Page 54 of Fire in Stone

“If I leave here, I’ll have to start from scratch,” I said. “Dakath is a world I know so little about.”

“I’ll tell you everything you need to know. I’ll teach you—”

I shook my head, not letting his sweet words and the tenderness in his eyes lure me.

“Nerifir is the home to fae, the beings like yourself—strong, powerful, and magical. What would I be among them? Even weaker and more powerless than I’ve ever been here.”

“Whatever comes, I’ll protect you.” His voice was filled with conviction, but he shifted his gaze off me. Deep inside, he knew I was right, even if he wished that I wasn’t.

“I’ll grow old and die centuries before you. No.” I shook my head again. “I’m so sorry, Elex, but I don’t belong in your world. It pains me to see you go. It really hurts…” I shut my eyes tightly against the pain. “But I have to stay here, in the world that I know. At least here, I have a chance to become something one day.”

“Amber—” The deep yearning in his voice gutted me. I couldn’t let him continue.

“Please understand. I’m so tired of being weak and helpless, of relying on other people, of risking them taking advantage of me. I want to be the one in control of my future. And I’m on my way to making it happen. I want a stable life when I know what the next day will bring. Nothing about where you’re going is predictable. Not even for you.”

“You don’t trust me to take care of you?”

“I don’t trust anyone, Elex.Iam the only person I can fully rely on.”

He groaned, fisting his hands in frustration.

“I wish I could assuage your doubts. I wish I could promise you more…”

But that was the problem. He couldn’t promise me anything. He didn’t even know himself what was waiting for him on the other side of the mysterious River of Mists.

Fifteen

ELEX

Amber lifted her eyes from the map on the device she called “cellphone” and came closer to the water’s edge of the creek.

“Does this look like the spot with the portal?” She pointed upstream.

The clear water running over the flat rocks looked familiar, but the shape of the bank was not what he remembered from that day when thebracks shoved him through the portal, forever stealing from him the only life he knew.

Anticipation buzzed through him. He was so close. So close to going home—something he had dreamed about for so long. The dream was now closer to reality than ever. All he had to do was find the portal.

“Maybe around this bend?” He examined the curve of the bank more closely. “It should be there. I think.”

He hiked along the water’s edge, straining his memory for every detail of the day he’d been taken from Dakath.

“Look. There!” Amber touched his arm, gesturing excitedly up the stream.

Warm air was rising from the water in the tendrils of fog. Haze shimmered over the stream, dissipating into the air. Except at the spot where Amber was pointing at.

The mist thickened there. It appeared to reflect the glimmer of sunlight from the water below. Sparks danced and played in the fog, tinting it pink.

It was pretty but looked almost natural.Almost, because there was no natural source of the pink color anywhere in the creek or around it. That was the color of the River’s magic.

Amber gasped, gripping his arm. “Elex, that’s it, isn’t it?”

His feet rooted in place. After dreaming of getting back for so long, he should be rushing to the portal as fast as his feet and wings would carry him, but something held him back—the slim fingers on his arm.

He turned to her.

“Yes. That’s it.”

Her warm, green eyes trapped him more effectively than any restraints.

---