Page 33 of Enslaved

He accepts the flower without a word and tucks it into the inside pocket of his coat. Then, turning to me, he says in his usual careless tone: “Shall we?”

There’s a ramshackle gate arch on the other side of the crone’s property with a small dial indicating a handful of destinations, including Vespre. The Prince, however, turns the dial to the mark of three concentric waves—the way to Ulakrana.

“Wait!” I gasp and grip his sleeve. “Will it drop us in the ocean? Underwater? Do we need to . . . to . . .” I hold up the awful flower. It drips thick ooze over my hand. The last thing I want to do is attach it to my face. But I’d also rather not try to figure it out while submerged.

“Not to worry,” the Prince says, his tone cold rather than reassuring. “It will lead us to the shore nearest Seraphine’s kingdom. We’ll emerge on dry land.”

“But where exactly?”

“I’m not certain.” He casts me a short look. “But I have a good guess. Are you ready?”

The crone stands on her front porch, watching us go. The giant chicken legs under her house shift uneasily back and forth, causing the whole structure to sway, but she sways along with it like a captain on the deck of her ship. Her glinting crystal eye catches the red glare of the riven sky, making it look as though a burning coal blazes in the socket.

I shudder and turn away. I don’t relish the idea of passing through the gate into yet another unknown world; but the sooner we leave this world behind, the better. “I’m ready,” I say.

The air beneath the crumbling arch shimmers. The Prince motions for me to go ahead. I offer up a swift prayer to any gods who might care, then duck my head and hasten through. Before I lose my nerve.

To my surprise, the journey out from the Wild Magic Realm is much less painful than the journey in. It’s still an awful, fingernail-scraping feeling all over my body with a few sharp jolts in the extremities. But I never fully lose the sense of my own physical self, and the whole experience is over in a flash. Before I’m quite ready for it, I’m staggering along a rocky landscape on a high cliff above the sea. This cliff is much higher than those lining the shores of Noxaur, a true, breathtaking height. Sheer rock walls drop a hundred feet into white foam and jagged, teeth-like boulders. I let out a little yelp, my voice stolen by a sharp ocean wind, and leap back.

The Prince appears before I’ve managed to draw a complete breath. No staggering or arm-wheeling for him. He strides through the tear in realities as though stepping through the door of his own house. His hair is caught by the breeze, black locks wafting, and his coat billows behind him. I wonder that he doesn’t curse at the cold, unbuttoned as he is, all that skin exposed to the elements. But as always, it doesn’t seem to affect him.

“Ah!” he says, and strides right up to the edge of that cliff, gazing up and down and along the jagged shoreline. He shades his eyes, then points to a promontory not far from our current position. There the crumbled ruins of a tower cling to the rocks in defiance of both time and the elements. “It is as I thought: Roseward.”

I give him a curious look, shaking my head.

“The Isle of Roseward,” he goes on. “It’s untethered to reality and floats adrift in the Hinter Sea. Those few brave mariners who have survived the sirens often claim to have spied this island while on their travels. I rather expected this is where we would end up.”

“Have you been here before?”

“Yes. Long ago.”

I bite my wind-chapped lips and gaze out on the seemingly endless ocean before us. “And Ulakrana?”

He points. “About fifty miles to sea. That way.”

“Fifty miles?” My knees threaten to buckle. It’s only with an effort of will that I manage to stay upright. “I couldn’t possibly swim that far! Even with this flower to keep me alive, how will I make it there and back in three hours?”

“You won’t be swimming.” Without offering an explanation, the Prince puts his fingers to his mouth and utters a piercing whistle. I watch him, baffled. Nothing happens for several moments, yet he remains standing there above the perilous drop, poised and expectant.

Then I hear it: a cry. Like a song, perhaps. Or a warble. I don’t have a word that can quite describe the sound that carries on the breeze and draws my head whipping around to gaze back across the barren isle. White wings fill my vision, enormous and feathered and shining with their own gentle light. Then a being as large as a draft horse swoops overhead, trailing a long, sinuous tail behind it.

It’s a wyvern. Like the one Nelle kept as a pet, but more graceful, the lines of its body so elegantly crafted, one might expect it to keep company with angels. It carves a smooth turn in the sky. The Prince backs up, making space, and the creature alights on its two great haunches where he had stood a moment before. “There you are, my old friend!” he declares, and reaches out to take the magnificent being’s long, feathered head in his hands. He draws it to him, and the two touch foreheads. Both of them close their eyes and stand there for a moment.

I stare. Utterly flabbergasted. I’ve never seen a creature so beautiful, so graceful in every line and proportion. More astonishing still, it’s made up entirely of magic.Writtenmagic unless I’m much mistaken. Which means it’s human magic. Living human magic.

“Is it a Noswraith?” The words blurt from my lips before I can stop them, drawing both the Prince’s and the wyvern’s gaze to me.

The Prince raises an eyebrow. “Does it look like a Noswraith?”

It doesn’t. Not in the least. “But it’s . . . The magic . . .”

“It’s a daydream. Nothing but a daydream, written into existence by the old Miphates methods.” He strokes the wyvern’s arched neck while it nuzzles the top of his head, mussing his hair. “Nelle is the one who taught me how to do it. Long ago when I first visited Roseward. I’d hoped I could convince it to stay with me, just as her little beast preferred to be with her. But daydreams are free beings with minds of their own. This one likes to spend most of its time here, in the place of its origin. We see one another but rarely when the isle happens to drift near Vespre.”

He gazes up at the wyvern—his own creation—with an expression I don’t remember seeing on his face before. For a moment, I glimpse the little boy he might once have been. It’s nearly impossible to think of the fae as ever having been children. But the Prince isn’t really fae, not fully fae. While he is centuries old, he is still young for one of his kind.

And suddenly he looks lonely.

Gathering my courage, I step a little closer. The wyvern turns to look at me, its large, solemn eyes blinking slowly. Then, as though coming to a decision, it stretches out its long neck and offers its nose for my tentative hand. I stroke the feathers along its muzzle, so wondrously soft and silky to the touch. “How did you come to be here?” I ask, flicking a glance up at the Prince. “How did you meet Nelle?”

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