by Emily Mckay
I pull the princess toward me, my arm looping around her over and over again to close the distance between us. Then there is a scrambling, a frantic yelling.
“I’ve got her!” Ro yells.
“She’s safe,” Kane says. “You can let go of her now. We’ve got her.”
I push myself up. My Sleeker arms are still coiled around the princess. Muscles trembling, adrenaline pounding through my veins, I sit up on my haunches, my head sagging, my hands on my thighs, as I suck in deep breaths.
I can’t believe it. I can’t believe Kendal is gone. That I dropped her. That I let her go.
My mind races, playing the moment over and over again when I felt her slipping through my grasp.
What could I have done differently? How could I have held on to her?
I can’t stop thinking about it. But I can’t keep thinking about it, either. There’s too much to do, because I have to do something. We’re still in danger. Kane’s sister needs to be rescued. And we have got to get off this damn island.
So I force myself to block out the image of Kendal falling, to concentrate on the people still here with me.
My Sleeker arm uncoils from around the princess and I will it back into nothingness. There’s an odd throbbing pain in my shoulders that I mentally shove aside. I’m not hurt, but others are. The princess rolls out of my grasp to land on her hands and knees, pulling air into her lungs.
She struggles to her feet, one hand clutched to her side as her chest heaves. Bright blue blood is just beginning to seep from the scratches along her arms, but it’s the bit of blood bubbling at her lips that sends fear spiking through me.
She sways on her feet, and for a moment, she seems to shimmer in midair, as if she is gathering her magic to glamour her appearance. But she can’t muster the magic for it. The air around her stills as she clutches her ribs and sags.
Her obvious pain, her undisguisable wounds, are enough to finally force energy into my shaking muscles. I push myself to my feet and stumble toward Kane.
“The princess,” I gasp.
He looks up, coming to his feet. By the cliff’s edge, Ro stands as well. She looks as shell-shocked as I feel. She jerks in one breath after another, but it doesn’t dispel the sickly tint of her skin.
“I think I cracked one of the princess’s ribs,” I say. “She needs a healer.”
“Ro?” Kane calls. “Can you help her?”
Ro steps forward, eyeing the princess. She reaches out a trembling hand, then snatches it back, clenching it tightly and tucking it under her arm, as though she can’t bear to have anyone else see her weakness.
This has shaken her, deeply.
“If she cracked a rib, I can heal that.” She gives a shaky nod in my direction. “But if she punctured a lung, there’s not much I can do.”
The certainty in her voice hits me hard. This wasn’t what I wanted. I never meant to hurt anyone. I know firsthand how serious a punctured lung is.
“If you can,” the princess says, before pain flickers over her face, “heal the break, I can do the rest. I have no skill with bones, but I can manage tissue.”
Kane looks at the princess. “You can heal yourself after she gets that rib out of your lung?”
She gives a weak nod. “I can.”
“Okay, Ro, get to work. Heal the princess and then wait in the house. Cupcake and I are going to go find Lucy and come back for you.”
Kane nods toward Ro and the princess, and then shifts his attention back to Gull Veston Island. On the other side of the chasm, there are still four hellhounds pawing at the earth.
Obviously, the hellhounds who are left are more cautious. None of them seem to be eager to jump across the chasm and risk death.
On the upside, that means Ro has a safe place to try to heal the princess. On the downside, Lucy is still on Gull Veston Island. Kane and I have to find a way to get past those monsters if we’re going to find her.
Excerpt from
Book Five of The Traveler Chronicles:
The Traveler Undone
Chaos loves a power vacuum.
The High King may have been a dickhead, but at least he kept the chaos at bay.
Now that he’s gone and there’s no heir to fill the void, the entire Seven Kingdoms are like a bar full of drunken frat boys—one clumsy shot away from an all-out brawl.
You might say I’m a total dick for not stepping in to take power—seeing as how I am the High King’s heir.
I’ve thought about stepping up. Taking one for the team.
The truth is, I’m smart enough to know I’d be a shitty King. I may have the brute power, but I have none of the diplomacy that it takes to be a leader. And frankly, nobody likes me enough to follow me.
When a bar fight is about to break out, you need someone to come in, crack a few jokes, and send everyone home in a good mood. You don’t need the guy no one likes, storming in and throwing punches. So if you think I should try to wrestle power and become King, then you obviously haven’t been in as many bar fights as I have.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
As Ro and the princess head to the house, Kane and I stare across the chasm at the hellhounds pawing at the ground. “What’s the plan?”
“There are too many to fight one-on-one. We need some way to divide them up. Something to distract them.”
“Can’t we just jump to the far side of the island and hope they don’t notice?”
Kane shakes his head. “We’ll be upwind of them. They’ll smell you within seconds.”
Again, my blood is screwing up everything. Unless I can make it work for me.
Five minutes later, I’ve convinced Kane my plan will work.
“You ready?” he asks.
I nod.
“You sure?”
I nod again.
For an instant, a smile plays at his lips. Then Kane closes the distance between us and slips his hand under my hair at the nape of my neck. I suck in a breath, sure he’s going to kiss me. Instead, he presses his forehead to mine.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
He squeezes his eyes closed before he answers. “For helping me save my sister.”
I nod, closing my eyes, too. Standing there, breathing in the warm, deep scent of him, prepping myself for the danger ahead, I want to stand here forever. Just him and me.
Except we’re not alone. Lucy is imprisoned here somewhere. Ro and the princess are back in Smyth’s house and Morgan is waiting for us on the boat a mile down below. And I’m pretty sure he would warn me about the dangers of stopping time.
Still, it’s hard to let Kane go when he pulls away. Harder still, not to imagine that his lips brushed against my forehead.
Excerpt from
Book Five of The Traveler Chronicles:
The Traveler Undone
According to Ockham’s razor, the simplest explanation is always the most likely. So if a guy hires you to kidnap his rich wife and leave her in the Dark World, it’s probably because he wants her money.
If a woman hires you to put a tracker rune on her husband, it’s probably because she thinks he’s cheating on her.
If a lower member of the Council of Sleekers hires you to import five hundred and twenty-three human ears, it’s probably because…
Ah, hell. I got nothing.
I have no idea why anyone would need those. And I sure as hell don’t know how to get them.
But this is the kind of crap I’m talking about. Do you believe me now when I tell you I work with the scum of the earth?
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
By the time we land on Gull Veston Island, the sun is low in the sky. We’ve been here most of the day. Soon it will be dusk, magic will stop again, and we’ll have to wait until nightfall. We have about forty-five minutes to kill the hellhounds, find
Lucy, and get the hell out of here.
Kane has dropped us at the far northeastern edge of the plateau. Below, the hillside slopes sharply down to the cliff where the hellhounds are perched, staring at Crescent Island in confusion. Behind us is the expanse of the prison lawn. Farther beyond that are the prison and the southern cliffs.
The island looks different now that the sun is overhead, instead of sitting right on the horizon. Things should look better in the light of day, right? If you take away the shadows, the monsters turn back into trees, right?
A gust of wind hits us from behind. A moment later, the hellhounds below us tense. Then, as one, they turn toward us and howl, then throw themselves up the cliff. With every leap up, they slide down, struggling to gain footing. Once they reach the open land of the plateau, they’ll be unbelievably fast.
There is no way I can outrun them. I’d have to be stupid to try. Or desperate.
Apparently, I’m both.
Beside me, Kane mutters a curse and then says, “I’m going to drop you midfield. Remember the thread lines cross the ground, deep in the earth. Stay as close to those lines of magical power as you can, because when the loop appears, that’s where it will be.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“You ready?” he asks.
I give my calves one last stretch. “Yeah. Let’s do this.”
Kane opens a loop in front of me. I step through. When it snaps closed behind me, I’m midfield, right where he said he’d drop me.
I land right on a thread line, and I can feel its energy through the soles of my shoes.
I whirl around, bobbing up onto the balls of my feet, ready to run. But the hellhounds are still thundering toward Kane.
He’s still there.
The plan was for him to immediately pull a second loop and land ahead of me, but he must be struggling to do that.
Hellhounds don’t hunt him, but that doesn’t mean they won’t kill him if he’s in their way.
I watch in dread as they close in on him.
They’re twenty feet from him. He’s stretching his hands apart.
Ten feet. The loop is the size of a dinner plate. Not big enough.
“Hey, over here!” I jump up and down, waving my arms. “I’m over here, you big dumb dogs.”
One of the hounds sees me and issues a sharp bark. The other hellhounds skid into wide turns and head my way.
My heart catches as the full reality of what I’m doing hits me. Then, I run like hell. At first, there’s only the strain of my muscles and the slap of my feet on the ground. The brittle weeds scrape my ankles. Rocks jab through the soles of my Converse, but I keep running. Every time one of my feet lands, magic pulses into my soles from the thread line.
But damn, they’re fast. Soon, too soon, I can hear them closing behind me. The pounding of their feet on the hard ground behind me fills my ears. How many are there? Four, I hope. I pray.
I don’t dare look back to check. Please, please, please let it be all four. If Kane didn’t make it through the loop in time, then he’s already dead, and I will be very soon. They’re close enough that I can hear the strained bellows of their breathing.
Something wet and warm lands on my back. Something I can only imagine is a giant glob of slobber. This is it. I’m dead.
Then, just in front of me, a loop stretches into existence. The shimmer of ground through the loop is different than the ground in front of me. I don’t see Kane. Just the loop. I jump and dive through it, landing in a roll as it snaps closed behind me.
Distantly behind me, a hound yelps in frustration. I pop back up, exhilaration pulsing through me. This is going to work.
I’m already running again as I glance over my shoulder. I catch a glimpse of Kane waving me on. He’s already trying to pull another loop to get himself ahead of me. The hellhounds are behind me, maybe a hundred yards back now. They stumble in confusion before picking up my scent.
I concentrate on running. I trust Kane to keep me safe, because all our lives depend on this.
I keep following the thread line, putting one foot in front of the other until, suddenly, there’s a tree directly in front of me—a scrub oak with spindly branches that dip low to the ground. I veer to the right, then angle back, trying to triangulate where the thread is, but I don’t find it. Shit.
I hear the hellhounds, right behind me now. And this time, I don’t have the energy from the thread line pulsing up through my shoes, giving me that extra burst of energy. I’m dead. Because they are right behind me, and there’s no way I can outrun them.
There’s a scrub oak just ahead to the right. I curve off toward it, while the thumping sounds of massive hellhound feet follow me. I head straight toward the tree. At the last possible instant, I dive into a roll under the branch. I scurry out on the other side of the tree. The hellhound is too close to turn away and slams into the trunk. The second hellhound crashes into the first. I skitter back as the force of the beasts rips the roots of the tree from the ground and the whole mess topples over in a mass of tree limbs and dog.
I dance from foot to foot, searching for the zip of energy from the thread line. I never find it. Thankfully, I do see a loop open maybe twenty feet to my right. And I dash toward it.
When I land, maybe forty feet away, the hellhound wheels about in confusion. He sniffs the ground under the closed loop.
I keep running and I make damn sure I don’t lose the thread line again. I barely see Kane. He is either always behind me or in front of me, closing and opening loops, keeping me just ahead of the hellhounds. Then, abruptly, I drop out of a loop to find the edge of the cliff only a few feet away. There’s nowhere else to run.
I take two tentative steps forward and peer over the side. Just like Kane promised, there is a ledge, maybe twenty feet down—way too far to jump. But the hellhounds are thundering toward me.
Too fast to slow down or stop. Which is exactly what we wanted.
I wait as long as I dare, until the closest hellhound is so near, I can see the hate in its mindless eyes, and then I step off the edge of the cliff and fall, trusting that Kane has the loop open for me and that I’ll land on my feet.
I drop only a few feet before I feel rock under me. Kane is there to catch me and keeps me from tumbling over the side. An instant later, the first hellhound reaches the edge of the cliff above us. Rocks and pebbles tumble over the edge as he tries and fails to gain purchase with his claws.
Kane pulls me to him, sheltering me against the side of the cliff. Above us, the hellhounds howl in a wild cacophony of fear and anger. More rocks slide off the cliff above us, landing on our ledge and then bouncing away into the abyss below. There’s a panicked yelp that ends in a howl that we hear fly past us. Then another.
I squeeze my eyes closed, trying to block out the sounds of the second hellhound tumbling to its death. Above us, I can still hear at least one dog fighting to stay on the cliff. More rocks shower down on us. Kane lets out a grunt of pain. One of them must have hit him on the back. Then another anguished yowl. From above of us comes the hair-raising screech of nails sliding along rock. The last hellhound is right above us, trying to hold on to the cliff. He’s not going to make it. And when he falls, he’s going to fall right on top of us.
Kane picks me up and spins me around, holding me to him. I hear the dog slide past us. There’s a horrible minute when I can feel him digging into our ledge, but he’s got too much momentum and he’s just too big. And then he’s gone. Off the side of the cliff and into the nothingness below.
When I finally open my eyes, it’s to see my own feet dangling above thin air. Kane turns again and sets me back on the ledge, which is now considerably smaller. So small, in fact, that it’s barely big enough to hold us both. I instinctively suck in a breath.
“It’s okay,” Kane says. “I’ve got you.”
“Yeah. You do.” The adr
enaline pumping through my veins has left me dry mouthed and shaky. Thank God he’s still holding me, because I’m not sure my legs could support me. Somehow, my crazy-ass plan actually worked. My life was quite literally in Kane’s hands, and he saved me. “Am I the only one surprised that it actually worked?”
He chuckles, his eyes closing briefly as he drops his forehead to mine. “Let’s get off this ledge.” Then, after a second, he lifts his head and takes his hands off my back, holding them out in front of him. “What is all over you?”
I cringe, plucking the damp fabric of my shirt away from my skin. “I think it’s drool.”
Excerpt from
Book Five of The Traveler Chronicles:
The Traveler Undone
Now that we’re out of danger, I take a good look at her.
She’s a little worse for wear. Her silky hair is tangled. Dirt smudges her face, the parts of it not already darkened by exhaustion, anyway. Slashes to the fabric of her clothes reveal tempting bits of pale skin. I’m not gonna lie: it’s a good look on her.
She doesn’t let her guard down for a minute.
I really like this woman.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
When we return to the plateau, the prison looks different. At first, I think it’s a trick of the light, but it’s not.
The main building looks like it’s been bombed. The entire west wing has collapsed in on itself. The east wing has multiple broken windows. But what is most interesting is a small squat building peeking out from behind the rubble of the west wing. It’s the kind of temporary building schools use as portable classrooms.
“That wasn’t there before, right?” Surely, I would’ve seen it. “Smyth must use the glamour to hide it, but how did he do that during the Everdawn?”
Kane shakes his head as he and I walk toward the prison. “The building is new. Think about it. Morgan was holding this island in the past. When you and I were here before, it was thirteen years ago. Sometime recently, Smyth came here, stopped Morgan from keeping time just long enough for him to move this building in. He did it to keep my sister here.”