Page 5

Chapter five

A Portal To Another Plane

W e spent our time waiting for nightfall at the tavern in the town a little further down the mountain. Rook shadowstepped to the town, preferring to avoid the embarrassing mortal labor of walking down the mountain on his own two feet. Lark offered to take me again but I refused. My gut was still roiling from the last time and I would rather trudge down that steep incline than puke all over the cobblestones in front of my colleagues. So Lark merely shrugged and fell into step beside me as I began the trek down.

“You said that man was in charge,” Lark spoke suddenly once we were halfway to the town. I glanced his way before turning my attention back to where I was stepping so I wouldn’t trip over a fallen rock.

“Wyn?” I asked. “He is. Of the camp, at least. This entire mission is his responsibility. Closing the rift is his responsibility. He’s a field agent for the DAA. That’s the Department of A—”

“I know what the DAA is,” he grumbled.

“Right,” I bit back through gritted teeth. “Well, whenever a rift opens up, the DAA assigns one of their field agents the task of closing it. Whenever the rift is proving harder to mend than others, Wyn requests help from Hadley and the university sends either my uncle or I to assist. Lately, I’ve been the lucky one.”

“And when the minotaur came?”

“He ran.”

Lark’s lip curled in open disgust.

“Not an outstanding leader,” he remarked.

“No,” I agreed with a snort. “He’s not.”

“Why aren’t you in charge?”

I glanced his way again.

“Why would I be?” I asked. “I’m just a professor and not even the head of my department. I’m here in a consulting capacity only and because the Dean of Hadley has some very useful connections.”

“Connections that a DAA agent believes capable of calling upon another foreign power to help heal a monster-dropping rift?” Lark asked, raising a brow in my direction.

“I thought it better than telling him you’re a supremely powerful magical being.”

“Supremely?” he smirked.

I rolled my eyes, ignoring him, and forged on.

“If he ever got over the shock of it, he would turn you into our government for experimentation straight away. And that’s not to mention the fact that you’re from a separate plane of existence which you’ve been banished from for a little over half a century now. Some people might ask about why that is, you know.”

“You didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

I could practically feel his gaze boring into me and so I looked over my shoulder as I answered.

“Everyone has the right to keep their own secrets,” I told him with a shrug. “If you wanted to tell me, you would. Regardless, our deal still stands.”

Then, because I was no longer watching where I was going, my foot slipped on a loose rock and I fell backwards. With a yelp, I braced myself for the sharp sting of hard ground on my frozen arse. But the hit never came. And I opened my eyes to find myself in the enigmatic Fae’s arms.

“Our deal still stands,” he drawled, the warmth of his breath heating my face as his eyes gazed down into mine in a way that should have made my skin crawl. I hadn’t met many Fae but if any of them had ever looked at me the way he was looking at me now, I would have done everything I could to shrink out of my own skin. But somehow, with him, it wasn’t menacing. I was as much a curiosity to him as he was to me. Perhaps that was naive of me. But I didn’t care. Not now. Not if he could heal the rift.

That gaze dipped to my lips and a hot flush crept up my cheeks. I should have moved, should have pushed him away and stormed down the rest of that mountain, but I didn’t. And I wasn’t even sure why. Anyone else, I would have pummeled for daring to look at me like that, to touch me like he was. But I stayed in his arms for a heartbeat too long as the realization dawned upon me that I wasn’t moving because I didn’t want to.

Panic rose within me and I blurted the only thing I could think of to end this dangerous silence.

“Why do you want to go back?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

Something about the question seemed to break the spell and he helped me back to my feet before stepping away and waiting for me to take the lead again.

“I just mean, if your father was angry enough with you to banish you,” I clarified, continuing along in our walk mostly so that I could watch my feet and not have to make eye contact with him again. “You said he was a powerful man. He must be powerful indeed to have the right to banish anyone.”

Lark did not answer me for a moment. I could practically feel his trepidation. He was considering my question and the best way to answer it. He was playing for time.

“I did something that my father believes is unforgivable,” he finally answered.

My steps faltered again and he reached out to steady me but I held up a hand to show him I was alright.

“How long did he banish you for?” I asked.

“One hundred years,” he replied.

“Then it must be forgivable. I mean, he plans to forgive you in a hundred years, right?”

I looked over my shoulder to find his lips stretching into a grin.

“I suppose you’re right,” he told me, that dark gaze warming to something almost friendly. Somehow, that was the most unsettling expression of all.

The land beneath our feet flattened and we stepped off the rough stone path onto the beaten snow road of the town. I sighed and turned to face him.

“Lark—” I said his name and those dark eyes flared with something I didn’t dare attempt to identify.

“There you two are,” someone spoke then, interrupting my attempt at reconciliation and Lark’s examination of me.

I turned to see Rook strolling toward us. He appeared to be at ease, lazy smile plastered on his lips. But I saw the way his eyes scanned the town while he walked as if expecting some form of danger from the harmless mountain folk going about their business.

“I was starting to think another minotaur had gotten to you,” he joked, eyes sparkling with mischief as if he almost wanted the challenge of a minotaur. Or maybe he didn’t consider it a challenge at all if he was joking about it.

I frowned. It hadn’t been a joke when it had picked up the DAA soldiers I had shared many meals and sleepless nights with, tossing them about as if they were dolls, cracking their bodies against the stone, blindly swinging that axe at the rest of them as they tried to shoot it down.

“I need a drink,” I muttered and pushed past the two of them, heading for the tavern.

The ale was terrible; I remembered that from last time, but in this frigid climate the alcohol was the only thing that kept these people warm at night. When the temperature dropped below zero, nobody cared what the ale tasted like. I was already a pint deep before the Fae entered, the faint purple sparks of their glamours shining around them. I wasn’t sure what had kept them for so long. Perhaps they were creating a plan for taking on the rift, maybe they were making fun of Wyn, maybe they were questioning this deal they’d made with me, or maybe they had gotten sidetracked by their own vanity as they shifted their appearances to become something these mountain dwellers would deem ordinary. It hardly mattered.

I took another sip as they crossed the room and separated. Lark walked toward me while Rook went to order ales at the bar. I waited for him to sit before I spoke, in a much fouler mood than I’d been before.

“What do they see?” I asked, nodding my head toward the people sitting at the tables scattered around us.

Lark just leaned back in his seat, watching two men playing cards near us.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes.

“I can see the glamour,” I told him. “I can see you’re using one but I can’t see what it is. I just see you, your face, and the glamour. I see when you drop it and when you put it back on but I don’t see what it is. So, what do you look like to them?”

“I look like them,” he replied. “So does Rook. All beards and potbellies. If they looked too closely at our group, you would be the odd one out here, Ren.”

As if for emphasis, he dropped his eyes and allowed them to sweep over me again, but I was thinking about what he’d said. I would be the odd one out. Me, a professor, in this ridiculous black as night ensemble they had crafted for me. Me and not these two glowing Fae in even more elaborate finery unfit for this mountain, faces that looked to be chiseled from marble, piercing gazes that followed me wherever I went. Not them. Me.

“And before?” I asked. “With Wyn?”

“Same as them,” he repeated. “We blend in with the people that surround us. Lab coats and glasses, all lanky and scrawny.”

He wrinkled his nose, eyes drifting to the people drinking at the bar.

“We keep our faces, mostly,” Rook explained, joining the conversation as though he had been part of it all along. I narrowed my gaze at him, wondering just how good that Fae hearing was, as he settled in next to Lark, sliding his friend his mug before taking a pull from his own. “It’s easier when you don’t have to change your face and we aren’t as good at glamouring as—”

Lark’s sharp glare cut him off. The newfound certainty that they were definitely not telling me everything had me shifting uncomfortably as Lark leaned across the table, lowering his voice and pinning me to my seat with a narrowed gaze.

“I answered a question for you,” he drawled slowly, his voice like velvet in the quiet of the mundane tavern. “Answer one for me.”

I watched him cautiously as if I could derive his intentions with just a look. I couldn’t, though, so I gave a curt nod.

“How does a consulting professor, not even the head of her department, know about a door to the Immortal Plane?”

I tensed. He was using my own words against me. Not the head of my department, a mere consultant, that’s what I had told him I was. And it was true. All of it. But perhaps I shouldn’t have disclosed so much to these strangers. Perhaps I shouldn’t have let them so completely into my life. They certainly weren’t taking such liberties with me. So I frowned and sat back in my seat, glaring back at Lark. Rook looked between us but kept silent, as if knowing better than to speak. He was obviously accustomed to allowing Lark to take the lead.

“Your people come and go from our plane as they please,” I spat, not without venom in my tone. “Although it’s technically against the rules. That’s what they erected The Divide for in the first place, was it not?”

Lark did not answer so I answered for him.

“I may not know the history as well as you, I may not have lived through as many things as you must have seen, but I can reason out the rules of a place that exists for the sole intention of separation well enough on my own. Your people are not supposed to come here. But they don’t seem to care. Some of them come as if they’re on vacation. As if they can just traipse about our cities unbeknownst to us. But I see them. I always have.”

“What do you mean you see them?” he pressed. “How do you identify us?”

“You glow.”

He blinked at me, dumbstruck. Rook snorted.

“We… glow” he repeated, uncertain.

Perhaps he was beginning to wonder if I was actually insane. He wouldn’t be the first.

“You glow,” I repeated, crossing my arms as I sat back further in my seat. “All of you. Some more so than others. And if I get too close, I can feel you. I can feel that you don’t belong and you know it. How do you shadowstep?”

Lark’s jaw tensed and I felt Rook’s scrutiny burning into me from his side. But I kept my composure and held Lark’s gaze as he spoke.

“This is what we’re doing?” he asked, feigning a tone of amusement but I could tell he was on his guard. “Trading question for question?”

I just quirked a brow and waited.

“It’s a rare ability,” he confessed after a moment. “Not common within my realm by any means, available to a select few.”

“So not all of your kind are capable of it. Especially those here as mere tourists. Therefore, it stands to reason that there’s another way between planes, a door of sorts, an easy method of travel your kind created, undetected by us. I’d even wager you know where to enter it on the other side.”

“The Court of Wanderers,” he told me with a nod and Rook’s gaze snapped to him, lips curving downward in a frown. I flicked my eyes to him quickly, uncertain. It was clear that he wasn’t happy with Lark for whatever he had just disclosed to me but Lark didn’t seem to care. He just kept nodding, encouraging me to continue.

“But you don’t know where it leads to here, do you?” I asked. “Because you can shadowstep. So even before you were banished, you never took the common route to visit our plane, did you?”

His lips quirked up into a smirk and I could tell he was pleased with my deductive prowess. Pride leaked into my voice as I continued. It wasn’t that I wanted to impress him. Maybe I did. But this was the culmination of my life’s work, the answer I’d been seeking since I was old enough to know the question, and now I had two Fae sitting in front of me who knew of the door, at least the other side of it. They had presented me with the opportunity to confirm what I knew, at least a part of it, and my heart was racing with exhilaration at all I’d already discovered. A Court of Wanderers? What could that mean? Where could that be?

“That professor in Oregon, she had heard whispers of a town up north where people trudged in and out of the wilderness. Not hunters; they carried no weapons. Not hikers; they didn’t wear the proper clothes or bear the equipment. She thought they were aliens but I knew what they really were. So we went to check it out. It was there. It wasn’t even guarded. She couldn’t see it. But I could.”

I didn’t want to tell them the rest. My throat bobbed as I swallowed, my mouth suddenly feeling quite dry. I took a sip of ale and looked past them to the dusk beyond the windows. Nightfall wouldn’t be far now.

Lark narrowed his gaze but didn’t ask me to continue. Rook looked as though he was on the edge of his seat, waiting. But I couldn’t. Because I hadn’t even allowed myself to think about it. Not for ten years now. Not since it happened. And I had never told Professor Chelsea Woodward that I had seen it, that I had let her search that unassuming little cottage, turning it inside out while muttering about wormholes and multiple dimensions, and find nothing. Because I had wanted to know that such a thing existed. I had wanted to confirm my own suspicions of the Fae having created such a door between planes. But I hadn’t wanted to go through it. I hadn’t wanted to travel to the other side. Not because I was afraid of what was waiting for me on the other side but because I was afraid of what wasn’t. Even as a woman pushing sixty, despite looking nineteen, I couldn’t bear the possibility of being abandoned by my mother twice.

So I’d lied. I’d lied and told Professor Woodward that I had found nothing, I’d consoled her when she fell apart in the woods beyond, bemoaning a lifetime spent in search of a portal to another plane, the confirmation that multiple dimensions not only existed but were reachable from our own. But I didn’t look back. Not even once. And I wouldn’t be doing so now if I didn’t need the help of these Fae so desperately.

“It’s time,” Lark said so suddenly that I jumped, having been lost in my own thoughts.

But he wasn’t looking at me anymore. His head was turned and he was gazing outside at the early evening. He twisted in his seat slightly and those dark eyes met mine.

“We should go.”