Page 13

twelve

I couldn’t close my eyes. Call it instinct, call it whatever it was that gave me the need to see exactly where I was going, but my lids were stuck open, and so I saw the shimmer as I went through. It was like walking through water— if water shimmered and wasn’t…you know, liquid. Not entirely.

The feel of it was warm against my skin. It had no weight, but it went on for a couple of feet, if my judgment in that state could even be trusted. My hair floated to the sides as it would underwater, and my ears echoed in the same way, yet my clothes remained dry and my lungs filled with air and my heart beat steadily.

Then the shimmer released me.

That was the only thing that made a bit of sense—the shimmer released me, and my hair fell over my shoulders again, and my ears picked up the sound of the forest around us once more.

The birds chirped, the owls hooted, and the the breeze was soft against the side of my face—only here the leaves on the trees were colorful. Yellow, green, blue and purple in all kinds of shades. The leaves were shaped like leaves, yet they looked thicker than those in the forest we left behind. They looked like they were plastic, which would explain the colors on them.

Because trees did not sprout blue leaves.

“What…what…what happened?” I finally said. My heart had picked up its beating already, and my eyes searched the trees—so many of them on all sides.

“We passed through the Aetherway, Nilah. You are now in Verenthia.”

Helid’s voice reached me, but I didn’t even see his face because I was still trying to find the real trees. The ones with green leaves— normal trees.

Except even when I looked at where we’d come from, I didn’t see it. I didn’t see the forest I’d been in just a minute ago. I didn’t see the oaks and pines and the thin green leaves, only these trees I had no name for other than colorful—imaginary—unreal trees.

“Where’s the forest?”

“It’s there. It’s here. ” Helid was right beside me, and he was looking back to where we came from, too. “We are in that same forest, but in Verenthia’s side of it. Think of it this way—this is your forest”—he held his hand straight, fingers together —“and this is our forest. They are merged together on either side of the Aetherway.” And he put his other hand over the first.

I shook my head with my lips parted, reached out my hand to touch the thin air. “There’s no shimmer here.”

“That’s because the Aetherway in this forest is a bit farther below. Possibly about a mile.” And he waved his hand ahead.

I couldn’t even begin to understand what he was saying because my focus was still on what I’d felt, the warmth and the weightless texture—and my hair, too. It had floated around my head, but now when I touched it, it felt just the same as ever, and my waves were perfectly dry.

“Come, Nilah. Our horses await.”

I turned, heart in my throat, trying but failing to keep my eyes on Helid’s face and not roaming around the trees, the strange leaves, trying to make sense of the fact that they were real.

But then I heard the neighing.

The five guards had continued ahead, and they indeed had horses tied to tree trunks not twenty feet away. My breath caught in my throat when I spotted them—white, almost twice the size of a normal horse, all seven of them. They were possibly over a head taller than me at the shoulders.

Horseback. I was going to have to mount one of those horses and ride it.

Helid must have noticed that I wasn’t responding because he came and grabbed me by the arm, then gently guided me forward.

The horses moved. They were real. They were so white I’d have though they were albino, but their manes and their tails had color. Brown and grey, deep and light.

“There’s no need to be afraid. These are Summer Stallions, and they are the easiest to ride. They connect with you and they watch after you. Tell me, have you ever been on a horse’s back before?”

“No, I-I-I…” I shook my head, took in a deep breath. “No, I haven’t.”

“That’s okay. We’ve brought you an older horse, one with more experience than most. This here is Aro, and he is, if I’m not mistaken, a hundred and twenty summers old.”

There went my brain again, emptying itself to make space for this new information that refused to stick to any kind of sense I knew.

“Immortal horses.” That’s what I gathered from what he’d said.

“No, no—not immortal. Horses are not immortal. They have a lifespan of about a hundred and fifty summers, but they do die of old age,” Helid explained. “All you have to do is put your leg in here and the other across the saddle. Orif will help you.” He stepped back and one of the guards—the same one who’d caught Betty’s sneaker aimed at his face—came forward.

“Requesting permission to touch,” he said, and I was going to say sure, man, except he apparently wasn’t talking to me at all.

He was talking to Helid.

“Granted. Do be careful,” the man said, and if I wasn’t about to mount a fae horse that made me feel smaller than I ever had before, I would have had a thing or two to say to him about speaking in my name about my body.

As it was, the man—Orif—stepped behind me and put his big hands around my waist. He pulled me up like I weighed nothing at all. It was easy to put my foot in the stirrup, and my leg on the other side.

Everything was happening so fast. I was suddenly sitting on the back of a giant horse and a saddle that was hard and slippery and too fucking big for me, and the horse was alive and he was moving, and someone put reins in my hands as well.

I hardly saw anything. Helid spoke, but I didn’t understand a single word as the panic came over me, made my ears whistle. Breathe, Nil, breathe, I told myself, but it wasn’t working.

Everything was happening way too fast. I couldn’t think straight, and the panic was catching up with me. At first, I’d thought it was for the best that I wouldn’t have the time to dwell and wonder. What-if s were a real pain in the ass I didn’t want to deal with.

But this might actually be worse. Right now, when I could hardly breathe and was pretty sure I was going to die by falling off this horse and breaking my neck, I wished I was drowning in what-if s.

Then I was moving.

The black dots in my vision began to fade. I blinked my eyes a thousand times until I could see again—the horse’s neck and head— so big! —in front of me, and the saddle that I had to squeeze between my knees so I didn’t slip off, and the other horses as well, two in the front, one by my side, and another three behind.

The guards and Helid were there with me, and they were actual fae, and they knew what they were doing. They looked like they had control over themselves on those horses, and Helid was smiling at me.

That could only mean that I wasn’t about to die, right?

“Trust Aro, mortal. He will not let you fall.”

Mortal he called me again, except I didn’t even dream of correcting him this time. My life was passing by right in front of my eyes and I held onto those reins with all my being.

“Just…just no running,” I said, and Helid laughed as pleasantly as before.

“No running,” he agreed.

Ahead we went.

* * *

It was nighttime.

At first, I thought it was just the thick canopy of leaves in all those colors that didn’t let any light peek through, but the more we walked, the more of the sky I saw. There was no moon anywhere, or stars. Only darkness.

Silence.

No more butterflies made of golden light guiding our way, just the two guards riding their white horses ahead. Helid stuck by my side, and maybe it was my paranoia speaking, but he seemed to be very alert as he looked around us at all times, the reins of his horse tightly in his fists.

Minutes must have turned to an hour, and the sound of hooves steadily hitting the forest floor in the same rhythm tried to calm me down. It did for the most part, and I was no longer hyperventilating in panic, but I was also realizing that coming here like this might have not been the best of ideas. Not without some preparation, at least. Not without knowing exactly what my surroundings were going to look like.

Don’t get me wrong—I didn’t regret saying yes. I was going to do everything in my power to save the life of the man who saved mine, but I regretted leaving right away. I regretted not sleeping on it, not eating better, not questioning Helid thoroughly.

I knew nothing about this place, and I’d put my life in the hands of these strangers who weren’t even the man who’d saved me.

But I’ve seen him, I reminded myself. I knew Helid was who he said he was because I’d seen him with the boy that day.

Except that alone wasn’t doing much to calm my nerves and my racing heart.

“How… dangerous is this place, exactly?” I asked, and my voice seemed so loud because my ears were used to the silence and the hooves hitting the ground at exactly the same rhythm.

“It’s a very dangerous place,” Helid said—and was it just me or did his voice seem more… hushed than before? “This is the forest that surrounds the south of Verenthia and it belongs to the Neutral Lands, which is as the name suggests: the neutral territories of our continent.”

Yes, yes, he was most definitely speaking lower.

“And what exactly lives in?—”

A snap somewhere in the distance, but we heard it. Because of the silence, it echoed in the forest.

Everyone stopped.

Every horse we were riding on, including mine that I was trying not to think about at all, came to a halt at same second.

My heart beat like a drum. “What was?—”

Helid raised a hand. The words got stuck in my throat.

Two guards—one riding in the front and one in the back—dismounted their horses so silently I would have never known they were moving had I not seen them with my own eyes.

One went farther ahead, the other back, and suddenly light exploded from both their hands. No butterflies or birds this time, just these balls of light that were as big as both my fists together.

I held onto the reins with all my strength, so tightly I had bloody half-moons on the skin of my palms. The horse I sat on held perfectly still, too, head straight, breathing even. I felt him so clearly against my body. For a moment there, when I closed my eyes in an attempt to calm down, I felt the breath going down his throat as if it were mine.

It freaked me out so much I almost screamed, except when I opened my eyes again, the guards were returning to their horses, and they both nodded at Helid.

He turned to me with a forced smile. “It’s best if we stay silent until we get to the other side now, mortal.”

I almost passed the fuck out.

“What? What does that mean? Are we in danger, is that it?” Because the look in his eyes terrified me even more than his words.

“We’re here by orders of the Seelie Queen. The residents of the Neutral Lands know it. They wouldn’t dare attack.”

Attack, he said, and yet he didn’t sound convincing at all.

So, I said, “Even you don’t believe that, Helid.”

He didn’t correct me on using his name, just like I didn’t correct him when he—again—called me mortal. Much more pressing issues at hand.

“Quiet,” he said. “It’s best if we remain quiet for now.” And he drove his heel against the side of his horse, and the horse took him forward, between me and the front guards.

Regret made its way into my very bones. I pressed my knees tighter against the saddle, but now I wasn’t concerned about riding a horse—this one actually made it very easy because he was so big and stable.

No, now I was concerned with what could be out there that could have attacked us had we not been here by orders of the queen.

Fuck, I shouldn’t have come here without a weapon. A knife or whatever—just something to protect myself with. Something to make me feel a little safer.

But all I had was my backpack and no amount of trying to calm myself down was working. Even so, the horse moved forward without needing any kind of guidance from me.

We didn’t stop moving for a long time.

The trees never changed. I felt so tiny among them. Everything looked the same as if we were walking through the same part of the forest over and over again, until…

“There!”

Helid pointed ahead. Beyond the two guards leading the way, there were small twinkling lights we could barely make out in the distance. If it wasn’t so absolutely dark here, we would have missed them.

My heart took a pause.

“The Neutral Lands,” Helid said. “The forest ends there, and the nearest town begins right down the hill.” He turned to look at me, and indeed he looked relieved, his golden eyes lighter. “We’re almost there.”

I believed him, and the relief was instant. Air went down to my lungs with much more ease and my hands were slightly numb when I relaxed my muscles.

“Now, you’re going to tell me exactly why you were so terrified back there, Helid,” I said with a sigh. “What the hell is in this forest that could have attacked us?!”

But Helid didn’t need to tell me anything.

I saw them with my own eyes in the next moment.