“At the fucking speed of light?” he said dryly.

I smiled bitterly. “I was wondering where the exit portal was and how long it would take me to find it, when I saw a shimmering reflection dancing across the tribesmen and sought the source. Across the water was an enormous, swirling array of endless mirrors rotating in a dizzying spin. Impossible to tell how many, because they whirled in an endless circle. Maybe a hundred thousand, maybe a million; it was as bad as the Hall of All Days. They never stopped moving, catching the sun, splashing it across us. And I thought, okay, I’m going to swim, do a mad dash into a mirror and, whatever world I come out on, I’ll get a bunch of weapons and go back and rescue Shazam, right?”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “You chose the mirror that brought you home.”

“Bingo,” I said wearily. “I told him I’d be back for him. ‘Wait for me,’ I said. ‘Don’t go anywhere. If you get free, don’t jump through another mirror or we’ll never find each other again. I swear I’ll be back. I won’t let you be lost, all alone.’ And he sat there looking at me with those big sad, violet eyes and tears were streaming down his face and he said plaintively, ‘I see you, Yi-yi.’ ”

“And you knew if you went back for him,” Ryodan said quietly, “you might never find your way home again. There was no way to choose the same mirror. And if he’d gotten free, there was no way he could choose the same mirror you’d taken.”

“Exactly. My only goal was to get back to Dublin. Goddamn it, I lived that purpose for five bloody years! What if I returned and he was dead and I never found my way home again? What if he escaped and left—and I went back for nothing? What if he didn’t even wait? What if he took another mirror?” What if he didn’t really love me? I didn’t say it but I’d thought it. “And what if he waits forever, believing I’ll come for him, losing hope, day after day? He cries so much and he feels so deeply. Ryodan, I’ve been back for months. Do you know what that means? If he’s still there, he’s been waiting decades for me! Decades!” My voice broke and the tears started to flow. I’d never told anyone any of this, and now that it was coming out, my heart felt like it was being ripped in half as badly as it had the day I plucked the crumpled Dani Daily from the trash and realized the terrible irony of where I was. I’d been so elated to come through to a world with civilization—translated, guns and badass weapons. But my elation had fizzled and I’d gone hard and cold as stone. I couldn’t deal. I couldn’t handle the pain.

I love Shazam unconditionally. There was no abuse or manipulation in our relationship. It was pure, full of joy, trust, and physical affection. I’d never had anything like it. I’d lost the only thing that mattered to me. Again. I was always losing things. Just like my mother, the erosions just kept happening. I’d felt so much pain and grief and I’d just wanted it to stop, and I’d finally understood why my mom drank and shot up. But I couldn’t permit myself to do that. So I’d numbed myself the way I knew how. And these past few weeks, I’d kept the Shazam part of me numb as I tried to let the other parts of me come back to life and do the things a superhero was supposed to do.

Ryodan was suddenly in my space. I bristled and tried to wheel away from him but he pulled me up from the chair and into his arms.

I snapped.

Something exploded inside me, larger and more violent than even the pressure behind that damned fragile dam that had made me tell him too much, and I attacked him like a wild animal. I threw punches and kicks, cursing up a storm, calling him names, calling myself names, raging at the universe for being such a grand shit to me. I railed and ranted. I picked up my chair and smashed it to smithereens across my knee. I shattered his and stomped it to bits then turned on his desk, that stupid fucking desk that a powerful man like him didn’t belong behind, and cracked it down the middle.

When I turned my fury to the walls, he got in my way, wouldn’t let me drive my fists through them. I wanted broken glass. I wanted blood. I wanted something else to hurt besides my heart. I needed the distraction of physical pain.

I’d been holding in so much for so long that I couldn’t keep a lid on it anymore. I hammered at him and he just took it, let me keep hitting him like some unbreakable Ironman, swing after swing. Catching my blows in his hands, other times just shaking off punches lethal enough to stop a human’s heart, watching me the whole time with a fierce, intense gaze.

My fury vanished with such abruptness that I deflated like a popped inner tube.

And there was nothing left but what I’d been trying to escape all this time—pain.

I went motionless, staring up at him through a tangle of curls that had escaped from my ponytail, opened my mouth to apologize and all that came out was a long, unending wail.

He put his arms around me and I sank into them.

Ryodan’s arms. Around me.

So strange.

So strong. Invincible.

This man had always been my nemesis, my punching bag, my rival. But he wasn’t now and I was beginning to wonder if he ever had been.

I leaned into him the way I leaned into Dancer, put my head in the crook of his neck and cried against his chest like a storm breaking loose, until his crisp white shirt was damp and wrinkled. And somewhere along the way, I started to laugh because I’d gotten snot all over the crisp, flawless Ryodan and turned him into a crumpled mess and I found that insanely funny. Then I was crying again until there was nothing left, and I was exhausted and quiet in his arms for a time, listening to the impossibly slow thud of his heart.

“Can you help me rescue Shazam?” I said finally.

He stiffened and my heart sank like a stone to the bottom of that hated lake that separated me from Shazam.

I drew back and looked at him.

He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his gaze shadowed by sorrow. “If you’d told me this as soon as you got back, yes. But Dani, we don’t have enough time now.”

“How long would it take?” I cried, anguished.

“Impossible to predict. I’d have to go through, figure out how far from Earth Planet X is and how many mirrors I’d need to stack to create a tunnel. It’s complicated. I’d have to die to get back out. The biggest variable is how long it takes me to get back from dying. And between the IFPs and the black holes, I’d have to go about it very carefully.”