Bags packed and a day later, the fae gazed around the empty cavern. Their lives had been minimized, folded away neatly into sacks and crates, leaving nothing behind. No evidence that this abandoned structure had once housed the last remnants of the faerie race, save for Kadiatu’s garden outside. Ruenen tasted their hesitation in the air, sour on his tongue. It was hard to leave the safety and security they’d built for years. Guilt gnawed at him.
“Can you . . . can you really take us all through the portal?” Thora asked Marai, not trying to hide the tears streaming down her face. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand as she surveyed the empty space.
Kadiatu linked arms with her and leaned her head against Thora’s shoulder.
“I’ve never tried it with so many people, but I think so,” Marai said as Raife placed a hand on the cavern wall, saying goodbye.
Ruenen turned away; he wanted to give the faeries these final private moments.
Marai, however, was not so attached to the cave.
She lifted her arms and magic burst forth from her fingers in shimmering multi-colored, electric light. The portal appeared, a solid thing, no longer weak and wobbly as it had been the first time in the Tacorn dungeon. Ruenen smiled, so impressed by how far she’d come. She’d learned to pull deep from the well inside without draining herself, without tapping into that strange, poisonous dark magic.
“This will take us to the glen outside of Kellesar. Let Ruen go first.”
He grinned at the nickname and the offhanded way she’d said it. With a deep breath, Ruenen stepped into the portal. He felt the familiar sensation of Marai’s power all around him, wrapping him up in the arms of her magic. He swayed, lightheaded, under its potency, addicted to the high of her touch.
Leif appeared next to Ruenen, hands on his weapons. Together, they walked through to the other side. Ruenen’s body adjusted to the change in temperature. A soft, cool breeze greeted him as his feet touched the earth, significantly more pleasant than the arid desert air.
Leif scanned the land hawkishly, ensuring its safety. The glen was as vacant as it had been the day before when Ruenen had first seen it. Leif turned back to the portal and gestured to his twin.
Raife took Thora’s arm and escorted her through, tossing her heavy bag over his shoulder. Aresti and Kadiatu went next, their eyes widening, mouths falling open, as they felt the magic surrounding them.
On the other side of the portal, Keshel held Marai’s gaze before he stepped inside. A twinge of jealousy wormed its way around in Ruenen’s stomach when he recognized the emotion in Keshel. Marai didn’t respond to it, except stare back with those blazing eyes.
Lastly, Marai entered, and didn’t once glance back at the cavern behind her. Her face remained inscrutable as she passed through the portal and came out the other side next to Keshel. The portal closed and shrunk back into nothing.
“Grass,” shrieked Kadiatu, falling to her knees and raking her fingers through the brittle plant. She held up her fingers to her nose and inhaled. It was such a strange reaction that Ruenen found himself chuckling. She dashed to an oak tree and traced her fingers across the rough bark, craning her neck up to the sky as two thrushes flew overhead.
“She’s never seen any of this before,” Raife whispered to Ruenen. “In fact, I can’t remember the last time I saw a forest, either.”
“Something is wrong with this land,” Keshel said as his eyes grazed across the grim dun of the highlands and snarled trees of thicket.
“Rayghast’s magic,” Marai said. “He’s sucking life from Nevandia, killing nature here.”
“That’s a powerful gift, to cause this much damage,” said Keshel with a shiver. “I sense a darkness, something other.”
Dark magic. The shadow creatures. Ruenen’s skin prickled at the sensation of eyes following them; that something lingered behind the trees, waiting to pounce.
Despite the lackluster sight, the fae gazed around with wonder, taking in the barren trees, the sloping, sepia valleys, the sludgy Nydian River, utterly mesmerized by the world they’d missed.
“Put your head coverings on,” Thora said, wrapping a kerchief around her head to hide her pointed ears, then adjusted Raife’s wide-brimmed hat.
The others also put on their various hats and scarves, except for Kadiatu, who had rounded, human-shaped ears like Marai. In fact, if Ruenen hadn’t already known she had fae blood, Kadiatu would have entirely passed for human.
Once Marai assessed that everyone appeared “human enough,” Ruenen led the way down the glen’s slanting hill into the barren valley, where the rocky dirt road dropped them at the Kellesar bridge. The fae stayed close together, shoulder to shoulder, hands at their weapons. They sniffed the air, craned their necks at all angles, stared at the cows, pigs, sheep, and their herders, the cottages along the way. It was all so new to them, as if they were babes opening their eyes for the first time.
Ruenen tried to relax his breathing, hoping the faeries didn’t notice how he kept wiping his sweaty palms on his trousers. Here he was, approaching this kingdom for the second time, with a group of part-fae in tow. Thora sucked in a breath as they stepped onto the moonstone and granite bridge spanning the Nydian River.
“It’s enormous,” Kadiatu gasped, mouth dropping open as she drank in the sight of such a massive man-made structure as the outer Kellesaran wall.
Kellesar had fortified itself more overnight. The number of guards on the bridge doubled, and Ruenen spotted the archers high up on the stone parapets. They aimed their arrows straight at the clump of advancing visitors. Were they walking into a trap?
This could all go horribly wrong.
Thora seized up, spotting all those weapons pointed at them.
Marai hissed in her ear. “Keep walking.”
“Are they going to kill us?” Thora’s voice trembled; her whole body shook.
Marai gave her a shove, and they crossed the bridge to stand at the closed iron gate. Dozens of golden-clad soldiers leered at them suspiciously through the bars.
They know. Dread curled in Ruenen’s stomach. The soldiers know who stands at their gate.
The fae stiffened and clustered closer together as more armed guards appeared on the other side. If Ruenen wasn’t so attuned to the rest of his party, he may never have felt the slight shift in the air. Something, magic, settled into place around him and the fae.
“Keshel,” Marai whispered to him.
A shield. Keshel had created one of his invisible barriers around the group. He wasn’t taking any chances with the safety of his people.
The soldiers, it seemed, hadn’t noticed the magical shield. They kept their stoic, defensive stances. Ruenen had to make the first move.
He cleared his throat, and plastered on a smile. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. Perhaps you might open the gate to let us in?” No one moved. Ruenen scowled as annoyance bit at his heels. “Your prince gave you a command.”
“Don’t know who you are,” said a soldier, baring his teeth. “You could be a prince or a Tacornian spy, for all we know. Or a group of faeries.”
Soldiers raised their weapons higher. Ruenen heard the twanging stretch of bow strings from above on the wall.
