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I was still gasping when we hit the ground on the other side of the Doorway in the World of Legends. My face felt like it was on fire.
“Don’t touch it!” Gran said urgently. “Magic fire sticks like tar!”
I hissed in pain, my hand hovering just inches from the burning pain in my cheek. It was all I could do not to scream.
“And it’s marked up your crown!” Gran said, her hands steadying me as I quietly keened at the agony, my eyes rolling up in my head and my jaw aching from clenching so hard. “What a shame. Hand me my bag, Stef!”
“Can you help him?” Zyla asked, grimacing.
“Hurry, Stef!” There was a shuffling sound. “There it is.”
Gran rubbed something on my face and the pain went from screaming agony to a dull ache.
“You’re lucky,” she said. “But then you knew that. You have an Eye Pendant, don’t you? They make you lucky. Or at least they give you extra chances. I don’t know if I’d call that luck every time.”
She was still rubbing.
“We need to get back there,” I said now that the blinding pain was subsiding.
“With what army?” Stef asked. “Didn’t you see the soldiers charging toward us? I can only hold off so many attacks with my staff!”
“Eventen ...” I began but my words were cut off by Zyla. She grabbed me by the shoulders and kissed me fiercely on the mouth until my cheeks were on fire in an entirely different way.
When she was done, she pulled back, looking entirely shameless.
“I knew you’d never get around to that on your own,” she said. “Sometimes, a girl has to take charge or she’ll wait forever for a man to do the right thing.”
“I ... I was just getting to it,” I stammered, my cheeks getting even hotter at the combination of amusement and disbelief in the eyes of all three women. “I’ve been preoccupied.” I frowned at their giggles. “We need to go back there. Or haven’t you noticed that we’re in the middle of something?”
Zyla nodded fiercely, her laugher cutting off and her expression turning serious once again. She rolled up her sleeves like she meant business.
“Another Ko bearer!” Gran said with a grin. “This is good. You will give her some of your power.”
“She doesn’t have a ring,” I objected.
“The ring only amplifies what you can do and how much you can give. You can still share your power with her. Give her some.”
Reluctantly, I tried the same trick I had with Bataar, reaching through the ring to pull magic from the Doorway to give to Zyla. It pulled through so easily that it was more like removing a dam from a river than pulling a cart. It flowed through me into the marks on her arms like it was filling a pitcher.
Zyla’s mouth formed a pretty “O” as she watched her Ko glow a brilliant purple as they filled with power.
“What can I do with this?” she asked.
“With that, you have power here in the World of Legends to rearrange things. And you have power over golems to stop them.”
But that didn’t solve the problem before us.
“Maybe if you grab Eventen you can pull him in here and weave some kind of trap around him,” my mimic suggested.
I hadn’t noticed him before. He stood off to the side surrounded by a gaggle of people who spoke to him excitedly. It worried me that he had friends here. Where had they all come from? The mimic rolled his eyes at my thought and pointed to Ty’nea in the crowd. Oh. They were the released souls from the golems.
“And now we need a plan,” Gran said. “Urgent or not urgent, we can’t just race back into harm’s way without an idea of how to get out again.”
“I think I have a plan,” I said.
“And if your plan is to pull our attackers in here one by one to dispose of them, then you need a better plan than that.”
“I was only planning to trap Eventen in here,” I said, blushing.
She snorted a laugh. “See? I can read your mind.”
“I think that might work for Eventen,” Zyla said. “And I think I can do that part.”
Her face was set in grim determination.
“How are the refugees from Estabis City?” I asked, remembering my responsibilities and nervous about the answer.
“All safe,” she said, coloring as she spoke. “We had them safe and under the protection of the Dominar when I made a foolish mistake and trusted the wrong person. She grabbed me, stuffed me in a sack and the next thing I knew, I was here.”
“I’m glad you’re okay,” I said earnestly. But I was worried about the ‘next thing I knew’ part of the story. Did they have a Door of Heavens somewhere else?
“Enough of the sweet chatter. There will be time for that when all of this is over,” Gran said gently. “More than enough time. Now, this girl –“
“Zyla.”
“Zyla will grab Eventen and use the power that you just gave her to secure him here. But we still need a plan for the soldiers, Tor. They aren’t golems. You can’t freeze them in place. We need an army of our own to fight them blade for blade – at least as long as it takes for us to get to your dragon.”
“Agreed,” I said, smiling as I looked at the mimic and his friends. “I think I have just the souls for the job.”