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No, no, no, Oliver thought back, fiercely.We have to leave! Do you understand? We have to go home! Back to the yard, back to bed!
The drakes were close enough now that Oliver could see the twisted spirals of their horns, and their wicked, curved teeth likes knives. Percy had never turned his guts to ice water like this, nor left his heart throbbing out of his chest.
“Ollie!” Náli shouted. “Go!”
Numb down to his fingers, he turned his head in time to watch Náli, Valgrind, and Mattias vanish. They faded out, slow at first, as though shrouded in mist; then there was a wink of light, and they were gone; nothing left but the deep gouges Valgrind had clawed into the road.
“How?” Oliver murmured. “How did–”
Percy let out an awful, explosive roar, and it shocked him into action. He spared one last look upward – gods, they were bearing down on them – and then scrambled up into the saddle, took up the reins, and pressed both gloved palms to Percy’s neck.
“All right, listen up,” he said, even as Percy stretched his wings and gathered himself, muscles coiling like great springs between Oliver’s calves. “No. Listen to me, Percival. We’re going home.Now.”
He shut his eyes, and thoughthomewith his whole being. Pictured the palace, and his makeshift bedchamber, Erik sprawled across their fur-covered pallet in the corner of the study. Pictured the lean-to that had been constructed for Percy and Alfie, and Alfie curled up at her mate’s side, gleaming like pearl in the moonlight.Take us home.
A roar sounded above, a multiplicity of voices, laced at the edges with the high notes of shrieks.
Home.
He felt Percy acquiesce with an unhappy rumble.
The world lurched, or he did. A bubble of silence, with pressure in his ears and a sense of being squeezed – then nothing.
Then–
Oliver opened his eyes with a ragged gasp to find that he was sitting upright in bed, hair plastered to his face and neck with the sweat that was pouring down his body. His skin tingled, and his fingers, he found, were knotted in the blankets, flexed so hard his knuckles ached. The room was dark save the burnished orange of the coals in the grate; the fire had burned down and the room had grown cold.
Oliver shivered, and his next breath smelled of ink, and parchment, and pipe smoke. Of the pine oil pressed into the pillows, and Erik, specifically, his sleep-warm skin.
It had worked. They were home – though it took him a moment to catch his breath and fully comprehend that.
It had seemed soreal, in that place of dreams. It was, he supposed. He could still feel its breeze against his cheeks, and hear the shrill cries of the drakes plunging toward them, black scales lit up like amethyst in the sunlight.
He couldn’t decide, at first, if it trulyhad beenjust a dream, if Náli and Matti and Valgrind had been constructs of his imagination, and nothing more.
But why would he imagine the name of the Selesee emperor? That seemed too authentic and specific a detail to have been dreamed up.
Moonlight glowed blue in the diamond panes of the window, and his next breath spilled like white smoke from his lips, drifting up to conceal the view of mountain peaks just visible through the glass. He began to accept it, then, by degrees.
Romanus Tyrsbane, Immortal Emperor Unchallenged of Seles, possessed strong magic, and was searching for Oliver in the Between. Had quite likely sent drakes to attack Oliver and his friends.
Speaking of said friends…Náli had clearly shared his magic with Mattias, enabling him to enter the astral plane. There was most definitely a story there, and one Oliver needed to know, now that he was being hunted, apparently.
Hunted.
And to what end, he knew not.
Overwhelmed, suddenly, he pitched forward and rested his face in his clammy, trembling hands.
The sheets rustled beside him as Erik turned over lazily, drawing in a deep, sleepy breath. Oliver felt him stiffen when he caught sight of him. Heard the change in his breathing, felt the warmth radiating off his body as he sat up beside him.
“Ollie?” His voice was gravelly from sleep. “What’s wrong?”
Oliver’s voice came out a dry croak. “Send a falcon to the Fault Lands. Things have changed.”
2
Leif didn’t like sleeping.
