Page 152 of Fortune's Blade

“Her city,” Louis-Cesare added. “The containment spell on its power source had ruptured and she needed to get it as far away from her people as possible. But instead of sending it off into the air—”

“She threw it at the dragons,” I finished for him.

Because of course, she had.

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“The dragons who were right at the portal.”

“Who were still going through it, in fact. The explosion took place on both sides of the opening, as a result. And apparently, that is one of the few ways of destroying a portal linked to a ley line sink.”

“It acted like a fuse in a bomb,” Ray clarified. “Causing an eruption from the sink like a hundred nuclear weapons going off, most of which was sucked down through the portal and out into non-space, or none of us would be here. But there was enough left for a hell of a—”

“Boom,” I said, and he nodded.

“We think they’re all right, given how far away they were from the portal when the images cut out, and how far the destruction went on this side,” Louis-Cesare said. “But . . .”

“But they’re trapped in another world.”

I said the words, but didn’t believe them. We’d come so far, only to end up right back where we started. Only this was worse, since we’d lost Mircea, too. And my mother. And the Pythia—

“Not the Pythia,” Louis-Cesare said, reading my thoughts. “Cassie shifted out at the last second. She tried to take your father with her, but he jerked away.”

“He wouldn’t leave them.” It didn’t surprise me. He’d gone through so much to have his family back together again, and had come so close. Yet it still wasn’t.

I wasn’t there.

It hit me then that I might never see any of them again, and I didn’t know what to do with that; I just didn’t. I’d lost everyone, hadn’t I? And if I’d panicked at the thought of losing Dorina, it was nothing to this.

I was completely alone.

“You’re not alone,” Louis-Cesare told me, blue eyes blazing. “You have me!”

“And me,” Claire said, leaning down to gently hug me.

Ray didn’t say anything, but he took my hand, almost the only thing on my body that didn’t hurt, and squeezed it.

“And us,” someone said from the doorway, causing me to look up. And to see a motley crew of the various groups we’d left behind on this crazy journey: Claire’s light fey bodyguards, armed to the teeth and looking jumpy, here in a bastion of dark fey power; the vampires we’d last seen getting drunk in a fey village, as we and our nag headed for the mountains; my personal group of mercenaries led by a guy named Tomas and his girlfriend, Sarah, who hadn’t found Dorina because I had beaten them to it.

And behind them, bringing up the rear, the Pythia herself.

She was looking harried as usual, with her blonde hair in flyaway curls that all seemed to be going in different directions and her blue eyes smeared with truly unfortunate glittery, powder blue eyeshadow. If she’d had a jumpsuit to match, she could have come straight off the dance floor at Studio 54 in its heyday, complete with smeared pink lipstick.

I guessed the Pythian sense of style was still evolving.

“I can’t stay,” she told me, trying to squeeze past the others, then giving up and shifting to my side, close enough to make Ray jump. “There’s another disaster waiting to happen in the Alorestri lands and—anyway. I just wanted to see how you were doing and, uh. Have a word. If I could?”

It took a while, because everyone wanted a word, until Claire noticed me flagging and shooed them all out. All except the Pythia, because you didn’t tell the chief seer of the supernatural world that she’d overstayed her welcome. No, not even Claire.

“It’s not your fault,” I said, when the door had closed again. “If what Ray said was true—”

“It was.” The blonde hair bobbed, causing a little tinsel earring to dance. She appeared to have only one. “Your father wouldn’t leave your mother, and your sister—”

“Wouldn’t go without our parents.” Our parents. That was an extremely strange phrase on the tongue, I thought dizzily.

“There may be a way you can see them again,” she said, almost idly, but it focused my attention as nothing else had.

“What? How?”