For a moment, mother and son stared at each other across the destroyed bedroom, the air thick with dust. Fragments of what had once been Finnian's desk chair lay scattered across the carpet like broken bones, and the entire wall where his window used to be gaped open to the night like a wound. The moonlight streaming through cast everything in stark silver and shadow, making the destruction look even more surreal.
Mrs. Ravenswood's eyes held depths of knowledge and pain that Finnian had never noticed before—layers upon layers of secrets that seemed to stretch back through years, maybe decades. Her usually perfect hair hung loose around her shoulders, and there was something different about the way she held herself now, as if she'd shed some invisible costume and revealed the person who had always been hiding underneath.
"Mom," he whispered, his voice hoarse with shock and disbelief. The word felt strange on his tongue now, loaded with questions he didn't know how to ask. "What... what are you?"
She closed her eyes briefly, and he watched her chest rise and fall as if she were gathering strength from some deep, hidden well. When she opened them again, they were filled with a sadness that seemed to age her ten years in an instant. The laugh lines around her eyes looked deeper somehow, carved by sorrows he'd never suspected.
"We have to go," she said, her gentle mother's voice—the same voice that had sung him lullabies and scolded him for tracking mud through the house—now at complete odds with the military efficiency of her movements as she surveyed the room, calculating exits and threats with practiced ease. "Right now."
"Wait, what? I don't understand—" Finnian's mind reeled, trying to process everything that had just happened.
"There's no time to explain." Her voice was clipped now, urgent. "Kieran was telling the truth about one thing—others will come, and they'll be stronger than him. I don't have enough strength left to face them all." She grabbed his arm with fingers that felt like steel bands, pulling him toward the gaping hole where his wall used to be. The night air rushed in, carrying with it scents that seemed foreign and wild. "We need to move."
"Mom, stop!" Finnian planted his feet, refusing to be dragged along. Every muscle in his body was tense with confusion and growing anger. "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's happening! What was that thing? What are you? Why could I see it when nobody else could? Why did you lie to me?"
The questions poured out of him like water through a broken dam, each one carrying the weight of the past few days or maybe eighteen years of half-noticed strangeness, of moments that hadn't quite made sense, of a feeling that his life had been built on foundations that were slowly crumbling beneath his feet.
Mrs. Ravenswood turned to face him fully, and for a moment he saw her mask slip completely. Beneath the calm facade was someone who was terrified, exhausted, and carrying the weight of secrets that had clearly been crushing her for years. Her hands trembled slightly, and he noticed for the first time that there were faint scars on her knuckles, old and white and speaking of violence he'd never imagined her capable of.
"Finn," she said, and her voice broke slightly on his name, carrying all the love and desperation of a mother who'd spent nearly two decades trying to protect her child from a world he didn't even know existed. "You're in danger. We're both in danger. I promise I'll explain everything—every single thing you want to know—but right now we need to—"
A howl echoed from somewhere outside, cutting through the night air like a blade. It was long and mournful and definitely not human. The sound raised every hair on Finnian's arms and sent ice water flowing through his veins.
It was answered by another howl, then another, until the night air was filled with a symphony of hunting calls that seemed to come from every direction at once. They weren't random animal sounds—there was coordination in them, communication, strategy. Whatever was out there was organized, and they were closing in.
Mrs. Ravenswood's face went white as bone in the moonlight. "Damn it," she whispered, and hearing his soft-spoken mother curse with such vehemence was almost as shocking as everything else that had happened. "They're already here. I thought we'd have more time."
She spun back to him, and now there was no hiding the fear in her eyes—not just for herself, but for him. Her hands found his shoulders, gripping them with desperate strength.
"Listen to me very carefully," she said, her voice low and urgent. "Whatever happens next, whatever you see, whatever I do—just follow my lead. Don't look back, don't try to help me, don't think—just trust me."
She grabbed Finnian's hand, her grip iron-strong and completely at odds with the soft hands that had bandaged his scraped knees and braided friendship bracelets with him when he was small. "We run, and we pray that eighteen years of hiding was enough to give you the strength you're going to need."
"What strength? Mom, what are you talking about?"
As they stepped through the jagged opening into the night air, Finnian caught a glimpse of shapes moving in the shadows below their second-story window. Multiple figures prowled around the base of the house, and even in the darkness he could tell they were all wrong in ways that hurt to look at directly. Too tall, too angular, moving with a fluid grace that no human body should possess. Their eyes reflected the moonlight like mirrors, dozens of them, all turned upward toward where he and his mother stood silhouetted against the broken room.
The monsters were no longer hiding.
And neither, apparently, was his mother.
The only question now was whether either of them would survive long enough for him to get the answers he desperately needed—answers about what he was, what she was, and what kind of world they'd been living in without him ever knowing it.
The howls grew closer, and Mrs. Ravenswood's grip on his hand tightened. But instead of preparing to leap, she pressed her free hand against the air beside the broken wall. The space shimmered like heat waves, and suddenly there was something there that hadn't been before—a doorway made of starlight and shadow.
"What is that?" Finnian breathed, staring at the impossible portal that hung in the air like a tear in reality itself.
"Our way out," she said grimly. "Hold tight."
Before he could protest, before he could ask any of the thousand questions burning in his throat, she pulled him forward into the swirling darkness.
The last thing he heard was the frustrated howls of the creatures below as their prey vanished into a place they couldn't follow.
At least, he hoped they couldn't follow.
The portal snapped shut behind them with a sound like breaking glass, leaving only empty air and the lingering scent of ozone where it had been.