Page 125 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
Kase shook his head, concerned instead of confused now. He pulled her closer, putting his palm against her forehead. “I think we should maybe get you looked at. You’re not making sense.
“Excuse me, I am making perfect sense.” But hewaslooking at her like she’d started speaking Yalven. “What are you talking about?
He turned slightly to look at her, searching her eyes and her face for some sort of answer, but he didn’t seem to find it. “Hals, it’s been nearly two weeks. I haven’t seen you in about eleven days.”
Impossible. Her calculations couldn’t be off bythatmuch, no matter how little sleep she’d gotten.
While she was doing the math again just to make sure, Kase cupped her cheek. “Are you hurt? Did something happen?”
Hallie could only stare blankly at him. It still wasn’t adding up.
“No, it’s only been five days. I’m almost positive.” She pulled out of his grip and started counting on her fingers. “It was night when we left the Gate chamber. But it’s midday here, and I’d guess it’s only been a half hour, or an hour at most. Okay, so let’s say six days. We spent yesterday hiking up to the city from the ruins. Before that, we were underneath the ruins, then in Ravenhelm, then Stoneset. And we spent three days there.” She held up her fingers as if Kase couldn’t see them clearly in front of her. “That’s only five. Six at worst, considering the rotation of the planet, but that shouldn’t have thrown us off all that much. Of course, maybe we were in the Gate chamber longer than I thought, though it couldn’t have been more than late evening when…well, when everything—”
“Hals. Wait. You’re confusing me.” Kase held up his hand. “I swear to you that I haven’t seen you in nearly two weeks. Let’s get you to the hospital ward and let—”
Fely stepped up and put a hand on Hallie’s shoulder. “We need to discuss this privately after we deliver our information.”
“I don’t understand,” Hallie said. She couldn’t get her brain to work right. Stars, she needed sleep. Had they stayed in Stoneset longer than she’d thought? Maybe she’d lost time when she’d used Navara’s journals?
Maybe something had gone awry with the passage. She’d lost control, she knew, but the Gate’s remaining power had gotten them here. Fely had said that herself. She looked down at her hands.
Her power could reverse time in small increments. Other than creating or opening Passages, it’d been limited to healing that didn’t hold, whatever she’d done to the beam in the Myrrai ruins, and…well, dissolving a man before her eyes, but she was desperately hoping that might prove to be an anomaly.
“Swear it’s been that long?” Hallie asked, her stomach rebelling. Her skin flashed hot and cold.
Kase cupped her elbows and bent a little to look into her eyes. “Yes, I’m sure of it.”
She didn’t know how she’d done it, because it hadn’t been intentional, but if her theory was correct…well, it was a miracle they’d only lost a week.
Her voice shook when she spoke again, so quietly Kase had to lean in to hear. “Then that means that I…somehow…sped up time.”
Chapter 24
OF YALVEN LORE
Niels
TO SAY NIELS WAS EXHAUSTED was an understatement.
In the last five days—that he remembered, at least—he’d been to the other side of the world and back because the girl he’d planned to marry had somehow acquired magic powers. Oh, and then she’d gone and healed his pistol wound with said magic. And now, apparently, she’d transported them a week or so into the future.
Magic. Sure, he’d known about her power ever since she’d woken after Achilles. He’d gone to the Yalven city knowing that. But he hadn’t really grasped what that meant. It felt like a bad fairy tale, not reality.
He’d wondered more than once over this whole misadventure if he’d died when his family did, and this was all some bizarre afterlife.
He felt empty. Nothing quite registered any more. He didn’t know if that was because he was losing everything that mattered—including the woman he loved—or because he’d possibly killed one of the leaders of Jayde by kicking him into a glowing archway, or if the numbness in his wrist had spread everywhere else, too.
He hoped it’d stopped bleeding, but he couldn’t get it checked out yet.
It felt cold, though, which almost definitely wasn’t good.
His feet dragged along the pebble strewn dirt tunnel floor beneath Kyvena on their way to see the Stradat Lord Kapitan, Kase’s father. He’d always wanted to see the capital of Jayde. Every traveler he’d spoken to described it as a glittering city on a hill, something out of a dream.
He wondered what they would say if they saw the nightmare it’d become.
It almost felt as if he’d never left the Stoneset caverns.
He followed the soldiers and Hallie through tunnels that felt entirely too much like home, sans the familiar mountain accent. He heard a cocktail of dialects as they walked. He tried to focus on not getting caught up in the fray and staying on his feet. If he didn’t look too far forward, he could pretend he couldn’t see that Hallie kept brushing against Kase’s hand.
