I was momentarily blinded, clutching a handful of Maddok’s feathers and the reins with all of my strength. Then the flash of light was gone and we burst out of the suffocating silence into the air above a sharp cliff.
Maddok screeched as our momentum sent him tumbling over the edge. I barely clung to his neck, my legs clamping onto his sides as he spread his wings, caught an updraft, and leveled out. But then, with another cry, he suddenly nosedived, plummeting once more. I barely caught sight of Barloc lying unconscious on the edge of the cliff, his gore-covered neck and face pressed to the rock face as we dove past him.
“Maddok! Maddok, stop!” I shrieked, flattening myself onto his neck, barely able to cling on to him without tumbling over his head to the earth far, far below.
But the gryphon ignored me.
The wind screamed past my ears, whipping my hair back and lashing at my eyes and face. What was wrong with him?
And then I spotted Loukas—tumbling through the air beneath us.
“Loukas!”
The gryphon was diving as fast as he could, but I wasn’t sure if we could reach him before he smashed onto the rocks below.
“Go, Maddok, go!”
The rocks surged closer and closer, growing larger and more deadly by the second—until I began to fear that we, too, would shatter onto them. Then somehow we soared past him and Maddok immediately twisted in midair, spreading his wings to level out, a split second before Loukas slammed onto the gryphon’s back, crushing me. All the air was forced from my lungs, silencing the scream that had built in my throat.
This time, he wasn’t faking being unconscious—and there was no Sharmaine to hold him onto the gryphon with her power. When he nearly tumbled off one side again, Maddok lowered the opposite wing to force him to slide back on. It worked, but only for a moment. He was complete deadweight; it was only a matter of time before he slid off of the gryphon. We needed to land, and soon. I twisted around, squeezing Maddok’s sides as tightly as I could with my knees, and wrapped an arm around Loukas, pulling him forward to collapse onto my back. I hoped I could keep him at least level until Maddok found somewhere to land.
The gryphon soared away from the cliff and the sharp rocks, while I clung to Loukas and the saddle. I’d dropped the reins entirely, hoping Maddok knew where to go—and that he needed to hurry. Already my arms shook from the effort of holding on to Loukas’s heavy body, my muscles burning from disuse. Below us the rocky outcroppings gave way to rolling hills with thick copses of trees and stretches of swaying grasses.
“Land, Maddok! We need to land!” I shouted, praying the gryphon could understand me.
The creature twisted his head back and squawked at me, with an agitated snap of his beak.
“I can’t hold on to him any longer!”
Part of me recognized the ridiculousness of arguing with a gryphon, but my desperation was stronger than any logic.
Maddok bobbed his head twice, his beak lowering, almost as if he were telling me to look down. Though I felt even more silly, I did, my eyes roaming over the seemingly perfect landing spots once more. The grass moved peculiarly beneath us; I squinted as I strained to look down without losing my balance and my grip on Loukas.
And then I noticed them—the strange-looking animals scuttling across the field. Their narrow backs were the exact same shade of green as the grass, which was why I hadn’t noticed them at first. There were so many, they covered the entire field, which was why the grass had looked like it was moving. There had to be hundreds of them. They were like nothing I’d ever seen before.
What were they?
And where were we?
“Hurry, Maddok. I really can’t hold him any longer,” I shouted against the wind as he hurried away from the horde of creatures all rushing the way we’d come.
The burning in my arms turned into sharp pain that shot up into my back.
“Now would be a really good time to wake up!” I yelled at Loukas, though I knew he couldn’t hear me. If only I’d succeeded in getting my power back, I could have tried to heal him. I’d been so close—if the others hadn’t followed us and ruined it. I still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened; I only knew I hadn’t drunk enough blood to make the change back to Paladin. The hole within me that Raidyn and Zuhra had patched up was still there. I remembered what it felt like to have my power inside me, and I didn’t feel that way now. There was a slight warmth within, the softest brush of power stroking at that emptiness, but it was only a ghost of what I’d once possessed—a pale shadow of what I’d needed to take back before everything had gone wrong.
“Loukas! Please!” I shook him as best as I could without unseating both of us.
He moaned something unintelligible.
“Louk! Wake up! Now!” I shook him again, even though I barely had the strength to hold on to him, let alone try to move his body without both of us falling to our deaths. Maddok screeched, as if he understood what I was trying to do and wanted to help.
A shudder went through Loukas’s body, and he mumbled something.
“Louk! You have to wake up, or we’re both going to fall off this gryphon!”
“Fall?” His voice was thick, the word nearly unintelligible, but with a huge grunt, he managed to push himself off me to sit up.
I nearly cried in relief. My arm cramped the moment I was sure he was alert enough to remain in his seat and let it drop. Overhead, the sky was an endless expanse of thin slate clouds, the sun barely visible, its warmth weak at best. Without Loukas sprawled over me, the chill swooped in, raking over my skin, making me shiver.
“W-what happened?” His voice was a scratchy whisper, but his mouth was still close enough to my head for me to hear his quiet question.
How did I answer it when I honestly had no idea?
“I don’t know … you lost control of Barloc, and he used your knife to make this glowing cut in the air and dragged you through and—”
He suddenly stiffened, cutting me off. “Are we … is this Visimperum?”
“No … that’s not possible.” But even as I denied it, an icy cascade of terror washed over me. It wasn’t possible—was it? Could we really be in the world where the Paladin and rakasa lived?
“It is,” he said, his disbelief palpable. “How … how did we get here?”
I explained what Barloc had done, how Maddok and I dove through the narrow strip of glowing light after him and Barloc—and how Barloc had been lying on the cliff that Loukas had fallen off, that Maddok had barely managed to save him from smashing on those rocks.
Loukas twisted behind me; I glanced over my shoulder to see him looking backward, then to the side. “I know that mountain. I know where we are. We’ve patrolled here before. It’s not too far from the gateway … maybe a day’s flight or less.”
“Then let’s go there—we have to get back.” Hope, delicate as a tiny sprout pushing through the soil, sprang up.
“I can’t open the gateway by myself, and I’m guessing you didn’t succeed at getting your power back.”
My silence spoke volumes.
“We have to go to Soluselis and warn them about Barloc. I’ve never heard of anyone being able to rip portals to our world through thin air before. If he can do that now, that means he can do it back to Vamala—and take others with him.”
“But … what about my family? What if I … if I need to be healed again?”
“Soluselis is where the most powerful Paladin are … If you need to be healed again soon, going there is our best bet at keeping you alive.”
He picked up the reins and pulled Maddok to the right. “It looks like midday. We should be there by tomorrow evening, if we don’t stop much. But first we have to get away from here. We’re in rakasa land, and they’ll be drawn to the amount of power Barloc used to rip a gateway out of thin air.” That was what those green creatures had been—rakasa, a whole herd of them, rushing toward the explosion of power.
I lapsed into silence. There was no convincing Loukas to go to the gateway—and it sounded like even if we did go there, we wouldn’t be able to get back to my home and my family anyway. If only I’d had more time to talk to Zuhra about her experiences when she’d been here—and how she’d convinced them to open the gateway for her to come home. Would they do it again for me?
We only stopped once until we were clear of the rakasa lands, to relieve ourselves and get some water, but Loukas was determined to continue onward until we were back in the safety of the Paladin lands, despite his obvious exhaustion—and Maddok’s as well. I tried to distract myself by looking at the scenery of Visimperum—in a few short weeks, I’d gone from being lost in the roar most of my life, to healing multiple people who were near death, including myself, losing my power, leaving the citadel, and now I was in a whole other world—but my mind kept circling back to what had happened, how it had all gone so horribly wrong. I replayed it over and over, each time more awful than the last. My stomach twisted into knots. I made myself breathe slowly in through my nose, afraid if I didn’t calm down, I would vomit the blood I’d swallowed all over Maddok and Loukas. I shuddered at the thought of what I’d done, of the disgusting heat of it, the metallic taste still in my mouth if I let myself think about it. And for what? Nothing.
I’d failed.
So, even though I should have been full of wonder at the chance to see this whole other world, instead, I glared at the rolling hills and grassy fields and mountains that grew and grew, until they towered over us, monstrous in the darkness, the moon hidden by the same clouds that had obstructed the sun.
“We should be safe now,” Loukas finally murmured, after hours that seemed to have stretched into eternities. “We have to stop. Maddok must rest or he won’t make it through the pass.”
I didn’t even bother asking him what “the pass” was as he angled the gryphon toward a small pond and the clearing around it. In the far distance, a glimmer of lights shimmered, hazy and indistinct. A small village or town, the first sign of habitation I’d seen in this world.
As soon as we landed, Loukas climbed off Maddok’s back. I didn’t realize just how exhausted he still was until I felt his arms tremble from the effort of helping me down. It had never fazed him before. Once we were on the ground, Maddok hurried to the pond, dropping his beak into the water and slurping it up in great gulps. Ripples spread across the surface, marring the reflection of the dark sky above us.
I stood still, arms wrapped around my waist, watching as Loukas walked over to the edge of the pond and knelt in the muddy banks, dropping his hands into the water and lifting it to his mouth. Once he’d drank his fill, he turned to look at me. His green-fire eyes were dulled from the expenditure of his power trying to control Barloc, but they still glowed, a beacon in the night. Vivid and beautiful and intense. Our gazes met and held, and for the first time since we’d left the rest of our group behind to track down Barloc, it hit me that I was completely alone with a boy I barely knew.
“Are you thirsty?”
His voice was deep and melodic, with that Paladin accent that made all the words in our language sound so much more lovely than they had any right to sound. I didn’t respond, even though my tongue was swollen from dehydration, scratchy and thick in my mouth. I was too afraid to move for some reason. I’d chosen to rely on Loukas, to ask for his help, but now that we were stranded together in the Paladin world, the reality of our situation sent my heart racing. Could I trust him? He’d done what he’d promised to do, with no benefit to himself, and had nearly died because of it—because of me. I wasn’t sure I had a choice at this point, other than put my faith in him and hope I wasn’t making yet another terrible mistake.
“Yes,” I finally croaked, embarrassed at the strain I couldn’t hide from my voice.
He gestured me forward, but when I moved, my legs buckled and nearly gave out. I caught myself before I fell, but my overused muscles trembled, rebelling against my need to remain standing and move to the life-sustaining water.
Loukas was there at my side before I’d taken more than a few unsteady steps. He took my arm, more gently than I might have expected, and helped support me as I staggered toward the pond. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, cheeks hot, even though the night was cool and a breeze that danced over the ripples still spreading across the surface of the pond lifted the hair from my neck.
“You aren’t used to riding for days on end—or having to support my deadweight for part of the ride,” Loukas said as he guided me to the bank where he’d knelt. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. It takes time to build up muscle. Especially if you’ve never been particularly active before.”
I wasn’t sure why, but his words made me bristle. Halvor had never made me feel ashamed of my secluded life, knowing the limitations the roar had forced upon me. Yet somehow, with only a few words, Loukas made my stomach burn with embarrassment. “I didn’t really have a choice,” I said.
“I know you didn’t.”
We stopped at the edge of the water, but he didn’t kneel yet. I felt the weight of his focus on me and reluctantly turned to look up at him. Our gazes met and held. I swallowed once, hard, almost involuntarily. We were so close, too close. His hand was on my arm, his body within inches of mine. His eyes searched mine, so intent, so piercing, my heart thumped against my ribcage and a flash of heat skittered over my skin when his fingers tightened around my arm.
He’s in love with Sharmaine. And I have Halvor, I reminded myself, shocked by my unexpected reaction to Loukas—and more than a little mortified. It reminded me far too much of what Zuhra had described feeling with Raidyn.
As if I’d spoken out loud, he suddenly released me and stepped back. “Let me know if you need help.”
I was grateful for the cover of night to hopefully hide my blazing cheeks as I nodded and dropped to my knees, cupping my hands to scoop up some of the cool, clear water. Though it was dark, I still caught sight of my reflection—of the blood crusted around my mouth and chin—and nearly heaved up the one mouthful of water I’d swallowed. There was nothing to be done for the stains on my clothes, but I splashed the water on my face and did the best I could to rub away the gore. My stomach roiled, and I reluctantly gave up on drinking any more.
“We can sleep for a few hours and then push on to Soluselis,” Loukas announced as I forced myself to stand and turn away from the pond. Maddok had already curled up near where Loukas had spread out both of our blankets, side by side, close to the shore.
“You don’t want to get back to Sharmaine as quickly as possible?” I didn’t look at him when I spoke, but I felt the change in the air between us—the tension that surged up, the spark of … something. I wasn’t sure what.
There was a pause before he said, “I know there’s no time to waste, but it won’t do us or the others any good if Maddok collapses or if I’m not back at full power before we push on.”
I nodded silently, not trusting myself to speak, eyeing the lack of space between the two blankets.
Loukas must have followed the direction of my gaze. “We need to stay close together so I can protect you. Just in case,” he added when my eyes widened. “We’re far enough from the rakasa lands that we should be safe here.”
My legs began to tremble again, but I was afraid it wasn’t merely from my exhausted muscles anymore. Be brave, Inara. You can do this. It’s only for a few hours. Halvor would understand.
I forced myself to kneel and then stretch out on the blanket, facing away from Loukas, toward the pond.
I felt him do the same, the heat of his body filling the small space between us. A shiver of awareness started at my scalp and slinked down my spine to my belly. Stop it, I commanded myself, determined to control the disconcerting reaction to his proximity.
“How long have you loved Sharmaine?” I asked, staring at the water that had gone still once more, as smooth as glass, determined to build a barrier between us—emotionally if physically wasn’t an option.
Loukas made a choking noise as though I’d startled him in mid-swallow.
“How did you know it was love?” I pressed on, determined to keep his mind on her—and get some answers all at once.
When he finally answered, it wasn’t what I was expecting. “I don’t,” was all he said, his voice low and gruff in the darkness, some of the melodiousness cut away by the sharpness of his tone.
Still, I refused to be deterred. “You don’t love her, or you don’t know if it is love?”
He exhaled, so hard, his warm breath brushed the back of my neck; goose bumps flashed over my skin. “Do you love that scholar? The jakla’s nephew?” he countered.
I wanted to be able to say yes without hesitation—but for some reason, I couldn’t. Did I love him? I enjoyed speaking with him, I’d healed him and we shared a bond from that, and his touch, his kiss, helped erase my pain. I cared for him—deeply. But that was why I insisted on asking Loukas how he’d known … because I didn’t. “He’s kind to me … he understands me.” It wasn’t an answer, and we both knew it.
“Does he, though? How can he truly understand you when he can never know what it feels like to be hated for what you are? When he can never imagine what it felt like to be trapped in your own mind? Is it possible to love someone who can only know parts of you—the parts that make sense to them?”
His words raced like poison beneath my skin, hot and uncomfortable, bringing too many things left buried too close to the surface. Memories of my mother, memories of the townspeople of Gateskeep, memories of the prison I’d spent only one night in—but had believed would be my last. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I?”
“No, you don’t.” Was it my imagination, or had he shifted ever so slightly closer to me? Why could I feel the length of him behind me, the heat of his body, even though we weren’t touching?
“I’m a mentirum,” he said, as if that proved his point.
After a long pause, I finally said, “And?”
He laughed, a short burst of sound that held no humor. “And if you think growing up as the only Paladin surrounded by family was hard, imagine growing up among thousands of Paladin who all know you could control their minds without their consent at any time, should you choose to.”
“Oh.” I was tempted to turn over—to read the emotions on his face, because I couldn’t understand the tone of his voice. He sounded … strangely indifferent about what he was saying, but there was an undercurrent of something else, something deeper that pierced at the hidden pain in my own heart.
“So I know how kindness, especially when it’s rare, can be … confusing.”
“Are you claiming to understand me better than Halvor?”
He laughed again, but this time, he had the audacity to sound amused. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Well, you’re wrong,” I insisted. But, yet again, his claims writhed beneath my skin, forcing doubts I hadn’t wanted to admit existed to become more clear. Halvor was kind, and he tried to be there for me—to understand me. But there was so much he couldn’t, that he never would. I didn’t know why—if it was the darkness, or the having barely escaped death together more than once in a day, or just his proximity, but I had a sudden urge to admit the truth to Loukas—to this man I hardly knew, but feared might understand me better than anyone else in my life. Even Zuhra. “I don’t know,” I finally whispered.
There was a pause, and then, “I agree, there are a great many things you don’t know, but you will have to be a bit more specific for me to follow.”
“I don’t know if I love him,” I clarified, part annoyed at his continual mocking and part horrified to realize I’d admitted to him what I hadn’t even dared admit to myself until that moment.
Loukas exhaled, his warm breath brushing over my exposed skin and making me shiver. “I have to admit I’m surprised you can be that honest with yourself.”
“Excuse me?” Before I could think better of it, I rolled over to face him, indignation burning in my chest. But my heart stuttered when I realized he was even closer than I thought—his face only a few feet from mine, pillowed on his arm, watching me, his expression inscrutable in the darkness. “What is that supposed to mean?” I forced out past the sudden pounding of my heart.
“You’ve been trapped in a roar most of your life,” he said. “You’ve met only one boy—until now—but you also healed him and created sanaulus between the two of you. So even though you’ve known him less than a month, I was fully expecting you to believe yourself to be madly in love with him. I’m impressed that you can be objective enough not to be certain.”
I stared at him, at a complete loss for words. He’d somehow managed to make me annoyed and proud all at once with his summation of the last few dizzying weeks of my life. “I think having known a girl for most of your life and still not being certain that you love her is far worse than if I had believed myself to be in love with a boy I’ve only known for a month.”
Louk’s eyes widened, but before he could respond, I added, “Don’t you think it’s possible to fall in love with someone in a few weeks? Especially if you’re together all the time? I’ve seen Zuhra and Raidyn together—I am certain he loves her. Don’t you think he does?”
A shadow crossed Loukas’s face, a muscle in his jaw tightened. “I don’t know why you insist on talking about this. We need to rest.” And with that, he rolled away from me, leaving me to stare at the wide expanse of his back, my mind racing and my heart a jumbled mess of uncertainty.
It took me an eternity to get to sleep, but I must have eventually dozed off, because I woke to Loukas shaking my shoulder and the sun rising above the trees to the east of us.
“Time to go,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “I found some wildberries if you’re hungry.” He pointed at a pile on his blanket that was folded near my head, and then walked away to where Maddok sat on his haunches, saddled and ready to go.
I blinked the lingering fuzziness of sleep away and sat up, grabbing a few berries and shoving them in my mouth before scrambling to my feet. I picked up both blankets, the rest of the berries plopping on the ground, and hurried to Maddok’s side, ignoring the stiffness in my legs.
Loukas wordlessly grasped me around the waist and lifted me up into the saddle. I ignored the heat of his touch through the thin material of my blouse. Why was I reacting to him this way? Why did he have any effect on me at all?
I didn’t know anything about boys or what it felt like to be in love—but I was pretty certain that if I was in love with Halvor, I wouldn’t have felt anything when Loukas was near, when he touched me, or when his eyes met mine. Would I?
But if that was true … then what did it mean?
I was miserable and confused and achy and still exhausted. Focus on getting back to Zuhra and your family. Focus on stopping Barloc. None of this matters right now. The terror of what might lay ahead finally forced away everything else, so when Loukas swung onto the saddle behind me, his arms encircling my waist, I almost didn’t notice the muscles in his forearms flexing, or the strength of his body pressed up against mine.
“We’re about to go through the pass,” Loukas said, the first words he’d spoken in what felt like hours. We’d flown most of the day without a break, and the sun had already set again, hours ago. “It’s a tight squeeze, so you’re going to need to hold on to Maddok’s neck while I hold on to you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will.”
Maddok soared up higher and higher, toward what looked a lot like insurmountable peaks to me. “Are we going over those?”
“Not over. Through.”
“Through?” I repeated weakly.
“Get ready to lean forward,” Loukas warned, pushing me down onto Maddok’s flank.
Uncertain of what was happening, I wrapped my arms around the gryphon’s muscled neck, as Loukas pressed his body over mine, his arms going around me and Maddok. My heart raced—from fear and his closeness. Before I could ask what he thought he was doing, the gryphon suddenly banked, tipping his entire body so he was nearly perpendicular to the ground far, far below.
A scream built in my throat as we soared straight toward the hulking mass of the mountains. Right when I was certain we would smash into the rocky face of the cliffs, the gryphon slipped into a narrow gap between the two peaks. I slammed my eyes shut. The loamy scent of earth and rock filled my nose; I could feel the cold rock faces as we soared past them.
And then, suddenly, Maddok straightened back out and the air turned sweet and clear once more.
“There it is. Soluselis. I never thought I’d see it again.”
My muscles trembled with the surge of adrenaline; I was certain we’d narrowly escaped death. When I finally forced my eyes open, the sight that greeted me took my breath away. A massive city spread out across the valley nestled among all those colossal peaks. It was mostly dark, its inhabitants sleeping, only a few homes glowed with light. But ahead, on a hill in the center of the valley, the most beautiful building I’d ever seen, in life or book, towered over the city below. It was entirely white and seemed to glow, even in the darkness of a moonless night.
This was where Zuhra had been? Where my father was from?
It was magic given shape, in the form of a castle.
We were silent as we soared across the valley, but I sensed a building tension in Loukas. His arms tightened infinitesimally around me the closer we got. Finally, we glided over the hedge—so similar to the one surrounding the citadel—and landed in a huge, empty field near the castle. Before we’d even had a chance to dismount, a handful of Paladin rushed out of the castle, jogging over to us.
“Loukas? Is that really you?” one of them shouted.
“It’s really me, Teron.”
“We heard you were trapped in Vamala!”
Loukas climbed off Maddok’s back and faced the group of Paladin now standing a few feet away. “I was. Did Ederra … is she…”
“They healed her. She’s here.”
Loukas’s shoulders sagged in relief. “I need to speak with her—immediately.”
“Of course.” Teron, the man in front who had recognized Loukas first, glanced up at me. “But what about her?”
Loukas turned back and reached up to help me get down. “She comes with me.”
“Are you sure Ederra will—”
“Yes,” he cut him off. “This is her granddaughter.”
I froze. “What?”
“What?” Teron said at the same time. “The one everyone risked so much to get back home?”
“No. This is her other granddaughter.”
With that, Loukas grabbed my hand and pulled me forward. I stumbled past the Paladin, my legs still partially numb from the long flight.
“Where are we going?” I was afraid I already knew.
“To talk to your grandmother.”