“I will,” she said. “But as I’m sure Mary also told you, the portal is a one-way trip to the prison world.”
“We’re aware.”
“Very well. Then follow me.”
The Empress led us out of the courtyard and up to the roof of the palace. There were marble, Roman-styled buildings on top of it—like a town on top of the roof.
The palace was the tallest point in the city, looking out over the densely packed buildings around it. The buildings closest to the palace were large, sturdy, marble structures. The ones on the outskirts were wood, and they looked like they might topple over at any second.
A few people we passed had wings of a variety of colors and wore stitched clothing like Aeliana. Most had no wings, and they wore gray uniforms that nearly blended into the marble floors and buildings. Red tattoos circled their right biceps, and they kept their gazes down as we passed.
Half-blood servants. The tattoos bound their magic, leaving them at the mercy of the fae.
Selena—the Queen of Wands—was also a half-blood fae. After becoming the Queen of Wands, she’d made a deal with the Empress—an alliance with Avalon in exchange for allowing her to free the half-bloods from their magical chains.
But she’d gotten so caught up in trying to save her best friend Torrence from a goddess that was keeping her captive that she’d yet to return to the Otherworld to free the half-bloods.
According to the witches in Utopia, Selena blamed herself for Torrence getting captured. But Selena was the only person in the world who could use the Holy Wand to free the half-bloods. And as I looked around at the servants we passed—all of them with downturned eyes—I wondered why Selena couldn’t have put someone else in charge of rescuing Torrence so she could free the servants she supposedly cared so much about.
I didn’t want to dislike someone I’d never met—especially not one of the Holy Queens. But how could Selena leave the half-bloods so helpless when she had the power to free them?
Eventually, we made it to the opposite side of the palace’s roof, and the Empress stopped in front of a building that looked like a mausoleum. It was made of marble, and had columns leading to the door.
She reached into a pocket hidden in her skirts and pulled out a black key. She stuck the key into the lock, the key glowed red, like burning coal, and she opened the door.
Aeliana stayed back. “This is as far as I go,” she said. “But before you leave, I have something for you.” She reached into the satchel tied at her side and pulled out two gold coins.
“More portal tokens?” I said, confused. Because the three of us already had portal tokens. At least, we had the ones we’d borrowed from Mary.
“These are rare portal tokens,” Mary said. “They were given to me by the only fae with omniscient sight who’d ever lived—”
“Prince Devyn,” I said quickly.
She raised an eyebrow. “You know your history.”
“Part of our training after receiving our elemental magic was learning the history of the supernatural world,” I explained. “I learned as much as I could.”
“Gemma’s a great student,” Ethan added, and I looked at him quizzically.
Why was he so eager to compliment me?
Mira’s lips pinched with annoyance. She never liked when I received praise and she didn’t.
I refocused on Aeliana, not wanting to look at Ethan or my twin. “Prince Devyn could do more than see the most probable future,” I continued. “He could see all possible futures.”
“Correct.” Aeliana nodded. “Which meant he could prepare for more than one possible future. And when he gave these tokens to me, he told me they were the only two portal tokens in existence that connect Ember to the Otherworld. They can be used in any fountain in Ember to create a portal back here. Devyn told me to give them to you before you entered Ember.”
“But there are three of us.” I reached for the key around my neck, as if getting reassurance that it would work as promised.
Could Hecate have been wrong? And if she had, why were we only getting two tokens instead of three?
“He said the purpose of the tokens would eventually become clear,” she said, and she placed them in my hand. “That’s all I know, since I cannot see what will happen to you once you’re in Ember. But I wish you the best of luck.”
Her expression was grave, like she thought we were dead already.
Mira looked to me, worried, and I could practically read my twin’s thoughts.
I’ll back out of this if you will.
But we’d already come this far. So I shook my head, thanked Aeliana, and followed Sorcha through the door.
Ethan took Mira’s hand and guided her forward.
Of course he did. It seemed like she needed his help with everything.
Maybe he liked the fact that she was always scared. Maybe it gave him a higher sense of purpose.
Except when he and Mira had started dating—before we’d gotten our magic—Mira had never been scared of anything.
Realizing I was getting lost in spiraling thoughts, I tore my gaze away from them and refocused on the task at hand.
Inside the mausoleum, a boundary spell the color of Sorcha’s diamond wings surrounded a pit of tar. Red glowed out of it, providing the only dim light in the building.
“The portal to Ember,” the Empress said. “No one has ever walked through voluntarily.”
Ethan stepped forward, not looking scared in the slightest. “There’s a first for everything,” he said.
His fearlessness amazed me. But of course he wasn’t scared. Ember was his home.
I needed to trust that he’d keep us safe there.
I also needed to trust my own ability to keep us safe. Because I had magic, too.
And I wasn’t afraid to use it.
12
Gemma
I’d expected it to hurt when I jumped through the portal.
It didn’t.
Instead, it tingled, like the air was electrically charged.
It wasn’t long before I tumbled out and hit the ground, landing directly on my shoulder. Pain shot up it, and I sat up and held it to relieve some of the pressure.
We were in a mostly flat desert with an occasional brown boulder along the ground. It reminded me of the Outback.
Ethan and Mira had been dumped near me. Mira looked frazzled, and Ethan was on his hands and knees, staring at the ground in a daze, like he couldn’t stand up.
I didn’t have time to ask him if it had started, because two groups of four people each walked around two giant brown rocks. The group to my left wore long black cloaks with hoods draped over their heads. They were like grim reapers without scythes.
The people in the other group all had wings. Green, red, blue, and yellow. Three of them were men, one was a woman, and they wore gladiator-style warrior outfits with swords strapped to their sides.
The first group was made up of dark mages, and the other was dark fae.
They represented the two major kingdoms in Ember—the Dark Allies. Their alliance was shaky at best, and was held together by one common enemy.
“Dragons.” The female fae sneered, looking straight at us.
Mira hurried over to me, her eyes wide with question.
What should we do?
“How did they get loose?” the man next to the female fae said.
She drew her sword. “They don’t have cuffs,” she said steadily, and the other fae reached for their swords as well. Then she looked back at us and smiled, her red wings the same color as a demon’s eyes. “Stay where you are,” she said sweetly. “Don’t use your magic on us—we won’t hurt you unless we need to defend ourselves. You can trust us to keep you safe.”
Her voice was calm and musical.
She was putting glamour into her tone.
But we’d been prepared for this. The tiny black stones attached to a thin chain around our ankles protected us from psychic attacks—which included fae glamour.
I stayed a
s still as possible, hoping it seemed like her glamour had worked on me. Then I glanced at Ethan. He was still on his hands and knees, and he took slow, forced, deep breaths, like he was straining for air.
It was happening.
I nodded at Mira, and she nodded back.
Then the mages reached up and pulled down their cloaks. Two men, and two women. Their eyes swirled with inky blackness, until they were totally dark. Like they had no souls.
“Come with us,” the tallest man said. “We don’t want to fight. You’re more valuable to us alive than dead.”
“Why do they get to go with you?” the female fae said. “We’ll take the boy—he has the strongest scent. You can have the twins.”
“No,” the mage said. “We’ll take one twin. You can have the other. We’ll duel for the boy.”
“A duel to the death?”
“A duel until first blood is drawn.”
The female fae smirked and tilted her head. “You should take the twins and let us have the boy,” she said. “He looks sick.”
I squeezed Mira’s hand, and we backed away from Ethan to give him space.
It shouldn’t be long now…
The mages and the fae continued to watch each other, both groups on guard, apparently unsure how to proceed.
They didn’t have time to figure it out, because Ethan’s entire body shook with what seemed to be total agony, and then he exploded into dragon form.
He soared up into the air, his red scales glistening in the sunlight, his wings held up regally behind him. I gasped at the sight. Because while I knew dragons were big, I wasn’t fully prepared for how big. He must have been at least six meters tall, and his wingspan twice that much.
He pulled his head back and breathed a line of fire directly at the leader of the mages.
The mage held his hands up, and black, smoky magic shot out of them, blocking Ethan’s fire. The flames mushroomed out around the magic, but Ethan was stronger, and his flames pushed the thick black smoke back down toward the mage.
Then a sword flew through the air like a javelin and sliced through Ethan’s right wing.
Ethan roared and pulled back on his magic, barely moving out of the way of the black magic flowing out of the mage’s hands. He swung his head around and breathed a line of fire at the fae.
The blaze hit the yellow-winged fae, and he screamed as the fire ravaged his body, consuming his flesh and leaving behind the distinct smell of cooked meat.
Ethan spun back toward the mages and blasted fire at one of them. But like the first mage, she held him off with dark magic.
“We don’t want to kill you!” the tall mage screamed up at him. “But we will if we have to.”
The fae used this opportunity to lob another sword at Ethan.
He stopped attacking the mage and avoided the sword. Barely.
The fae with blue wings growled, raised his hands, and threw icicles at Ethan.
Ethan blasted the icicles with fire, and they melted before they reached him.
Water magic.
That fae wasn’t a normal fae. He was a chosen champion—a half-blood fae chosen by a god to compete in the annual, gladiator-like competition the fae held each year called the Faerie Games. Given his water magic and the blue wings, I assumed he’d been chosen by the god of the sea, Neptune.
But I didn’t have much time to think about it, because the tall, male mage shot more dark magic toward Ethan.
I did the first thing that crossed my mind—focused on the rocks surrounding the mage’s feet, used my magic to raise them up into the air, and smacked them into the mage’s head.
His black magic puffed out, he wobbled, then fell to the ground.
The woman standing next to him kneeled down, checked for his pulse, and let out a pained sob.
I flexed my wrist.
Did I kill him?
It felt like it should’ve been harder to kill a dark mage.
Hopefully it wasn’t, because the other three mages spun to look at me and Mira, their inky eyes swirling with anger.
I cursed and reached for as much magic as possible—both my fire and earth magic.
I’d never taken on a mage. There were no mages on Earth to train with.
But there was no time like the present.
“Blast them,” I said to Mira, and I blasted them with fire at the same time as my twin shot ice out of her palms.
The female mage—still on the ground—raised one of her hands and held off our elements with a cloud of black smoke. She screamed and pushed harder, and I strained against her magic.
Ethan was also sending fire toward the mages, but he was being held off by the other two.
I glanced to where the fae were standing—except there were no more fae standing. Ethan had burned them all to the ground.
But the mage aiming her magic toward me and Mira pushed harder, and I widened my stance, putting everything I had into holding her off with my fire. Mira was now using air, and holding off the other male mage, who’d joined the woman in trying to blast us down.
So much for them wanting to keep us alive. If that smoky magic reached us…
The strongest mages could use dark magic to kill on the spot.
It was closing in on us. And Ethan kept getting closer and closer to the ground.
The swords the fae had thrown into his wings had ripped through them. And while Ethan healed quickly, he didn’t heal immediately.
Fear descended upon me.
The mages were beating us.
Not even ten minutes after landing in Ember, and we were failing in our mission. Maybe Mira had been right, and Ethan should have gone without us.
But it wasn’t over yet. I needed to try using my earth magic again. Earth magic was trickier, because fire was my strongest affinity, and it was difficult to focus on using more than one element at a time.
Breaking from my fire magic—even for a second—could give the mage the time she needed to overpower me.
But I needed to try. Because what we were doing so far wasn’t working.
I needed to reach for more rocks on the ground with my magic, like I’d done to kill that first mage.
I felt the rocks at their feet. But trying to raise them was like trying to raise a giant boulder.
“Gemma!” Mira yelled. “She’s getting too close!”
Sure enough, there was only about a meter of fire magic between my palm and the black smoke, and she was gaining centimeters on me each second.
Suddenly, red light flashed in the corner of my eye.
Two plumes of dark smoky magic shot out from where the light had been and smacked into the mages who were attacking me and Mira.
They fell to the ground.
Dead.
The final mage must have been shocked, because Ethan cut through his dark magic and burned him to ash.
I wanted to jump in victory.
Instead, I pulled back on my magic and turned to see where the surprise dark magic had come from, ready to defend myself against whoever had wielded it if they tried to attack us.
Two people.
A girl around my age with long auburn hair, and a guy with jet black hair and skin so pale that I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d grown up underground in Utopia.
Judging from the magic they’d used, they were mages. Dark mages.
So why did they help us?
“Gemma,” the girl said, as if we’d met before. “Mira. I take it the dragon is with you?” She motioned to Ethan, and I stared at her blankly.
Ethan lowered himself to the ground. Blood dripped out of the holes in his wings—I had a feeling it wouldn’t have been long until he needed to land, anyway—and he shifted back to human form.
He looked exhausted, but his human form wasn’t wounded. Thank God.
He hurried over to me and Mira and faced the dark mages. “Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Torrence,” the girl said, then she pointed to the dark-haired guy next to her. �
�This is Reed. Long story, but we’ve met the twins before. And we definitely weren’t expecting to see you when we landed in Ember.”
I stared at her, confused. Because how was Selena’s best friend here? And why was she acting like she knew us?
“We haven’t met before,” I said simply.
“Yes, we have,” she said. “Twin Pines Café. We dropped in a few months ago, but you don’t remember because we made you forget. Well, Selena made you forget.”
“The Queen of Wands?” Mira asked.
Torrence’s eyes went hard, and she said nothing. Because of course she meant the Queen of Wands.
The Queen of Wands, who was currently on a mission to find Torrence and free her from Circe’s island.
If Torrence had been thrown into Ember, and Selena wasn’t with her…
“Selena didn’t save you,” I guessed. “Did she?”
“She tried,” Torrence said. “But she shouldn’t have. She should have known I could handle myself.”
I glanced at Reed. He’d been silent so far, and from his intense expression, I had a feeling he wasn’t going to be as open as Torrence.
“Something happened to Selena,” Ethan guessed.
“It did.” Torrence’s voice was flat.
“Did Circe take her?” I asked. “Did Selena offer herself as a trade and take your place on Circe’s island?”
It sounded like something one of the Queens would do. Something noble, to save someone they loved.
“Selena’s not here because she’s dead,” Torrence said, her eyes so empty that it put me on edge. “The Supreme Mages killed her.”
13
Gemma
“Selena has the most magic of anyone in the world,” I said, shocked. “That’s not possible.”
“Six Supreme Mages were there,” Torrence said. “And they didn’t just kill Selena. They killed Selena’s soulmate Julian, too.”
I shivered at her empty stare. Because Selena was Torrence’s best friend. How was Torrence so unemotional right now?
It had to be shock. Selena’s death must not have sunk in for her yet.
“Tell us what happened,” Ethan said. “From the beginning.”
The Dragon Realm (Dark World: The Dragon Twins Book 2) Page 5