My mother.
My hands curled into fists at the thought. If I left him behind, I would be no better than her—abandoning the people who trusted her. I would not do the same.
“Let’s go.” I pushed open the door, entering the shrine. The inside was bare, save for a replica of the front door on the far side.
That strange connection that’d tugged at me in Terin materialized again, as if it’d just been waiting for me to remember it. It felt like a rope pulling at the center of my chest, demanding that I follow.
I tried the handle of the door, but it wouldn’t turn. What had Razel told me to do? Above the door, the same symbols had been carved into the wood. I pressed two fingers to the Sella symbol and, feeling foolish, commanded the door open.
The symbol began to glow like trapped moonlight fighting to escape. I stepped back. Then the symbol flashed, the door rocking in its hinges, before fading back to wood.
The door clicked open.
The meaning behind that small sound struck me like a blow. Razel’s letter had said only a Sella could open the door. She’d claimed it would lead me to a road. A lost road that only one with Sella blood could find.
Hearing Ericen say it had been one thing. Seeing the truth of it for myself was another.
Taking a slow, calming breath, I stepped through.
Twenty-Three
Razel had said the door would lead to a road. She hadn’t said it would look like this.
It was like I was still stuck in the vision, the world warping around me as if I were looking at it from underwater. Colors shifted in undefined shapes, occasionally sharpening into something recognizable: a soldier knocking on a door; a group of revelers staggering by, their laughter warped; a tall, dark-leafed tree.
I looked down at the path and immediately wished I hadn’t. What felt like hard stone beneath my feet was nothing but solidified air, like a wind current woven into a walkway barely wide enough for me to cross. And below it, the world twisted and turned, flashing bits of color and images.
Res made a soft sound behind me, and I felt the brush of his beak against my back. This was magic unlike anything I’d ever seen, and yet I knew it. Shadow crows could bend space in ways we didn’t fully understand. It was how they blended into shadows, sliding through them to travel from one location to the next in an instant. The most powerful of them could take their riders along, and Lady Kerova had once described the disorienting rush of images and sound that accompanied the journey.
But she hadn’t mentioned a road.
Was this how Malkin and his mercenaries had reached Eselin?
A door identical to the one back in the shrine waited ahead on a ledge of packed earth. I let out a relieved breath when I reached it and pressed my hand against the Sella symbol, demanding it open. Like before, it came alight, the door shuddering and releasing.
I pushed it open and stepped through.
My apprehension plummeted as the door revealed another small, empty shrine, every bit the same as the one I’d left. The only difference was the temperature, the air here crisper, colder, and…fuller? It felt charged, like the shifting air above a crackling fire.
I shut the door behind Res and approached the one on the far side of the shrine. Pushing it open, I stepped into lush green grass up to my knees. To my right, the field extended to the horizon. To my left—my breath caught, and I fell still.
The Wandering Wood sat before me.
* * *
The colorful forest spilled like dye across the gently sloping hills. A full moon hung heavy in the starlit sky, shining as bright as a gemstone to illuminate my way. A breeze whispered through the grass, the sound of the rustling stalks soft as the slide of smooth silk. I ran my hand through the grass—it felt like brushing air.
“It’s real,” I breathed. “I think—Res, I think we’re in Sellador.”
That passage had been a true Sella road, connecting two locations. And somewhere in the forest before me, Razel held Ericen hostage. Still, I hesitated. According to the stories, I had only until dawn to escape the wood, or I’d be trapped until the next full moon.
I stepped into the wood.
A howl went up, a ghostly sound carried by the wind that sent a shiver running through me. An answering howl followed, nearer than I would have liked.
Res pressed up beside me, tense as marble. He didn’t like this any more than I did.
“This way,” I said, following the pull. The place of light and color that I’d read of was not what lay before me. The pure dark brown of the thick, proud trees inSaints and Sellaslooked gray and thin in real life, the leaves crunching underfoot like delicate bones. The air felt stiller and thicker than a humid Rhodairen summer day, yet drier than the desert.
