I swallow hard as the teleportation hub hums to life around me.
On the one hand, it’s utterly fascinating to be at the center of this much magical exploration. I never realized how strictly King Grathgore restricted magical study until last night, talking with all of the magicians of King Galan’s court, when I felt connected to something in a way I’d never felt before. Everything I’d ever thought about the barrier, all of the careful observations I’d had to hide and the conclusions I’d shared only with my mother in whispered conversations in wild places where we couldn’t possibly be observed, they were all met with smiles and open deliberation.
It had never occurred to me that there might be a place where magicians would talk openly about their work. It was exhilarating.
But it was so much easier to be exhilarated when the magic in question was hypothetical. Of course, their plan should work. I’d seen Lytheinne’s calculations and heard her arguments. Stars, they were the same arguments I’d whispered to myself in the shadows of the Dragon Pass.
The barrier was built with anger and hate. Ergo, care and concern, added to a strong connection between a heart from the Worlds Above and a heart from the Lands Below, should be able to break the barrier.
But it’s one thing to agree to the theory that the teleportation hub could amplify heart magic enough to shatter the barrier when you’re sitting in the middle of a warm room after a meal of thick, spiced stew, salad dotted with pomegranate seeds, and bread fresh from the oven. It’s another thing entirely to stand beneath the looming gray stones of the activated teleportation hub when it’s your heart on the line.
A hand closes around mine.
“You okay?” Orryen whispers.
I nod, then turn to offer Orryen what I hope is a reassuring smile. He looks very solemn this morning in his new Royal Guard uniform. The strange magical glow of the teleportation hub casts long, flickering shadows over his face. He turns toward me, takes both my hands in his, and then leans down to whisper in my ear.
“It’s not too late to back out,” he says.
I close my eyes and let his words wash over me. I think of the Kingdom of the Summer, of the once-grand houses on the outskirts of town that now stand empty, given over to the roving dust storms that blow off the plains. I think of our teleportation hubs, neglected and abandoned, and the traders who must instead cross the Dragon Pass to bring goods to the kingdom. When I was a child, the farmers leaving our kingdom after each failed harvest had made caravans to cross the Dragon Pass for the Silver City or head toward Cairncliff and the sea. Now, there are so few farmers remaining that even the caravans are gone. Those who leave go silently, by themselves.
And then I think of the cold little pub where Orryen brought me after I’d attacked him. I remember the barkeep who’d brought me a mug of hot, spiked tea, even though his eyes were wide with fright. I remember the cloak Orryen fixed around my shoulders and the biscuits they gave us. Survival biscuits. How much longer can those people survive under those conditions? How much longer can either one of our kingdoms survive with the barrier draining our magic and our lands?
I meet Orryen’s gaze. He looks so heartbreakingly serious. Has he always been so handsome, I wonder, and I just didn’t notice it at first? Or is the heart magic already beginning to work?
“I’m not backing out,” I whisper.
The corner of his mouth twitches in a soft, secret smile. “Neither am I,” he replies, and his words brush the skin of my neck.
Orryen lifts his head and turns to the side.
“We’re ready,” he announces.
The teleportation hub pulses with a fresh influx of magic from the men and women standing in a circle just inside the ring of standing stones. It’s glowing, a strange, silver light that makes me think of moonlight falling across the marble floor of the palace ballroom, only it’s so bright that my head feels like it’s swimming.
“Let’s begin,” Lytheinne calls from somewhere beyond the bright magical glow.
I’d seen them set up this morning, all the king’s magicians carrying their delicate and mysterious instruments through the streets, past the barrier garden, and to the teleportation hub. I can imagine the tall woman with her little silver dials, the baker with his crystal orbs. But all I can actually see in the harsh magical glare of the activated teleportation hubs is Orryen’s dark eyes and carefully trimmed beard, the furrow between his brow, and the shifting shadows chasing each other across his face.
I reach for his cheek and feel the rasp of his beard against my palm. Orryen turns to me, smiling, and I smile back at him. Magic is heavy in the air now, like the heat and moisture of summer along the ocean shore on those nights when it feels like the border between the air and the water has been erased.
“Kiss her, dear,” Lytheinne calls from beyond the circle of stones.
A frown ripples across Orryen’s face, and I can feel the stab of his embarrassment, his fear of losing the respect of the court he serves. Then he bends down, and our lips meet. Heat crackles in the air around us, and I can’t tell if it’s magic or the strength of his kiss that steals the breath from my lungs. His lips press to mine, and I lean into him. Magic tightens around us, thickening the air like steam. Orryen breaks our kiss, buries his face in my neck.
“Elanerill,” he says, and the word is a whisper torn from his throat.
His fingers thread through my hair, tugging me apart. I gasp, clinging to him like we’re both lost in some strange and unforgiving sea. He’s trembling in my arms, shaking against my body, and I can feel him, his heart, all that is Orryen, Captain of the King’s Royal Guard. His desperate desire to be the best, to prove that even a lowborn orphan can earn a place in the royal court. The isolation that follows ambition, the aching loneliness woven into the warp and woof of his entire adult life.
My own heart throbs with the magic, dragging me forward, desperate to meet Orryen’s loneliness with my own. All the years of living apart from everyone around me, harboring Mother’s terrible secret knowledge of the barrier but also knowing that every single person in my life was only there because of the role I was born to play. Not because I was interesting or intelligent or attractive, but because I was a vessel for the blood of King Grathgore of the Kingdom of the Summer.
A cold thread weaves its way through this realization. Fear. I almost don’t recognize the emotion as it pours out of my heart and into Orryen. Fear has been my shadow for every day of my life, keeping a rein on what I can do, what I can say. I follow this dark thread all the way back through my own heart.
My mother’s fear. It’s bound every aspect of my life so neatly I didn’t even realize it was there until I fell out of my world and into another. Until I could breathe in a place where King Grathgore, my grandfather, couldn’t reach me.
“Now!” Lytheinne’s voice echoes through the ring of stones, distorted and refracted by the thick layers of magic pulling tight around us.
And magic lances my chest.
I gasp, although the sensation isn’t pain so much as obliteration. My legs give out, and I sag against the solidity of Orryen’s body. I’m gasping for air, but the feeling is strange and distant, as though I’m hovering in the cloud of magic knotted through the teleportation hub and watching my own body struggle for breath.
Magic pulses and tightens. Orryen sinks to the ground so gracefully, like a dancer, with my body clasped in his arms. The magic in my chest pulls tight, then tugs, yanking at my insides like a fishhook.
And then it explodes.
Something somewhere breaks. The sound is delicate and distant, like ice cracking in the deep forest, and then the world is an explosion of light, blinding white and blue and golden, the light of the sun, that bright, burning orb in the Worlds Above. Heat seeps into the world like blood escaping from a puncture wound. It washes over me, and I want to close my eyes, to drift on that blissful warmth.
But Orryen is screaming. He’s screaming like he’s suffering, and I can’t leave. Can’t leave him. Not like this, not while he’s hurting. I try to focus on the brilliant pinprick of Orryen’s voice, the scrape of his words against my consciousness.
“She’s not breathing!” he’s shouting. “Stop! Stop, damn it! She’s not breathing!”
Warmth and light slowly ebb, leaving the jagged edges of pain in their wake.
“Voids below,” someone mutters, their voice a low burr of sound.
“Stop!” Lytheinne calls. “Stop, everyone. Stop!”
Slowly, the borders of my own body close over me, trapping me in darkness. My chest feels like it’s been cracked open, leaking heat and light into the cold emptiness of this world.
“She’s not breathing!” Orryen screams. Sobs.
Magic is pouring into me as fast as it bleeds out, the soft warmth of Orryen’s healing magic, but he doesn’t know I’m broken. He doesn’t know it’s spilling through me. I struggle to open my eyes, to lift the darkness all around me, and for a very long time, I can’t remember how.
But Orryen is screaming. Somewhere, his heart is bleeding.
I draw a desperate breath, and something deep inside me cracks open. My breath leaves my chest in a shattered whisper. Shadow and light dance across my vision, flickering like flames.
“Get her out of the stones!” someone yells.
“Lytheinne.” That’s a man’s voice, solid and calm. King Galan. “Lytheinne, what do we do?”
Lytheinne’s voice is steel wrapped in silk. “Take her through the hole.”
Arms pull tight around me. Fear jumps inside Orryen’s heart. I bring all my energy forward, focusing on the dance of light and heat across my face.
It’s the teleport hub. The stones have fallen silent, cold and empty, but something remains. Something shimmers in the center of the teleportation hub. It’s shifting like the air just above a fire, dancing and wavering while somehow remaining motionless. And it’s spilling something onto the cold stones of the Lands Below, something bright and familiar.
Sunlight. Sunlight from the Worlds Above spilling across the stones of the Lands Below. Sunlight pouring through a fresh hole in the barrier.
I struggle to pull in another breath. My chest shifts and cracks as my lungs expand.
“It was too much,” Lytheinne gasps. Her voice sounds like it’s breaking up, like it’s coming from somewhere very far away. “She— You both— You gave too much.”
“Damn you!” Orryen screams. His heart is trembling wildly inside his chest, sending echoes through my body. “How could you—”
His words cut off as he gasps for breath, and then his body shifts against mine as he struggles to come to his feet. Men rush forward and fear dances across my skin, but they’re coming to help, not to punish. Someone catches my back and shoulders. Hands wrap around Orryen’s chest and help him to his feet, and I slowly recognize the king. King Galan holding Orryen, the orphan he’d chosen as his heir, as if he were a child learning how to walk all over again.
“I’m sorry.” Lytheinne’s words fall to the ground like polished stones. “We can’t finish the spell with the princess in this state. Orryen, please. She needs to return to the Worlds Above, to regain her magic, just for a moment. Or you both might—”
Lytheinne turns away, her face a blur of movement. My chest aches. Focusing my eyes seems to take more energy than I can muster.
“I’ll take her,” King Galan says.
Orryen moans. My heart twists at the pain in his.
“We can’t separate them right now,” Lytheinne replies. “It’s too dangerous, the heart magic isn’t complete.”
The king sighs. It’s a soft sound, almost a whisper. When he speaks next, his voice is so low I know it’s only intended for Orryen.
“Can you walk?” he asks.
“Yes,” Orryen replies.
“Can you take her through the portal?” the king asks. “Do you wish to?”
I feel Orryen’s answer inside my own chest. His certainty. The ferocity of his conviction that he would do anything in this world or the next to keep me alive. I pull in another cracking, agonizing breath, my determination responding to his.
“Go, then,” King Galan says. “It’s been open long enough. The Kingdom of the Summer will know what’s coming. You show up with their princess in your arms, and they’ll know we come in peace.”
I’m dimly aware of hands on my arms and around my waist, hands tugging me upright. My vision has faded to shadows and smears of light, but I can feel Orryen’s presence burning like the midday sun, and I lean toward his heat and light. His arm wraps around my waist. My head falls against his shoulder, and for just a heartbeat I’m aware of how we must look, like two children lost in the woods, stumbling toward what we desperately hope is the warm, welcoming light of a fire.
Orryen’s hand tightens around my waist. Voices rise in the air, but they’re distant and distorted, and I can’t be certain which world they’re coming from.
Then Orryen steps forward, and we fall into the fire.