Page 99 of Hearts Lost

ALOSERIN

ANYWHERE YOU WANT TO GO

Something feels wrong.

Not that heart magic or this dangerous madness of opening portals to the Worlds Above has ever felt easy, but right now the magic in the room feels especially terrible. Ithronel’s eyes are closed, and her face is contorted into an expression I usually associate with battlefield surgical operations. Sweat drips down her face and neck; she seems pinned in place by the magic pulsing through the room.

Orryen and Elanerill don’t seem to be faring much better. They’re standing, arms wrapped around each other, foreheads pressed together, their bodies trembling. I can practically see heart magic rising off of them like steam, spiraling toward the ceiling of the world, being pulled into Lythienne and the silver globe in her outstretched hand.

That silver globe is smoking. The skin of Lythienne’s palm is an angry red, and her jaw is clenched like she’s locked in battle with the damn thing. For all I know, she is.

And there’s no portal. There’s no shimmer to the air, no shifting and thickening in the space between Lythienne and the dying embers of the fire on the hearth. The air is so thick with magic that it coats the back of my throat, stinging like blood, but it hasn’t coalesced. Whatever the magic is supposed to do, whatever it was able to do before, it hasn’t happened yet.

I turn from the tight line of Ithronel’s lips to the ferocious snarl on Lythienne’s. When do I call this off? When do I say enough is enough, that we can’t try forever, that we have to find another way?

A gasp rips through the thick air. Elanerill collapses, falling to her knees on the soaking wet floorboards. Orryen follows her, splashing into a puddle of water from some other world that had just come crashing through our previous attempt. Elanerill’s head lolls against Orryen’s shoulder, her eyes open but misty and half-focused, and I’m remembering the first time Lythienne tried heart magic, when it damn near killed both of them.

Voids, this has gone far enough. I open my mouth—

The air around me crackles and spits like an angry fire. My breath is sucked from my lungs, and my ears pop. A portal slams into place, ripping the air in front of the hearth so violently that I can almost hear it sunder.

There’s another gasp, a harsh little sound that might almost be a scream. I run my eyes over the room; Lythienne’s hands are shaking, but her jaw is clenched. Arryn, Phaedron, Orryen, and Elanrill are silent; actually, Elanerill seems barely conscious.

The scream didn’t come from this side of the portal.

Phaedron moves as the thought slams into me. He’s pushing through the room, almost like he’s fighting his way upstream. The portal shivers as Phaedron forces himself through the churning, twisting mess of magic, and some part of me screams that I should stop him, that something is different this time, but he’s gone before I can open my mouth, the portal swallowing him like water swallows a stone.

There’s a shattering sort of pop, a sound like a bottle of wine exploding against a slate floor, a flash of blinding light, and another scream, this one from our side of the portal. Then my ears are ringing, my vision swims and pulses with scarlet after-images, and the room has gone dark. It smells like the inside of a blacksmith’s forge, hot metal and ash and sweat.

“Oh,” Lythienne gasps.

My vision slowly recalibrates, shifting things into their appropriate places. Lythienne stands in the middle of the room, her burned palms raised, her eyes wide and fixed on the emptiness where the portal just stood. Where Phaedron just forced himself into another world. Arryn stands before her, dripping water onto the floor.

“Oh, no,” Lythienne says.

There’s a small, soft thud as Elanerill falls to the floor. Orryen sprawls out beside her, his breath rasping against the rapidly cooling air in the cabin. Ithronel curls forward beside me, her head in her hands.

“What happened?” Arryn demands.

Her voice bounces back from the walls, piercing and sharp. I stare at the water shimmering on the floor, the hearth, the darkness in the corners of the cabin. The screaming emptiness where Phaedron just vanished through a hole in the world.

Oh, voids below. Rowan is going to kill me.

Rowan. Rowan is trapped in the dragon’s den. Arryn turns around, her eyes circling the room like a soldier on a battlefield surveying the bloody corpses that had just been her friends and allies.

Rowan is in the dragon’s den, and the screaming voids below only know where Phaedron is. If the magic went according to plan, he’s just been teleported inside the Palace of the Kingdom of the Summer. Phaedron, perhaps the largest and least-subtle person I’ve ever met in my life, might be standing in the middle of King Grathgore’s court right now. Hells, he might be right smack in the center of the throne room for all I know. And there is absolutely no chance that Phaedron Evenworth could ever be mistaken for a member of that Royal Court. No, he’ll stand out like a sword on a silk mattress.

And that’s only if the magic actually worked.

Stars above. I’ve just killed the Evenworth brothers.

“What happened?” Arryn says again, her voice rising like steam hissing from a teakettle. “Why did it stop? What went wrong?”

Lythienne steps backward, reaches for the table, and then winces as her burned palm closes over its edge. She glances around the room, then stops at me.

“Aloserin,” Lythienne says in a trembling voice. “Could you be a dear and put some tea on?”

I nod mutely. Before messing with the fire and the teakettle, I help Lythienne settle onto the edge of the bed. She’s talking to Arryn now, mumbling in low tones and stringing together words that don’t seem to actually make much sense, but Arryn looks like she’s clinging to Lythienne’s stumbling, muttered explanations like they’re the only thing keeping her from being pulled into the very voids themselves.