Heat and light wash over me, burning my skin, forcing tears from my eyes. I cling to Elanerill’s body, pressing her to my side, desperate to protect her from this new danger. But my desperation is met with her placid calm.
Sunlight.
I’m not sure if the word is spoken aloud or if it’s merely traveling on the bond connecting us, reverberating somewhere in the space between our hearts. There’s a hint of a smile, a playful gleam in Elanerill’s eyes, and then my boots hit the ground and I stumble forward, closing my eyes against the horrible glaring light.
“Sire! Something’s coming through!”
The words are spoken with a strange, clipped accent. I don’t recognize the voice.
“Hold,” a man replies.
Fear lances my chest. It’s not my fear. It’s an echo of the dark thread that spooled from Elanerill’s heart when we joined beneath the teleport hub. It’s her fear. Her fear of—
I force my eyes to open. Voids, it’s so bright here. The earth itself seems to shine with a light so brilliant and white it’s almost blinding. And the heat; this land bakes like an oven. Was it always this hot, this bright, in the Worlds Above? Is it only my memory that’s faded?
Elanerill gasps, and her body stiffens. Figures dance across my vision, shifting patches of shadow in the blinding light.
“They’ve stopped, Sire,” a voice barks. “We can close it.”
I blink, squint, and blink again. Voices tumble over themselves in the dry, dusty air around us. Sunlight dances off gleaming lengths of metal and burnished chest plates. Swords. Armor.
We’re surrounded. By an army. My chest tightens, my own fear amplifying Elanerill’s. We’re facing the ruthless Kingdom of the Summer.
I’m standing before the army that murdered my father.
“Wait!” Elanerill shouts. She’s gasping as if she’s been running, and she’s leaning heavily against my side, but her voice is strong. “I am Princess Elanerill.”
The soldiers in front of us shift and murmur. Then, as if following some command, they stand aside. I suck in a breath of the dry, dusty air. Magic swirls around us in this world too, but it feels desiccated and sharp, nothing like the warmth of the heart magic Lytheinne wove in the Lands Below. No, this is the magic of a blade, of a weapon. Of hatred and anger.
“Hold,” the man’s voice says again.
It’s a slow, cold voice. Elanerill’s fear shivers through me.
One man steps forward. He’s tall and slender, with hair that’s beginning to go white around the temples. He wears a crown topped with jagged, serrated points, but I don’t need the crown to identify him. Elanerill’s terror is enough. He walks forward as his army melts before him. The man fixes me with his dark eyes, and it takes all my remaining strength to keep my knees from buckling.
I’m standing before Grathgore, King of the Summer.
“Veils,” Grathgore says, flicking a finger at the man standing beside him.
The man nods. Shimmering magic rises in the air behind the king, obscuring the army behind him. The low rumble of their voices cuts off as abruptly as if we’d just been closed behind a solid iron door. The king stands with a handful of attendants behind him and lifts one elegant eyebrow.
“Well, well, well,” he continues in that slow, cold tone. “Granddaughter. What a surprise.”
Terror pumps through Elanerill’s heart. She turns from the king to the knot of men and women standing behind him.
“They’re dying down there,” she says. “In the Lands Below. The barrier is killing the Kingdom of the Fall.”
“Yes,” the king replies. “Pity it’s taking so long.”
Cold fear trickles down the back of my neck despite the baking, oppressive heat of the sun. They are afraid, I remind myself. I need to show the Kingdom of the Summer that they have nothing to fear.
“Your Highness,” I begin. “I am Orryen, Captain of King Galan’s Royal Guard. We’re returning your granddaughter to—”
The king turns to me with a wide smile and drops his hand to his waist, almost as though he’s going to shake my hand. My sun-numbed mind recognizes the movement for what it is a heartbeat too late. I turn and shove Elanerill out of the way as King Grathgore pulls his sword from its sheath. Elanerill stumbles backward. Grathgore moves like oil on water, smoother and faster than I anticipated.
He’s still smiling as he lifts his sword and drives it into my gut.
There’s pain, but not as much as I would have expected. The world flashes brilliant white as air is forced from my lungs. I bend over and blink at the ornate golden hilt now sticking out of my abdomen.
And that’s yet another Royal Guard uniform I’ve ruined.
Someone is screaming.
It’s Elanerill. Her heart is racing like a trapped bird flinging itself against a window. I turn toward her, wanting to comfort her. My mouth fills with blood.
“Close it,” the king commands.
His voice cuts through the fog of Elanerill’s screams. The magic in the air draws sharp and tight, hundreds of blades pointed at the portal behind us. At the tiny little crack we managed to make in the barrier that’s killing my people, my entire world.
I spit. My blood spatters against the dry earth of the Worlds Above. That’s it, then. All our effort, all our years and years of sacrifice and struggle, and one little crack in the barrier is all that King Galan has managed to achieve.
Perhaps it would have been different if I’d managed to convince Rowan. If I’d won one of his chess games, if I’d sent him stupid little puzzles in response. Perhaps we could have done something more with our lives.
Determination surges through Elanerill’s heart and hits me like a punch to the gut. Her hands close on my shoulders. I look up, through air that’s hazy with blood loss and sharp magic, and I find her dark eyes.
“I will find you,” she growls.
She leans in and presses her mouth to mine. My head swims. When she pulls away, my blood is smeared across her lips.
“I love you, Orryen,” Elanerill says. “And I will find you.”
Then she shoves me backward. I stumble, my arms flailing as magic burns my skin and sucks the air from my lungs. My heart screams as I fall, and the weight of an entire kingdom’s hatred and fear suffocates the light of the Worlds Above.
The crack vanishes slowly, like a lamp running out of oil, glowing first a brilliant, incandescent white, then yellow, then orange, and finally a dull, angry red, the color of dying coals winking bitterly beneath a mountain of ash.
And then all that is left is the blue-green wash of the glowsoft orbs and someone screaming for a healer. I’m a healer, I think, but when I open my mouth to reply I find I have no breath.
I have nothing left.