Jessica’s feet moved beneath her as if in a dream as she stared at the wall of light everyone else called a portal. Leandras didn’t have to urge her forward with his hand around hers. If anything, she could have been pulling him along behind her.
The upstairs hallway was completely silent until Ben let out a heavy exhale of awe, trepidation, and relief.
Sure. He wasn’t the one who had to make this giant leap for all of them.
Leandras squeezed her hand again just before they reached the beckoning portal. When she looked at him, though, the fae man’s gaze centered unwaveringly on the veil between worlds—between the only world she’d known and the allegedly poisoned wasteland on the other side.
His eyes were wide, glinting with their own silver light. And if she didn’t know better, she would have thought Leandras looked just as scared as she couldn’t help but admit she was in this moment.
Then they stepped through the door that had caused all her problems and into the light
Chapter 21
An overwhelming cold both frigid and soothing enveloped Jessica. She tried to suck in a breath, but no breath came.
Specks of light fluttered around her in the sudden darkness—or maybe it was oncoming darkness drowning out the light.
Compared to this, Leandras’ quick little pops across space when he’d transported her around Colorado were short bursts of discomfort, and yet a part of her still felt as if there were nowhere else she’d rather be. Right here, in all the nothingness, without the ability to see or breathe or feel her body and her blood pulsing through her veins.
Jessica couldn’t even feel Leandras’ hand in hers. Had he pulled away?
The resounding echo of the Gateway slamming shut behind them blistered all her thoughts into a million fragments.
Then she found herself on cold, hard dirt. Her face stung. She couldn’t move.
When had she actually walked into this other world? Maybe they hadn’t made it. There was still no light. No sound. Or her ears were ringing too harshly to hear anything at all.
Her body’s responses kicked into high gear, and the pain lancing through her made her gasp for air again. Bitter dust drew into her mouth and down her throat, and when she coughed, it felt like her guts were being peeled out of her through her pores.
An agonized groan grinded into her awareness. Not hers. Someone else’s.
Someone else she was supposed to know but couldn’t place.
Her stomach heaved, and then she was gagging, trying to draw her hands up at her sides to push herself off the ground. The dust caught in her throat again. Now her eyes were open, adjusting to the darkness to see a thin sprawl of dirt in front of her flecked with pebbles.
She had to get up.
“Jessica...”
That didn’t sound good. Who was that?
“Breathe,” the voice grunted.
Between her dry retching on an empty stomach and two nights without sleep, Jessica sucked in sharp bursts of air that smelled like hot metal and tasted very much the same.
A thunderous crack split through the air, followed by an echoing rumble.
That was thunder, right? If it was some kind of attack already on the move toward them, no way in hell could she handle fighting it off. Not now. Not when she could barely breathe or push herself off the ground.
Something slid noisily across the dirt and tiny chipped stones toward her, then a cold hand clamped around her wrist.
“Breathe.”
The silver light flaring beneath that hand shot a burst of heat and flaring energy through her. Powerful, searing, electrifying energy.
Jessica’s heartbeat kicked up to twice its normal speed, and she finally took the raw, rattling, metallic-tasting breath she’d been trying to draw in. Finally, her hands moved, and she thrust them under her to get up off the ground and away from all the dirt. She’d end up suffocating herself just by lying on the ground and breathing it all in if she didn’t move.
Another attack of dry, hacking coughs overtook her, but she managed to pull her legs up under her to kneel and sit back on her heels, bracing herself with her hands in the dirt.
“It will pass.”
Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked them furiously away. Whoever kept talking to her really needed to shut the hell up so she could focus on not dying.
A second wave of intense energy coursed through her, and she reared back with a heaving inhale, her head thrown up toward the sky as her back arced dangerously in the opposite direction.
That was the sky, right? Where were the stars?
The hand left her wrist and now settled on her back to keep her upright. That hand—Leandras’ hand.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” she whispered now that the rest of her capacity to think and remember had returned with her ability to breathe.
The fae slid across the ground toward her and gently rested his hand on her back when she coughed again. “Are you all right?”
“No.” Swallowing thickly, she hunched over again and turned to look at him. “Seriously, would it have killed you to even briefly mention this being the worst teleport of my life?”
His eyes shone in the darkness—not like their occasional pulse of light when he felt particularly brazen but completely illuminated from within, the silver glow winking off and on when he blinked at her. “I didn’t know.”
“What do you—” She coughed again and grimaced at the ache in her side after her short but intense struggle. Great. Her first trip to a brand-new world, and she was pathetic enough to get cramps from it already. “What do you mean?”
“Crossing over was never meant to be this taxing. I knew circumstances had worsened over here, but I had no idea the Gateway itself was this affected.” Leandras scanned the area around them, then offered her his hand. “Can you stand?”
“I don’t know. The damn portal could’ve taken off both our legs for all you know how it works.”
He glanced at her bent knees beneath her and scowled. Fortunately, the fae man had enough sense not to comment on her sarcasm.
“We need to keep moving.”
“Really?”
Another deafening crack of ominous thunder pierced the air, making Jessica duck and Leandras whip his head up toward the sky.
“Yes. Quickly.” He apparently had far less difficulty getting back on his feet, but he still extended his hand toward her. “If this weren’t the only remaining active portal, I’d say it’s the most dangerous.”
“Awesome.” She slapped her hand down into his and let him help her up. Swiping at the thin layer of dust coating her shirt and pants—and also most likely her lungs—she gave herself a brief moment to look around.
Poisoned world was right.
The flat landscape stretched seemingly forever in all directions. Dry, dusty ground gave way to cratered pockets beside massive fists of jagged stone erupting from the earth. The occasional tree sprouted from the wasteland expanse, but the closest ones were gnarled, twisted, and completely devoid of life. One tree a dozen yards to the right had been smashed halfway to breaking. The center of its trunk looked as if it had been hit by a wrecking ball, spiny fragments jutting from the hole like teeth in some nightmare’s gaping maw. Despite all that, the tree still hadn’t fallen. Somehow, it still clung to the rest of itself in this place where survival was the only option.
Jessica didn’t think the other trees here would offer a different story, either.
Another crack of thunder splintered the air. The ensuing echo reverberated through her body, thudding harsher than her own wildly racing pulse. Apparently, Leandras’ dose of magical adrenaline still hadn’t run its full course.
“Jessica, we need to—” With a hiss, Leandras whirled around, searching the open wasteland that offered nothing in the form of shelter or a place to hide their arrival. “Idiot.”
She stepped away from him with a scowl. “That’s not how you get your Guardian chaperone to listen—”
“Not you. Me.�
�� He lunged for her arm, enclosing it in another vicelike grip before stalking away from what lay ahead of them and jerking Jessica with him.
The fae’s sharp tug sent her spinning around in the dirt, and she stumbled forward with a frustrated grunt. “Well the idiot yanking me around better—”
Let go. That was what she’d meant to say before probably adding another useless threat of her own. But the sight in front of her now completely wiped out her intention to tell him off and left her speechless instead.
A few yards in front of them and closing in fast was a door. It looked just like any other door in any other normal place—not like the Gateway in any way—but normal doors didn’t hover six feet off the ground, suspended by absolutely nothing but air.
She probably wouldn’t even have seen it if a soft white light hadn’t still been fading around the edges of that door to illuminate its incredibly ordinary features. Except for the floating part.
“Is that where we came through?” Jessica whispered, craning her neck to gaze up at the underside of the door as Leandras pulled her beneath it and kept moving.
“Our side of the Gateway. Yes.”
She turned over her shoulder to find the back of the door still hanging there with nothing else attached, though it didn’t have a knob to turn and probably wouldn’t open from that side.
Right. Like she had any idea how this kind of door opened from any side.
No wonder she’d come back to herself feeling like she’d just been thrown out of a moving car.
“How are we supposed to get back through, exactly?”
Leandras tugged her sharply to the side and pulled her around a huge chunk of light-colored stone rising three feet above his head. “Quiet.”
“Leandras, that kinda puts us in the wrong position for walking back through when we can’t even reach the damn thing.”
“We’ll address that at the proper time.”
“This is the—”
“I said be quiet,” he hissed, lurching forward until his face was inches from hers, his silver eyes blaring. Then he stepped around her to peek beyond the edge of the boulder, quickly scanning the harsh expanse before darting behind the chunk of stone again. “If you have any faith in my abilities here or my knowledge of this world, Jessica, put them to use and do exactly as I say.”
The fierceness in his violent whisper did nothing to help her still-pounding pulse or the dryness in her mouth.
He was serious. She hadn’t seen anyone moving across the destroyed land toward them—she hadn’t seen anything move, let alone anything else that looked like it was remotely alive—but maybe they weren’t as alone as she’d thought.
Jessica nodded once and looked him up and down.
Puffing out a sigh, Leandras held her gaze and lifted his hands toward her. “Stand perfectly still.”
She dipped her head and glared at him in warning.
“An illusion, Jessica. Nothing more. Just don’t move. With a partially sealed illusion, you may as well be walking around Xahar’áhsh with a neon sign over your head reading, ‘I don’t belong here.’”
Despite his urgency and the apparent danger, Jessica pressed her lips together to keep a snort and the accompanying smirk at bay.
This centuries-old fae had been incapable of a line like that since they’d met. Apparently, she’d started to rub off on him.
The stark lack of any agreeing quip from the bank in her mind made her stiffen.
No. The bank wasn’t here. It was on the other side of that door floating six feet in the air, probably terrorizing Ben Cready because it had no idea whether Jessica had made it through worlds in one piece or a billion.
A dampened light rose from Leandras’ palms. He clearly tried to subdue it by aiming his casting at her thighs instead of straight at her, but if anyone happened to take a leisurely stroll across the dead earth in the middle of the nigh—or maybe this was still the day—they’d have to be blind not to see the shimmering flare of light behind the boulder.
Thin filaments of illusion magic flowed slowly away from the fae man’s fingers toward her, rippling with warmth when they wrapped around her legs and wound their way up her body.
Jessica pulled her attention away from his diligent spellcasting and studied their new surroundings hidden here behind a hunk of rock.
On her right, a long line of similarly crumbled stone stretched almost a hundred yards, the stripped earth beside it peppered with smaller rocks and broken bits of lighter-colored debris. Her gaze caught on a stairway leading up into the ridge but broken off halfway. One of the larger pieces on the ground looked surprisingly like a wing carved of stone. Another could have been a hand. As her vision continued to adjust to the gloomy darkness here, she thought she could see dark stains on some of the rubble.
Those could have been anything, really. A natural discoloration. Years of dark, dry earth being blown against this wreckage to stain it darker over time. A trick of the nonexistent light.
The only option that entered her mind and actually rang with even a hint of truth was a lot more sinister.
Those were bloodstains.
Jessica opened her mouth to ask about where the hell they’d just landed, but one look at Leandras’ warning scowl when he glanced up at her made her instantly shut her mouth again.
All she could do was speculate. But there was enough here for a devastatingly convincing case. This wasn’t the middle of nowhere. The fae had led her through the Gateway and into a damn war zone.
Or she’d led him here. Either way, neither one of them had truly understood what they were walking into.
The warmth of his spell faded around her body, then Leandras gave her a brief once-over and nodded. “Passable.”
“Are you serious?” she whispered. “After your lecture on the dangers of a crappy illusion?”
“It’s completely sealed and the best I can do without more time.” He turned away from her to poke his head out from behind the boulder again—which she assumed now wasn’t a boulder at all but a huge chunk of the destroyed building sitting out here in the middle of nowhere.
Jessica glanced down at herself to find her hastily assembled outfit from half an hour ago completely changed. Now she wore dark, tight-fitting trousers tucked into calf-high boots and a loose tunic strung with ties at the cut of the neckline. When she spread her arms to take in more of the weird ensemble, dark fabric fluttered at her sides. She didn’t feel it, but it definitely looked like it brushed against her arms as she moved.
“Is this... Am I wearing a cloak?”
When he was done looking for oncoming danger in whatever form, Leandras darted back behind the ruble and stopped mere inches from her. He leaned toward her ear and lowered his voice to a faint, almost breathless whisper. “We will discuss what we must elsewhere. If you speak again before I say it’s safe, I can’t promise that illusion or my protection will be enough to get us where we need to go.”
His protection.
This fae needed Jessica, didn’t he? There wasn’t any argument about which one of them could do more damage if they had to fight their way out of an attack now. Even if that attack came from a bunch of thugs running around like this was the Renaissance Festival and not Xahar’áhsh.
Leandras pulled slightly away from her, just enough so he could meet her gaze again, and widened his eyes. “Understand?”
Jessica raised an eyebrow and figured her silence would speak for itself.
He grabbed her wrist again and tugged her out from behind the huge pile of wreckage. This time, she yanked away from his grip, just waiting for him to call out that the coast was clear so she could let him have it for talking to her like that. Just because they were in his world now didn’t suddenly make her a goddamn yes-witch.
Thunder cracked again across the sky, this time louder and closer. A streak of blazing light followed, illuminating for the first time the full expanse of what loomed above them in every direction—thick, roiling clouds that didn’t just
blot out the sky.
This storm was the sky.
Now that whatever passed for lightning in this place had finally reared its head, Jessica realized why everything looked so dark, so colorless. The entire world carried a monotone uniformity—pale, barely-there light against sharp silhouettes and muted details.
Apparently, there was only one kind of light in Xahar’áhsh, or at least this part of it.
It was the same creepy, menacing green light that had seeped out from beneath the Gateway door and into the upstairs hall of Winthrop & Dirledge too many times for Jessica to count.
Leandras had been wrong about one thing after another with his approximation of the Hruandir spell’s timer and what they’d experience traveling through the Gateway. But the greatest disparity between what he’d shown her and what Jessica now knew as he led her hastily across the beaten, lifeless land beneath the constantly churning storm was even worse.
It wasn’t just the Dalu’Rázj trying to break free.
It was this whole goddamn world.
Chapter 22
The Guardian of Earth’s Gateway couldn’t keep an entire world from breaking through a single door. It was impossible.
That thought repeated itself in an array of hopeless variations as Jessica raced after Leandras across the decimated landscape, darting around brittle trees and avoiding the cratered pits. Discovering those pits were filled with shimmering, sludgy liquid the same green as the lightning in the storm and the deadly tendrils of smoke that had almost found their prey in Jessica Northwood—more than once—didn’t surprise her in the least.
It didn’t make her feel any better, either.
Thunder cracked overhead, the deafening clashes rising in volume each time with far less silence between the next. And the next.
Leandras had better know exactly where he was heading. He’d better have a plan. Because he seemed a hell of a lot like he was leading them into the eye of the storm.
Still, she stayed close on his heels, ducking when the next roar of magical devastation clamored through the sky.
The Poisoned Veil (Accessory to Magic Book 4) Page 20