Sam wasn’t sure how long they walked side by side along the foggy path while the swirls of coiling mist enveloped them. Eventually, the fog would part like wispy gates to reveal a white-hot room just beyond them.
“This looks like—”
“The place you go to when you meet with Apollo?” the little girl asked.
Sam nodded.
“It’s similar but not the same,” the little girl replied. “We’re in Serena’s dreamscape. Not yours.”
After the fog dissipated around them, Sam could finally see the teenage girl sitting cross-legged in the middle of the white-hot room. It was Serena. Not the child who held onto his hand, but the Serena he’d met in the real world. Although the shawl that was wrapped around her head was gone.
“She’s—”
“Pandora the 8th,” the little girl confirmed. “But she’s also Serena Shepard, daughter of Adele and Steven, younger sister to Samuel… And my bestie in the whole wide world.”
Sam glanced sideways at the little girl. “Your… bestie?”