Page 6 of Fading Sun

He’s been out there tonight trying to find—and likely kill—Viktor. He said he had it handled, but what if something happened to him? What if he needed me, and I wasn’t there for him?

What if he’s already back at the Fairmont, and he knows I’m not there? That I left, even though he asked me to stay put for the night?

“What’s wrong?” Cassandra asks.

“It’s Damien,” I tell her. “He’s been calling. A lot.”

I call him back, my heart pounding as I wait for him to pick up.

He answers before the end of the first ring.

“Where the hell are you?” His voice comes through the phone like a shockwave, his anger barely contained.

It’s different from his usual intensity. There’s a sharp edge to it, a tremor that makes my chest tighten.

“Little Island,” I say, since there’s no point in lying about it. He clearly already knows I left. “I’m sorry. I know I wasn’t supposed to leave. It’s just?—”

“Stay where you are,” he cuts me off. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

Morgan

Blaze and I are in the witch Langwerda’s cottage in the mystical realm, and he’s holding the Crimson Quill—the artifact that will strengthen his blood magic—as if it’s the lifeline he never knew he needed.

Our next step is getting to New York so he can use the quill to get the potion out of Amber’s body.

I thought he’d smile at my suggestion that we take a plane. At least, I hoped he would.

Instead, he rolls his eyes and turns his attention to the witch.

“Where’s the nearest airport?” he asks, sarcasm dripping from his tone. “Past the garden of drugged roses? Through the valley of deadly lightning? Or maybe we should turn right at the forest full of bears and radioactive rabbits?”

Langwerda gives him a look so sharp it could cut glass. “If sarcasm were an art, you’d be a master craftsman,” she says. “But, as you’ve clearly deducted on your own, there are no planes or trains in the mystical realm.”

My gaze travels back to the quill in Blaze’s hand.

I can’t fire travel between realms. I can’t even fire travel with another person.

But with the quill, there’s no telling what Blaze might be able to do.

Before I can consider it further, I glance down at the scar on my forearm. The place where he engraved the word sanare on my skin. It’s the word he used to heal me so he could stop the Tatzelwurm’s bite from killing me.

The wind’s whispers in my mind didn’t start until after he cast the spell on me.

He did the spell with the penknife he carries with him, but still… I want him to keep that quill as far away from me as possible.

“I guess we’ll just go back the way we came,” I say, although I really don’t want to do that. The journey was exhausting, and we barely made it through as it was.

“No need,” Langwerda says, and my heart leaps at the possibility of another option. “The two of you did well in your trials. You can leave through the waterfall in my backyard. You did see it when you approached, correct?”

See it?

The narrow waterfall flows down the cliff of a mountain so tall that it touches the sky. It looks like the sort of place people visit to take photos of themselves and post online.

A person would have to be blind to miss it.

“Yeah. We saw it,” Blaze says simply.

“All you have to do to return to your realm is walk through it,” she replies.

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