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She nodded.

“Priestly. Although…” her guard paused. “He remains unmotivated.”

A diplomatic way of putting it.

Priestly was a wild card — at best a lazy, self-indulgent prick; at worst, a cunning, insubordinate jackal. Add spoiled by his doting mother into the mix and…

Lyonesse sighed. Not the best guard to send after a Door Master. Then again, as inept as she considered Priestly, he did do one thing well — fight. He never missed an opportunity to embarrass her favored guards with his skills.

“Majesty,” Anckar said, “If Priestly doesn’t please you, we have another option.”

“The crystals?” Flexing her hands, she shook her head. “Not optimal. We’ll need to make multiple jumps. With no guarantee of landing close to Forrestarian.”

“Too risky.”

Far too risky.She didn’t want to make a mistake. Too many had been made already, and with dematerialization crystals involved, she couldn’t predict the outcome.

The precious stones taken from the core of Azlandia (mined in the deepest recesses of her realm) no longer generated the same power. For generations, her people had taken the natural resource for granted, using crystals for everything from ready light sources to teleportation. The stones had been taken from the ground by the trolley-full for centuries. Now, few remained, the quality of each less powerful. Which made rematerializing in the correct spot almost impossible while bending time and space.

If she opened her dwindling cache and used one, she might end up ten thousand miles from the location she needed to land.

“Get word to Priestly,” she ordered, whirling toward the machine room. “And prepare my guard. We fly the moment the storm clears.”

Anckar murmured his assent.

Lyonesse nodded in approval. Perfect obedience. Such a lovely trait. She only hoped Priestly behaved half as well.

20

SLOW AND STEADY

Broken by the call of crickets, eerie quiet stretched as Truly watched the horned behemoth from her place in the undergrowth. Right now, slow and steady won the race. Silence added a key element, but she needed to be ready for anything. Ready to inch forward. Ready to stay put. Ready to run without looking back, though intuition warned her running would be a mistake.

The man-beast staring into his backyard looked fast. Far too quick for her to outrun.

Truly swallowed as he turned his head. As he scanned, the twist of his horns cast horrifying shadows across the lawn. He continued searching. She remained frozen, waiting for him to decide all was well. Insects chirped, chipping away at the quiet, pushing a soothing song into the garden.

A lost opportunity, given she didn’t feel soothed at all.

She was stretched thin, fragile skin wrapped over hollowed-out bones. Barely breathing, she watched and waited, the beat of her heart throbbing in her ears.

He turned on the stone path. Toward his home. Away from her.

Releasing a pent-up breath, she ghosted from beneath a branch of night-blooming roses. Her strategy was simple. Her plan straightforward — move soundlessly to, then around the end of the stone wall. Get out of his yard unseen, but more importantly, unscathed.

Focus fixed on the man-beast’s back, she crept sideways. Open blooms the size of a closed fist bobbed above her head. Thick foliage brushed her shoulders. A thin whisper of sound escaped her hidey-hole.

His head snapped back in her direction. An instant later, he lunged across the yard. His hooves slammed down next to the flower bed. She heard him land. She felt his aggression. Terror raged into a wildfire, ripping good sense away as Truly whipped around. Feet churning in loose soil, she grabbed the wooden trellis anchored to the back wall.

He growled.

She cursed. Stupid, stupid…stupid. She should’ve remained unmoving until the front door closed behind him. But like an idiot, she’d given herself away. Too late now to change a bad decision to good. She was committed, and now must climb.Climbas though her life depended on it.

Catapulting herself over the brick wall remained the only option. It didn’t matter what lay on the other side — a prickly thorn bush, another monster, Dante’s Inferno and its nine circles of Hell. Nothing mattered but avoiding the man-beast and getting away. Before he grabbed hold of her and dragged her out of the darkness into the light.

Thin, sharp wooden edges scraped across her palms. Thorns from the rose bush nicked her skin. Blood welled on the backs of her hands.

Truly ignored the pain and listened to self-preservation. Her heart took up the cause, thumping hard, delivering adrenaline, propelling her upward. She climbed fast, fighting through foliage, searching for handholds, refusing to look back. Getting caught wouldn’t end well for her. She was an outsider in a strange land, a human surrounded by a host of magical creatures. Who knew what Azlandians would do to her if —