A few long, excruciating seconds later, the pain receded. Odessa sighed, shook her head, and waddled to the lake. She stepped into the water, paddled out just far enough that she would be unbothered, tucked her swan head under her wing, and literally drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Five
JAX
Death had far more feather pillows than he had imagined.
It also hurt to breathe, which, as Jax slowly returned to consciousness, seemed to be a sign that perhaps he was not quite as dead as he had believed.
He forced his gritty, heavy eyes to open, then immediately regretted it as the bright sunlight pierced into his skull. He squeezed his eyes shut with a groan. The longer he was awake, the more parts of his body insisted on airing their grievances. His limbs were sore, and a splitting headache wrapped around from the back of his head to behind his eyes.
He heard the sound of a nearby door opening, then an unfamiliar male voice, “You’re awake.”
Jax pressed his fingers to his temples and rubbed them in slow circles. “Unfortunately.”
“How do you feel?”
“Like I got dropped off a cliff.”
Jax made a second attempt at opening his eyes and blinked several times until his surroundings came into focus. He was in a large room, tastefully furnished with dark wood and warm reds and browns. Narrow poles ran up from each corner of his bed, supporting a frame that hung with heavy burgundy curtains tied up at the corners. The windows, one on each side of the bed, were paned with small squares of thick glass lined with some kind of dark metal. They had been cranked open to allow fresh air to flow through the room, carrying in the fresh, green scent of summer growth and the sound of distant bird calls.
On instinct, Jax reached for his magical senses, then immediately slammed shut the door to that part of his mind when the music registered in his inner ears.
It was like listening to an orchestra playing a familiar song in four different keys at the same time while all the instruments were out of tune with one another. The notes themselves were stringent, as if produced by scraping nails down a smooth piece of slate, and the resulting magic made him grit his teeth together in discomfort.
“What’s wrong with this place?” The words tumbled from his mouth before he had a moment to think them through.
The man standing at the foot of his bed lifted his eyebrows in curious amusement. He didn’t appear to be much older than Jax, though his dark, neatly combed hair and clean, well-tailored clothes gave him an air of authority and importance that Jax had always lacked. He crossed his arms, the action highlighting both his broad shoulders and reminding Jax that not only was he already at a disadvantage by being only recently not-dead, but that he also had just inadvertently insulted the man’s home.
“I mean…where am I?” he amended.
“The royal palace in Kovskia. You really don’t remember?”
Kovskia…
Jax searched his memory for any mention of such a place but came up with nothing. He shook his head slowly, closing one eye at the hammers that pounded his brain as a result. “Sorry. I’m not really from around here.” He paused for a moment, then remembered his manners and lifted his hand in a half-hearted wave. “I’m Jax.”
The man nodded once. “Dmitri. Can I ask what you were doing in my lake?”
“Your…lake?” Jax frowned. The last thing he remembered was grabbing wildly for the vines that slipped through his fingers before hurtling toward the sharp rocks at the bottom of the cliff. “What lake?”
“The one my friend pulled you out of.” Dmitri tilted his head. “Do you not remember?”
He barely registered the words, too focused on the fact that the rocks had apparently transformed themselves into water. “Where did the lake come from?”
“I would imagine the same place all lakes come from—the Almighty put it here. At least, it’s never moved in all the years I’ve lived here.”
“And here is…Koska?” He pushed himself up to a seated position.
“Kovskia,” Dmitri corrected.
“Kovskia,” he repeated, committing the name to memory. “I thought I was in Cygnus. Where in Eukarya is Kovskia, exactly?”
It was Dmitri’s turn to frown. “Eukarya? I’ve never heard of such a place.”
“Isn’t that what the whole continent is called? When I came through the gateway from Faerie, that’s what they…” His voice trailed off as he started putting the pieces together. “Of course. It was the wizard. He must have somehow formed another gateway between there and here.”
“Wizard?” Dmitri’s brows were so high they were nearly hidden by his hair.
