Alaric leaned forward, forearms braced on his knees, as if the weight of what he was about to say could crush the room. The soft hum of the lamp above us flickered once, and my stomach knotted tighter.
“Here’s what we found,” he began, his voice low but steady. “We tracked down a witch named George. He’s the one who told us about the Shadow Queen.”
Sage froze where she sat cross-legged on the floor, a grimoire already open in her lap. Her eyes flicked up sharply. “And?”
Alaric’s jaw flexed. He glanced at me briefly—just a flicker of green eyes in the lamplight—before continuing. “She’s not just some bedtime story witches tell their kids. She was real. Powerful. Obsessive. She built the Other Side when she died, and she’s still feeding off it. If all the Bridges fall—” his gaze landed on
