From the sweat beading down Nisha’s forehead, the weakening vines, Emory could tell the magic was taking a toll on the Sower, fatigue already kicking in. “Go,” Emory said as she took control of the vines, wove her own magic through them to reinforce the bindings with ropes of light and chains of darkness. “I’ve got it, Nisha, go!”
Nisha didn’t need to be told twice. She took Emory’s placecarrying Aspen, and went through the door with Virgil. As soon as they were through, Emory let go of the magic and flung herself with all that she had into the bleeding darkness.
The last image she had was of Keiran’s eyes flashing that unnatural silver and gold.
The sensation of falling among stars. A rush of fear. And then her feet struck solid ground and she found herself back in the space between worlds, on a familiar starlit path.
Emory whirled toward the rift she knew would still be open behind her, willing the door to close, to lock, before thatmonsterfollowed them.
But as the rift closed—becoming once again a marble door with roots climbing up its smooth surface, exactly like the door Emory and Romie had opened into the Wychwood—she realized the monster was already here.
Keiran moved with a speed that wasn’t human, rushing past Emory with a snarl to chase after the others already barreling down the star-lined path.
Emory’s magic crackled beneath her skin, eager to be let loose in this realm of endless possibility. She unleashed a blast of silver light toward Keiran. He whirled on her with a surprised look of pain. She blasted him again, making him move farther and farther away from her friends—and closer to the edge of the starlit path.
“Stop,” he said angrily. Shadows gathered around him, and Emory saw claws begin to form in them, the umbrae come to help their master.
With a sudden thought, Emory plucked a star from the darkness above her the way Romie had done last time. She barreled into Keiran, pressing the burning star against his heart. He screamed out in pain. She closed her own heart off against it, despite the sound being more human than before, more likeKeiranthanbefore, and pushed the star harder against him until he fell to his knees with a grunt, trembling in pain.
Emory dropped the star at her feet, distantly realizing it hadn’t burned her hand in the slightest, andran.
She picked up on that Tides-damned song, the same one she and Romie had followed into the Wychwood, guiding them down the path. She caught up to the others just as Vera exclaimed, “It’s here!”
The third world’s door was solid gold.
It was a resplendent thing, a work of art. A border of sculpted gold depicting the wings of a great beast and, in its middle, a carved sunburst.
Emory pushed the door open, and just like last time, water spilled over the lip of the threshold. Glaring light had them all shielding their eyes as the third world Clover had written of opened wide to them.
This time when she went through the door, Emory was prepared, steeling herself against whatever waited on the other side. There was a feeling of falling, a heart-stopping moment where she thought she would break against the red-hued earth that appeared beneath her.
Emory landed with a painful thud on her back at the edge of what looked like a small spring. It was all she allowed herself to see before she spun around to catch a glimpse of the still-open door, a rift of dark stars open beneath a sandstone arch through which the spring ran. She hurried to shut the door with her magic and trap Keiran in the seams between worlds—but he slipped through the archway seconds before it closed, landing solidly on his feet as if he’d been doing this for centuries.
They stared at each other for a second that seemed frozen in time, his eyes more golden than black here, as if they had gobbled up the sun.
Keiran took a step toward her, then stopped, wincing in pain at the horrible burn on his chest, where she’d pressed the star against his heart. Shadows flickered dimly around him, then disappeared altogether, as if the umbrae that had clung to him vanished with the closing of the door. As if the power he’d wielded back in the grotto was all but spent.
When Keiran met her gaze, gone was the promise of violence. In its wake was a knot of confusion, an unbidden show of weakness, that left Emory wondering why she feltbadfor him when he had just tried to kill them.
“What in the name of the holy fucking Tides isthat?” Virgil shouted, pointing up at the sky—where great winged beasts blotted out the sun.
Emory could make out only their shadowed outlines from here, and though their eerie cries sounded distant, it was clear they were much larger than any bird should be.
A chill ran up her spine.
When she looked back at the arch where the door had been, Keiran was gone. But she knew it wouldn’t be the last she saw of him.
PART II:THE WARRIOR
WHEN TOL WAS A BOY, his heart gave out.
He remembered the slow agony of it. The thunderous sounds of battle, the nauseating smell of sulfur and smoke and blood. Lying with the other injured, unable to move as the wound above his knee turned black and putrid from the rushed amputation he’d endured—his leg having been mangled by one of the eldritch beasts that attacked his village. A phantom impression was left behind by the missing limb. The healers, wherever they were, if they were still alive at all, would not reach him in time to set the wound properly.
Help did not come for him.
But Death did.
Death, Tol discovered, was a weather-worn woman with features like a hawk. She swooped down to him and rested a cold hand atop his feeble heart. Her mouth twisted to whisper something that Tol was too weak to make sense of. It sounded almost comforting, like the lullabies his mother would sing to him before bed, or the last words of comfort she spoke to him before Death came to claim her, too.
