Page 27 of Ruined Kingdom

“All right then, if you’re both ready,” she said loudly as she turned her back to us and began motioning something with her hands.

A beam of light stretched across the arch like a piece of paper. Or a doorway.

I felt the need to squint even though the light from the magic didn’t burn my eyes the way the sun’s light would. The sheer power from it crackled and raised the hairs on my arms as we drew nearer to it.

It was a portal, just like the one the Fae King had created to pull Yenisey and me through.

I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until Kaine squeezed my hand. “Relax, Soph. Nothing will happen to you. I won’t let it,” he said soothingly. He then bowed his head to the side, bringing his lips to my ear, and murmured, “You look breathtaking, by the way.”

Without waiting for a response or allowing me to decide against going with him, he led me forward through the veil of otherworldly light.

It suddenly felt like I’d dived into a pool of pleasantly warm water.

This is so strange…

I looked at Kaine, and my heart skipped a beat.

It wasn’t Kaine as a man standing beside me anymore, but his true form.

I wasn’t just looking at him in his shifted form. This was his bare essence.

He was surrounded by shadow and pulsated with power. There were aspects of his human and wolf forms melded together. He turned his head to face me and his beastly eyes widened.

“Soph…” His voice sounded far away, the way it usually did when he visited my dreams.

Why is he looking at me like that?

I looked down at my hand to find that my skin was glowing as well—not the way Kaine was, though. It was something completely different. Before I was able to comprehend what I was looking at, we blipped out of the portal.

My mouth fell open, but I couldn't think of a single word.

Kaine continued to stand as still as a statue, looking at me in awestruck silence.

“What is it?” I asked, searching his eyes for an explanation.

“What indeed.” His mouth barely moved as he spoke. “I saw something, but I have no clue what it was. You were something … different.” Kaine stared down at me seriously as he tried to piece together what he’d just witnessed.

“Alpha King!” a voice exclaimed, and he looked away from me hesitantly to greet whoever had called out to him. “So happy that you were able to make it here on such short notice.”

A welcoming committee of about twenty Light Fae greeted us. Oddly enough, apart from them being normally sized and standing with their feet on the ground—meaning they didn’t resemble the floating orbs with a little person in it—every one of them was dressed in fine materials with gold-encrusted pieces attached to their uniforms.

All the Light Fae I’d met before had never been dressed in such finery. Their clothing had always been ethereal, yes, but simplistic. For that reason, I assumed these ones were special somehow. Maybe they were part of the Queen’s personal guard.

Kaine simply nodded in response to the fine soldier causing them to all turn in unison and march us through the massive white stone gate standing before us.

Everything here was unusually bright, which made seeing anything other than the soldiers and the gate difficult—almost as if we weren’t meant to see anything else. However, my opinion changed as soon as we crossed the threshold of the gate. Clearly, the entrance had just been an illusion.

The moment we stepped into the city, I could see that the ground was made up of what I could only assume to be clouds.

My knees became wobbly at the thought that we might be elevated thousands of feet into the sky.

My grip on Kaine’s arm tightened instinctively as if he was going to magically sprout wings and save me if we fell.

“I’d tell you that there's nothing to be afraid of, but then you might let go of my arm, and I don't think I'm ready for that yet,” Kaine admitted, chuckling to himself.

“You can't tell me you're not the least bit worried that we're walking high up in the sky right now,” I blurted out, forcing myself to keep looking ahead of me—and not down, where I might find clues to prove me right.

“It's not the sky as you know it. This is a completely separate plane of existence,” he explained with a reassuring smile, with a hint of amusement to the curl of his lips, as we entered what appeared to be a market area.

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