It could work, I think; it should work. We successfully brought Miriam into the Blessed Plane before she was even banded, and though my connection has been severed to my Divh, surely I can travel in a similar fashion. Surely the crime of wearing the winged crown won’t keep me from that.
And if I could travel this way, so could horses, so could anything that we chose to move from space to space, plane to plane. The Blessed Plane could be an extension of the Protectorate, a byway for travel in times of war, if nothing else, and maybe in times of peace as well. If we could travel this way, if we could connect?—
Pain rips through me with such agonizing force I feel as if my muscle and sinew are being wrenched off my bones. I scream in utter agony out to all the Divhs and warriors, my mind blanking with the horror of it, and I’m not surprised when a shocked Szonja drops me straight out into open air. I vaguely register Fortiss’s howl of dismay and urgency as he realizes something has gone terribly wrong, but I blank in and out of consciousness as I plummet down, down, down—my mind teetering on the brink of madness.
Still, in the back of my thoughts, a certainty grows within me. Gent will catch me. Gent will always catch me. My connection with Gent was forged at the dawn of the Protectorate to protectmy long-ago ancestor, and he will protect me as well. He willcatchme.
He doesn’t.
Chapter 44
Consciousness doesn’t ease upon me gently; it slams into me with the force of a Divh’s mighty paw.
I awake with a violent convulsion, air bursting into my lungs and rushing back out on a scream. I jerk upright and instantly wish I hadn’t, as every muscle and joint shriek in agony.
Wildly, I get the impression of lush green grass and blue and white flowers and a distant vista of sparkling water hurtling toward me, then I pass out again.
The second time I open my eyes I can taste dirt and blood. My ears are pounding with the sound of my own pulse, and everything on my body hurts. But if it hurts, it means I’m still living, so at least that’s something.
I shove myself up on one arm, blinking around. My sight isn’t quite working right. I can see the green hills and the mist in the air, so thick that it should be rain and yet isn’t, the sunlight arching through the sky, shimmering in bands of color. I remain still for a moment, my hands braced on the earth, my legs crumpled beneath me, and try to take stock.
I can breathe. My legs move when I twitch them, my hands are sturdy upon the ground, my elbows locked. I can feel theearth beneath my fingers, the soft dew of the grass. I can smell a combination of loamy soil and fragrant flowers that I recognize…I recognize.
Hands shaking, I dig my fingers into the earth, scraping up the rich soil as I breathe in a shuddery breath, then exhale. I look up, but there is no Gent staring down at me, there are no mighty Divhs at all. But that doesn’t mean I’m fully alone.
With a chirruping pop and whirl, a small clutch of hummerlets flutter at the edge of the hill, at least four horse lengths from me. I blink at them, still fully dazed. They bubble over with enthusiastic chirping as I focus on them but don’t move toward me while I’m too exhausted and in pain to stand. We face off like this for two breaths, then three, then I collapse into darkness again.
The next time I wake, they’ve moved closer. I can tell because their whirring and chirping sounds like they’re practically breathing into my ear. I slowly, carefully open my eyes, not wanting to scare them away.
“Hey there,” I manage, but my voice comes out as a throaty croak and the words are more in my mind than spoken aloud.
The hummerlets predictably wheel back, but not so far this time—just out of arm’s reach. I huff a strained cough, then work my arms beneath me again, pushing myself up to an almost seated position.
“Where’s Kreya?” I ask, and from the chorus of coos and murmurs, I get only sadness, loss, and separation.
I smile a little. “It’s not your fault, Miriam had to go to the First House alone. People don’t understand that—mmph.” I sit up a little straighter, drawing in a heavier breath. There’s no one besides me and the hummerlets on the mountainside, not that I can tell. I wonder for a moment about Fortiss and Szonja. His thinking hadn’t been flawed. He thought that Gent was simply waiting on the other side of the separation betweenthe planes, ready to catch me and make everything right again. But why hadn’t he and Szonja come to find me? How much time has actually passed since I landed on this grassy ridge? Has the battle party moved on, pushing inexorably towards the First House?
The hummerlets offer no opinion on this last, but they’ve moved closer to me now. “I’m sorry you were left behind,” I murmur, and whether it’s my words or the emotion behind them, this elicits a chittering whirl of dismay. “But you’ll be reunited soon, okay? You’ll be…”
A strange, foreign smell wafts up to me, making my nostrils twitch. It almost…it almost smells like burning flesh, but of course that can’t be possible. I’ve never seen Divhs eat, on this plane or any other, but if they did eat, it wouldn’t be the charred carcass of one of their own. That just doesn’t make sense.
I shudder again, aware that the hummerlets are now spinning around in anxious concern. “I know, I know,” I mutter, as I get my feet beneath me and push myself up to a standing position. I wobble a little, my stance going wide as my hands go to my belt. The stance of the proud warrior, only now it’s all that serves to keep me upright.
I take an awkward step, then another, my hands twitching for the edges of my cloak to wrap around me. I’m so cold. Unreasonably cold. I don’t remember it being cold last time. As if in sympathy, the hummerlets duck and weave around me, a living cloak of tiny Divhs. With no particular direction, I trudge up the ridge, my heart beginning to pound with both excitement and a little fear as I near the top. Maybe Gent is waiting for me on the other side, ready to snatch me up and dive into the great lake? Or, far worse, maybe he’s hurt—broken somehow—needing me, and I never knew it?
I pick up speed. By the time I reach the top of the hill I’m gasping, but as I dash forward, trying to see everywhere at once, there’s no denying it. Gent isn’t here.
Disappointment squeezes my heart in my chest, and I stop abruptly, then stagger forward as the brightly colored hummerlets crash into me—first one, then another, their chirruping chorus growing more frenzied as I wave them away.
“He’s nothere.” My words come out in a wail, but surely they don’t need me to tell them that. I glare at them, suddenly furious that I can’t connect to them like proper Divhs, can’t pierce through their chirruping pips, hums, and squeaks. “Whereishe?”
They dance back and gyrate, their wings flapping frantically, but as I conjure up an image of Gent and try and press it toward them, they whoop and jitter, only growing more agitated. The images that flood my mind are pure chaos. Divhs soaring through the air, plunging into the water and out of them, Gent among them—but clearly this is from happier times, because sometimes I’m with Gent, sometimes I’m not. Sometimes Gent is the mighty creature that I know him to be as my Divh, sometimes he’s far shorter, stumpier and more furry but still gloriously joyful—the Divh that he was for the long line of Tenth House warriors, ending with my brother. But even as I implore the hummerlets to slow down, to focus and go back, they’re on to other images. A mighty phoenix, winged lions, cats and lizards, everything we’ve seen over these past several days since Kreya burst into?—
Kreya!
The moment I form the name of their core Divh in my mind, the hummerlets explode in a frenzy of screaming dismay. They shoot straight up, dart across the top of the ridge, then drop out of sight, only to rise again and hurtle back toward me, sofrantically I end up crouching away from them, my hands raised over my head to protect myself.
“What are you doing?” I screech at them as they zip around me in dizzying circles and then crash into me, shoving me toward the edge of the ridge. I duck and try to twist away, but two of them slam into me at once, grabbing my cloak at the neckline and dragging it forward, nearly strangling me. “You can’t carry me, you idiots. Kreya can’t even?—”
