by Dean Murray
She stared at him, mouth a thin line.
“It doesn’t work that way, Mackenzie. I can’t just take you back.” He would have to wait, sneak her out closer to the culling. He was amazed they’d made it through at all.
She said an ugly word. A very ugly word followed by a string of cursing so creative a virago would have blushed. It didn’t help. She was in the Land of Oz. He didn’t know what that meant precisely, but she’d said so. Repeatedly.
“Dorothy,” she muttered. “In the Land of Oz. Flying monkeys and tornados and click your heels and let me go home…” Her eyes were closed, dark lashes fluttering as she swayed like a tree on the breeze. There were no tears.
And there was no breeze. The air here was flat, stale. This was the dying lands. Not her home.
It could never be her home.
“Kenzie,” he said, ever so gently. “We really shouldn’t stay here.”
“Here,” she whispered, voice no more than breath. “Here.”
Hunter slipped a cautious hand beneath her arm. She was a creature so changed from his first glimpse of her at the park. “I’ll get you home, Mackenzie. But not today.”
He hoped it wasn’t a lie, but deep down, Hunter knew the truth. They were both likely to be killed among these trees. Both of them lost to the dying lands.
They walked over low grass, the soft green blades a distorted echo of her home. Hunter knew what the shock of finding another world felt like, even though his own had come so many years before. Life here was flat, a paper drawing of the existence in her world. It would be beautiful—color and light, soft edges and curled lines—but a drawing no less. The dying lands lacked the wet leaves and drops of rain. It lacked the bite of a chill wind and evidence of constant growth. Of renewal. That was how the translation was made, from his language to hers. She lived in a place of renewal, the undying lands.
Everything that was here, on his side of the plane, had been acquired, stolen from those lands to be cultivated with a power that required fuel. The energy of her world. Things could be brought over and fostered, things could and unquestionably did change, but nothing was born here.
Nothing but him.
He glanced over his shoulder, the chittering nightbugs hidden in blue-green undergrowth the only thing watching their stride. He shouldn’t be forced to walk on this plane, but between the wound in his side and the draw on his power, he’d have to leave Mackenzie if he wanted to fly. And he couldn’t seem to do that anymore.
“It isn’t much farther,” he promised, though his assurances didn’t receive a reply. He was taking her to an outpost, the place that would most resemble her home. They might be safer outside, but only until the bloodhounds trailed them. And Hunter needed supplies.
A cabin, if he were to translate it, the terms falling with each step through his mind. Human language had surrounded him, but there were still words he rarely had the chance to speak. Every word he wanted to say felt like that now. Unfamiliar. Wrong.
He felt nearly as disoriented he suspected Mackenzie did. Not because he was lost, but because he knew exactly where he was, and just how much trouble he’d gotten himself into.
She stumbled, the toe of her black leather boot catching on one of the desiccated vines. The grommets holding her laces had already started to turn, the thin metal unable to withstand the energy around it. Hunter steadied her arm, helping her through a latticework of roots and vine. He could feel the change in himself as well, the return of a power that had been leached from him. It was hard to say whether it was a relief or not.
By the time they reached the outpost, a substantial gray building between massive wood-like posts, it was clear he was the only one whose condition was improving. He ushered Mackenzie through a carved plank doorway to the deepest depth of the structure. Seven rooms between him and the entrance. Seven rooms to hear them come.
Mackenzie hadn’t said a word.
She was in shock. Or some kind of waking coma. He wished he’d learned more about human medical conditions. He settled her onto a sofa—some dying-lands mix of a loveseat and cot. Her words didn’t work here; none of these things were as real to him as the world she called home.
Hunter tugged off his jacket, careful of his injured side, and laid it over Mackenzie’s lap. She didn’t blink. He thought he might feel her skin, check for fever, but when he brushed the back of his fingers across her cheek, they lingered. Words came softly from his lips, of their own accord. “Kenzie, you’re—”
He wasn’t sure what he’d intended to say, but she flinched. An outright recoil, as if he’d slapped her.
He dropped his hand, sorry. But that word didn’t come. Of all the words to slip, not the apology.
She sat up, as if coming awake, and tugged the jacket tight around her.
It wasn’t cold.
“What are you?” she asked.
Hunter wet his lips, not wanting to ever have this conversation. “One of them,” he said. “Iron Bound.”
“Why did you bring me here?”
He shook his head. He could tell her it hadn’t been him. But Azral hadn’t been the one who’d swiped her up, snatched her struggling body from one of the Iron Bound at the army outpost and dragged her to the gate. Azral might have pulled her in, but he hadn’t made Hunter save her.
Azral hadn’t forced Hunter to keep her, hide her within.
“Were you using me?” she said. “Was I bait?”
Hunter flinched, a reaction not so different from her own. “No, wh—” But she had been bait, hadn’t she? Azral had used her against him.
“Mackenzie, I never intended any of this to happen.” He ran a hand over his neck, suddenly tired. “I never expected you to find me. For a human to stand up to…” Monsters. They were monsters to her.
They were monsters to him too. And no matter what else he was, he was one of them.
“You’ll take me back,” she said.
He wasn’t sure if it was a question or demand. “I can’t. Not yet.”
“When?”
“In a few days, when the gateway is closer.”
Her brow lowered.
“It’s complicated,” he said.
Her eyes narrowed further, a look that could only be followed by violence.
“I won’t be able to reopen the… portal,” he explained, grimacing at the use of her term. “Even if I could, the forces… the gravity of it would crush you. I won’t let you die here, Mackenzie. Not like that.”
Not like that.
“So we’re stuck, on this side—” She shook her head, corrected herself. “Me. I’m stuck here.”
“It’s only for a short while. I’ll try to get you out, as soon as I can.” It was all he could give her. Because the truth was, in that short while, they might both be dead.
“What am I supposed to do then?” Her voice quavered. “In this place. What am I supposed to do?”
She was alone. In another world.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But you can’t go now.”
Chapter Fourteen
She stared at him. Since the moment he’d met her, Mackenzie Scott hadn’t been able to keep her gaze off him for long. Hunter understood why. She’d spent the whole of her life pushing people away, keeping them free of the bubble she’d created for her and her brother, the safety of no one knowing they’d been abandoned. But Mackenzie had let Hunter in. The one person she shouldn’t have.
For his part, he hadn’t taken his eyes from her either. But it wasn’t any sort of interest. It was wariness. Because he’d spent the whole of his life knowing he could never allow a human to discover the truth.
He rubbed a hand over his face, unable to keep from glancing again at this girl. Who was he kidding? It wasn’t merely interest, it was outright covetousness. His. Just like the story said, he wanted her for his own. He frowned, angry at his own loathsome idea, and pulled at the cloth of his shirt where it was irritating his injured side.
Mackenzie leaned forward. “Yo
u’re hurt.” Her voice was flat, and he couldn’t decide whether it had been a question.
He answered anyway, turning to face the chiseled wall to bring his side away from her view. “I’ll be fine. It’s healing.” The energy here was feeding him.
Mackenzie shifted, as if to move for him, and winced. Hunter bit down his automatic response, because the words would have been in the language of the dying lands. She had gotten hurt in the fall. “What is it?” he asked, sliding onto the edge of the seat beside her.
The pain must have been too sharp for her to notice his approach, because she didn’t shy away. “It’s nothing,” she said. “Just cracked my shoulder again when we landed.” Her gaze fell to the tattered material of his shirt, now on full display. The borrowed shirt was torn, shredded by the raven claw Azral had lodged in his side. The claw Hunter had snapped.
It was a severe thing to do, worse than the injury the other man had inflicted, because it was taboo. Splintering a raven claw was something only the king would do. But Hunter couldn’t feel regret for it. The humans Azral had Marked would be his last.
Mackenzie pulled her shoulder in, hugging it close to her body, and Hunter realized she was purposefully not touching the carved plank walls. “It’s all right,” he found himself saying. “It won’t hurt you. It’s like the shell of your coral. Nothing in this place will do you harm.” This place. This outpost.
Not this world. Not his realm.
“That man,” she said. “The one who cut you.” She wet her lips, eyes going to the blood staining his shirt, back to him. “He was the one from the park.”
Hunter nodded.
“You knew him. That day, he was talking to you.” Spitting on you. Cursing your name.
Had poisoned you.
“Yes,” he said. He was going to have to tell her this. She was going to have to know. And as soon as the hounds found them, none of it would matter. “Azral. The king’s guard.” It wasn’t quite the right word, but it would have to do.
“King’s guard,” Mackenzie repeated numbly. She glanced around the room, taking in the statues, polished floor that would look to her eyes like marble, all of it pristine. An undersea castle from one of her storybooks, the palm-like leaves swaying in a current that wasn’t there. She drew a deep breath. “King’s guard.”
“Mackenzie—”
“You were telling him what to do,” she said. “Agsral. He was standing there, all of them bending to you, and you were telling them what to do.”
“Azral,” he corrected, all too aware that her grasp of their tongue was not the issue at hand.
She scowled. It was fearsome, probably honed by years of wrangling a teenage boy, and he had to restrain himself from reaching up to loosen the collar of his shirt. He shrugged a shoulder, though the feeling of being strangled was entirely phantom.
He brushed a thumb across his chin. “Malkyn is not my father,” Hunter said. The words felt like blasphemy, even here. “But he is king. And I am his possession.”
She blinked, pulled a hand over her eyes. “Wait. I know… I mean… I’ve been through a lot lately. Just, just help me process this.”
“There is an order to things here,” he said. “A succession. Not unlike your stories of kings, knights, and heirs.” Knights was another wrong word, for so many reasons. But he could not explain that to her, not here. “There are things expected of me, of each of us among this realm. Azral betrayed me, Mackenzie. He used me, misled me.” Hunter shook his head. “I was a fool. But that doesn’t matter. We are here now. What’s done is done. The danger on this side of the wall is no different than in your own home.” It was worse, so, so much worse. But he couldn’t tell her that, either.
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 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 might 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 hea
d. “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 Fifteen
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.
