Her eyes widened. “So you made me a dress?”
She didn’t sound angry, but I still rushed to explain. “I’ve also enchanted it so you can change it into fighting leathers.”
She tipped a brow up.
I unfolded the dress and lifted it by the wide straps that would hang over her shoulders. “If you trace the runes on the belt with your thumb, it will shift into fighting leathers that are more protective. Otherwise, this dress will be a little cooler and still give you lots of freedom of movement.”
She’d also chosen to appear in a dress every time she’d cast a glamor, so I’d suspected she liked how they looked. I didn’t want to insult her by suggesting shewear something else, but she hadn’t had much choice so far. “I won’t be offended if you don’t want it,” I started to say, but she reached out and took it from me.
Running a hand along the leather, she whispered, “I appreciate your thoughtfulness.” Then she spun around and disappeared into her room.
When she returned, she didn’t say anything about the gift, but she wore it as the long-sleeved, fighting outfit. She did not mention it as we ate and prepared to leave either, so I did not bring it up. I still had to think of a way to convince her to leave the humans alone.
After a few hours of walking, as the sun reached the height of its path, I caught the first hints of loamy soil and warm rain scents. The chasm, and the border of the Summer Realm, was close.
I almost warned the queen but decided that actually seeing the chasm would be warning enough. With one step, we crossed the final tree line in the Winter Realm’s forests, left all the snow and ice patches behind, and walked onto a stony plateau.
The breeze carried wisps of rich earth and broad-leafed plants, even though the ground was a network of bare, dry, and parched stones.
“Is that it?” She pointed at a crack two hundred feet ahead of us, running to our left and right as far as we could see. “The Summer Chasm?”
“It is.”
She squinted ahead. “The other side looks just like this one.”
We kept walking while I explained. “It does. The plateaus on each side of the chasm are some kind of neutral territory—bits of both magics seep through the boundary. But we just left the clear winter forests and, after another five hundred feet or so on the other side, we’ll enter the summer forests. We’ve essentially traveled directly south from Civa Exima, so we should hit the rainforests on the other side first.”
“Rainforests?”
I smiled. “Yes. Forests with lots of rain. Surely you’ve heard of them?”
She clenched her jaw shut and stomped forward.
I laughed, speeding up to catch her. “The rainforests are pretty big, but you’ll also have to cross a bit of desert before you hit the Autumn Realm.”
She raised a brow at me. “You mean, we, right?”
Ah. I’d let it slip.
Instead of answering, I finished walking up to the edge of the chasm.
At least a hundred feet wide and several hundred deep, the Summer Chasm looked like it split the realms right in half.
And it distracted the queen. She stared at the dark crack below us. “How far down does it go?”
I stared with her. The thing was so big and so deep that no matter how many times I stood here, I was always struck by the size of it. “Nobody really knows. I haven’t met anyone who’s been to the bottom. Some legends say it doesn’t even have a bottom, but you’lljust keep falling until eventually it spits you out in another realm.”
She turned to me. “Do you think that’s true?”
“No.” I offered her a hand. “Shall we cross?”
Her eyes widened. “How?”
I wiggled my fingers. “On the bridge.”
Impossibly, her brows lifted even higher. And she hadn’t given me her hand yet.
I sighed and explained. “The Summer Courts have established several bridges, but they’re camouflaged with magic. You won’t see them, even when you’re standing on them, but they radiate a magic that most summer fae can see.”
