Sacrifice

The princely guardian's eyes met hers. "Time," he said simply. "A fragment of your shared history."

Samantha blinked. "You want us to... what? Give up some of our memories?"

Aspen's perfect features shifted into something more solemn. "Not exactly. The realm between realms exists outside normal time. To enter it, you must offer something temporal—a moment that happened, but will become unhappened."

"That's not a word," Marcus pointed out, his tone casual despite the tension in his shoulders. The hybrid crossed his arms, dark eyes fixed on Aspen with undisguised suspicion. "And it sounds like bullshit magic semantics."

Kai growled in agreement. "How do we give up something that already happened? And who decides which memory goes?"