AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Violence rose and rose inside me like an ocean tide.
I’d seen a lot of fucked-up shite in my life, on battlefields and in distant lands fighting for the Shadow King, but this fuckery…this I had no words for.
Somehow, the bones and the glowing portal were more dangerous than any battle I’d ever fought, especially with Anaria trapped in the middle.
Right now, I wished Zorander was here.
My oldest friend would know what to do next, and right now, I’d give all the king’s gilder to have Zor looking at this with clear eyes, and not through this haze of mangled, simmering rage.
Tavion led his steed to where Dane waited by the portal, the once dusty floor a muddy mess from the drifts of melting snow. I couldn’t explain any of this, but my skin crawled from the magic thrumming in the air.
From Tavion’s quick, panicked breaths, so did his.
“I’ll warn you lot, this doorway has more bite than the warded wall up there.” Dane jerked his head toward the ceiling to where the entire Solarys army thundered toward Tempeste. “But the pain will only last a second.” Dane led his horse into the swirling light and vanished.
Tavion caught Anaria by the arm, his huge hand wrapping around her elbow, gently, like he was trying not to spook her. “Are you okay? I was…I couldn’t reach you. I tried, but I couldn’t.I couldn’t get to you in time.”
His voice shook with agony, his hands trembling, and I wondered if he’d seen the same thing I had. I wanted to tear his hand off her, but the look of utter confusion and devastation lingering on Anaria’s face stopped me. She didn’t need violence, she needed support, even if it came from Montgomery.
“I know,” she murmured, taking a shaky breath. “I know, but I was feeding my magic into you, and then…” She shook her head as realization hit me.
“That was…us?” I tried to make the vision make sense, and now it did, in an awful, twisted way. We’d all seen the same thing. The invading army, Anaria feeding power into Tavion, who’d been an enormous monster, lightning flickering down his arm, his legs.
We’d all met the same horrifying ending.
“I thought you’d used these tunnels,” I demanded in a whisper. “I thought you’dbeen here before.”
“I have.” Tavion spread his hands. “A hundred times. But never…never like this.I swear, never like this.”
“You three want to stand around and chit chat? Fine. Have a party. I’m getting the fuck out of this horror show.” Tristan headed for the light, never hesitating as the portal swallowed him up in a swirl of glowing blue magic.
“Anaria and I are next.” I took her freezing hand, squeezing hard. “I’m right here and I won’t let go.”
“I know. I’m okay, just…still processing everything.” Her shaky, uncertain smile sent an arrow of vicious anger slithering through me. “See you on the other side.”
I took a deep breath and we plunged into the light, cold washing over me.
There was no pain, like Dane had warned, only an endless stillness, as if this place—this thin, effervescent veil between realms—stretched into infinity. So endless and eternal, we stood at the crossroads of the universe.
Anaria peered up at me. “What is this?” Her muffled voice echoed strangely, swallowed up by the enormity of the space we now inhabited. There was light and darkness, cold and heat…but mostly, a vast emptiness without end.
Snowflakes still danced in the air, the smell of a hungry, consuming winter gripping me as tightly as the vision had. The coldness swallowed up every breath I took and coated my tongue with frost.
“Different for us than for other Fae, apparently.” My voice rang hollow in here. “Dane seemed to think we’d be through in a matter of seconds. And he said there’d be pain.”
I gripped her hand tighter in case the magic tried to rip her away. “Are you okay? Are you in pain?” She shook her head as the ravaging atmosphere wrapped around us tighter, cold and brittle and threatening.
Anaria took one final look then nodded, tugging at my hand, her pale eyes glowing with stars. “I’m fine, but let’s not linger. This place…there is something very wrong about it.”
We were greeted on the other side by a pale-faced Tristan, then Tavion burst from the portal right behind us, his eyes slightly wild. Just looking at their faces, I knew. They’d experienced the same unsettling wrongness inside the portal.
If I’d had any doubt the five of us were bound together, there was none now. If anything in that vision was true, then Anaria’s magic not only bound us together, she would be the one who doomed us.
Because if she died…so would we.
“We’re not stopping,” I told Dane bluntly, and Tavion’s shoulders sagged. In relief or exhaustion, I didn’t care. We were getting out of here as fast as possible. “We keep going until the end.”
“It’s another ten hours, maybe, until we reach the forest,” Dane said, then he shrugged. “But have it your way. I can’t say I’m not in a hurry to get out of here.”
