Hot, angry wind gusts around us, tossing my hair in everyone’s face.
Then the gate sucks us in.
One second, we’re standing in the desert while the sun beats down on us, and the next our feet are skidding along the dusty, cracked earth. A heartbeat later, I’m weightless, and all five of us are hurtling through space.
“Don’t let go,” I shout, the force of the wind doing its best to rip them away from me.
Lights flash—every color imaginable—some I haven’t seen since I left my home realm. I squeeze my eyes shut.
The whining turns to a wail, then a shrill scream, eerie and horrifying.
Luca grunts in my ear, his grip on my hand tightening. It’s too loud, too rough. I imagine blood dripping from my ears, and I’m not sure if it’s happening or all in my imagination.
It ends as suddenly as it began.
Like a rubber band snapping against an exposed wrist, the metallic screech cuts off abruptly. The wind rustling my hair is freezing cold. It makes no sense to me. The celestial realm is temperature controlled.
I open my eyes and look around, but there are no golden walkways. No bloodline-activated transportation tubes between the echelons. No background buzz of celestial lights.
Instead, we’re standing in a brutal wilderness.
Craggy, jagged peaks shoot out of the crumbling ground like spikes erupting from the core of the planet itself. In the sky all around, there’s a strange floating barrier made of glowing rubble. It reminds me of the cage at the Mouth of Hell—the one woven with dozens of enchantments.
Trembling from the cold, I look at Malach in horror. Something went terribly wrong, and the gateway we came through is nowhere in sight.
“This isn’t how I imagined it,” Ciprian says, chafing his hands against his arms.
Panic stirs in my veins, and I push it back desperately. I don’t know what happened, but this is my fault. I led them here. I have to be strong.
Gritting my teeth, I face them and whisper, “This isn’t the celestial realm.”
Then Luca drops to his knees and screams.
EPILOGUE
Unspoken rule of the Fringes #105:
Some supernaturals weren’t meant to live among the others.
LUCA
My basilisk hisses as fire tears through my body.
Celine’s words were unnecessary. At least for me. My body knew where we were the second my feet touched the ground. Fear, primal and wretched, singes my nerve endings.
S-s-shift. Every muscle in my body shakes with the effort of holding back. I hit the ground, barely feeling the sting on my knees.P-protect them. Now. Shift.
The monster inside me is adamant, making all its earlier attempts to wrench control from me look like child’s play. Venom fills my mouth, pooling against my taste buds as my fangs tear through my gums, bigger than they’ve even been before.
“Get back,” I shout, cowering away from the unrecognizable sound of my own voice.
Celine shouts my name and reaches for me. She’s afraid but I can’t comfort her.
I’m losing control. Here, with all of them around me, my basilisk is forcing a full shift for the first time in my entire fucking life. I can’t stop it. Twenty-nine years of resisting the monster, and it’s removing my fragile illusion of control with one painful explosion of muscle and bone.
My spine cracks. The pain is worse than anything I’ve ever experienced.
My arms are next, absorbed into my body. I fall to my back—twitching—and stare at the sky. Any clouds I might see are blocked by the spiky bubble that surrounds the realm.
