52

“Fire,” she said.

The tension in the air seemed to shimmer like heat waves. I didn’t know if it was her power or my nerves causing it.

Corinne knelt in the center of the circle. She clicked her tongue, and Sini, her cave salamander, peeked its head out from the hem of her trousers. She held out her hand and Sini crawled into her palm, comfortably winding onto her wrist. She stood up, then gripped the salamander’s body and flipped it over, revealing the creature’s vulnerable belly.

I clapped my clean hand over my mouth, eyes widening. Part of me wanted to leap over the circle and stop this. I’d assumed the water in the equation would be just that: water, pulled from the bathing pools around us. But she’d said blood, and she meant it, blood from a water-dwelling creature that had built its life in the cave. She slit the salamander’s throat deftly; it thrashed once in her hold then fell still. She dripped its blood over the circle, then placed the lifeless body outside of it, directly across from me. There was still tenderness in her motions, in the gentleness she held the salamander’s body, but there hadn’t been a moment of hesitation.

Again I wondered. Would I have been able to do something like that? Take a pet’s life in hand like that and end it, if that was the only way I had to survive?

“Water,” she said. She tilted her gaze up to the roof of the cavern again and breathed in slowly. The air hummed with power.

Then she drew the knife’s blade across her own palm and spun in a circle again, just as balletic as the first turn, and her own blood dripped onto the circle.

“Air,” she said.

She knelt in the center of the circle and placed both palms flat on the floor of the cavern. The air crackled even more, like it was carrying lightning with it, and prickled over my skin. My wolf roused into alertness, both curious and anxious. Corinne’s clothes shifted in an unfelt breeze, and her hair floated around her again like she was underwater. Her eyes shone, and the faint glow under her skin became brighter and brighter. She channeled the energy down into her hands, then it was glowing under her palms, like she had trapped light under her hands against the earth.

From the place she touched the ground, a portal began to spiral open. It spread out like a stain, a shimmering silvery light—more of the same light that had been under her skin. It flowed until it was contained by the bloody circle like a new bathing pool in the cavern.

She stood up. Her eyes glowed the same silver as the portal beneath her. I stared at the portal, hypnotized by the unfamiliar shine, and how it seemed to shift under her feet like water. I’d imagined it differently, like she’d wave her hand and open a gash in the world to step immediately through into somewhere else. The opaqueness of the portal frightened me. Internally, my wolf laid her ears back, unsure.

“Come,” Corinne said. “We did it. Now we can escape.”

Again she held out her hand, just like she had when she was creating the portal.

This time my anxiety writhed in my throat like it was alive. “To Frasia, right?” I asked.

She nodded. “To the Court of Nightfall.”

I’d come this far. All I could do now was trust her. We both wanted the same thing—freedom. Fae magic was the only thing that could give it to us.

Internally my wolf whined. She wanted to pull away from that mysterious portal and rush back to our private quarters, tail between our legs. But if I stayed here, I’d have to face Draunar again. Face him… Or worse, be his.

The shudder that raced through me at the thought was enough to drown out my wolf’s plaintive whines. I took Corinne’s hand again and stepped across the circle onto the portal. I held my breath as I did so, feeling like I was stepping onto a very thin layer of ice. The portal was soft under my feet, plush like moss. It was unnerving walking on it, and I stared at my feet, unsure of its solidity. Corinne took my other hand in hers. The gash on my palm had slowed to an ooze, but hers still dripped blood, bright red that sank into the portal and disappeared.

“Ready?” she asked.

I met her glowing eyes. “Yes,” I said. “Let’s go home.”

Corinne squeezed my hands reassuringly. Her power sparked over both of them, not painful but strange, and then the portal shimmered beneath us.

We fell.

I tried to scream but there was no air in my lungs. I didn’t know what I was expecting—Drifting? Floating?—but falling wasn’t it at all. The darkness was abyssal, dizzyingly deep, and I closed my eyes tightly rather than strain to see Corinne through the thick inky blackness. I focused on her grip as we fell, and fell, and fell.

Then, through my tightly closed eyes, light flooded in, red through my eyelids. I gasped and my lungs filled with crisp, cold air; the inhale was almost intoxicating after weeks of stale cave air. My back hit the soft ground with a whump, gentle as if I’d tumbled off a hammock instead of falling for what felt like ages through the darkness.

I dropped my hands to the ground beside me and slowly opened my eyes.

I was in a bed of soft grass. Overhead, plush clouds drifted in the cool breeze, and the sky was so blue it didn’t exactly look right. It was almost too blue. Had I forgotten how bright the sky could be in Frasia after only a few weeks locked away?

Internally, my wolf whined. I’d thought she’d settle in Frasia, but my nerves only worsened.

Slowly, I sat up, then groaned as a headache roared to the front of my skull. I pressed my fingers to my temples and closed my eyes again.