by May Dawson
Something like guilt flashes across Rian’s face, but it’s gone in a second, replaced by his usual easy smile. “Well, sister, don’t die on me. We both know I don’t deserve to rule. It’s on you.”
“You are worthy, no matter what our father has ever said,” she promises him. “Don’t you die on me either, brother. Whichever one of us rules doesn’t matter to me—I just want to be at your side.”
The two of them hug goodbye tightly, as if they don’t know when they’re going to see each other, but it’s the only trace they betray of emotion; their attitudes still seem easy, light-hearted.
“What are we going to do with Aeryown and Penny?” I ask. Penny can shift—although she’s so enormous that it’s hard to believe she’s even the largest of dogs now when she tries to take another form—but a unicorn will certainly stand out on dirtside streets.
“I can bring them with me, if they’ll come,” Alia says uncertainly. “I’ll hide them so my father won’t ever know they’re here.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I think I can make them understand.”
“Yeah, I imagine so,” Rian mutters.
Penny is reluctant to leave me, and in the end, it’s only Aerowyn I give kisses goodbye—no matter how deadly she may be. I’ll bring the enormous ‘dog’ with me.
“Make sure you raid Devlin’s armory,” Alia reminds us as she whirls, her long skirts whispering across the ground. “Only the angels know how many realms you’ll have to walk through to reach Primus from that rip.”
“Great,” Airren murmurs. “Not only are we going dirt-side, but we have to work for it.”
She turns to us with a smile playing across her lips as she taps her wand against the closed doorway in front of her. “No rest for the wicked.”
Then she opens the door. I glimpse greenery through the door—her portal door must be in her garden—and she shoos Aerowyn through.
Then she steps through, and she’s gone.
Chapter 13
After the five of us armor up, we leave Devlin’s palace through the back door. It feels like the story of my life: always sneaking somewhere.
There’s a thick layer of snow on the ground, and the mountain that looms above us looks white and untouched. No one but a lunatic climbs higher than we already are into the mountains.
We’re all exhausted already, but as Alia said, no rest for the wicked. Until we find a safe space, we need to keep moving. We spent longer than we should have at Devlin’s castle.
“So if monsters have been coming through this rift, is it really going to take us dirtside?” I ask.
Airren shakes his head. “Every rip tears through the walls of each realm. They’re all linked. Every rip is usually two tears. Usually, when there’s a rip in Avalon, one side of the tear leads to the land of the ravengers and one leads to Primus, which is why we see so many monsters. But you can just keep passing through the rips until you come full-circle.”
“Wait.” I frown. “I thought the portals only led dirtside.”
“That’s what my father wants everyone to believe,” Rian says. “Because if people knew the cost of the portals, that Primus tech might not seem worth it.”
“Some portals do only go to one place, now.” Airren says. “But almost every one of those safe portals that the rich and powerful pass through has been christened with the blood of Marines like us.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“We go through the portals and use magic to seal the other side of the rip,” Mycroft explains. “Dangerous work.”
“People should know about this,” I say. “If they knew…”
“Avalon’s not a democracy,” Rian reminds me.
“Well, maybe it should be.”
Mycroft snorts. “I don’t think we should start bringing back good ideas from Earthside. They’re worse off over there than we are.”
Airren glances down at his map again. He holds his wand flat against the side of the map, and it swivels to bring him toward the spot on the map where the rift is marked.
The others fall behind us as we crunch steadily up the thick mountain snow. When he glances back over his shoulder, taking them in a few yards behind us, I feel a prickle of nerves. He either wants to ask me something uncomfortable or tell me something sweet, and either one sets my heart racing.
“When did you start calling Primus dirtside again?” Airren asks me.
“I always have.”
“I thought you stopped for a while. You know that you don’t have to despise Earthside to have a home here. You never have to go back.”
“Except for now.”
“We aren’t staying. We’re getting what we need to protect our world, and we’re coming home.”
He sounds so confident. But the thought of walking down dirtside streets once again scares me. I’ve changed so much since I came back to Avalon, but once I set foot on a dirtside street, my magic will start to seep away.
I feel like I’ll be small again. Trying to blend in, trying to hide.
I might wear a mask now as the Lady Fox, but I haven’t tried to hide in a long time.
When it’s obvious that Airren is going to let the subject go, bless him, I hesitate. Then I blurt out, “I’m afraid that if I don’t make it clear all the time that I hate it, that people will think I belong there.”
Airren nods as if he understands. Then he says, “But you realize that for the overprotective fools you’ve fallen in with, there’s only one place you belong, right?”
“Where’s that?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
“Wherever we are.”
“I think you’re wrong,” I challenge him, just to watch him turn to me, his eyebrows lifting.
There’s bits of snow in his eyebrows, and he rubs it away, wincing. “I think my eyebrows are freezing. How am I wrong, exactly?”
“You belong where I am.”
“Any way you want to parse it, as long as I never have to go without seeing that smile again.”
An hour later, we arrive at a flat spot between pines. I lean over, struggling to breathe in the frosty cold air that makes my lungs ache. My thighs and calves burn from the climb.
“Do you see the ripple in the air there?” Mycroft asks me, pointing to a spot in the darkness of the trees. I follow his pointing finger to squint at the darkness. There’s the faintest shimmer in the air.
“If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you’d never be able to see it,” I say.
“Imagine stumbling into one of those without realizing what it was,” Cax adds. “Every realm with creatures that tell stories has myths and tales about people disappearing into thin air…”
“Because they stumbled through a portal,” I finish. I think of the bit of history and folklore I learned Earthside, like Amelia Earhart’s disappearance and the Bermuda triangle.
Where there’s one rip, there must be two. I turn, looking for the second one. There’s a flash of pride in Mycroft’s eyes as he realizes what I’m doing. It takes me a second to find it, hidden in the icy embankment that rises to our side. “There?”
“There,” he confirms.
“How do we know which side is which?”
“We don’t.” Airren folds up his map and thrusts it into the bag he carries. He draws his sword. “It isn’t recorded. They must not have sent anyone through on an exploration mission. They just killed the monsters, noted the location and moved on.”
“There are always more pressing monsters,” Mycroft agrees, which is the kind of optimism I’ve come to love so much from him. The thought pretty much embodies life in Avalon: there are always more pressing monsters.
The rips are terrifying, but the monsters I fear most wear crowns and human faces.
“So we just go through and hope?” I ask.
Airren hefts the sword in his hand and flashes me a grin. “You’re with the Marines, sweetheart. We’ve got better resources than hope on our side.”
“I mis
sed that cockiness,” I say.
“Stay close to her,” Airren orders Croft. To Rian, he says, “And you, stay close to me. I’m not going to be responsible for the heir to the throne being killed.”
Rian waves his hand airily. “Worst heir, really. At least there’s a backup.”
“Maybe we can move a step closer to democracy by letting the people choose which noble they’d find less irritating to have rule,” Airren says.
Rian fixes him with a dirty look and draws his own sword, stepping up beside him. “Would you be this rude to me if we didn’t have a long history from boarding school?”
“Probably,” Airren says.
He looks over his shoulder and winks at me before he steps through the portal, and Rian follows him closely.
“I’ll just bring up the rear,” Cax mutters as Mycroft rests his hand on my shoulder. Mycroft gives me an encouraging squeeze.
Then Mycroft turns to Cax. “Yeah, we need you. Watch our backs.”
With my sword low in my hand, I nod to Mycroft. He’s half a step ahead of me as he steps into the shimmer.
Just like the first time I went through, it’s anticlimactic. There’s a second I lose my vision—but I could swear I’ve just blinked—and then my eyes open again and in front of me is a dim, overcast world. It’s suddenly warm, despite the clouds of dust that separate us from the sun, and I immediately begin to sweat in my heavy coat.
“Back,” Mycroft says urgently. “We’re in Ravenger territory.”
An unearthly scream goes up in the forest that surrounds us, then another.
Before we can retreat back through the rip, the Ravengers attack.
Chapter 14
Mycroft is already lunging forward to meet the first Ravenger before I fully understand what I’m seeing.
All around us, dust hangs in the air like a sandstorm. The monsters create the rising dust, swirling their long, dangerous tails across the ground and thumping them into the dust until clouds rise.
Breathing in the dust makes my chest tighten. The Ravengers are taller than even Mycroft. Their teeth and claws flash out of the sand as they lunge toward us.
Airren and Mycroft move in perfect synchronization as they fought the monsters, their swords slashing. Mycroft catches ne of the monster’s throats on his blade, and blood spurts across his body as he squeezes his eyes shut, keeping himself from being blinded. As Mycroft tries to draw the blade free, another monster ducks low for Mycroft’s legs.
But Airren is there, driving his blade down. He drops low as another monster snaps at Mycroft’s side, and Mycroft rolls over Airren’s back, escaping the powerful jaws that snap shut on the air where he a second before. Airren rises, driving his sword into the belly of the beast. Mycroft is already fighting the monster that lunged from Airren’s left.
Cax’s hand tightens on my shoulder, drawing me back, and then he stops so suddenly that my body bumps into his. He drives his sword deep into the foot of the monster that towers above us. It almost looked as if it was smiling, with its long, wicked teeth exposed as it drew its lips back from its mouth, but now it lets out a scream of pain. I throw my sword up to defend us as drops of its drool fell against my face.
“They’ve got us surrounded,” Cax says grimly, pulling his sword out of the thing’s foot. “We’ll have to fight our way back to the rip.”
Rian stabs through the belly of a monster that then falls in front of us. At the impact, the ground shakes under our feet. A massive head, as long as my arm, almost lands on my toes as I dance out of the way. Blank, reptilian eyes stare at me. The damn thing still seems like it’s grinning.
I peer through the clouds of dust as best as I could. I can’t see far, but I have the sense of more and more bodies pouring in the space around us, pressing against the backs of the monsters that my men are fighting so desperately.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to calm my rapid-beating heart. There are dozens of monsters hidden in the dust.
I didn’t come all this way just to watch my men die here.
Alia’s words echo in my head. She can control every magical beastie under the sun.
My magic might terrify Avalon, but hopefully it can save these men of mine.
“Tera?” Cax asks, a question in his voice. My sword hangs limply at my side, feeling too heavy in my fingers as I try to reach out into the mind of the Ravengers.
“She’s going to control them,” Rian says with enviable certainty. I wish I felt that sure of myself.
The air stirs around me as a monster dives close, as the men around me fight to protect me. My hair blows back from my face, but I focus on finding my way into the mind of the monster. For a second, I see through its eyes; I see Mycroft’s face looking up at him, looking so small in comparison to the looming monster.
Then I feel a ripple of pain, just before the monster falls. Damn it. I pull back into myself, the jolt of agony still burning in my chest. For a second, I glimpse the scene around me; the men fighting desperately, the ever-increasing press of monsters.
Then I close my eyes. I trust Croft, Cax, Airren and Rian to protect me while I save us all.
I reach back out, and this time, once I slip into the mind of a Ravenger, I’m able to project out beyond that, into the minds of the ones around it, then the next, until I’m inside the minds of all the Ravengers.
There are dozens of them. More coming, too.
“You want to kill?” I mutter, because these aren’t like the sea monsters; they’re predatory and cruel in a gleeful way. “Then kill each other.”
They turn on each other, ripping each other to pieces.
When I open my eyes, my men are all staring at me.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say, just as a Ravenger rips open the throat of another Ravenger, and blood and gore splatters all around us.
Cax already has my hand in his, pulling me toward the rip. His sword is still held at the ready, just in case. “I’d just like to point out that Tera has the highest kill count today.”
“Is it a competition?” I demand.
“It’s always a competition.” Airren answers.
The five of us move as one for the portal, leaving the Ravengers behind to tear each other apart.
Chapter 15
When we step into a dirty alleyway, I say, “I never thought I’d be so grateful to be Earthside.”
Airren’s gaze flickers to me, but he doesn’t betray that I’ve taken his words to heart. Primus wasn’t good to me, but neither is Avalon.
Whichever world we’re in doesn’t matter. I’ve got myself and my men, no matter what ground I walk.
“Let’s get to safety first,” Airren says. “Get some much-needed rest. We need to be sharp enough to deal with this shield business in the morning.”
“Ooh, I have lots of restaurant recs.” Cax’s face lights up. “What city are we in?”
“We’re keeping a low profile,” Airren reminds him.
Cax’s enthusiasm for life here confuses me. Every minute I was here, I dreamed of Avalon.
“Do people really come here for fun?” I ask.
“Of course,” Cax says. “There are lots of good parts here, Tera. And besides—it’s another world, and one where beasts hardly ever try to chew your arm off. People love an adventure, but not that much adventure. This is a lot better than Ravengerland.”
“Well, I guess I agree.” Perspective is everything.
Airren gets us a two bedroom suite in a fancy hotel because he wants to keep us all together.
Once we’ve dropped our swords and leather bags and winter coats in a heap in the entryway, in an expansive room with two couches and a big screen television and a view of the city lights below, I ask, “This is what you call keeping a low profile?”
“I’ve missed these things so much.” Cax already has the television remote in his hand.
Mycroft glances from him to the television. “I admit, I’ve never seen one up close. Teach me about it.”
C
ax brightens at the prospect of teaching Mycroft, who knows almost all, it seems. The two of them are soon lost in a discussion of something I take for granted.
“I’ll order room service for us,” Rian says, plucking a menu from a table in the corner.
“Remember you actually have to pay for stuff here,” Airren reminds him. “When we run out of magic and money, we’re screwed.”
“Devlin had a very well-supplied safe,” Rian promises. “I’m rich dirtside, just like back home. Don’t worry about me.”
Airren gives him a deadpan look. “I really don’t.”
For some reason, Rian’s words make me think of Airren’s family, now relocated from their castle and lands in Vasilik to…wherever they are in Avalon. When Airren turns and walks into one of the bedrooms, I follow him.
He turns back, as if he’s going to close the door, and there’s a flash of surprise in his eyes when he sees me before they crinkle at the corners. He takes a step back instead, letting me in.
“I just wanted to ask you a question,” I said.
“Ask away.”
“I wondered how your mother and sisters are doing.”
He inhales slowly, then blows the breath out in a long exhalation. After the mere mention of his family, Airren requirse a break to regain his composure.
Then he says, “They’re doing well. My two younger sisters, who I like to think are redeemable from their ridiculous spoiled lives, are at boarding school. I convinced my mother to let me pick it out, and I’m pretty sure they’re both miserable right now.”
“You look far too satisfied about that.”
“I don’t want them to turn out like my mother,” he says. “I’m not saying I turned out too well, either, but boarding school and then the Marines knocked some sense into me. Some.”
The playful, self-deprecating smile on his lips makes me want to kiss him.
Before I can cross the distance between us, he adds, “I was going to take a shower, then get some sleep.”
“Sounds good to me.” I close the door softly, then lean against it. “Um, you know… I could also use a shower and some sleep.”
