Sound.
Night.
Chill.
I sat up so fast that my head spun as I willed my eyes to focus. Breath held, I watched as a leaf plucked by the gentle breeze swayed to and fro until it settled atop its kin under the cloudy, midnight sky.
“Fuck,” I said, scrambling to my feet. This was bad. Very bad. Lady Time had released her grip, and we were still in the Autumn Court. “Fuck,” I cursed again, looking around wildly for Endymion.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I spotted him about ten paces off, face down. “What in Lumnara?”
I moved toward him, but my feet faltered as an unsettling sense of déjà vu came over me.
We were there.
We’d made it.
We were at the border.
Hope and desperation over me as I sprang into action. Grace be damned, I grabbed Endymion by the wrists and tugged hard knowing full well that the surge of adrenaline coursing through my veins was the only thing propelling me forward.
Breathless from the effort, it’d taken to drag him about twenty paces, I freed my hands and wiped my brow before kneeling, needing to catch my breath before continuing.
I smiled at familiar shimmer of border, and heart skipping a beat, I brought my hands up to the only obstacle between us and safety.
With a deep breath, I settled into the part of me that was the essence of all things. Then, at long last, I pressed my palms against the border. I gasped as it gave way so suddenly that I fell forward, catching myself on the rough, drought-stricken ground that had been deprived of life from unrelenting summer.
The hot sun on my skin was a balm like I’d never experienced before, and I almost wept in relief.
“Going somewhere?” Even heat of summer wasn’t enough to stop his voice from filling my veins with ice, and it took everything in me to brace for what came next. To brace for Wymond.
I was so close. So. Fucken. Close. All I had to do was pull my legs through and I would be home. Safe. Free.
But Endymion lay helplessly to my left, no part of him in the Summer Court—and as I took him in, I raged at the thought of Wymond taking anyone else from me.
Standing up with every last ember of fight I had left, I held the border open and faced the Autumn High Lord.
“Home,” I answered in a lethal tone.
He smirked, then shot tendrils of dark magic toward me. I braced, made to call for my magic, but his Death Thrall came up short. Looking down, I realized I stood on desert. I was in the Summer Court, and his magiccouldn’treach me. Realizing his error, he redirected it toward Endymion. I threw my hands out, and a shield of glittering white locked into place, blocking his attack. Gods, I reveled at the look of shock on his smug face.
“Not so easy when your prey isn’t poisoned, is it, High Lord?” His honorific dripped with disdain, and a hate for him coiled deep in my soul like a serpent deep in my soul, poised to kill—and for the first time ever, I let it strike.
A blast of white-hot power erupted from me, the force of it so strong that I stumbled back a few steps before finding my footing; and stars did it feel good to let the spark fly free in search for her quarry. So good, in fact, that I cared very little about how I began to sway.
Standing was no small feat as I dug deeper. A scream tore from me as the horrors of what this fae had done called for vengeance, which was now the only thing fueling my ebbing body.
Endymion forced to confess our bond.
More power.
The fates robbing me of slicing Wymond’s throat.
More power.
Kaelun, looking down at me as he dissolved into nothing.
More power.
