(LIAM'S POV)
The world spun.
It spun so hard, so violently, that I felt my stomach tear loose from its moorings and try to climb up my throat. I screwed my eyes shut and crushed Violet against my chest, one hand splayed across his tiny back, the other clamped around Beau's fingers so hard I was terrified I might break them—but I couldn't let go. I couldn't. If I let go, if I lost them in this, I would never find them again.
Behind my eyelids, the dark wasn't dark. It was alive.
Colors streaked past me—violet and gold and deep, impossible blue—swirling into ribbons, into spirals, into great slow clouds of light that looked like the galaxy itself had opened up and swallowed us whole. Stars drifted past my face. Something that might have been a nebula pulsed in the distance. I could feel the cold of the void pressing against my skin and, beneath it, a hum—a deep, resonant hum, like the universe humming a lullaby to itself.
"Don't let go," I told myself. "Don't you dare let go."
