Page 30 of Enthralled

I dash tears away with the back of my hand. Then, adjusting the strap of my satchel over my shoulder, I turn and face the crone. She leers at me, her one good eye blinking while the crystal remains fixed and focused. “Hurry, little one. The magic won’t hold much longer.”

Dragging in a short breath, I hasten to the door. As I step past the crone, she makes a slurping, satisfied noise with her lips. When I look at her, horrified, she grins. “Sometimes the dregs of despair are the sweetest,” she says and tilts her head. “A pleasure bargaining with you, my dear.”

I cast a last glance back at Ilusine. She crouches over Danny once more, holding his hand with her bony little fingers. Her golden eyes hold my gaze hard. Then she nods. Stifling the sob in my throat, I wrench away and stride through the open door, out of the crone’s house. I pass through the darkness and stumble out onto her front porch.

Glaring light burns against my eyeballs. I throw up a hand to shield my vision, blinking until some of the pain recedes. Then, peering out through my fingers, I look once more upon the Desolation of Gorre.

The sky overhead churns.

Castien told me Gorre exists too close to thequinsatra—the dimension of pure magic. As a result, storms of magic wrack the land, permeating the flora and fauna. Nothing can live here but monsters. I stand on the porch of the crone’s weird little house, overlooking what she calls her garden. Everything about it is strange and twisted, home to any number of unholy mutations, both plant and animal. A rabbit hops into the center of the main path, its side gaping with a ghastly wound from which fungus sprouts and spreads. It turns eerie lantern eyes my way before scurrying into the shelter of a broad-leaf plant that oozes puss from every leaf.

My stomach flips. It’s a good thing I’ve grown used to living with nausea over these last few days.

Gripping my skirts with both hands, I descend the porch steps. The crone’s house balances on a pair of enormous chicken legs, which shift in place, making the whole porch rock like a storm at sea. It nearly casts me down in a heap of broken limbs, but I manage to reach level ground in one piece. Soil squelches underfoot as I follow the center path, keeping well away from any bushes and shrubs. Some of them look altogether too hungry for comfort.

By some miracle, I make it to the end of the garden unmolested and approach the ramshackle gate arch. It’s covered with black fungus and looks ready to topple over, but is still recognizably a Between Gate. The air beneath the arch shimmers and ripples, veils between realities thin. A stone dial stands beside the arch, marked with symbols of all the different locations throughout Eledria to which this gate may lead. I find the mark for Vespre—a single eye. A crack runs through it, nearly obscuring the symbol entirely. Evidence of Lodírhal’s destructive spell, no doubt. Even as I look, it seems to crumble more and soon will vanish entirely. The crone was right; I haven’t time to delay.

I turn the dial. Sparks and energy erupt beneath the arch. Freezing terror rushes through my limbs, fixing me in place. This is it: my last chance to turn back. Even now I could retreat through that hideous garden, mount the porch steps, pound on the crone’s door, and beg to be let back in. Back to my own world, my own life and existence. Beg to undo the bargain for Danny’s heart and put everything back together as it should.

“There’s no going back,” I whisper and press my dry lips together. Whatever happens next, I am committed. To finding Castien. To reclaiming my children. To rescuing Vespre.

To facing my brother.

I place a hand against my womb and close my eyes. If only I was far enough along to feel the life inside me, to know I’m not alone. It would be nice to have that little reminder to give me courage. Instead I just feel more nauseated. “All right,” I whisper to my child, the words soft in that magic-stricken air. “Let’s find your father, shall we?”

Then I stride forward and hurl myself through the gate into the void between worlds.

I’ve traveled between the realms and realities of Eledria more times than I can count. While one never fully gets used to the experience of one’s essence being broken down and remade again, at the very least, I know what to expect when I cast myself through one of the gates.

This is not like that.

At first it’s the same skin-scraping sensation I know, like the outer layers of my existence are being sloughed away by a very fine, very precise razor. Then the pain increases. It no longer feels like just the outermost layers are being pulled away. It’s more like reality itself is trying to rip down inside of me and rend me to pieces. I cannot seem to find myself, cannot hold onto my center of being. There’s nothing but tearing, ripping pain, and I don’t even have a body with which to feel it. My essence has become nothing but agony, and then—

I tumble out into a blur of light and shadow and suddenly re-formed limbs that flop uselessly around me. Coming to an abrupt stop, I lie on my back, staring up at nothing, knowing nothing, seeing nothing. Feeling too much of everything to know what I feel. Some vague part of me is aware of whirling void spinning in the air some feet away. I try to turn, to look at it, but can’t seem to remember how necks work. Or eyes for that matter. It’s a strange thing to be embodied again. Everything is so heavy and sluggish.

The void closes with a snap. The pressure in my head pops suddenly, and my lungs seize, dragging in a desperate gulp of air. Now at last the rest of reality settles in around me. I can blink. I can breathe. My heartthunksseveral times as it relearns how to beat. Then, slowly . . . I frown.

Wherever I’ve landed, it’s dark. But of course, this is Vespre, isn’t it? It must be. Vespre is one of the Umbrian Islands, which exist in a state of perpetual twilight, so I didn’t expect to arrive in blazing sunshine. But something feels off here, if I could just put my finger on it.

Groaning, I sit upright. My eyes strain as I try to take in more of my surroundings in the gloom. There are plants everywhere. Dead, skeletal plants. I shake my head, look again. Very little vegetation grows in Vespre, which is a realm of rock and crystal. Why would there be plants here, even dead plants? Did the crone play me false? Did the gate not work? Have I ended up in some wildly different part of Eledria?

Slowly my memory fills in missing pieces. “The solarium,” I whisper. Of course it’s the only explanation. Castien made the solarium for his mother, Dasyra—a mortal mage with an affinity for plant magic. He’d used a powerful spell to channel light all the way from Aurelis and funnel it into this chamber. It had been a little piece of the Dawn Realm, just for her. But now the gates are all broken, including this bit of magic-working.

I suck in a sharp breath. How long has it been? My gaze, somewhat adjusted to the dark, roves across the chamber, taking in the dry fountain, the skeletal trees, the rot and ruin. The last time I was in this chamber, all was lush and green, a veritable jungle of thriving life. This ruin couldn’t have happened overnight.

A slither of movement makes me startle and turn sharply where I sit. My vision strains, peering into the deeper shadows. I am no fae; I cannot see in the dark. Perhaps I’m imagining things. Perhaps the shock of travel through the gate has made me jumpy. But no . . . Something creeps through a tangle of dead hydrangeas. The desiccated flower clusters bob like so many heads on spikes, stirred by that subtle movement. Otherwise all is still, silent.

My heart kicks against my breastbone. I knew there was something off, something wrong with this darkness. It’s not normal gloom at all. That twisting energy in the deepest shadows can only mean one thing: the Nightmare Realm has infiltrated my head.

Before the thought fully clarifies, my hands are in motion, ripping open my satchel, dragging out the little notebook and that damned fountain pen. No sooner are they in my grasp than a snake-like limb lashes out, darting for my leg. I’m not fast enough; a vine, thick as a man’s arm and covered in thorns, wraps around my ankle and yanks me hard. I scream as I’m dragged across the ground through stalks and dead stems and dried out flower husks straight toward a writhing tangle of briars that looks like a mouth opening and closing. Harsh red light burns deep inside, causing the thorns to stand out stark and black as they churn hungrily, ready to devour me.

But I’ve not entirely lost my skills in the last seven weeks. I flip open the volume—aware that somewhere, in another layer of reality, I’m lying on a stone floor littered with dead leaves, not being dragged toward that hideous maw. If I can remember this, if I can hold onto that knowledge, then I can just manage to scrawl a few lines of text into the little notebook. It doesn’t take more than a few lines.

In this reality an ax appears in my hand.

With a bellow, I hack at the vine, little caring if I hew into my own leg. My blow lands true; the vine shudders. Somewhere in the midst of that snarl, a woman’s voice screams in pain. I shake off the vine, which flops like a dead thing, and pull myself to my feet. More vines close in around me, crawling down the walls of the solarium, slithering along the paths, swarming over the dead plants and trees. “Stand your ground,” I whisper, both in this reality and the other where my physical self writes as fast as she can. “Be brave and stand your ground.”

Then, heedless of my own advice, I turn and run like hell. I’m not thinking straight. If I were, I’d remember that it’s never a good idea to run from a Noswraith. They cannot resist a chase. But this wraith is far beyond anything I was prepared to meet so soon upon arrival. If I don’t get out of this chamber, I’m going to turn into plant food.

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