Chapter Fifty

It didn’t take long to locate the window to Harangirr—the aggressive blue desert city was impossible to miss, its blinding white monolith buildings jutting into the dusty sky. It was the brightest and hottest city in all of the Immortal Realm. Both its jagged buildings and citizens had been hardened by millennia of brutal storms that sometimes left half the city buried up to its crowns in peaks of cobalt sand.

“I still don’t understand,” said Harry, even after they had found the window. “How are you going to . . .”

Orion clasped the pendant in one hand. “You said this would amplify my magic.”

Harry’s stomach plummeted. “That’s what you were counting on? You can’t just—”

“Just trust me,” Orion interrupted, taking a stand in front of the window. “My magic acts differently in this realm. It doesn’t always listen to me, but I think I’ve figured out the pattern. It wants to survive. Whatever stands in its way be damned. And it sure as hell should know that I’m as good as dead if we stay here.” His brow scrunched in concentration. “Eoin did most of the work, anyway. The windows show exactly what’s happening in each of these places, so there must be some sort of magical connection already in place.”

Harry finally realized the simple brilliance of Orion’s plan. “So all you need to do is widen that connection. And by the time Eoin notices we’ve left the palace, we’ll already be in Harangirr.”

Orion nodded and braced his palms against the window pane. “Hopefully, yes.”

Harry watched in astonishment as the glass began to pulse, vibrating from the sheer outpouring of Orion’s magic. He couldn’t sense the magic itself, but he could certainly feel the effects, buzzing through his bones like electricity. Orion gritted his teeth and shoved his palms outward, and the glass melted to sludge right before their eyes. A vicious wind howled into the room, carrying with it swirls of blue sand that stung their eyes.

“You first!” Orion shouted over the wind, holding a hand out for Harry to grab. “Hurry, before Eoin comes!”

The wind wailed, dragging Harry backward, but he finally managed to latch onto Orion. They helped each other through the window, wriggling and squirming through the opening until they tumbled headfirst into a scorching sand dune. The window swallowed itself with a pop and vanished.

Without daring to squander a single second, Harry raised his fingers to his mouth and whistled high. No more than a few moments later, the sand at their feet trembled and a swarm of butterflies of vivid lapis lazuli exploded forth in a geyser of wings. Orion gasped as their little bodies blurred and began to merge into the shape of a sleijh, complete with a hood to keep the sand out.

“Up we get,” Harry said, snatching Orion by the waist and hauling him onto the sleijh even before it had fully solidified. “Isenynesi, please!”

With the desert storm battering the curved rails of the sleijh, they zipped into the sky, the sleijh’s exterior camouflaging seamlessly with the blinding cobalt backdrop overhead.

Soon the sleijh dipped down to skim the sand, the dark-blue crests below them rising and falling like ocean waves. “Keep your eyes sharp on the dunes,” said Harry. “The gateways conceal themselves to everyone except those privy to their true names.” And the only beings who knew those names were Eoin, the Council of Immortals, and anygnés—since they always had to use them for travel when summoned to the Mortal Realm.

“There!” Orion exclaimed, waving down at the ground just up ahead, where a whirlpool of sand writhed as if some beast were trapped beneath. It took Harry a moment to spot it properly—without the aid of his enhanced eyesight, he almost mistook it for another windblown sand dune. “Now what?”

“We jump,” Harry replied, his heartbeat hammering against his throat. “It will open for us only if we jump.” Ever faster, the gateway approached. Having arrived at their destination, the sleijh quivered beneath them and began to unravel into individual pairs of wings.

“We made it.” Orion laughed and interlocked their fingers. “We actually made it.”

A giddy grin crept across Harry’s face. “Yes.” There it was—freedom, lying no more than twenty feet below. “Against all odds.”

“On three,” Orion said. They coiled down in the scattering sleijh, bent their knees in preparation to leap for the gateway entrance. “One . . . two . . . three! ”

Together, they vaulted off the sleijh into open air, clinging onto one another as they hurtled down toward the gateway.

We are going to make it, Harry thought to himself in amazement. After all of the hardship, all of the struggle and torment . . . somehow, by the grace of the Immortals, they were actually going to make it.

The sands below heaved in anticipation. Like the bottom half of an hourglass, they spiraled into a great, churning vortex. Harry squeezed his eyes shut and held Orion closer. He felt the brush of smiling lips against his own, fleeting and victorious—

A pained shout escaped him. The sharp sting of blades laced down his torso, piercing through his flesh. Claws tightened around him and jerked him to a halt mere feet away from the void of the gateway below. Orion dangled beneath him, clutching desperately onto his hand, his ice-blue eyes wide with shock as he stared past Harry’s shoulder.

Harry craned his neck, trying to follow that gaze. His vision was already fading to black at the corners. He managed to glimpse an eyeful of feathers, but nothing more.

The claws dug deeper into Harry’s sides. A glistening trail of crimson spilled down his arm, first running along his knuckles and then dripping onto Orion’s, painting a line across the bare flesh to entwine their bodies in blood.

So close.

So fucking close.

Despair crashed down upon Harry like buildings toppled by an earthquake. Then, in the collapse, as hope disintegrated to dust around him, a precious realization—

Those claws only held onto him.

Meaning that Orion still had a chance.

Harry didn’t let Orion’s gaze find his. He didn’t let Orion realize when he let go, when he forced his fingers, already slick with blood, to slip free.

Ice erupted from Orion’s palm, surging up Harry’s forearm and binding them together. Just hanging on.

“No,” Harry choked out.

Orion shot him a sad, lopsided grin. “You think you can get rid of me that easily?” he quipped. Sand and blistering hot wind lashed at them, but his ice held strong.

“Go home,” Harry begged. “Please.”

Orion sighed in fond exasperation. “Idiot,” he whispered. “Home is nowhere without you.”

By then, it was too late. Wings pumped them higher into the sky and Harry could only watch on as the gateway fell away and freedom—wretched, wonderful freedom—escaped their clutches once more.