Page 119 of The Moorwitch

“Yes,” I agree regretfully.

He steps back, holding me at arm’s length. Then he picks up the broken Dwirra branch and presses it into my hands. “I’ll see you on the other side. Hurry, now.”

I draw a deep breath, then step through the glass portal. The surface shimmers and parts for me, sliding over my skin like cool water. My foot falls onto dewy grass; my lungs inhale the fresh, clean scent of the forest. Turning, I see Conrad standing still in Elfhame.

For a moment, we stand on opposite sides of the portal, I in the forest behind Ravensgate, he in the world of the fae. I press my hand to the glass, and his palm meets mine, but our skin cannot touch; the pane has gone rigid.

“What are you doing?” I ask. “Come, you must hurry.”

But Conrad only stares at me.

My stomach plummets, as I realize what he means to do. Why he made me go through first. Why his eyes were full of such sadness when I kissed him. Why he pressed me to him as though it were our last kiss, not our first.

I chose you and Sylvie.

No mention of himself.

I slap my hands against the glass, trying to open the way again. He watches, his eyes hollow.

“Conrad!”

He shakes himself, then says, “I must give you time to escape. Without the portal, she’ll be slowed down considerably. I’m so sorry, I ...” His voice breaks. He shuts his eyes for one heartbeat, then opens them, his gaze blazing. “Promise me this: You’ll take care of Sylvie. Whoever triumphs—Morgaine or Lachlan—they may come for her yet. Youmustget her away from here. Take her to the Telarii, perhaps, or some other powerful guild that might protect her. Mrs. MacDougal can explain once you’re away.”

“No!”

“Go east from the circle, and you’ll find Bell tethered to a tree. He’ll carry you back to the manor, then as far as you can run. There’s moneyenough for you all to live on, wherever you go. Mrs. MacDougal will know where to find it. Promise me, Rose.”

“I won’t leave without you!”

There are tears in his eyes. “My sister. Please.”

I begin to sob, leaning into the glass.

“I promise,” I whisper. “I promise.”

“Thank you.” He breaks off a bit of beam that has already splintered away from the trembling wall and raises it.

My heart cracks. “No!”

He swings the beam and shatters the portal. I watch in horror as shards of glass rain down, his image fragmented in their jagged pieces, and then the portal, Elfhame, and Conrad all vanish entirely.

I stand alone in the black wood, an hour from midnight.

Chapter Thirty-Four

I cannot Weave another portal knot, for my threadkit is still in Elfhame. And even if I could, I know it would not work. Conrad broke the portal glass, the anchor to the standing stones, so that Morgaine could not follow me, and so that I could not return for him.

The way is entirely shut.

Conrad could not have issued a more final farewell.

I let out a scream of anger and splitting, searing sorrow, on my hands and knees on the damp earth, my fingers driving into the dirt. The wind tears through the clearing, disturbing the once sacred quiet of this place, driving home the knowledge that the connection between these stones and Elfhame is shattered. They are only rocks now.

A glint in the grass reveals one triangular shard of the portal glass which somehow followed me through. I pick it up and stare at it venomously, as if all of this wereitsfault. The glass reveals no image of Conrad or Elfhame, only a twisting, vague mass of threads—the strange place the Telarian tapestry led me through, I realize, when I traveled to and from Lachlan’s camp. The raw warp and weft of the tapestry of the world.

Finally, I put the shard in my pocket, as if somehow it might still help me reach Conrad. It is the only tie I have to Elfhame, now.

That, and the Dwirra branch.