“Of course,” I panted, as if there were anything “of course” about it.
But he was polite enough to pretend he didn’t notice that I was dying.
We finally reached the others. They were moving around busily. Anayla was painting on the trees, moving quickly from one to another and painting runes in shimmering gold magic.
“What does that do?”
“It enchants the mortals that aren’t as wise as you, who come into the forest,” Fieran said with a smile, “to feel afraid and turn back. So they don’t get stuck in one of the traps with the monsters.”
The thought of being trapped with one of the monsters, transported to the capital city in a monster’s cage, only to be a corpse at their feet when they arrived, was too vivid and easy for me to imagine. “Does that happen often?”
“No. Because Anayla protects us all.”
She glanced over her shoulder at him, smiling.
“Where’s the rip?” I asked, because they were spaced so far apart from each other. I hadn’t realized how vast and enormous the traps they set were.
I was a little afraid of it, as if monsters might come through if I came anywhere near it, but just like the night forest, it was something I could only see this once, with them.
Fieran called to Maura, who was across the clearing. “Where is the rip?”
She folded her arms. “It’s a good idea to indulge mortal curiosity. To show the girl who’s never seen the next village the next realm.”
“It is, I agree,” Fieran said.
Maura sighed, but she pointed.
Hopefully, the darkness hid the way I felt stung. I followed Fieran who led me to a place between the trees that was strangely bright.
I realized, looking through it, that I was looking at another sky. This sky was mottled with purple and green.
“Northern lights,” he told me. “We have them here, too, in the northern kingdoms. But we’re peering into another realm.”
I took a step closer, and suddenly I was looking down, down through the layers of sky and clouds toward the ground. The rip might be vertical in our world, between trees, but it had been torn open in the sky on their side.
I felt a strange, discombobulated sense as if there was no up or down. Bile pressed in my mouth, and I doubled over, my hands on my knees, doing my best to swallow back my nausea. The last thing I needed to do was to puke in front of the beautiful dragon shifters.
“This is why no one ever listens to me,” Maura called. “I never have any wisdom to share.”
“The rip is in the sky,” I said, to absolutely no one, since everyone else knew and looked bored rather than sick.
“You’re fine,” Fieran offered in response to this rather stupid observation. “Here.”
There was the sound of rattling paper. I looked up at him only to find him taking the wrapper off of candy, which seemed random and strange. He slipped it between my lips, and I found myself surprised by the gesture, by the way his fingers brushed my mouth so casually.
“Peppermint. It’ll soothe the nausea.”
The flavor of chocolate and peppermint melted onto my tongue. I swallowed the thickening spit that had filled my mouth as my stomach threatened to upend itself all over the toes of his shiny boots, and it was replaced by the pleasant sweetness of the candy.
“Thank you,” I said. I turned my back on the rip, and then felt a disquieting sense ripple up my spine, as if something might fly in after me. “Is the trap activated yet?Are we in it?”
He shook his head. “We can’t set the trap until we’ve escaped it.”
“So something else could come through that rip at any point.” The creeping feeling up my spine, like there had been a spider dropped down the back of my shirt, was powerful enough to have me retreating from the rip.
Fieran moved with me. “It’s unlikely anything would come through now, though. Sometimes things come through by accident, of course. But it’s up high. Only winged things are coming through.”
“Like the wyrms.”
