I crouched and tilted my head, trying to get a better look.
There it was, a white patch on the stelka’s chest that looked like a lopsided half-moon. I had seen a dozen stelkas in my three days of stumbling around the city, and only one of them had a white patch like that. I must’ve been really delicious.
“You followed me.” My voice creaked like I had crawled out of the grave.
The stelka eyed me.
“Nope. Not happening.”
The little creature took a step forward.
I showed her my rock.
Another step.
I gripped the rock and hit the cobblestones with it.
The beast shied back and hissed.
A piercing screech tore through the air above us. I glanced up. One of the weird birds swooped at the tower in a suicidal dive and rammed the petals.
For a moment, the entire flower went dark, barely visible in the rain.
Oh crap.
The bud pulsed with pale light. Tongues of golden lightning erupted from the petals, snaking toward the birds. They tried to flee in a panic, but the lightning chased them, stabbing at their wings.
One of the bird-things cried out, plunged from the sky, and smashed onto the paver stones between me and the stelka with a wet thud. It was about the size of an eagle, with a long whip-like tail tipped with a fan of dark feathers. Its wings were wide, its long hind legs were sheathed in contour feathers, and all four of its appendages ended in paws armed with sharp talons.
A lorsse. Those long dinosaur-looking jaws were a dead giveaway. So that’s what they looked like. In the books, they came out during storms and were attracted to magic.
The bird-thing clicked its needle teeth and tried to rise.
The stelka lunged forward. Her mouth closed on the creature’s neck and bit down. Blood drenched the feathers. The lorsse went limp. The stelka growled at me, clamping the neck in her teeth, slung the dead lorsse over her back—it was bigger than she was—and took off deeper into the alley, back the way she had come.
That’s right. And don’t come back.
I slumped against the wall. Kair Toren in a nutshell. One moment you are flying high and screaming at the world, the next someone bites your throat and drags you off into a dark alley. It was unhinged, but I was almost sorry to see the stelka go. In the past three days, that little beast was the only living creature that had acknowledged my existence.
I’d read this type of story before. It was a portal fantasy, a subgenre that had grown really popular in fantasy romance lately. It seemed in every other book some poor office worker woman about my age got hit by a bus or collapsed from overworking and ended up in a fictional world.
I knew exactly how things were supposed to go. I was meant to appear in this new world as a woman of prophecy with magic holy powers so I could assist the kingdom with their blight or curse problem. I would be met by a prince or some high-ranking and stunning noble, and upon heroically demonstrating my abilities, I would become the center of attention, while a gaggle of ridiculously handsome men followed me around, pledged their swords to me, and pleaded with me not to overexert myself.
Failing that, I could wake up in the body of the female lead, usually a daughter of a prominent noble house, after she flung herself into a lake in despair over being shunned by a villainous prince and died, conveniently vacating her body for my soul to take it over. I would pretend to suffer from amnesia, while an army of maids waited on me hand and foot, and plot my revenge, during which I would be fawned on by a dangerous and ice-cold male lead, who would turn into a devoted puppy in my vicinity.
Alternatively, I could come to in the body of the villainess, usually another daughter of a prominent noble house, after she flung herself into a lake, etc., etc., despair, death, maids, hand and foot, and then I would convince everyone that I was just misunderstood and win over the dangerous and ice-cold male lead, who would abandon the heroine for me.
If not the heroine or the villainess, I could be their best friend. Their younger sister. A lesser noble. A chamber maid. I would’ve happily taken the fucking chamber maid.
That’s not what I got.
I woke up choking on rainwater in a muddy ditch. Naked. Without any magic powers.
When I’d finally coughed all the sludge out of my mouth, crawled out, and saw the Mage Tower rising above the city with its magical glass petals, I thought I had lost my mind.
The Rise of Kair Toren was not a pretty-princess-rides-a-unicorn kind of fantasy. I’d stumbled on a ragged blanket someone had forgotten in the rain, dug it out of the mud, and wrapped it around me, stench of urine and all. Because if I didn’t, I would be assaulted, murdered, sold, or forced to suffer any of the other tragic things that happened to women running around alone and naked in this city. I needed to look like a beggar, and the less attention I drew to myself, the better.
In our world, there were homeless shelters, police stations, and emergency rooms. I could’ve walked into any one of those and said, “I have amnesia, help me.” And I would have been helped.
