Shana lay in bed, back home at Greyson Manor in Grimoire.
The Enchanted Dominion. The Radiant Palace. Dreamworld. Nightmares.
All were far, far away.
A soft knock sounded on her door. Shana winced, but was silent. For some time she contemplated whether or not to say anything, but she must have taken too long because she heard the door open.
“Shana?” came the voice of her mother. “Are you awake?”
“You know I am,” Shana muttered. “Master of Divination Magic.”
“I’m not always using it, you know,” Deirdre said gently. “Come on, Shana. At least show me your face. You’ve been holed up here almost all day every day for nearly a week. I’m worried about you.”
Shana sighed softly, then peeled back the heavy, comforting covers just enough so she could see. It was dark, but of course it was. Even with the curtains open — her mother had flung them open two days ago to try and convince her to get up — the room was dark, no matter what time of day it was.
The Endless Night was coming. Darkness grew stronger every day.
Deirdre placed a hand on her hip, smiling slightly. “That’s at least a little better, isn’t it?” she asked. “I missed those big, curious eyes of yours.”
“What do you want?” Shana asked, though it came out as a weak, half-hearted mumble.
“I wanted to see you,” Deirdre said. “To check up on you, of course. And to tell you that you have visitors.”
Shana felt her heart twist. “Who?” she asked, looking away.
“Kathryn and Rae,” Deirdre said. “I know you don’t want to see anyone, but they’re your friends. Even if it’s just to send them away, you should talk to them yourself.”
Shana winced, starting to retreat back under her covers. “I can’t,” she said softly.
“You can,” Deirdre said. “I’m going out. Shias and your father are already out, too, so it’ll just be you. No one else can tell your guests to leave, if that’s really what you want.” She paused. “I know what you’ve been through is far too much for your age, but even so… I don’t think you really want to hide away from everything like this. I love you, Shana.” She turned to leave.
“I love you too,” Shana said, looking up.
But her mother was already gone.
She sighed, sinking into the downy comfort of her pillows. There was a warm wriggling against her stomach, moving up towards her face, and soon Altair popped his head out from under the covers. He stared at her, black eyes wreathed in a soft blue glow.
“What do I do?” Shana asked, forcing back tears. Altair leaned a little closer and licked her nose, twice. Shana laughed softly, then sighed, rolling over onto her back and staring at the ceiling.
I want to go home.
She’d said that, she’d felt it, and she’d meant it. But she’d been home for nearly a week now, and…
She’d done nothing.
She didn’t feel any better. The exhaustion, the pain, the deep, indescribable melancholy in her heart… there was such a weight on her, crushing her, pressing her down.
It was so hard to move. So hard to do anything other than lay in bed. She hadn’t even been sleeping very much, but even so, she remained cozied up in bed.
Except she didn’t feel cozy. Her mattress and pillows were soft, her covers and Altair so warm, the familiarity of this place so comforting, except she wasn’t comforted at all.
“What do I do?” she asked softly as tears stung her eyes.
Nothing makes it any better. Nothing makes it go away.
After all I’ve done, after all I’ve won… I don’t feel like I’ve won anything. None of it feels like a victory.
I just feel so…
…heavy.
But her mother was right. At the very least she needed to get up and talk to Kathryn and Rae, to not leave them hanging. She let out a long, heavy sigh.
“No sighs,” came the cheerful voice of Kathryn. Shana looked towards the door in surprise to find her two friends standing there looking at her. Kathryn, as always, wore the easiest, most comforting smile in the world. While Rae…
Looked so different.
Even when it was just the three girls, Rae had often still been her shy, awkward self.
Until the adventure. Until so many battles and trials, so many journeys and discoveries.
Now she stood with an easy, confident grace that reminded Shana of Mina, Rae’s mother. Rae had been letting her usually short, pixie-cut hair grow out, too, emphasizing her graceful demeanor.
“You guys,” Shana said, quickly moving to wipe at her eyes. A soft whump on her bed jostled her, followed by a second, softer whump. Before Shana could get her eyes back open, she was enveloped in a double embrace.
“Sorry for staying away,” Kathryn said, her breath tickling Shana’s ears.
“We thought we should give you space,” Rae said. “But we missed you too much. So… sorry for showing up out of the blue like this, too.”
Shana shook her head, hugging the girls back. “No apologies,” she said.
“I like the sound of that,” Kathryn said. She pulled back, and a slight crinkling caught Shana’s ears. She looked to see that both Kathryn and Rae were holding grocery bags. Kathryn grinned. “Got your curiosity piqued?” Shana nodded, earning a laugh from Kathryn. “You gotta get up to find out what’s in the bags, though.”
“Feet on the floor or the contents remain a secret,” Rae said with a nod. She and Kathryn hopped off the bed, standing just a few feet away, watching Shana expectantly.
Shana hesitated. Altair wriggled up and out of the covers completely, standing on the bed and wagging his tail. So Shana smiled, then laughed, just a little bit. Slowly, with a great effort, she wormed her way over to the edge of the bed, clambered out of her covers, and sat on the edge of the mattress, planting her feet on the floor.
“You should have been a little more specific,” Kathryn said, laughing.
“No, this is good enough,” Rae said with a nod. “Once she sees, she’ll only be more ready to get up completely.”
“Ooh, good point,” Kathryn said. She stepped back, coyly hiding the bags behind her back.
Shana frowned, pursing her lips as she stared at the bags. A part of her still remembered how difficult it was to move, but curiosity was a powerful motivator. Before she knew it, she was standing.
And then Kathryn and Rae were racing out of her room, giggling as they went.
“Hey!” Shana called, starting after them.
“Catch us if you can!” Kathryn called with a laugh.
“You guys!” Shana called, but her friends raced downstairs, laughing hysterically, and so she followed, Altair on her heels. “Stop them, Altair! Grab one of their bags!” Altair barked once, leaping up onto the banister and sliding down it on his little paws, swiftly catching up to the girls.
“Hey, no magical assistance!” Kathryn said, ducking under a leaping blue dog, narrowly evading his noble attempt at grabbing her bags. Rae, breathless with laughter, barely managed to avoid Altair as well, spinning and very nearly smacking her head on the wall, saved at the last second by Kathryn pulling her away. The two girls burst out laughing and raced across the family room, disappearing into the kitchen.
“Come on!” Shana cried, racing in after them. But she slid to a stop on the tiled floor when she saw Kathryn and Rae both had stopped, catching their breath, their grocery bags deposited on the counter.
“Goal!” they both cried together, raising their arms overhead and laughing as much as they could in their breathless state.
“Why here?” Shana asked, stroking one of Altair’s ears as he leapt onto the counter.
“Ta-da!” Kathryn said, opening her bags wide and spreading their contents onto the counter. Rae followed suit.
There before Shana was what was, undoubtedly, a treasure trove. Chocolate chips, dark chocolate chips, white chocolate chips… granulated sugar, confectioner’s sugar, dark brown sugar, decorative colored sugar… two different types of flour, gingerbread mix, vanilla extract, butter, eggs, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, wax paper, parchment paper…
“Wha…?” Shana started, but she couldn’t form her disbelief and amazement into words.
“We might’ve gone a bit overboard,” Kathryn said, “but we checked with your mom ahead of time and she hadn’t gone grocery shopping recently so we figured we should make sure we get everything we could possibly need, just in case you didn’t have it.”
“Everything we need for…?”
“Cookies,” Rae said, beaming. “We’re going to have a cookie baking party.”
Shana blinked in disbelief, and then she was blinking at sudden tears. But she fought those back, too.
No tears. Not today.
She took a deep breath, and then finally smiled, laughter teasing her lips. “You guys… so… where do we start?”
“I figured we could pick a few recipes and try them out,” Rae said, pulling out three separate recipe books and laying them out on the counter. “I went through and marked the ones that looked most interesting, especially the ones that I’ve never tried before.”
“And I marked a few!” Kathryn said. “But Rae pretty much had us covered before I got a chance to look.”
“But we are missing one thing…” Rae said, looking at Shana expectantly. Kathryn matched her.
“Missing what?” Shana asked.
“You can’t have already forgotten our last baking party!” Kathryn said.
Shana’s eyes suddenly lit up. “Oh!” she cried, smiling brightly. “Oh! I’ll be right back!”
Shana dashed upstairs to her room, taking the steps two at a time both up and down, returning with her music player and wireless speakers. Setting them up on the counter, she scrolled to the “Baking Party Playlist” she, Kathryn, and Rae had put together the last time they’d done something like this, almost three years ago, while Kathryn and Rae watched expectantly, resting their chins on each of Shana’s shoulders.
And when the music was started, the party began in earnest! Shana went through the recipes marked by Rae and Kathryn while they organized ingredients and got out cookie sheets, rolling pins, mixing bowls, and everything else they might need for making the best assortment of cookies ever. Shana had soon picked out three that looked especially interesting to her, but after displaying them Kathryn said “Three’s not enough! We’ve gotta make as many cookies as possible!” and together they picked out three more recipes.
Dancing and playing around as they started on the first batch, Shana’s worries melted away. She laughed, she sang, she saved the first recipe from getting one too many eggs at Kathryn’s hands. Once the first batch was in she led her friends and Altair to the gaming closet to pick out some board games. In between bake cycles they sort of played, but it was mixed in with singing, dancing, and Kathryn springing into spontaneous gymnastics routines. That got slightly dangerous, so Kathryn had to be temporarily kicked out of the kitchen, where she could take advantage of the high ceilings in the family room to do proper flips and handsprings to her heart’s content. Shana and Rae went with her, watching and giving her arbitrary scores, and anything that wasn’t a perfect ten got Kathryn asking a million questions a minute about what she could have possibly done better and how to improve her score in the next routine.
They each had a single cookie from the first batch, fresh out of the oven — Kathryn ate hers right away and then panicked at how hot it was in her mouth — but then vowed to save the rest of those cookies until after all other recipes were completed. “We don’t want to ruin our appetites before we’ve tried every cookie,” Rae said.
First up was the favorite, the mainstay, the perfect warm-up: chocolate chip cookies! Simple, easy, and delicious. They only made a half-batch of those, saving ingredients to properly test out as many unfamiliar recipes as they could. They chose from various different styles, testing their mettle with rolled cookies right after their warm-up — they had failed spectacularly the last time they’d tried making rolled cookies, so this was their chance at redemption.
And they succeeded! Rolled “star drops” — rolled sugar cookies shaped like stars, sprinkled with cinnamon and confectioner’s sugar, drizzled with vanilla icing and finished with a white chocolate chip in the center immediately when they came out of the oven, so it melted as the cookies cooled. Shana moaned in delight at the delicious combination of flavors melding in her mouth.
And on they went, making gingerbread Altairs after that, laughing hysterically as they tried — and often failed — to form the gingerbread dough into reasonable facsimiles of the glowing dog Summon who watched them intently with a wagging tail. And after those were done, they did another recipe, and then another, and still another! Despite picking out six recipes ahead of time, and starting off with a half-batch of chocolate chip cookies, Shana didn’t feel at all tired as they neared the end of their hours-long baking marathon.
“Why can we only have one of each cookie?” Kathryn asked, her chin on the table, her arms outstretched towards the oven. “They’re too delicious, I want more!”
“You need to save room so you can try them all, first,” Rae said. “We still have one more recipe to test after this one.”
“You’ve gotten kinda bossy,” Kathryn said, raising an eyebrow. When Rae began to shrink in her chair, Kathryn waved her hands. “No, no, it’s a good thing! ‘Bossy’ might not be the right word. You’re speaking your mind! You’re very talkative and open and stuff with us now. It’s good.” She grinned, drumming her fingers lightly on the table. “I like seeing you come out of your shell. It’s like you’ve been in a cocoon for a really long time and are just now becoming a butterfly.”
“I-I’m a butterfly?” Rae asked, staring at her lap, cheeks slightly reddening.
“Yup!” Kathryn said, hopping to her feet as the timer went off for the latest batch. “A pretty one, at that.”
Rae shrank into her seat, blushing even more. “You can’t just say stuff like that out of the blue!”
“But it’s fun to speak the truth,” Kathryn said, grinning.
Shana and Rae followed Kathryn to the oven, even though Shana had to lift the embarrassed Rae out of her chair. They couldn’t trust Kathryn with taking out the cookies alone, and watched her very closely as she served up the cookies onto their respective plate without sneaking a single one.
“One more recipe!” Kathryn announced excitedly, and Shana and Rae cheered with her.
During this final round of baking, Kathryn soundly beat the others at Nono and Friends, a board game Shana was so happy to play, since even Shias — who was always up for doing anything with her — wouldn’t play it anymore, calling it too “childish.” Even losing was refreshing, after not having a chance to play for so long. Dancing, singing, and just general goofing off took up the rest of the bake cycles, and soon the girls were standing in front of a large kitchen counter completely filled with plates and plates of seven different kinds of cookies.
“This is even better than last time,” Kathryn said, grinning.
“Way better,” Shana said, nodding.
“You said it,” Rae said, smiling.
Kathryn suddenly exclaimed with wordless joy, wrapping Shana, Rae, and even Altair into a group hug. “I just love you guys so much!”
“Yeah, we know,” Rae said, giggling. “We love you, too.”
“We sure do,” Shana said, hugging her friends and dog back as tight as she could. She looked through a gap in Kathryn’s hair at the kitchen window, at the dark, ashen sky outside.
And yet here in this kitchen, she could feel the sun shining brighter than ever.
Slowly she pulled away, her smile fading. Kathryn and Rae looked at her, but didn’t say anything.
For a long time, the three girls just stood there in the kitchen, silent. Shana noticed a spot of flour on Kathryn’s shoulder and some flecks in her hair, and a tiny smudge of dough on Rae’s cheek.
“I love you guys,” Shana said softly, letting out a long breath and staring at the floor.
They’re not saying it. They’re not saying anything about it.
Thank you.
“I’m sorry,” she continued. Rae took one of her hands in her small hands, Kathryn took the other in her warm hands. “I just… after everything that happened, I… coming home was one thing, but shutting you guys out all this time…” She shook her head. “It’s not okay.”
“It is okay,” Kathryn said, giving Shana’s hand a squeeze. “If you’re ready to talk about it.”
Shana nodded, and the girls headed out to the family room, where Rae and Kathryn sat on either side of Shana on the couch, and Altair nestled in her lap.
“I was so excited when we started,” Shana said. “We were going to save the missing children. Save Rae’s dad. We were going to do what the Hunters couldn’t, what no one could. But then… we were sucked into a whole other world. And that was kind of exciting, even though the circumstances were scary. I was so… excited… for so much of those early times. But I…”
She thought back to so much. And as she thought, remembering all that had transpired since the start of her journey, she talked about those memories…
Annabelle, so small, so powerless, held captive against her will, cut off from her sisters, her only hope a promise from Shana.
Maribelle, alone at the very edge of the world, thinking her sisters were lost to her until Shana came along.
Dullan, the shadow on the road. How he nearly killed her — specifically targeted Shana — and how Shias had saved her, stepping in the path of Dullan’s attack, risking his own life to save hers.
The battle to save Annabelle. So intense, so loud, so frightening. The triumph, the victory…
So soon followed up by Shias, Ben, Kathryn, and Rae giving themselves up, ensnaring Void and pulling him away from Shana so she could escape, reaching the Library of Solitude…
Alone. With Maribelle and Annabelle, reuniting with Delilah, and yet…
Somehow…
Alone.
“I think it was the Library of Solitude that made me really start to realize it,” Shana said, heart heavy.
The battle through so much darkness, against so many shadow Hollows — battles that she could barely do more than watch. Watch as her baby sister risked life and limb.
The trial of the Dream Forge. All her failures, all her mistakes, all of her inability to conquer her nightmares, conquer her fears.
First Maribelle, then Isabelle, then Annabelle. Gone. Defeated because Shana couldn’t be brave.
The desperate, lonely trek back with the Eternal Flame. The horrifying beast that stalked her, the vicious wounds it inflicted on her. The mud, the rain, the slow, exhausting crawl through muck and grime and filth towards her goal.
The success, the victory, the restoration of the Library of Solitude.
“And even though I succeeded…” Shana said, shuddering. “Even though I won, even though Maribelle and Isabelle and Annabelle were all okay in the end… it didn’t feel like I thought a victory should. I didn’t feel triumphant. I just felt… exhausted. And…”
Nocta. There in the Dream Forge, at the very end of her desperate, arduous trek, at the very end of the most vicious trial of her life, a trial the likes of which many older and wiser and more competent than Shana would never have to face…
There was Nocta, telling her plainly that her trials were far from over.
There was Nocta, counting on Shana to rescue her. Despite all she’d just fought through, despite all she’d barely survived through…
“It wasn’t over. It was… never over. And…”
Grimoire. All the horrible things happening there, with Delilah stalked by Duo. Caleb kidnapped. Shadows moving in the night.
And bringing Delilah with her, onto her team, into the Dawn Riders, only to watch her be the first to fall on the Nightmare Road.
Soaring. Actually flying, properly flying for the first time, and carrying everyone with her to rise up and conquer the Nightmare Road, reach the Nightmare Citadel.
That was a victory that had actually felt like a victory, however short it lasted. That was a memory that still brought a smile to Shana’s face.
And yet she had to brave the Nightmare Road more than once. She had to face Nocta more than once, broken and consumed by Collapse, so terrifying and heartbreaking.
She saved Nocta…
Only to be sent on yet another quest. Only to be told, once again, that it wasn’t over.
“And nothing went right after that. I mean, we won. We didn’t fail at anything, but…”
The Garden of Memory, and the test Shana had faced under the Guardian’s piercing gaze. Being all alone, being faced with her weaknesses and vulnerabilities…
And her friends were there. Her brother was there.
And yet…
And then the memories, all the locked memories of the Radiant King, Leon. To see how a good man had gone so wrong so fast. How someone who started off so pure, so noble, had turned to violence and cruelty in desperation and self-righteous pride.
She’d seen the first battle for Grimoire, Leon’s Radiance against Blaise’s Shadows. The violence, the death and pain and anguish wrought there.
She’d watched the massacre of Sunset Square, Leon’s Radiance going to “war” against a people they knew would always hold back, they knew wouldn’t dare try to take their lives, because life was too sacred to them.
And going up against Leon, Dreamer to Dreamer…
And…
“I… killed him,” Shana said softly, tears flooding her eyes. “Heart and everyone else play with the technicalities. ‘He was already dead.’ Sure. But he was alive. He was dreaming, that was all that kept him alive, but… he was alive, as long as he kept dreaming. As long as he held onto Heart, he was still alive, even if it was life in some sick, twisted way… he wasn’t dead. Not yet. Not completely. And I… I’m the one who finished it. I know he did so much evil, but he… he didn’t have to… I didn’t…” She wrested her hands back from her friends, clenching them into fists. “I shouldn’t have had to be the one.” She stared at the floor, anger and grief overwhelming her. “I reunited Heart. I fixed that. The Radiance is defeated, held prisoner, their violence not spreading any further. Leon’s evil schemes won’t continue. It’s all good, and yet… I killed him.”
The final straw. After all she’d faced, the final act that brought her to that simple phrase that ended her journey…
“I want to go home.”
“I’m… able to bake cookies,” she continued, wiping at her eyes. “I’m able to laugh, and dance, and sing. I’m able to play board games and feel the warmth and love of my friends. But he can’t anymore. And I made that happen. I ended that for him. How could I… why did it have to be…?”
It isn’t fair.
This was never fair. They never asked this, Heart and Nocta, of Leon. Not when he was a child, and even as an adult, he never had to do the Dream Forge. He never had a proper Nightmare trial. They never asked all this of him, even as an adult, even with all his power, but they asked all of that of me with only half of Heart, and then…
Then they asked me to…
They told me to…
And I…
I did it.
They were all silent together for a long time. Slowly, Shana started again. “Heart came to me. Just once, the first night I was back, when I finally could fall asleep. She started… to tell me about what’s next. Because of course it isn’t over yet. And I…” She thought she’d stopped herself, she thought she’d managed to push back the tears for the last time, but here they came, finally tumbling down her cheeks. “I told her to go away. I told her I didn’t want any of this, not anymore. I told her I was done.”
She looked up, out through the nearest window at the ashen sky that grew darker by the minute. “Darkness is out there, stronger than ever,” she said. “And Caleb’s out there, and Fae’s out there, and Delilah’s out there, my baby sister’s all alone on her own adventure without any of us… They’re fighting the darkness. Shias would be, too, if he didn’t feel obligated to me. You guys probably would, too, the Dawn Riders would be just fine, if only I… and the whole world’s falling apart, everything in the whole universe is at stake, and I just want to curl up in my bed and scream ‘go away!’ I’m sick of all of this, I’m sick of what I’ve been made to do and how hard it all is and why I’m the one who has to do it, I’m just a stupid high-schooler with friends and a club that I want to be a part of, I want to go back to that life but I can’t, I’ve seen things they wouldn’t believe, I’ve done things they wouldn’t imagine, and I’ve killed a man. So I can’t go back, but I… I don’t know how… to go forward.”
Kathryn leaned in, resting her head on Shana’s shoulder, and Rae did the same on the other shoulder.
“Not alone,” Rae said softly. Kathryn shook her head. “Not alone. Maybe other people can do this stuff alone, but that’s just terrifying, and wrong. No one should be a hero all alone.”
“Let us carry the burden with you,” Kathryn said. “Not just the ‘mission’ or whatever. If you want to go back to school and normal life, that too. Wherever you go, whatever you do, don’t try to go there or do it alone. I don’t care how cool or strong or perfect anyone else is, I’d go crazy trying to carry all this alone. I’d be exactly like you right now.” She put a finger to Shana’s lips when Shana started to speak. “Don’t even start to deny it. I don’t care how strong I look. After what you’ve been through? I’d be a wreck, same as you. Anyone who thinks you should be otherwise can answer to my fists.”
Rae and Shana both chuckled the tiniest bit at that. “Just don’t try to do it alone,” Rae said. “Whatever you try. Okay?” She took Shana’s hand in hers. “We’re right here with you, all the way. No matter where it leads.”
Shana just sat with her friends, crying, for a long time. She’d said everything she could, everything that had weighed down so heavily on her all this time, and now all she had were tears.
After a long time, she looked up. And for a moment — the faintest of moments — she could see Heart. Here in the waking world, right in front of her.
Tears filled her golden eyes. And yet those eyes held the same emotions and convictions shared by the friends to either side of Shana.
Then Heart was gone.
Shana sat back, tilting her head back so she could stare at the ceiling. After a while, she looked out the window again.
It was only late afternoon, and yet it was dark as midnight outside.
Caleb, Fae, Delilah…
Alice, Addie, Chelsea…
Annabelle, Maribelle, Isabelle…
Selphine…
You’re all still out there.
No matter how dark it gets, you’ll still be out there.
And I…
Shana looked to either side, at her most treasured friends.
And slowly she felt part of the immense weight she felt lift from her shoulders, from her heart.