“You want me to make the bridge? Now?” My eyes opened, and I blinked, quickly taking in our surroundings.
We were in a small clearing. The ground was mostly rock, and there was a huge boulder to my left, which sparkled with flecks of minerals in the moonlight. Below, beyond the tree-covered slopes, the dark mounds of the surrounding hills stretched into the distance. And not so very far away, the lights and smoky haze of Ring-Around-the-Hill burned like a pile of dying embers against the night sky.
“Yes, you have to make the bridge,” Alastor said impatiently, drawing my attention back. “Quickly.”
The vulgen were still out there. I could hear them. The longer I stood here being useless, the more likely Radven was to fall.
I pulled the pearls off my wrist and shoved them into Alastor’s hand.
Immediately, I felt the difference. Felt theshiverstart to build under my skin, going from pleasurable to uncomfortable in a matter of seconds, and swelling quickly towards painful.
It was only then that I realized I had no idea what to do next. The last time I’d created a bridge, the pain had been necessary, helping me connect to the essence of Therador—the essence that was already within me, right alongside the part of me rooted inmyworld. It was those dual pieces, coupled inside me, that had given me the ability to create a link between the two worlds and open the portal we’d traveled through to get here.
But this time, I was starting in Therador. Which, if I understood correctly, meant that this time I needed to connect to the normal, ordinary-Earth side of myself.
How the hell did I do that?
“Do it now!” Alastor ordered.
I tried. I looked inside myself, searching for whatever part of me was most closely connected to the world where I’d been born and raised.
But I felt…nothing. I couldn’t tell one piece of me from the other, couldn’t figure out what I was even supposed to be grasping for. It was just…me.
Panic rose up my spine, clogged my throat. The keening of the vulgen was getting louder, but I was paralyzed, helpless. I looked up at Alastor.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” I told him.
His dark eyes widened ever-so-slightly, enough for me to glimpse the flicker of trepidation there. He hadn’t counted on me failing here.
But he should have known better. The first time I’d made a bridge had been a fluke. I still wasn’t even sure what I’d done. Now I was supposed to do the same thing, only inreverse, with a power I didn’t understand at all, and with vulgen bearing down on us and members of the Circle looking for us and—
A mournful howl split the air. Too close. The vulgen were too close, and I didn’t even know how tobeginto do what I was supposed to do.
Alastor pulled out his sword and spun around, pushing me behind him.
“Just keep trying,” he said. “I’ll hold them off.”
But if the vulgen were closing in, that meant Radven had already failed. If he was lying dead in the woods, because ofme, then I…
I squeezed my eyes shut and clamped my hands over my ears, shutting out everything else. My fear was helping no one, not myself nor the brothers. The only way out of this alive was to stop panicking and justfigure it out, whatever it took.
The tinglingshiverunder my skin was starting to burn now, noticeably building with every passing second. The essence surrounding me was quickly becoming overwhelming, filling me up with a charge that had nowhere to go, threatening to shatter me apart into tiny pieces.
Think, Marigold.
Thinking was hard to do when I was in so much pain, and when my heart was beating so fast from fear that I could feel my pulse pounding through my palms where my hands were clamped over my ears.
Go beneath the pain, I told myself.You’re looking for the part that’s beneath.Not the part of me that was responding to essence. The other part. The part that belonged back in that little apartment, with my succulents and murder documentaries and fanfic stories.
And when I looked closely, I could see it—orfeelit, more accurately. That part of me that remained calm despite the trembling, burningshiver, the part that felt familiar andnormal.If I could touch it, draw it out, then maybe I could—
Something slammed into me.Hard.
I was thrown back, and a great weight landed on me, knocking the breath right out of my lungs. My eyes flew open.
One of the vulgen was on top of me, its pointed teeth bared and its unearthly blue eyes staring down into mine.
48
