked off, leaving them in darkness. He took a deep breath, then let it go, tapping a finger against his thigh.

  “You’re okay with this?” he asked. “Leaving your family?”

  Rachel’s stomach flipped. “No. No, I’m not.”

  “Then why-”

  Rachel interrupted him with a brief Edomic phrase. It had been an exceedingly useful command for her final few years in Lyrian, but now, of course, it just felt like gibberish. It was a short, forceful suggestion for someone to stop talking. It had worked on everyone except for Jason, though Corinne and Galloran had probably only heeded the suggestion to humor her.

  Matt stared. “Huh?”

  “Just had to remind myself why I’m doing this,” Rachel grunted. “Step on it.”

  Matt needed no encouragement. The car lurched as he let off the clutch, and he apologized sheepishly, but from then on out his driving was more or less acceptable.

  Rachel stared blankly out the window, grateful that the night hid her tears as her street, then her neighborhood, then her town faded behind her. She thought of her little note and only cried harder, knowing that it was not enough. Nothing could be enough. Nothing, not even the knowledge that she was okay, could replace a missing daughter.

  She prayed that the hippo would lead her nowhere. That she could return home in a few days with the knowledge that her only lead back to Lyrian was gone. That she could go back to her family and live knowing that Lyrian, and Edomic, and Jason, and everything else she had left behind were inaccessible. Forever.

  And she wished, with every ounce of her being, that she could find them again.

  ? ? ?

  Rachel had to give Matt credit - that boy could drive. Stopping only for gas and the occasional stretch break, they managed to make it all the way to Salt Lake City before pulling off to the side of the road to grab dinner. They settled on a sad little Panda Express that poked up in the middle of a gigantic parking lot, which Matt insisted was more or less normal. As per their agreement, Rachel stayed in the car with her hood pulled over her face, staring down at a tired old Tolkien novel as Matt ran inside to order food.

  “Got you the orange chicken,” Matt said, smiling ruefully as he ducked into the driver’s seat. He held out a hand, inside which lay a small Styrofoam container.

  “Didn’t know chicken came in colors,” Rachel objected, though she and Matt both knew she was joking. She gingerly opened the box and, not knowing in the slightest how to use chopsticks, pinched a piece of chicken between her fingertips and shuttled it to her mouth. It… wasn’t bad, but there was so little chicken in the bite that all she could taste was sauce and sugar.

  “I miss the Tavern-Go-Round,” she sighed truthfully, dumping a fingerful of rice on her second piece of chicken in hopes that it would improve the taste. It did no such thing.

  “The what?” Matt inquired, already half-finished with his portion.

  Rachel rolled her eyes. “You won’t find it on Google, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “You can find anything on-”

  Rachel burst out laughing, spraying little bits of orange-stained rice all over the dashboard. Matt, sheepishly, produced a cloth from the center console and wiped up the mess.

  “Sorry,” Rachel giggled. “That was really funny.”

  Matt reddened. “Not that funny.”

  It took all of Rachel’s dwindling self-control not to object.

  “Hotel? Camping?” Matt finished off his portion and carefully repackaged all of his garbage into the Styrofoam container. “I didn’t bring a tent or anything. I’ve just been sleeping in my car.”

  Rachel was also finished, though most of her portion still remained. “Can I check into a hotel without being recognized?”

  Matt raised his eyebrows. “How about I go in first and check to see if your face is printed anywhere in the lobby?”

  Rachel nodded, and so, without incident, they did exactly that. Rachel kept her hood up as they walked through the lobby and up to their room, but nobody looked her way twice.

  She had never been so thankful to see a double-queen room.

  “You going to shower before-” Matt tried, dropping his toiletries on the dresser.

  “No,” Rachel interrupted, keeling onto the window-side bed, still fully clothed.

  “We’ve been sitting in the car all day,” Matt protested.

  “Exactly.” Rachel pulled her hoodie and socks off, then threw open the covers. “I haven’t produced even the tiniest modicum of sweat. I have taken forty-seven steps since we left Olympia. I counted. I’m clean.”

  Matt almost objected, but quickly shut himself in the bathroom before he could make a poor decision. Rachel pulled the covers up and turned the little desk lamp off, leaving the room in near-complete darkness.

  She stared up at the ceiling, wishing for the umpteenth time that she had Jason’s knack for sleeping. In reality, she probably could have used a shower, but she felt it a necessary form of protest against the endless boredom of the drive.

  She missed traveling in Lyrian. She missed the freshness of walking, the danger of running, the serenity of the ferry between Durna and Windbreak Island.

  She wasn’t running now, not really, but at least it was something.

  And, for now, it was enough.