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Elsie

T he warmth of the soft sand beneath my back is welcome in the cool, dry air. The weather isn’t warm and humid like I’ve grown used to in Lona, and instead of smelling like moss and flowers, the breeze carries a stale, salty scent.

Goosebumps run over my arms under the light fabric of my shirt. I stretch out to better soak up the pleasant heat from the sunbaked beach. Squinting at the misty glare of the white sun, I study the colorless sky. There’s not a pterosaur or cloud in sight.

I’m lying on the shore of a small silver lake with gargantuan trees all around it.

The star-shaped leaves are so delicate they’re almost transparent.

They catch the pale light twinkling on the branches and sparkling in the reflection of the water.

The fallen leaves glitter like a lacy carpet of cobwebs on the ground.

The lake isn’t deep because the same trees dot the surface, standing up to their knobby roots in the water.

Betty, my quetzalcoatlus friend, sits close by in the shade of a palm tree, which is such a deep green it almost looks black.

She watches me sulkily, her gaze flitting between my face and the weird tadpole-ish thing she’s plucked from the water and tossed next to me.

It looks like a giant sperm with catfish barbels and two disproportionately miniscule lizard feet at the front.

“Nope,” I tell Betty. “I’m not going to eat that.”

She extends her giraffe-like neck and pokes the beige-brown, slimy glob with her beak. It wobbles like jelly.

Eww. And I’m definitely not eating it raw.

The tadpole hisses and slashes its tail viciously through the air, kicking up sand as it hits the ground.

“You’d better throw it back in the water.” At the almost dejected way in which Betty hangs her head, I add quickly, “But thanks for wanting to feed me. I appreciate it all the same.”

She lifts her long lashes, blinks innocently with those soft, big eyes, and unceremoniously gobbles up the tadpole.

Gross.

I suppress a shudder as she tucks her head beneath a wing to doze off in the hollow she’s scrubbed for herself in the sand. After a moment, I follow her example and interlink my fingers behind my head to make myself more comfortable and finally process what has happened.

I flew.

I freaking flew.

On a dinosaur’s back, no less.

The knowledge is so unreal and exhilarating that it still feels like a dream.

How much distance did we cover? I have no idea.

I only know we were in the air for a long time.

The landscape changed from stark iron-blue cliffs and foamy white-capped seas to rolling hills of succulent grass and tree-studded lakes.

The vegetation slowly grew denser and darker until it turned into a jungle.

We landed in a small clearing next to the water so that Betty could eat and drink. I sensed she was getting tired.

If anyone back home had told me I’d fly across a strange world on a quetzalcoatlus’s back, I would’ve laughed in their faces.

How is this even possible? All I had to do to steer Betty in a specific direction was to think where I wanted her to go.

Back at the palace, I only had to reach out to her with my mind, and there she was, landing on the balcony.

The strange power zapping like currents of electricity under my skin is responsible for this ability.

It’s hard to believe that a short while ago, I lay in a hospital bed in Cleveland, Ohio, while my parents grieved in a corner as a doctor told me I was dying.

Just as I was mourning my impending mortality, a circle of lights appeared, and I was sucked onto a different planet, an Earth-like world in what I figure must be a parallel universe.

A world where lizard people would’ve gang-raped me and sold me as a slave if a darkly handsome prince with a terrible power hadn’t saved me, claiming that I was his mate.

I take a deep breath and slowly let it out. I’ve been too preoccupied with staying on Betty’s back to dwell on what happened with Aruan, but now I can’t help myself.

We had sex. He took my V-card, only to treat me with a cold, cruel indifference in the aftermath.

My chest tightens as I relive those terrible moments.

He must’ve hated the sex.

For all his claims that I’m fated to be his, we’re clearly not compatible as mates.

At the time, I was too overwhelmed to think clearly. I simply had to get away. What I’ve done only hits me now.

I escaped.

Holy fuck.

I actually did it.

This is what I wanted. This is what I set out to do from the moment I arrived on Zerra and doubly so when I found out that my presence could be dangerous for this strange, beautiful world.

So why do I feel so down, so disturbingly…

forlorn at the thought of putting distance between me and Aruan?

Sure, we had sex. But it wasn’t like we made love.

It was more like “let’s rip each other’s clothes off and just get it over with. ”

No, that’s not true. Aruan did take his time with foreplay. I can’t fault him for that. He ensured my pleasure, even if the act was painful at first. He’d vowed that I’d enjoy it, and although I have to admit so begrudgingly, he kept his promise.

An involuntary sigh falls from my lips.

A certain something, a feeling I can’t place, is growing inside me, and it’s not a pleasant sensation.

I feel as if I’m out of sync with myself, as if I’m somewhere I’m not supposed to be.

It’s as if I’m… incomplete. Yet at the same time, I feel good in my own skin.

This weird power that has taken over my mind has settled inside me with the ease of something that has always belonged there.

But there’s also something amiss. With the distance from Aruan, the pull toward him is stronger.

Which is stupid. And silly. And doesn’t make sense.

Especially seeing how he treated me. He even told me our mating wasn’t complete, so there’s no reason for me to feel so dejected.

No, it’s better like this.

I’m not pining for a man I slept with once.

I’m just a bit out of sorts, seeing that it was my first time.

Besides, Aruan’s power is far too dangerous, and he’s demonstrated on multiple occasions how easily he loses control of it when he thinks the safety of his mate—a.k.a.

me—is at stake. I can’t shake the memory of those strange scrolls and their prophecy, the warning that a powerful prince will destroy Zerra because of his mate.

Aruan is certainly powerful. The man can set off a nuclear explosion, for crying out loud. And he is a prince.

Yeah. I’m not superstitious or into prophecies, but I’m not willing to take that risk. It’s better for everyone that I left—for Aruan, who was clearly disappointed with our sex, for me, and for Zerra.

I made the right decision. I’m sure of it. Yet when I push onto my elbows with newfound determination, the heaviness doesn’t lift from my chest, and the illogical sense of loss only worsens when I get to my feet and command Betty with my mind.

“Let’s go, girl.”

Betty lifts her head and shakes out her feather tuft. I climb onto her back and hold on tightly to her neck, knowing the take-off is going to be bumpy.

She leaps into the air with a powerful thrust of her legs, spreads her wings, and takes off over the water. Once we’re high enough, she picks up speed.

I try to enjoy the wind in my hair and the incredible feeling of freedom I experienced earlier, but I fail to rekindle those thrilling sensations. There’s a heavy stone in my stomach, my chest tight with a peculiar sadness.

Wiggling my shoulders as if I could physically dispel those feelings, I focus on the landscape instead.

A black lake stretches out to the left. My pulse jumps. I recognize that gray, windswept shore. That was where the Phaelix almost loaded me on their slave boat.

A shiver of repulsion runs over me.

They brought me here, so they must know how to create a portal to send me back to Earth.

My poor parents must be worried sick about me.

I don’t even want to think about what’s going through their minds.

They must expect the worst. Their only child—a dying child—disappeared from the hospital where they’d left her.

A cult could’ve kidnapped me to use me as a demonic sacrifice.

A shady organization that supplies dead bodies for people wanting to fake their own deaths could’ve stolen me.

Maybe Mom and Dad have started preparations for a funeral, but they won’t even have that closure if they don’t have a body.

I can just imagine them grieving while looking for me everywhere.

Knowing them, they would employ private investigators.

Mom would make posters and put them up on lamp posts.

She would post on social media and on all her local app groups.

Dad would be driving the streets around the hospital, showing everyone a photo of me and asking if they’ve seen the woman in the picture.

In my mind’s eye, I see him sitting hunched over his steering wheel and squinting in the darkness as he searches for me until late in the night.

My chest clenches painfully.

“I’m coming, Mom and Dad,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

The water seems to go on forever. The sky is even paler here, almost white. With the flat, black surface reflecting the washed-out light, it’s a bleak portrait.

Just when I’m about to give up hope of ever seeing land again, the opposite shore appears in the distance. Humongous palm trees fringe the narrow beach. Beyond the trees, a jungle stretches to an indigo mountain, and there, at the foot of a hill, a thin ribbon of smoke curls into the air.

My heart jolts.

Fire.

That means there’s life.