After stepping around the dead mage, I raced down an aisle of the library. Kaja and Reyna flanked me, and we scanned the room for foes. Noble and Honor brought up the rear of Team B, and I could feel the group funneling into the large space.
As shifters and mages, we moved silently, stalking toward the back of the room, to the cracked onyx door. Behind that barrier was where it all went to hell before. High Mage Island was likely their stronghold, which was why Team Badass was so large.
We could do this. We have to. I sucked in a deep breath and then reached out to pull the door open.
Mother Mage, give us the strength to kick their asses.
I yanked on the door handle…
And nearly pulled my arm out of its own socket. Pain sliced up my shoulder blade before being absorbed by my shields.
“Damn,” Reyna muttered, shooting me a frown as she rubbed her shoulder. “Are you trying to dismember me?”
I pulled again, but nothing. The door was … stuck. I yanked again and again, but the door stayed closed—like super-glued shut. Sariah had tried to seal it, and that hadn’t worked; the blood mages had busted through as we were leaving. Which meant … they’d recently sealed it, maybe even just now from the other side. My mind spun with anxiety.
Reyna raised her eyebrows. “What happened?”
I gulped and then shook my head with sickening certainty. “They closed the portal—or locked it.” Orsomething.
Blood mages: 1.
Nai: 0.
I didn’t even know how to close down a portal, my lessons had been so limited.
“Let me try.” Carson moved his way through the crowd and reached out to pull on the handle.
Nothing.
Sariah moved to my side. We’d left Donovan back with Annette, but Sariah had insisted on coming to fight. She looked at me now with compassion in her gaze as her lips flattened. “Nai, you know what needs to be done.”
I gulped. I’d made small portals—but only for short distances and only for me and Honor. This … this would have to be huge. But if I couldn’t make a portal, we weren’t going to get our home back. Everything hinged on this.
No pressure.
I nodded. “Everyone step back. I’m going to make a new portal.”I hope.
The collective gasp from the crowd behind me didn’t help my nerves. I did my best to ignore them as Reyna, Kaja, and Noble had everyone take several giant steps back.
This was the culmination of hours of hard work with my mother and Gramps, and I wanted to make them proud. In the past, with Grandpa, I’d pulled my body through a portal to skip through space. But my mother’s lessons made me think of something totally different.
Closing my eyes, I breathed in and out deeply. Then my spirit slipped from my body with ease. No one else could see the separation, of course, and spirit-me spun and glanced over the curious faces of the people behind me: Reyna with her brows drawn, a crease between them; Noble leaning forward, expression full of light and hope; Kaja, a small smile playing at the corners of her lips and her eyes sparkling with curiosity.
Turning away from them, I steppedintothe door and passed through the black stone with ease. I peered down the hallway, spotting a few passing blurs deeper in the library, but no one was here, guarding the door or even looking this way.
They thought they were safe.
But they weresowrong.
Bringing my awareness back to my physical body, I pressed my hands together and sent out my magical feelers. I could feel the resistance coming from the other world, or plane of existence, or whatever it was that the High Mage Island resided in. But now, I better understood why my spirit needed to be separate to make this work. That part of me, my soul, tethered me to that realm—while my body tethered me to this realm. I could feel my soul, like a giant lighthouse in a storm, guiding my energies as it pulled for the rest of me to join it.
But this wasn’t a portal for one.
I slowly opened my hands, my eyes still closed, and several people in the crowd gasped.
Please let that mean this is working, I prayed.
Another deep breath, and I opened my hands wider, tearing at the force separating the two parts of me.
