"Fi… are you serious?" I asked, my voice barely audible.

"What about Sophia?" Caspian added, genuinely alarmed.

"Please, Fiona, for the millionth time, I beg you: go with them," Zane said to her.

She wouldn't budge, shaking her head with all the stubbornness she'd inherited from multiple generations of absolute fighters. Fiona wasn't famous for changing her mind. My heart was bleeding already.

"I can't," she replied, looking at Zane with glassy eyes. "I can't leave you. I'm sorry. No matter how many times we talk about it, you won't convince me to leave you. No one can."

"Fi… Please…" I managed, and she shot me a desperate glare in return.

"Harper, I can't. My soul is bound to Zane's. I love him. We fought through the worst together. Our marriage was forged in fire… I've tried. Don't think I haven't tried to pull myself away from this. I… I can't."

"Zane, you can both come with us," Caspian said in an attempt to bring them along, part of him unable to cope with the fact that we were losing two of our dearest friends to this blasted ritual. "The Shade and Earth will need all the help they can get. Maybe Taeral will find Death in the meantime and stop this. When he does, you can come back like nothing happened."

Zane chuckled softly. "I'm fond of you, too, Caspian. But you know I would never abandon my people, not even in their darkest hour. I freed them from my father's delusional and hellish reign. I can't."

I'd heard "I can't" too many times, already. Whenever Fiona or Zane said it, something cut through my very soul, making it difficult to even stand, let alone focus. I did understand why Fiona couldn't bring herself to leave Zane here on his own. Love was a powerful thing—and Caspian and I were both more aware of that than anyone else. But Fiona still had baby Sophia. Her daughter.

"What about her?" I asked, looking at the dormant little angel swaddled in delicate white linens, her round cheeks flushed with tiny roses.

Fiona's gaze found me, and there was so much grief, I had to grip Caspian's arm to keep myself upright, without even registering the two people who'd just come through the portal. "I've made arrangements," Fiona said. Glancing to her left, I saw Scarlett and Patrik joining us, both of them looking about as torn apart as I was, if not more so.

"Fi… No…" I murmured, tears stinging my eyes.

"I knew you wouldn't do it. You'd use Sophia to get me to come with you, and I love you so much for that. I love her more than words can ever express. But I belong with Zane in what's left of our future. You will all take care of our baby if the worst comes to happen here tomorrow night," Fiona said, in between gut-wrenching sobs. "I suppose I'm not a great mother for doing this, but I trust you will all make sure Sophia understands how much Zane and I loved her… and why we're staying here with… with our people."

More than once, I'd heard Fiona refer to the Nerakians as "her people." She'd married into the daemon kingship, but she'd quickly become devoted to the daemons and their world. In a way, Fiona was more Nerakian than she was Shadian. Her decision was difficult, to say the least, and I was certain she hadn't reached it quickly. No mother gave her child away with ease.

I couldn't even begin to imagine what this was like for her, but I had to find the strength to trust her and accept her choice, as tough as it was.

"Sophia has a better chance to survive in The Shade," Fiona continued, while Zane stared at his daughter. His aura burned red, like Fiona's, sprinkled with flashes of gold—his love for Fiona and little Sophia. "If the Hermessi succeed in destroying us here, our baby will have another shot in The Shade. I know you will all take good care of her."

Her voice faltered as she kissed her baby's forehead, then handed her over to Scarlett and Patrik. "I promise you, we'll do everything we can to keep her safe," Scarlett mumbled. Looking at me, she exhaled sharply. "I'm sorry we didn't tell you. I swear, I've spent the better part of today begging her not to do this."

"Once Fiona sets her mind to something…" Zane sighed and walked over to Scarlett, who was now holding Sophia. He brushed a finger along the side of the baby's face, the corner of his mouth twitching. He kissed the top of her head and moved away, swallowing back a deluge of emotion. He caught Fiona's hand in his and pulled her close, as she unraveled in his embrace. "Just go," he said. "All of you… Go. We'll be fine here."

"Will you, though?" Caspian replied. "This doesn't make sense!"

"One day, you'll have your own people to rule, I'm sure of it," Zane said. "You're a marvelous ruler. I know you'll exercise that skill at some point in what I hope is going to be a long life. Only then will you realize why I'm doing this. When you surround yourself with people who will give their lives for you, giving yours for them won't seem like that much trouble anymore."

Zane loved his kingdom too much to leave it behind, and Fiona loved Zane too much to abandon him. As wrong as that might've sounded to most of us, especially since they still had a child who needed her parents more than anything, I had to let go. I had to accept their decision and respect it.

If they wanted us to take Sophia to The Shade and do our damnedest to make sure she'd be safe, then that was what we would do. Regardless of the pain that it caused me, I needed to be a good friend till the very end.

Wiping the tears with the back of my sleeve, I hugged Fiona and Zane as tight as I could, then moved back and tried to focus on something else, while Sophia continued her slumber in Scarlett’s arms.

"What will you do now?" I asked them.

"We're going to use the daemon tunnels," Zane said. "Most of my people are already down there, and I've invited Pheng-Pheng's people and the Imen to join us."

"The tunnels are the fastest route to the other side of the planet," Patrik reminded us. "Straight passageways that are smooth and devoid of natural obstacles."

"Please, forgive me," Fiona said, her wet eyes fixed on mine. "This isn't how I wanted us to part ways."

I smiled, though it took a considerable amount of effort. "We've been through a lot, you and I. There is nothing to forgive. But, if by some miracle Taeral finds a way to save us, I hope we can all agree to never speak of this moment ever again."

Zane nodded. "You have been the greatest friends a daemon like me could ever wish for. I hope to see you on the other side."

Saying goodbye was the single most difficult thing I'd ever had to do. I had always known it to be a hard moment in one's life, but I'd never thought I'd deal with it myself. At least I still had Caspian by my side, to hold me up and keep me going.

From this point onward, our fates depended on Taeral. I trusted him to stop at nothing until he found Death, so I found comfort in hoping that this wouldn't end in tragedy, that the Fire Star prince would find a way to defeat the Hermessi before it was too late.

I wasn't ready to say goodbye to my friends yet. I could nod and pretend, but that was it.

Sofia

"I feel horrible for doing this," I said.

"There isn't enough room on Earth for everyone, you know that," Derek replied, his voice low and calm as we both stood by The Shade's portal, waiting for more GASP agents to come through from Neraka.

Gazing beyond the portal's stone frame, I found a sense of relief in the presence of Tebir and the other Hermessi of Earth. They'd manifested as colorful, fiery figures, offering to protect the portal from unwanted elementals while we transferred all the willing GASP agents back to The Shade. I knew not all of them would choose this path. Some would've rather stayed back on their home planets, with the people they'd known their whole lives, until the very last minute of their existence, and it was a decision we had to respect.

But even so, I hated having to organize such a protocol to begin with. I wished we could've just brought everyone out of the Supernatural Dimension and the In-Between, and into The Shade. Alas, our haven—not to mention the entire planet—was too small for such an ambitious endeavor, and time wasn't on our side.

"If we take some people off a planet, it will be unfair to the many others left behind," Corrine chimed in. She'd joined us earlier, along with Ibrahim, Vivienne and Xavier, and Rose and Caleb. I’d left Mona and Kiev as additional support for the Hermessi children. We’d needed seniors there as well. "And we certainly can't do that, as far as the civilians are concerned. Our agents, on the other hand, we can pull them back and use them for The Shade's defenses. Chances are we’ll need them."

"Choosing who to save will always be a tough one," Ibrahim added. "You either save everyone on a planet, or no one. At least, that's how I see things. Sacrificing the commoners to rescue the elite or the scientists or the more brilliant minds of a civilization is rather cruel. It's like saying the others don't matter."

"The best we can do is bring our GASP people back, for the time being," Derek said. "With a little bit of luck, we'll only have to formulate an apology to the civilians we left behind, later—"

"Oh, rest assured, they'll understand," Xavier replied. "If this whole ritual insanity happened here, and In-Betweeners and Supernaturals had to take their soldiers out of here and leave us behind… well, it would be a hard pill to swallow, but I wouldn't hold it against them. The odds are stacked against every civilian in the Hermessi's radius, I'm afraid. And they know it."

"This is the best we can do, I know," I murmured. "It still sucks."

"It will never stop being terrible, Mom," Rose said. "But in times like these…"

I nodded slowly, well aware of what she was going to say. I'd told myself the same thing a million times over by now. It didn't make me feel any better. Then again, the truth rarely had that effect on people.

"Thank you for being here," I said to Tebir. I meant it, too. "Your support is priceless."

The green fire figure bowed with reverence. "It is the least we could do. I imagine Brendel and her cohorts are too busy hunting Taeral and Thieron to bother with this portal, but, nevertheless, it's better if we're here to make sure they don't tamper with this evacuation."

"The last thing we need is a hostile Hermessi infiltrating The Shade again," Ibrahim said, disgust skewing his lips. He'd taken Brendel's intervention against Sherus quite personally—not that I could blame him. We'd all felt the same.

As it stood, time was running out on us. There were dozens of planets in peril in the Supernatural Dimension and the In-Between, as the Hermessi's ritual drew closer to the end. We couldn't save everyone, as much as we wanted to, but we could at least pull our officers back and use them to defend The Shade and Earth, as a whole, in case the Hermessi completed their objective.

That didn't mean we'd have a sure chance of survival, going forward, but we had to try.