A large, dark shape rolled over the dark countryside, and a yellow flash flared against its side, eliciting another ear-splitting roar.

“That useless lump by the tree is me,” Marshall stated blandly, like it had no effect on him. “I got taken out in the beginning of the fight. You should be able to make out a faint shimmer around my body. That’s the shield my father put over me to keep me safe. He might have survived if I hadn’t been there. He needed all of his magic to kill that demon, so throwing that shield around me is probably what finished him off.” Marshall’s eyes were unfocused as he spoke, and he played absently with a lock of his hair. “Thank you, by the way. If it wasn’t for you, I’d be in the middle of that, trapped and helpless. Instead you’ve given me a buffer. It’s a bit disorienting, but it’s better than experiencing all the horrible highlights of my life at once.”

Cym burned with embarrassment. He’d wanted to help Marshall, not roll him. Though on the plus side, at least Cym wasn’t driving him insane. “I’m sorry. I can’t really control how I affect people.” He started to pull his hand away from Marshall’s, hoping it might give him a chance to reorient himself.

Marshall squeezed Cym’s hand tighter, keeping it trapped in his. “No, I don’t think that would be a good idea right now,” Marshall said. “I just need to adjust to it, and then we can figure a way out of here.”

We.

Marshall included Cym in their escape without hesitation. Without even knowing him. Cym’s chest swelled with heat, and he noticed once again the pink glow of his magic filling his body. He could sense it flowing down his arm and into Marshall’s.

Cym’s full attention was drawn to the magic flowing between them, and he saw his pink mingling with Marshall’s cool blue. It reminded him of working with Adelle to heal himself. Except when his magic mixed with Adelle’s, their colors didn’t blend together; they stayed separate as they worked to fix his injuries. Right now, his pink bled right into Marshall’s blue, creating a vibrant purple that ran rampant through Marshall’s body.

He concentrated, trying to imagine the pink pulling back from the blue, but it felt like trying to push a dump truck up a hill.

It must have done something because Marshall’s eyes lost some of the dreamy expression they held, and he said, “Keep going. If you can pull your magic back a little more, I should be able to take it from there.”

Cym’s teeth bit into his lip as he fought to pull his magic back, millimeter by millimeter. He swayed, but Marshall held him up. They were like two drunks, bracing themselves against one another for the long walk home from a bar.

Cym’s mind began to fragment and lose focus, and he was certain he was about to pass out, when suddenly he was no longer in the driver’s seat. It felt as though his magic was a ball of yarn and someone was carefully winding it back up.

“There we go, that’s much better.” Marshall’s eyes had lost their dreamy quality and were now focused on Cym. “We don’t know one another nearly well enough to accidentally blend our magic without serious confusion. Now we can figure out what went wrong.”

“What do you mean? What went wrong was that Sekt and my aunt are trying to eat you, and we need to figure out how to stop them.” Cym could stand on his own now, so he pulled back but made sure to keep his hand in Marshall’s.

“You know its name? That’s helpful. I wasn’t able to get that far.” Marshall looked impressed. “What are you doing here anyway? You should be long gone by now. What happened?”

“I don’t know what your plan was, but things have gone sideways out there. Nightmares are using my family as puppets and are letting demons and nightmares through portals as fast as they can. Our friends aren’t going to be able to hold them off much longer.” Cym couldn’t understand why Marshall was wasting time quizzing him when they should be doing something, anything, to get out of this place.

The scene around them switched to a street lined with houses. In the distance, he could make out a group of people battling strange, flying creatures in front of a house that had been torn in two.

Rather than responding to the urgency in Cym’s voice, Marshall frowned and said, “That doesn’t explain why you are here. The job was to get you out and then come back for me.” Irritation laced his words.

“Adelle mentioned that I might be able to help you?” What Cym intended to present as a confident statement of fact ended up sounding more like a meek question.

Marshall’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “There is no way she told you to come here; you’re an untrained civilian. I don’t care what you’re packing in there, you don’t belong here.” He tapped Cym’s chest lightly, belying his angry tone.

“She may have been distracted and mentioned that I would be an asset under different conditions,” Cym admitted grudgingly. “Listen, we don’t have time to stand around chatting about who sent who where. We’re being attacked right now. For all I know we could be dying!”

“We probably are dying,” Marshall agreed mildly, like dying was a simple, everyday occurrence for him. “But we have time to figure this out. Time works differently in here. Outside of this trap, you’ve only just gotten between the demon and me, and it’s only been a few seconds since I grabbed your hand. You’re right though. We should work on finding a way out of here.”

Instead of doing anything, Marshall stood and stared dispiritedly at the fighting figures down the street and then shook his head. The scene switched to a cemetery, where a man holding a baby stood with a young girl with honey-colored hair next to a headstone.

Cym was all but vibrating out of his skin when Marshall sighed and said, “To defeat this thing, I need to find out what I did wrong the first time. In order to defeat a demon, a dreamwalker has to unmake it. This demon is incredibly old, but it shouldn’t have taken me out without so much as a whimper. I don’t want to brag⁠—”

Cym was unable to suppress a snort of disbelief. “That’s exactly how a bragger begins his sentences.”

Ignoring him, Marshall continued, “But I am fairly powerful as dreamwalkers go. Once I’ve identified how a demon or nightmare came to be, I can unmake them. This guy surprised me. It took no effort at all to see that he was born from xenophobia. He all but slapped me in the face with it, but when I went to unmake him, I landed here.”

Cym’s memory poked at him. “Can a demon have more than one origin?” He had no idea if it was a stupid question or not, but now wasn’t the time to be getting squeamish about sounding ignorant. The extreme isolation of his formative years left him feeling constantly out of the loop, and the only way to learn more was to ask questions.

“Why do you ask?” Rather than being irritated by his question, Marshall’s eyebrows drew together as he pondered Cym’s words.

“Well, earlier I accidentally went into one of Hester’s memories—Sekt’s original host—and I learned a lot of things, one being that he and my great-great-whatever-grandmother have been possessing Blaikes for generations.”

Marshall raised his eyebrows at this but motioned for Cym to continue.

“The other thing they talked about was that his favorite thing to feed off was guilt. It sounded like he found survivor guilt to be especially desirable. Does that mean anything to you?” Cym cringed internally, preparing to be told—probably kindly if he was any judge of character—that he was completely off base.

Marshall’s hand went back to his hair, tidying his already-perfect mop of curls as a myriad of expressions crossed his face. Confusion warred with suspicion as he ruffled his hair and then smoothed it back down again.

On impulse, Cym grabbed his hand. “You’re going to make yourself go bald if you keep that up.”

Marshall grinned. “Habit. I’ve been doing it for more than a century, so I think my hair will survive. Okay, from what you said, it sounds to me like Sekt might have learned a new trick. Instead of hiding his origin like most demons and nightmares, he threw his out into the open. Like an idiot, I grabbed it and tried to unmake him, no questions asked. If I had just slowed down for a minute…” He caught himself, waving away his self-recrimination. “It doesn’t matter.”

Cym found himself being dragged along behind Marshall as he began to pace. It looked as though Marshall wasn’t planning on letting him go any time soon, so Cym forced his short legs to work double time to keep up with Marshall.

“He must have created a fake origin to trick me into attacking prematurely—and once I went for the bait, I was no longer as focused on defense, which left him free to swoop in and feed on me. And what a bounty he found…” he murmured the last part to himself.

He stopped abruptly, and Cym smacked awkwardly into his back. Marshall looked at Cym as if he’d forgotten he was there.

“So what do we do?” Cym may not know much about his world, but he did know guardians were supposed to be a tenacious group of people. He was willing to bet Marshall already had a plan.

Marshall let out a short bark of a laugh. “So much confidence in me after such a short acquaintance, Stillbringer? I hope your faith in me is warranted, but it’s going to take both of us to get us out of here.”

Stillbringer. Cym heard that word when he’d fallen into his nightmare. It sounded like a title, but he’d never heard of it.

“What do you need me to do? Whatever you need, I’ll give it. Just…” Cym paused, embarrassed at exposing his feelings for other people to a stranger, but he pushed on, needing for it to be said. “Just promise me you’ll get my brother and Fourteen out of here alive.”

Marshall’s hazel eyes met his, and he cradled both of Cym’s hands gently, dwarfing them inside his. “I promise I will get you back to your soldier, and together, we’ll save what’s left of your family.”

Marshall’s gaze promised Cym a level of safety he’d only felt with Fourteen—which made sense if he thought about it. Both men were warriors, and both of them were clearly hardwired to protect.

“First things first, let’s get out of here.” Marshall blew out a deep breath and shook himself like a boxer readying himself for a fight. “This is going to suck.”

At Cym’s quizzical look, he clarified, “For me, not for you. I’m going to have to go back in there”—he pointed to the scene ahead of them. It had cycled back around to the monster on the moor—“and face my own demons. All you have to do is stay with me. Don’t let go of my hand, and focus on your magic. Imagine it flowing to me, but not into me. I’ll take it from there. Adelle was right to want you here. If you hadn’t dropped into my lap, I don’t think I could have done this.”

“You are planning on explaining these cryptic statements at some point, right?”

“The moment your soldier boy lets you up for air, you come find me, and I’ll explain it all,” Marshall said, with laughter in his eyes.

Cym felt his cheeks go red, but he didn’t protest. He already knew what he wanted. He just hoped it was what Fourteen wanted too.

Gripping Cym’s hand tightly, Marshall asked, “Ready?”

At his affirmative, Marshall squared his shoulders and strode toward the battling figures on the moor. The wind picked up the moment they stepped forward, and soon Cym was holding on to Marshall, not just to support him magically, but to keep from getting blown away. Marshall pulled Cym close to his side and arranged it so he had one arm around Cym’s small form while holding tight to him with his other hand.

Cym burrowed into his warmth and focused all his attention on keeping his magic from invading Marshall’s. It was only slightly less exhausting than pulling it back, so it wasn’t long before Marshall was supporting most of his weight. Marshall was just as big as Fourteen and didn’t seem to notice the added weight.