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I didn’t answer that.

We trekked in silence towards the stone. Oraik carried the basket of food, almost empty now apart from a few stale loaves and Kalcedon’s melon. I had my bag over my shoulder, and the wicker cage in my arms. The pigeon hunkered down inside, head drawn back and wings fluffed.

When we finally reached the stone, it pulled so hard my teeth felt like chattering. Oraik pulled out the little knife, rolled up his sleeve, and paused.

“I might need help,” he said quietly.

“With what? I can’t touch the stone. It’ll kill me.”

“With this,” he said, his voice inching higher. “The cutting part. The blood.”

“My hands will be full,” I told him sourly. “You’re going to have to figure it out.”

He clucked his tongue and eyed the blade warily. Opening the small bird cage, I reached my hands in and received a sharp jab between my thumb and finger. A sear of pain, and then my hands wrapped around the flapping body in a mess of feathers and blood, and pulled the struggling creature loose with both hands. I clutched it tight against my chest until it stopped struggling. The pigeon panted.

Oraik held the knife to his forearm an inch from his elbow. I didn’t want to see it happen, I realized. I turned to face the stone.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

“Yes. Tell me when.”

I readjusted my hands, finding the bird’s neck. It shuddered under my hands, not fighting but anxious.

“I’ve never done this before,” I told him.

“Me neither. Count down?”

“Three, two…” I braced myself and twisted my fists in different directions, snapping the neck in as clean a motion as I could manage. The bird thrashed. With a curse I tightened my hands and tried snapping it the other way.

“I don’t know if it’s dead,” I wailed, but it had stopped moving in my hands.

Oraik stepped up to the stone. I almost warned him instinctively, and had to remind myself he was human, and safe from its pull. The prince hesitated with his arm a few inches from the obelisk, then gritted his teeth and pressed the wound to the stone. Nothing happened. He drew his arm back and looked at me.

“Am I missing something? More blood?” he asked. I bit my lip.

“Maybe the timing wasn’t good enough.” I set the pigeon down, my hands still shaking, and fumbled for my notebook. Maybe I wasn’t as good of a translator as I had bargained. Tied to life. Keyed to blood. A sacrifice of both, but I saw no reason they had to be the same source. Was I missing something?

I was interrupted by a crack so sharp it thundered. Oraik jumped back as I threw my hands over my ears.

The stone slid neatly apart down its center, and the Ward came crashing down.

Chapter 49

The Ward had come down so recently before that there wasn’t much power left in it. Still, standing so close I caught the full brunt. It knocked me back a few steps. I felt as breathless and hot as if I were wrapped in a thick blanket of magic.

As if Kalcedon’s arms were around me, though his were familiar. This magic was not.

“Hurry,” Oraik said, and grabbed my arm.

He was right. As a human without any fae blood, Oraik might have been able to cross anytime he liked, but I couldn’t. If the Ward closed before I made it over…

But I’d been standing close enough that I didn’t need to worry. I was ten big steps into the fae outland before I dared to stop running. The Ward hummed back into place, magic tugging at my back.

I had never realized.

The air was hot around me. So thick with power I could’ve cast a dozen big spells without running through it. I felt like I’d been starving and had just woken up to a feast. It roiled off plants and animals, faerie flora and fauna filling my bones with wild, untamed strength. No wonder so much excess power had built up on the Ward over time.

To just my eyes, the landscape didn’t look terribly different. Magic sparkled everywhere I looked, but the river to our right was the same one we’d sailed up, and the mountains on either side the same range which had cocooned us all morning. The forest ahead looked, perhaps, a little deeper and darker than the ones on Doregall, though for all I knew magic had nothing to do with it. I saw a flicker of light deep inside it, brighter than magic. Some fae creature, perhaps.