Page 41 of Beyond the Winter Kingdom
“I’m really sorry, Damon. There’s nothing I can say that justifies it, but I really am sorry.” He inhaled sharply, thennodded. It wasn’t forgiveness, but it was something. I turned to my sister. “And you; are you okay?”
“I’m in a fucked up Wonderland. Why wouldn’t I be okay?” She laughed lightly, barely hiding the strain in her voice. “I landed in a cave with this one,” she jerked her thumb toward Damon, “who scared the shit out of me, and it’s been a fucking treat ever since.”
“Here we go again.” Damon leaned casually against the wall and crossed his arms. “You burst out of a portal through the ceiling without warning and I’m the one that scared you?”
“You were shirtless and standing in the shadowslike a creeper,” she shot back at him, wrinkling her nose. “What did you expect?”
“For the last time, I was shirtless because that hell realm ishot. As for the rest, I expected you not to throw a rock at my head when I offered to help you stand up.”
“You startled me!”
“You asked where you were, and I answered, and politely offered my hand while you were laid out on the ground. Sorry for being a gentleman.”
They glared at each other.
“Okay...” I drawled, feeling the tension between them. “What happened then?”
Damon raised his brows, glaring at Sadie. “Yeah, Sadie, what happened then?”
“Look, we would’ve sat in that cave for gods know how long if we did what you wanted?—”
“‘That cave’ was shelter, and I was doing the smart thing and not wandering around Eversus like I was on a goddamn vacation.”
“I wasn’t wandering,” she snapped. “I was looking for a way out. We weren’t going to find one playing cave trolls.”
“If you would have listened to a word I said, you’d know there was no way out of Eversus, but instead, you spent a solid hour shouting at the ceiling before declaring it a dead end, scribbling in the sand, and then storming off into the desert.”
“I was yelling at Amelia!”
“Right. Because obviously she can hear you fromanother realm. My mistake! Who knew interdimensional communication was possible simply by yelling through a portal. Bravo! What a discovery.” He clapped mockingly, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“All right, gods.” I held my hands up to stop the arguing. “You left the cave. Obviously. Did you go back?”
Damon jabbed a thumb at Sadie. “She wandered too far. We couldn’t get back. I warned her?—”
“In my defense,” Sadie interrupted, “the terrain started to shift. Damon said something about the landscape changing, but he explained it like an idiot.”
Damon’s hands flew into the air. “How else do I explain it? In thetwinhells”—he held up two fingers—” that means two; okay? Thetwinlandscapes”—he gestured grandly to the village around us—“change and flip at random. With magic.” He flailed his hands. “Poof.”
“In my continued defense,” Sadie said, folding her arms in classic sibling fashion, “I thought you were dehydrated and hallucinating.”
Damon’s eye twitched, and I almost smirked. “And now we’re here. We lost the cave and the consistent shelter. Lost the stream of food that damn witch had the decency to toss down. Was punched and kicked when I grabbed her during the shift so she wouldn’t get hurt. Got prodded and pushed by the baby bear army. I said Evorsus was dangerous, and maybe we should be calm and observe what they wanted from us. She decided to start a revolution.”
“I didn’t start a revolution,” Sadie argued. “They just stopped shoving me when I shoved back. Then they started fanning me. I wasn’t gonna tell them ‘no, don’t be nice to me.’”
“You conquered them?” I said slowly. Because of course my sister would shove back and prove herself to be the strongest. There was no world in which Sadie took that kind of crap from anyone. Not even in hell.
“I wouldn’t say conquered.”
Damon snorted. “She made them braid her hair and bring her drinks.”
Sadie shrugged. “They offered. I said yes. You’re just mad they don’t like you.”
Vareck, who’d been silent through most of this exchange, finally spoke. “How long have you been playing queen?”
“Hard to tell,” Sadie replied, then looked at Damon. “We’ve had bedtime tea, what, maybe three or four times?”
Damon nodded. “Three.”
