CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 43

AUREN

The rip seems to drawme forward just like before.

Light and dark congeals at the center, and a mimicry of stars glitter within its clouded depths. We stand before it, and even despite the cold of the cave, there is the faintest stream of warmth hinting from an unfelt breeze.

I walk closer to it, only stopping when Slade’s hand comes down to my arm. “It has a very strong draw,” I say.

“It’s Annwyn. The two of us will always feel that call to home. But no one has come through since we arrived here—which I think must mean that this is the only side that has an entry point anymore or that the magic is too unstable. It’s dangerous. Which is why I had to dissuade some of the people not to try to go back through it.”

“You said it nearly killed one person who tried to go back.”

He nods. “The rip was even more unstable then, but it could also have to do with them being Orean. I dissuaded anyone else from trying.”

“Why would they even want to go back?” I ask curiously. “I thought they hated it there?”

“They did, to a point. But they’d been in Annwyn for hundreds of years. It had become familiar to them. Adjusting to Orea was not easy, especially since knowing they could never leave this remote, difficult place. Knowing that all their loved ones would’ve long since passed. For some of them, loved ones were left behind with my father.”

With the guilt I hear in his voice, sadness gnaws at me like the brittle teeth on an infected creature, chewing a hole right in my chest.

“Why are we here?”

Instead of answering directly, he instead says, “We’d been here in Orea for several weeks when the rip started to fail.”

My eyes snap to him.

“The noise...it was like a thunderstorm churning up an angry sea, and the wind was right there with it. It woke everybody up. I could tell right away that the magic was collapsing.”

I immediately think of all the villagers, of the implications of what would happen if the rip did fail.

“What did you do?”

“Shoved so much magic at it that I passed out,” he says with a dry chuckle.

“Great Divine.”

He runs a hand over the back of his neck. “Yeah. At first, nothing was happening. I was just rotting everything out. Thousands of beetles dropped from the ceiling, their husks raining down on us. The blue fluorescence blinked out—I think we were even in danger of the whole damn mountain caving in on us. And still, nothing was helping. But then I figured out it wasn’t rot power it needed. It was that raw, indefinite power that my father and I had somehow made together when we clashed. I was able to channel that same force and feed it into the rip. It nearly drained me to death, but it worked, and it stabilized the rip. It’s something I’ve had to do ever since.”

My mind whirs. “You’re saying you’ve had to feed raw power into this rip all this time so that it doesn’t close?”

Slade nods, and I just stand there completely dumbfounded. “I didn’t even know fae could do that.”

“Neither did I,” he says with a humorless laugh. “And I can’t use that power for anything else. I have enough rot power to take out all of Orea, and I need to expel it. It would be nice if that’s what the rip needed, but it’s not. My rot magic has no effect whatsoever. Too bad, because expelling rot can be invigorating, while expelling raw power is always exhausting.”

“So...you have to come out here to Deadwell to expel your rot power, but then you also have to feed raw magic into the rip?”

He tilts his head. “Yes.”

“How often do you have to do this?”

“Depending on how much power I can feed into it, the longest I can leave it is about eight weeks.”

I stare at him with awe. Not only is this male unparalleled with his rot power and his overall extent of control, but he has to drain himself every two months to sustain a rip between worlds. “Wow. You are...really, really powerful.”

This time when he laughs, the sound is genuine, and he turns to look at me, unleashing that charming smile he seems to save just for me. “Have I dazzled you, my lady?”

I drag my boot against the floor. “I mean, maybe a little.”

“Wait until I show you my kingdom.”

Excitement bubbles up in me, because the fact that I’m actually going to Fourth Kingdom hasn’t really sunk in.

“Alright,” he says, rubbing his hands together. “I want you to back up and stay over there by that rock where it’s safer,” he says, head tilting to the right.

Nodding, I turn and walk several paces away until I sit down on the rock he indicated. My hands gather in my lap, my knee bouncing up and down in nervous anticipation.

Slade turns back toward the rip, walking so close to it that his black hair gets windswept, the panels of his coat blowing back.

His feet are planted, hands outstretched, and although I can’t see his face, I sense the moment his power rises up, because every hair on my arms and the back of my neck rises with it. His body goes taut, and when the force of his raw magic comes barreling out of him, my back slams against the rock behind me.

Despite the fact that my back has mostly healed, the force makes me hiss out a breath of pain. But it’s immediately forgotten when I see the ripple of air that’s now streaming from Slade’s hands. Adrenaline courses through my body, like all my senses are on high alert from the presence of such power.

Wind blows out of the rip, the cracked air shoving and elbowing its way through the torn air. Everything in it seems to shudder. The dark and light that churn inside start to shake. The pricked stars begin to spin, so fast that it’s like watching a million fireflies get caught in the whirl of a tornado.

Slade pours out more and more power, so much that I feel pinned in place, unable to move from my spot. Spikes tear out from his back, the first one appearing at the top just between his shoulder blades, before the other five appear, one after the other until the shortest one just above his hips. They break through his arms too, which is when I notice that his hands have started to shake.

But still, he shoves more power out of him.

My eyes jump between him and the rip, my heart beating, speeding like it’s going to pass me by and leave me here breathless.

His ears go pointed, aura bursting off his silhouette like thick black steam. It’s not a calm, clinging shadow, but an erratic and unsettled swell like capsizing waves. When his entire body starts to shake with the effort of the magic pouring through him, my mouth goes dry, worry slamming through me.

“Slade...”

I know he can’t hear me, but his name slips past my lips anyway, eyes unblinking as I watch him. The magnitude of the magic he projects presses against my skin in some invisible force, like static clinging to my arms and charging up through my teeth.

His aura continues to churn erratically until its usual inky depths start to turn shallow and pale.

I jump to my feet, pushing against the brunt that wants to push me back. With gritted teeth, I walk over, every step a challenge to get closer to him. Wind tears through my hair, making my clothes plaster against my body, all while the rip seems to try to shove me away.

“Slade, stop,” I call out when I’m just a few feet behind him. He either doesn’t hear me or he’s too focused on his magic, because he doesn’t react to my voice. But his aura has gone slow, like water bogging up, weighed down as he continues to expend.

Pushing forward, I don’t stop until I’m right at his side. “Slade, you need to stop,” I say, just as I reach out and grip his wrist.

He jerks in surprise at my touch, and one of the spikes on his arm slices into the skin of mine. I release him with a surprised hiss of pain, looking down at the gold blood that trickles from the cut.

Slade’s face snaps to me, black eyes blinking away the faraway look of concentration. In an instant, his gaze drops to where I’m bleeding, realization scouring over his face like the raking of nails to drag him down.

“Fuck.”

With great effort that makes his whole body shake, teeth clenched and muscles bunching, Slade manages to fist his hands, and the power cuts off in a blink.

The sudden loss of its magnetism makes him stagger, and his body pitches to the right. He almost falls over, but I shove my shoulder against his side and keep him upright, my arm stretching around his waist, careful to not touch the spikes on his back. “I’ve got you,” I say, though I struggle to keep my feet planted beneath me with his weight bearing down. He pants like he just ran across the Barrens without stopping. I can feel his exhaustion as he sinks into me.

“Do you want to sit?”

Slade shakes his head. “Just...gimme...a...second.”

I help him stagger over to the cave wall, and he braces himself against it, still pulling in lungfuls of air. His pallor has gone gray, his aura sticking around him like the drip of sap on a tree.

Worry indents into me, leaving me feeling raw and pitted. I stay at his side just in case, and my pulse only starts to calm down when he finally catches his breath and looks over at me.

“Are you okay?” I ask, the distress lifting my tone.

He ignores my question and instead grabs my arm, pushing up my sleeve to reveal the cut. “Fuck,” he hisses out. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

I glance down at the slice against my skin. “It’s fine. It’s not even very deep, and it’s my fault for grabbing you.”

With a creased brow, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a clean handkerchief to gently wipe away the blood before tying it around my arm. His fingers caress my skin just below the fabric, and when he looks back up at me, tormented black eyes fade back into green. “I hurt you.”

“You didn’t. It’s barely a scratch,” I say as I pull my sleeve back down. “But you were worrying me.”

He lets out another deep breath and then straightens up from the wall. “I know, I’m sorry.” He runs a hand through his messy hair. “I wanted to expel enough power into it just in case I can’t come back for a couple of months. It’s always a difficult push, and I let it get away from me. The rip doesn’t like for me to cut off my power.”

My eyes look over to the tear, which is now back to its calm swirl, sparkling stars blinking, and the faintest lightning boiling within churning clouds.

Slade takes my hand, bringing my attention back to him. “Are you truly ready?” he asks, eyes watching me steadily. “To leave Drollard, to go to Fourth Kingdom?”

To leave the cocoon.

Slade delves into my thoughts with the look in his eye, like he’s always been able to root right down inside me. “Because fuck the rest of the world, Auren. If you need to stay here, we’ll stay here.”

My lips tip up, even as emotion drags down my chest. “I’m ready.”