No Audience Required

"The hardest performances are the ones where you already know the ending."

I barely had time to down a shot of whiskey before the insistent knock at the front door demanded my attention. The fiery liquid burned its way down my throat, doing nothing to calm the frantic beating of my heart. If anything, the warmth made the cold dread in my stomach more pronounced—a stark contrast that left me feeling worse than before I'd poured the glass.

I'd beaten Brett here. The Portal had given me that much, at least—a few minutes to compose myself, to prepare for the performance I was about to deliver. Because that's what this had to be. A performance. I couldn't let Brett know that I already knew about Duke. Couldn't let him see that I'd been in his house, that I'd spoken to Wendy, that I'd fled through a dimensional gateway to get here before his car pulled into my driveway.

The lies were getting harder to track. Harder to maintain. But I didn't have the luxury of honesty. Not anymore.

Taking a deep breath, I set the empty shot glass on the kitchen counter and willed myself to keep it together. My hands were trembling—not from the whiskey, but from everything else. From the accumulated weight of the past twenty-four hours. Duke was dead. Jamie hated me. I'd kidnapped people, stolen from them, threatened violence against Ben in a nursing home corridor. And now I had to stand at my front door and pretend to be surprised when a well-meaning man handed me my dog's corpse.

My hand on the door handle felt like a point of no return. On this side, I could still pretend. Could still hold myself together behind the familiar walls of my home. On the other side was a reality I wasn't sure I was ready to face, no matter how much I'd tried to prepare for it.

I swung the door open.

"Brett, what a surprise to see you here," I greeted him, my voice straining to maintain a casual tone that felt hollow even to my own ears. A poor mask for everything churning inside me. My eyes skimmed over him deliberately, avoiding looking directly at what he carried in his arms. The bundle. The shape of it. I knew what it was. I couldn't bear to see it yet.

Brett stood on my doorstep looking like a man who'd aged ten years in the past hour. His face sagged with the burden of what he'd come to deliver, his eyes carrying that particular heaviness that came with bearing news no one should ever have to bear. He wasn't a Guardian. He didn't know about Clivilius or Portals or shadow panthers. He just knew that his daughter's friend's dog had somehow ended up dead in his bathroom, and now he'd driven across town to deliver the body because it seemed like the right thing to do.

I pressed on with feigned ignorance, clinging to the thin hope that pretending might somehow make this easier. That if I acted surprised enough, shocked enough, the grief might feel less like it was tearing me apart from the inside.

"What's wrong?" I asked, the words feeling like a betrayal of everything I already knew.

"Look, Luke," Brett began, his voice thick with emotion. The struggle to maintain his own composure was evident in every line of his face, in the way his jaw worked before he could get the words out. "I really don't know how else to say this."

His arms extended toward me.

In that moment, my heart—which I'd thought couldn't sink any lower—found new depths. The bundle he handed me was wrapped in a blood-soaked sheet, the fabric stiff in places where it had pooled and dried. It was heavier than I expected. Or maybe I just wasn't prepared for the weight of it—not the physical weight, but what it represented. What it meant.

Duke. My Duke. Reduced to a bundle in a bloody sheet.

The hot prickle of tears burned my eyes as I accepted him into my arms. I could feel the shape of him through the sheet—the curve of his back, the stillness where there should have been the warmth of breath, the subtle movement of life.

"He, uh… he—" I tried to speak, tried to articulate something—an explanation, a question, anything—but the words lodged in my throat. Too raw. Too impossible to voice.

What could I say? That Duke had died protecting us from shadow panthers in another dimension? That he'd been brave and loyal until the very end? That Jamie had been there when it happened, had held Duke as he died, and now Jamie couldn't even look at me without hatred burning in his eyes?

None of it could be spoken. None of it would make sense to this man standing on my doorstep, this man who'd driven a dead dog across town because his wife had found it in their bathroom and demanded it be removed.

"You don't have to explain," Brett offered quietly, and I could have laughed at the irony if I'd had any laughter left in me. He thought he was being kind—sparing me the pain of recounting whatever accident or illness had claimed my pet. He had no idea that the explanation I couldn't give had nothing to do with his kindness and everything to do with the impossibility of the truth.

Brett braced himself against the porch railing, one hand gripping the wood as if he needed the support. His own grief was written across his features—not for Duke specifically, perhaps, but for the situation. For the rawness of loss. For having to witness someone receive news like this.

A heavy silence stretched between us. I stood in my doorway holding my dead dog, and Brett stood on my porch not knowing what to say, and neither of us moved for what felt like a very long time.

"I... I should get going," Brett finally murmured, his voice barely above a whisper. He stepped back hesitantly, caught in that awkward space between wanting to leave and feeling like leaving might be abandonment.

"Yeah," I agreed. The softness of my own voice surprised me. I'd expected it to crack, to break, but instead it came out flat. Hollow.

Our eyes met briefly.

"Will you be okay?" he asked, genuine concern in his gaze. He didn't know me well—I was just his daughter's friend, someone he'd met a handful of times. But he was asking anyway, because that's what decent people did.

I wasn't sure I qualified as decent people anymore. Not after everything I'd done. But I nodded anyway.

"Yeah," I repeated, the affirmation automatic. A reflex. The kind of thing you said when someone asked if you were okay and the real answer was too complicated to voice. "I'll be fine."

I wouldn't be fine. I knew that. But Brett didn't need to carry that knowledge with him.

He retreated down the porch steps, and I watched him go—watched him climb into his car, watched the door close with a thud that seemed to echo through my chest, watched the engine start and the vehicle pull away. The sound of it fading into the distance felt like something final. Something ending.

I closed the front door with my foot, both arms still wrapped around Duke's body, and stood in the dim silence of the entryway.

The house felt wrong. Too quiet. Too empty. For years, coming home had meant the scrabble of claws on tiles, the excited bark of greeting, the warm weight of Duke and Henri pressing against my legs as he demanded attention. Now there was nothing. Just the sound of my own breathing and the cold, still bundle in my arms.

An unfamiliar numbness began to creep through me, starting somewhere in my chest and spreading outward. Not peace—nothing so kind as that. Just... absence. A cold detachment that wrapped around my emotions like insulation, muffling the sharp edges of grief into something duller. More bearable. Or at least, more survivable.

I carried Duke through the house. Through the living room where he used to sprawl across the couch. Past the kitchen where he’d sit with his brother and stare at me until I fed them. Down the hallway where his lead still hung on its hook by the back door.

The bedroom was dark when I entered. I didn't turn on the light. The darkness felt appropriate—felt like the only honest thing in a day that had been nothing but lies and performances and pretending.

I sat on the bed, my back against the headboard, and cradled Duke in my arms. The position was awkward—he was too big to hold like this comfortably, his body stiff in ways it had never been in life—but I couldn't bring myself to lay him down. Not yet. Not when holding him was the last thing I could do for him.

Slowly, carefully, I began to unwrap the sheet.

The sight of him hit me like a physical blow. His eyes were open but empty, that bright intelligence extinguished, leaving behind only dull glass that reflected nothing. His fur was matted with dried blood around the wounds that had been inflicted—wounds I could see now, dark gashes against his golden coat. He'd fought. He'd fought to protect us, and this was what it had cost him.

My gut twisted with a pain so acute it felt like being hollowed out from the inside. Every breath became a struggle, the air in the room suddenly thick and insufficient.

I thought about Jamie. About the way he'd looked at me by the river, holding Duke's body, telling me this was my fault. And he was right. He was right, and that was the worst part. I'd wanted to build the settlement. I'd brought people to Clivilius. I'd created the situation that put Duke in danger, and now Duke was dead and Jamie was gone and I was sitting alone in the dark holding a corpse.

The tears came without permission. They burned down my cheeks, hot and relentless, falling onto Duke's head and mingling with his fur. I didn't try to stop them. Didn't try to compose myself or push the grief down or be strong. There was no one here to perform for. No one to lie to. Just me and Duke and the darkness.

I found myself yearning for impossible things. To black out and wake up to find this had all been a nightmare. To hear the click of Duke's claws in the hallway, to feel his wet nose against my hand, to see his tail wagging with that unbridled joy he'd always carried. To go back to before—before Clivilius, before the Portals, before I became the kind of person who kidnapped friends and threatened enemies and justified it all in the name of protection.

But there was no going back. There never was. The past was fixed and immutable, and all that remained was the wreckage of what I'd built and the consequences of what I'd done.

I leaned forward, pressing my forehead against Duke's.

"It's okay, Duke," I whispered, the words barely audible even to myself. "You're home now."

The silence swallowed my voice. Duke couldn't hear me—I knew that. He was gone, had been gone since the shadow panther's claws had torn through him in Clivilius. But I spoke to him anyway, because it was the only thing I could do. Because somewhere in the irrational depths of grief, I needed to believe he knew. Needed to believe that bringing him home meant something, even if home was just a dark bedroom and a man who'd failed to protect him.

"You're home," I repeated, and held him tighter, and let the tears fall, and made no attempt to be anything other than broken.