She needn’t live in fear for what little time they had left.
She snorted, and he thought she’d seen right through his words. Instead, she said, “Kings. Knights. Heirs.”
His lips parted, waiting for words to come. Waiting for Mackenzie to fall into hysterics, or faint, or whatever happened to humans when they were pushed past a brink.
She flipped a hand. “Never mind. Whatever it is, right? I mean, yeah. Okay. Let’s do this. Fairytales and unicorns.”
He wondered if this was what a nervous breakdown looked like.
She shrugged, as if she could read his thoughts. “I don’t believe in magic. I don’t. But Hunter, I saw you fly. With my own eyes. I am past the point of comprehending this.”
He smiled. It was meant to be reassuring. He was certain he’d failed at it. “It isn’t that different, is it? No more magic than your television or radio waves. This internet you’re so worried about.”
“The one you broke, you mean?”
Her words weren’t playful or light and he felt himself straightening, drawing back the centimeters he’d crept closer. “It is merely an ability to control gravity, mass. If it was part of your world, if you’d been raised seeing it, it would simply exist for you. You wouldn’t feel the need to examine how it worked.”
She smirked. “Spoken like a man who doesn’t know the answer.”
He cleared his throat. “Mackenzie—”
She cut him off again. He wasn’t sure he’d been interrupted by one of his own kind in his life, and yet it was commonplace for her. As was his need to apologize. And, come to think of it, to say please. He frowned.
“You don’t look like them,” she said.
Another vague announcement. He’d lost the ability to even decipher whether she was questioning him.
He took a steadying breath. This was the part that would hurt her. “The others, they are older. They have spent more time… here, on this side.” Not that any of them had the ability to move freely between realms. “I was born little more than twenty cycles ago, and most of that time has been spent on your side.”
She blinked. “So,” she said. “This portal didn’t just get there?”
“It’s… difficult to explain.”
She waited.
“There was a smaller gateway, a door I’d been able to use for years. It doesn’t allow the others access, or I suppose they’d never tried.”
Mackenzie drew her hands into her lap, kneading a thumb over her knuckles. “What changed?”
“Azral,” he answered, feeling a rush at finally voicing his accusation, even if only to her. “Somehow… some way Azral was able to observe me. They followed me through that day of the invasion, and… the gateway never should have opened, but it did. Weeks early, it did.”
Mackenzie froze. For a moment, he wasn’t certain what he’d said. Her voice was level when she asked, “Weeks early?”
He stared at the floor, its polished surface hiding the remains of what it had been. It was a skeleton, masquerading as marble. They lived in a castle of painted gold. “The gateway would have opened,” Hunter said. “It would have opened and those monsters would have come.” He let his eyes trail the room, follow the line of abundance up the wall carved with symbols of the reaping, stylized arcs and lines that masked its reality. They came across the ceiling, false as any of it, unable to bear the weight of even one man. And then they fell on Mackenzie, the human, the girl in this truest of untrue worlds.
“It’s called the reaping. A gathering of souls from your world, to bring them here to replenish ours.”
“Souls,” Mackenzie whispered.
His fingers curled into his palm as he resisted the urge to brush them against her skin. He made himself recite the words. “‘Between the cycles of two and three thousand years, into the dying lands is born a son. Upon the twenty-third cycle, he shall lead them into the inner realm where they might cull the spirits for the coming season, bring them home to become our own. He is the key, he is the One. He will recall our soldiers and restore order among the realms for all time to come. This king among our kind can only surrender to his true successor. The son of a son.’” His words felt cold. He felt cold.
“Spirits,” Mackenzie said, “but you mean—”
Hunter shook his head. “It’s the translation, there are just… there are no words to encompass it accurately. The humans are to be your monsters, Mackenzie. Azral, the flying beasts. They will come, the Iron Bound will bring them, and the magic will turn your people into what you see here. It will take hundreds of years, but it will happen. They will turn; they will feed our earth and become part of this world.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said flatly. “They can’t. It doesn’t—” She swallowed hard, pressed a fisted hand against her stomach. “I don’t believe you.”
He stared into her eyes, let the flicker of power he felt pulse through him. She winced, seeing what she could not deny, seeing him as one of them, and it hurt. “It will happen, Mackenzie. Neither of us can stop it.”
Chapter 15
Mackenzie had fallen asleep. They’d sat silently for long hours, her only able to look at him when some new string of questions arose. His answers were never what she’d been looking for, never right enough to make her see. This was something she could not accept, but there was no changing it for her.
There was no changing it for anyone.
In the end, she had succumbed to exhaustion. She had fought the need, but her body had won out. Hunter had watched her at first from the doorway, keeping a sharp ear to the chatter of wildlife outside. There was nothing but that of the lower beasts—lesser Fae, if she still insisted on comparing them to her storybooks. But he had eventually wandered closer, lulled by her steady breathing. Sleep was about renewal in her land. In the dying lands, it was more of a recharging.
He would let her go, allow her rest as long as she was able. Because she couldn’t draw energy the way he’d been able to since his birth.
When the first echoes of movement sounded, Hunter was sitting in the chair nearby her, feet resting on the frame of an elaborately carved stand. “Mackenzie,” he whispered. “Mackenzie, wake up.”
Her lashes fluttered for a moment, lids finally opening to reveal clouded eyes. She appeared to recognize Hunter, and for one brief moment, not remember where they’d spent the night.
No, Hunter thought. Another wrong word. This was nothing like her night. “We have to go,” he told her.
She rubbed her eyes. “What?”
He touched her arm, let her hear his urgency. “It’s time to go.”
She nodded, sitting up and patting a hand around her. Reaching for her bag, Hunter realized, until she recalled she didn’t have it anymore. He took her elbow. “We need to go.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m awake now. I’m good.”
She followed him out the maze of rooms, this time more aware of the walls that surrounded her. The look on her face made him feel no better about the world he was going to drag her through, but at least she was alert, out of that shocked daze.
It would resemble concrete and stone, all of it polished or painted or not quite normal, but it would look nothing like home. It would feel nothing like her world. Outside though, outside was the brightness and color in whorls and ringlets that would feel like a dream.
He wished he could fly. Hunter was healing, but Azral had rent open the first cut, and the poison wasn’t quite flushed from his system, not well enough to support both his and Mackenzie’s weight. At this point, staying beneath the trees was their best hope.
There was a call from the foliage behind them, a croaking squawk that might have once been a curlew’s song. He wondered if it missed its home, the water, the lapping shores and salted air.
Mackenzie jerked on Hunter’s arm, leaning toward him. “Do we have to be quiet?”
“No reason to make yourself a target,” he said. “But you’ll be fine to walk and talk until I warn you other
wise.” Sound was not how the hounds would track them.
She let out a long breath. Resignation? Fear? She rubbed her nose with a knuckle, stepped carefully over the blood-red patches of moss. “Why don’t I want water?”
“Hmmm?”
She hopped two steps closer, brought her voice up to near normal levels. “Water. Usually when I wake up, the first thing I do is chug a glass of water.”
The energy, he should have told her. The energy will change you, faster than you can imagine. He said, “Climate,” glancing into the treetops, surreptitiously checking for tracks.
“Oh.” Her brow wrinkled, though the air was temperate, never too cool or too mild. But Mackenzie wouldn’t be put off. “Where are we going, then?”
“Away,” Hunter answered. “Out of reach of the hounds.” He had told her they’d be looking, had mentioned it would be time to move, but he’d not described the beasts in detail. Only a fool would have done that.
“So, I’ve been thinking,” she started, “about this reaping.” She bit her lip, gripping his arm to steady herself over a crack in the ground. She didn’t seem to notice the earth that lay beneath it, that the color, the scent was all wrong. She dropped her hand from his arm. “Why don’t you just close it? If the only thing coming is more of your men, then why not seal it now?” Her head shot up. “I mean, as soon as I’m out. Just lock it up tight and throw away the key. Let our army figure out what to do with the thousands out there now.”
“The source doesn’t come through to your side,” he told her. “Whatever they have, they must bring it when they come. If I were to close the gate with the Iron Bound on the outside, their energy would fade.”
Mackenzie shrugged. “Even better.”
“Their souls are not born, Mackenzie. They are taken from your side. Once the energy fades, the Iron Bound will not revert to human. They will die.”
She watched him, waiting for there to be some issue she’d object to.
“They are still your people, Mackenzie. Despite what they look like from the outside.” The sudden guilt on her face made him regret the reprimand; how could she possibly understand? “Ideally, there would be some solution that did not require thousands of either race to be exterminated.”
She pressed her lips and he could see that he was not getting through to her. “I am the chosen, Mackenzie. The key to survival for this entire realm. Without the reaping, there’s no guarantee my world will survive.”
“So we make the sacrifice?” she asked. “Humans die, humans are stolen from their homes so that you can live all happy and fly around Fantasia with your fluffy little—hey,” she said. “Where are your clouds?”
“There is no sun or moon, Mackenzie. We are in another realm.” The dying lands.
He stopped, turning to look at her, and she drew up short, mouth partially open as she prepared her next bid.
“I have borne this knowledge the whole of my life. If I knew some way to solve it, I would. I have lived in your world, Mackenzie. I have dwelt more among your people than my own. I cannot save them. It doesn’t matter that being the son of sons is nothing I ever wanted, nothing I could ever undo. The gateway will reopen.”
Her expression melted into something that might have been sorrow or sympathy or loss. But her gaze found the earth beneath their feet, her hands sliding into pockets as she continued the trek once more.
“The reaping is coming,” he said to her back. “It’s coming and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
Mackenzie was quiet for a long while, her dark hair hanging still, as if even it yearned for a breeze. There was nothing he could say to her, nothing he hadn’t thought for himself. It was about keeping the most of them alive. It was about staying in either world until he was sure he could get the gate closed again. Until he could be certain each realm was safe.
She didn’t speak for so long he began to miss it. He missed her questions, he missed her annoyance. He missed her voice. But he was being foolish, aching for a girl who didn’t have much time, one he should never have had the chance to be around in the first place. He cleared his throat, ran a hand over his breastbone. He couldn’t protect her for long.
They passed into a clearing, a field of flowering grass lying low against the ground.
Mackenzie still didn’t say a word. She stepped through the scraps of grass, their blades crushing beneath the soles of her black leather boots.
When she finally spoke, her words were soft, but pierced him no less. “There was a story I read to my brother once. When he was young.” She didn’t look up at him as she walked, but Hunter knew she felt his attention. “It was a fable,” she said. “The King’s Son and the Painted Lion.”
There was a flash of alarm at the words king and lion, but Mackenzie was calm, her tone even. She was merely telling him a story. “I’ve not heard it,” Hunter said.
Her eyes remained on the path before her. “This king had a dream,” she said. “A dream in which his son was killed by a lion. The idea of it terrified him so badly, the king built a special palace, far away from any danger of the beast.” Her gaze flicked up then, toward some imagined horizon, and the hint of a smile played at her lips. “He wanted to keep his son entertained though, so he painted the walls inside the palace with all the animals of the forest, including the image of a life-sized lion. One day, so upset with being caged and abandoned by his father, the king’s son looked upon the image of the lion and screamed. He detested the lion, blamed it for his imprisonment, and so he took to the thorn tree, meaning to tear free a branch and whip the false lion in his anger.” She breathed in the still air—like the idea that she’d not yet become winded was strange—and continued. “But the young prince pricked his finger, piercing the skin with a thorn from that planted tree inside the safety of his palace. The wound became infected, and he died in only a matter of days.”
This was how fables worked. They were to make a point, no matter how sharply it stung.
“And the moral of the story?” Hunter replied, his chest tight.
“Is that we’d better bear our troubles bravely than try to escape them.”
He gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Am I the lion or the prince?”
She smiled, face still turned toward the ground. “You are the king.”
Chapter 16
Hunter wasn’t just afraid of the reaping. He wasn’t just afraid of the gateway, or the consequences, or losing Mackenzie. He was afraid of all those things. He would face his responsibility, because he had no other choice. But he could see no way out that didn’t call for the sacrifice of at least one aspect that mattered. And as far as he was concerned, one was too many.
“Hunter,” Mackenzie said, stopping to examine an indigo vine that corded its way through several other plants, “if the gate was going to open anyway, then why did Azral and the guard attack you and rush through? Why not just wait?”
He stepped beside her, kneeling down to show her it was safe. The vine trembled, drawing back from his touch, and then raised its tendrils, feeling out, able to sense his energy. “I think,” Hunter answered, sliding a finger beneath the vine thing’s root, letting it crawl across his hand, “Azral has other plans.”
Mackenzie was so absorbed in this new creature’s display, she barely acknowledged the words. She rocked forward as if to stoop, and then hesitated. Hunter raised his palm to her, offering the creature up for inspection. Mackenzie’s hands tightened into her shirt. Hunter lifted a brow. “Facing our fears, are we?”
She huffed. But she didn’t touch it. Hunter smiled, returning the vine to its place on the ground, and Mackenzie said, “Are they all like that?” She raised her hands, gesturing toward the world around them, grasses and trees and flora-like things, each of them a distorted mirror of their kinsmen at home. “Everything? Magic?”
Hunter brushed the palm over his knee as he stood, a gesture from her world. Nothing here would leave soil or residue. There was no dirt, no rain. “The vine was from the un
dying lands. It has always been a living thing, but when it was brought over, the energy of this world altered it to this.” It would have more life than it ever had.
So many things in this realm were not real. So many things were props, reminders and constructions from their memories of home. From a time the older Iron Bound could barely recall.
“It’s not just humans,” she whispered. “You bring everything?”
He reached for her, touching her sleeve as he explained they would only move a portion of it—some small part of that whole so that both realms could live—and he heard the hiss. It echoed through the forest like a stone over water, skipping unpredictably from spot to spot to spot. His grip on her tensed, and both of them froze.
“What is it?” Mackenzie whispered.
He met her gaze for one heartbeat, and then pulled her to his chest. “Hounds.”
Arms wrapped tight around her, he lifted them both, darting through the air only paces above the ground. The blue-green limbs and iridescent leaves rushed past, motionless despite his speed. Mackenzie clung to him, pressing her face into his shirt to not see. Her weight was too much for him with the poison still lingering in his blood. She was human and this was not the human world. He would not outrun them with her, not the king’s best hounds. He could feel them gaining, their low, slithering forms scooting across the forest floor. Giant salamander-like bodies with sharpened claws, snakes merged with dogs in some ancient dragon form, too fast and too smooth and able to maneuver better than any other beast. And he couldn’t fly.
“Hunter, what’s wrong?”
Mackenzie’s words were cut by their speed, her cheek brushing the skin of his neck. He was holding her, she was wrapped in his arms, and he could do nothing but sacrifice her to the dogs. To Azral. To the king. He faltered, her back brushing the greensward, and he whispered into her ear, “I’m sorry.”
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