Sophia had to open the box. That was the only option. To do that, she had let go of the door frame. However, at the rate that Don Ectoplasm was intensifying his vacuum, it wouldn’t matter.
The dragonrider’s grip on the doorframe was slipping. She was an inch from losing her hold. Her flailing legs knocked into something behind her, and she jerked her head back to see that it was the railing on the walkway up the stairs.
Her boot knocked into the wrought iron railing as she tried to direct her flailing legs. Her shins banged into the metal several times, but Sophia didn’t care. Her fingers slipped another inch from the door frame.
She wildly scissored her legs, desperate for anything to save her. She was about to release the doorframe and open the box when her boot caught the side of the railing and hooked in place.
Sophia’s breath caught in her throat. She gulped, and felt like she might pass out. However, this wasn’t the time to faint. It was time to use everything she had left.
After winding her other foot around the other side of the railing, Sophia felt anchored in place, if only for a moment. The vacuum’s intensity was greater than ever.
Her hand shook as Sophia dared to release the doorframe and found that her legs kept her in place, although she still flew like a flag in the wind. She reached for the ring box and remembered what Bep had told her.
If she didn’t get this right, then she wasn’t sure what would happen next because one thing was certain—she couldn’t hold on much longer.
Chapter Ninety-Seven
Sophia loved Wilder. She knew that with her whole heart. But she also recognized that most romantic love was conditional.
I’ll love you if…
I’ll love you when…
I’ll love you as long as…
Those were common terms connected to love. Sophia knew what Bep meant about having no restrictions on love. It couldn’t be based on a commitment. True love wasn’t about being there as long as the other person promised one thing or another. Genuine love was about being there simply because.
Yes, there was respect. Yes, there was affection and honor, and thoughtfulness.
Someone didn’t stay if they were abused. That wasn’t love.
Real love was about being in a healthy relationship and loving someone for everything that they were—the good and the bad. It was about loving someone unconditionally. For Sophia, there was no doubt that if Wilder never promised himself entirely to her, if he lost all his hair, if he forgot her birthday, or if he decided not to love her anymore…
No matter what, Sophia loved Wilder.
That was true love, and she had that for him. With that thought in her head and heart, Sophia’s free hand grabbed the lid and sought to pull it back. As when she tried to pick up the velvet ring box, resistance met her efforts.
Her mind screamed with horror that it might not open…that she might be out of options…that this was the end. Then the lid cracked as she put more force into the effort, feeling determined. Using her emotions, rather than relying on her brute strength.
It felt like trying to open a rusted-shut door, but once Sophia got it to crack, she poked her pinky finger into the opening and pried it back. Then came a flash of brightness and a chorus of noise—a blinding experience that made Sophia completely black out, overwhelmed by what spilled out of the ring box.
Chapter Ninety-Eight
Everything hurt when Sophia opened her eyes. The light was too bright, and the sounds too loud. The pain from the wind that had attacked her body. The bumps and bruises from being banged around, and the aches in her muscles and bones.
Her head had hit the concrete hard when she landed on the school’s front stoop. The one piece of good news was that the wind sucking her into the blob of green goo was gone. Don Ectoplasm was still very much alive though, only a few feet away and rising into the air. It made a tall tower that she was certain was about to bend and gobble her up.
Sophia glanced over at the ring box in her hand to find it still open although it was empty. She couldn’t figure out what had happened. Suddenly, Don screamed. The toxic substance that made him up flew through the air straight at her.
Panic raced through Sophia at the thought of the monster coming at her this time instead of the opposite. However, he was siphoned into a spiral of thin substance and sucked toward the ring box in a strange turn of events.
Sophia held onto the velvet box. Her arm banged against the concrete from the force the box exerted as it sucked in the green sludge like it was a bottomless pit. It continued to swallow the radioactive waste as though gulping it through a straw in a neat stream.
Holding onto the ring box grew exponentially harder as if it were trying to get away while filling with the toxic sludge. Sophia yanked her other hand onto it. She felt like she resembled a madwoman lying on the steps to Happily Ever After College while holding a small box that sucked up a stream of green goo as she flailed around as though possessed by a poltergeist.
It made every part of her body sear with pain. Her limbs banged into the concrete, and her head flew forward and back like she was on a rollercoaster. She felt like she was fighting with an invisible force.
She could still hear Lunis yelling to her in her head, but the force of the commotion around her and her desperate thoughts to hold on for dear life made it impossible to make out his words.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, the hallway before her emptied of the green matter and left the space bare besides the destruction it had caused.
The velvet ring box snapped shut in Sophia’s hands and sealed with a spell she knew couldn’t be undone. It would never open again, and what was inside would be trapped forever.
Sophia’s head lolled to the side. She suddenly felt lightheaded, as though she would pass out. She’d allow that now that she’d done her job.
Lunis… she said in her head, searching for her dragon. What were you trying to tell me? I couldn’t hear you.
I told you to hold on. Sentimentality filled his voice. I told you to remember that real love always holds on, but you didn’t need to hear that from me because you already knew that. Good work, Soph.
Chapter Ninety-Nine
“Is she dead?” an indistinct voice asked from the recesses of Sophia’s mind.
“Do you think she’s dead?” Mae Ling shot back. “Would I have this expression if she were dead?”
“You always look like that,” the woman replied.
“She’s passed out.” Mae Ling put a cold hand on Sophia’s forehead, making her startle.
“Do you think the green poison got to her?” another girl asked, this one with a high-pitched voice.
“Maybe.” Mae Ling sounded worried.
Sophia shook her head and tried to open her eyes but felt locked inside a distant dream. She was coming to, but it took time to swim to the surface.
“The poison is gone,” Willow’s voice stated in a dignified tone.
“She could have gotten knocked out while trying to take it out,” another voice Sophia didn’t recognize countered.
“Maybe,” Mae Ling repeated.
“What’s in the box in her hand?” a third stranger asked.