I held Kasia’s hand until it grew cold, before uncurling my fingers and setting them in my lap. The rest of the house creaked and groaned. Wind howled mournfully, shaking the rafters.
It felt as though a horrible weight, one I hadn’t even realized had been crushing me, was gone. Even still, all I felt was sadness mingled with relief.
I shouldn’t have felt sad. Not for Kasia. Not after what she’d done. But I was.
I reached over to close Kasia’s eyes and fold her hands over her stomach. Like this, it merely looked like she was taking a brief rest.
I stood, wincing at all the little aches and pains that’d collected throughout my body. I limped to the door and looked back at Kasia. Once I found my way back to the Academy and made sure everyone else was all right, I’d come back with help and bury her. I wasn’t sure how the others would react to that, but I had to do it. It would bring me my own sense of peace.
But first I had to get home.
My magic felt almost completely drained. The hollowness in my chest was gone, but the stirring of the Prince and his magic wasn’t there, either.
“Prince?” I said as I limped into the hallway, heading to the foyer. “It’s over. She’s gone.”
The Prince was silent.
Maybe he was mad at me for not having already found a way to free him. Maybe—strangely enough—he was mourning Kasia in his own way. He’d hated her, but as a god his connection to her, a Zukami, had been stronger than most.
“I can’t wait to see the look on Asher’s face when I get back,” I said, talking to keep my mind off the pain. “Mia and Colson too. I’ve nearly died so many times they’ve probably started a betting pool. And my parents…”
I ran a hand down my face. “They’ll lock me in my room for a year until they’re sure I won’t disappear again.”
I stumbled over a fallen beam and stopped to catch my breath. My legs were shaking again. My fight against Kasia, as short as it was, must have taken more out of me than I’d thought. It almost felt like a part of my magic, a part I’d used like a crutch, was being pulled from me, leaving me weak and unsure on my own.
“Prince, you want to tell me what’s going on?” It was becoming harder to breathe. My magic continued to shift and change. I closed my eyes to get a sense of it. It was still mine, but it was different now. No longer did I feel the incredible surge of power I’d had before. “If this is you pouting because I haven’t gotten you a body yet—”
My chest exploded with pain. Pain like my breastbone being pulled apart; pain like my heart being wrenched from my ribcage.
I collapsed, screaming. The house spun. I braced my arm against the floor as everything blurred into indistinguishable shapes. The house vanished—
—only to be replaced by the Realm of the gods, silent and dark and empty—
—only for that to be replaced by nothingness, and then—
I slammed to a halt. I closed my eyes and swallowed hard, taking five deep breaths to stop my shaking limbs before opening them again. The world really had stopped spinning for good, though my stomach felt as though it would never stop.
When at last I felt steady enough to lift my head, I let out another shocked breath. Kasia’s house was gone, and I was in a place I’d only seen once before, through the portal Zephyr had conjured when we’d visited the Night Court.
This realm was totally, achingly flat except for a single mountain in the dead center, covered with jutting spires of rocks. The spires looked like they were less than a mile away, but something about the vast, unconquerable feeling of this world told me it was a lot farther than that. Much like the Realm of the gods, the entire place was cast in perpetual twilight, stretching my shadow out far ahead of me, across the fine, copper-colored earth. It was silent and hauntingly peaceful. It was what I imagined standing at the edge of eternity must have been like.
I tried to stand, but the weight of this place pressed down on me and I merely slumped back, spent. The air itself seemed to clamp down on my lungs. Even when I raised my hand to rub at my face it felt weighted down. Sluggish.
“You’re dying, here,” the Prince said.
I’m not proud to admit I let out a little yelp of surprise. What do you expect when an entity who’s supposed to be trapped inside you suddenly appears in full physical form?
And he was in full physical form. There was no aura of power or evil-ness around him. His eyes were a vibrant blue instead of glowing gold, his lustrous hair dulled to a muddy brown. Even his posture was a bit slouched, like he was every bit the actual teenager he appeared to be. He didn’t look evil, just unusually handsome.
I didn’t like him looming over me so I tried to stand again, only to fall right back down. I glared at my legs, as though they were the ones to blame for all this. Then I turned that glare up to the Prince. “What do you mean I’m dying?”
“Mortals can’t survive in this realm,” the Prince said.
“If it’s killing me, then why’d you bring me here? Besides the obvious reason.”
“I didn’t bring you here. I had no say in the matter. One second I was embroiled within your magic, and the next…”
He spun in a full circle, taking in all the lovely sights of nothingness. He paused when he faced the mountain. I might have been going crazy, but it looked a little closer than it had before. If I squinted really hard, I could almost imagine thin, sketched lines of paths leading up to the top. But up to where?
“I suppose, when I was breaking free from your magic and into my true form, the magic that bound me wished to take me back to where I originated from,” he said.
“You mean the Realm of the gods,” I said, suddenly understanding. “But you saw, it wasn’t the same. Well, not exactly, I think it looked about the same, but something was wrong with it. It wasn’t lit up or…alive.”
“Yes, I know. So when returning me there wasn’t an option…” he held up a hand at the landscape. “I suppose the magic brought us here.”
I waited for him to sneer at the ground, to laugh callously at the single pane of blue sky. For a guy who’d come from a castle with all the trimmings of a gothic horror novel, and all the excitement of constantly trying to woo his host and enact his plans of getting a body of his own, this place should have been the epitome of lame. Like being pulled out of Disneyworld and plopped in the middle of the Sahara. Sans death by heat.
Only he didn’t look furious. I wasn’t entirely sure what the new expression on his face was, but if I had to guess—and it would have been a wild guess—I would say it was peaceful.
“I still don’t understand,” I said. “When Kasia died, did she free you? Was her magic the only thing tying you to me?”
The Prince smirked down at me, but not in a cruel way. “You never did learn how to cast magic properly, did you?”
I bristled. If I could have stood and walloped the guy, I would have. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means, when you cast the severance spell to cut off Kasia’s connection to the Realm of the gods, your aim went a little wide. Either that or you used more power than even Radell intended. But I personally believe you just have poor aim.”
I opened my mouth to shoot back an answer. Then I thought about it, recalling what I’d seen after I’d cast the spell on Kasia. I’d had a brief glimpse of the Realm of the gods. Then the strands…Yeah, the strands of magic tethered from where I’d stood to the enormous cloud in the distance. Then all three of them breaking, one by one—
Three of them. Kasia’s original god, then Nolan’s, then mine.
The Prince was right. Whether Radell had known all along that using the spell would sever my power as well or I really had cast the spell incorrectly, it’d succeeded in doing what I never could have before.
“Well…you’re welcome,” I said.
“Don’t expect any thanks,” the Prince said, and for just a moment, his peaceful expression clouded over with something ugly and angry. Something I was more used to seeing. Then it passed and he was back to looking around at the fruitful expanse of nothing. “And yet I will admit I owe you some measure of gratitude. A very small measure.”
I shifted a little away from him. I may have been all but helpless here, but that didn’t mean I needed to be close to him if I didn’t have to be. He was free now. Free to do whatever he wanted. Free to exact revenge on whomever he wanted.
The Prince didn’t miss my movement. “We are finished, Skylar. I have no reason to fight you anymore. And you have no reason to associate with me.”
“I have a hard time remembering that when the last time we talked like this it was a lot more painful from my end.”
“Yes.” The Prince frowned. “I was angry. At you. At her. At myself. I still am, but…lesser now. Something about this place…you don’t feel it?”
I sucked in another deep breath as I started to go lightheaded again. “I feel something, but I’m not sure it’s the same thing you are.”
The Prince looked down at me, seeming to understand what I was implying. “You can stay, if you’d like.”
“Do I have a choice? Aren’t we stuck here?”
“I have my magic, and yet…” The Prince examined his hands, as though trying to find fault with them. “I don’t think I can leave. I don’t think I want to leave. This is where I’m supposed to be. But you…as I said, mortals cannot survive in the realm for long. But my magic could protect you.”
He reached down with one of his hands, offering it to me. “You could stay here with me and we can explore this place. Together.”
I stared at his hand, mind racing. He wanted me to stay, with him, forever. Or for as long as I would last with his magic protecting me. I didn’t believe he asked me in any sort of romantic sense. I wasn’t even sure he offered as a friend. It felt more like a request from someone who had been through the same things I had, who understood me as well as I understood myself. Heck, we’d shared souls. You didn’t get much closer than that.
“You don’t want to.” The Prince pulled his hand back. “You don’t wish to stay.”
“I…”
I took another look around. Now that I took the time to open myself up to it, there certainly was something peaceful about this place. Empty, devoid of life, but devoid of everything else, too. I imagined that I wouldn’t suffer pain here. I wouldn’t suffer heartache or sorrow or anything. My life could be endlessly…bliss.
And that’s why I couldn’t stay.
“No, I can’t,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
The Prince’s brow furrowed in confusion. “After all you’ve been through, this is your chance to leave it all behind.”
“I’m okay with it, though, all the pain. Because I have some really great things back in my life, too. No matter how bad things get I’ll always have my friends and family. Life might suck sometimes but…” I shrugged. “It’s my life. For better or for worse.”
“I understand.”
It was my turn to wrinkle my brow. “You do?”
He pointed to himself. “It’s my body. It’s my life. Now that I have it, I wouldn’t give it up for anything. I hope you find your way back home. I hope you return to your family and find those you love, and live as long a life as you’re granted.”
“Yeah, I hope you do the same.”
The Prince chuckled. “I’m not sure I need all that. I think I’ve already found what I wanted. I just can’t put a name on it.”
He nodded toward the mountain, which in the time we’d been talking seemed to have moved even closer. “I feel something from there, a calling of some sort. I think I’ll go check it out. And for you…”
He waved his hand. A beacon spell of burning orange, cast into the shape of a small bird, took flight from his fingers. It gave a haunting cry as it circled once around us, then vanished. “Hopefully my magic is strong enough to reach someone who can find you,” he said. “And I’ll leave some protection to keep you alive a bit longer.”
“Thank you,” I said sincerely.
The Prince turned from me to the mountain and squared his shoulders. Then, without a second glance back, he took off, striding confidently away until he was nothing but a dark speck. I watched him reach the base of the mountain, watched as his figure moved up the sketched trails on its face and rounded a bend.
Then I blinked and the mountain had moved impossibly far back again, and I couldn’t see him anymore.
Time had no meaning here.
I was pretty sure I’d thought that before, but I wasn’t sure when. Was it now? Or had it been later? Was I going to think it in the future? Wait, that didn’t make sense. Or did it? Whatever. My head hurt. Yes, time literally had no meaning here. This wasn’t a place that obeyed any scientific laws I knew.
I stayed sitting where I’d collapsed, continuing to grow weaker as the Prince’s protection slowly wore off. As it did, the pressure of the realm pressed more strongly down on me. I could feel my muscles tiring, even while sitting. I considered lying on my back, but I knew if I did that I’d never get up again. I had to stay seated. I had to be ready for…
For what?
The Prince didn’t seem confident his beacon had reached anyone. Even if it had, I wasn’t sure anyone was still alive or in any position to start conjuring portals to other realms. I wasn’t sure they had the magic to do so. I remembered my mom telling me stories of her time in one of the Fae’s realms. Even Lucien hadn’t been able to conjure portals to those places. Or conjure portals out of them.
My head was starting to sag as the fatigue took over. I waited for the sun to set, but it remained fixed on the horizon.
I was glad the Prince had found his peace here. I was glad Kasia had found hers. And now, maybe, it seemed I would finally find mine.
My eyelids started to droop. I was so incredibly tired. If I couldn’t lie back, maybe I could close them for only a moment…
And then a sound split the everlasting silence: it sounded like something unzipping.
Figured. I was so exhausted I’d reached the point of imagining things. And my mind was doing a good job of it too. I’d just imagined the sound of a Farcast portal opening. I was even imagining the shape of another person’s shadow falling over me.
“Skylar,” Asher breathed.
I practically fell over into warm arms. Framed in the twilight, I could make out Asher’s concerned face.
“At least my visions are pretty,” I murmured.
That got a smirk out of definitely-not-real Asher. “Look who’s talking.”
“Bring her back, quickly. She won’t survive here much longer.”
Was that General Zell’s voice? Impossible. The guy hated me.
My head lolled to the side as Asher lifted me and carried me over to an open Farcast portal General Zell stood beside. The General peered down at me, and I saw something that might have been worry on his face. “Looks like we made it just in time.”
No way. Even in a dream General Zell wouldn’t have been this concerned. This was real. This had to be real.
“You came back for me,” I mumbled.
Asher smiled. “Anywhere and always.”
Then we stepped through the portal back home.