“I need—” she tried to say, but her words were cut off as the whiteness returned. Speaking was impossible, how could she speak without breath? She looked at Inekera, hoping to communicate her distress in her expression.
Inekera met her gaze with one that was hard and cold and calculating. At Rielle’s shock and confusion a brief flicker of sympathy softened the woman’s features, then the hardness returned. Her grip loosened.
Realising what the Angel was about to do, Rielle instinctively grabbed at the elegant hands and managed a tenuous grip around two fingers. As she tightened this, Inekera’s eyes and mouth widened. The Angel scowled, then pulled herself closer, placed her other hand on Rielle’s chest… and gave a great shove.
Rielle’s grip slipped from Inekera’s fingers. As soon as they no longer touched, the Angel rapidly faded to white.
Abruptly alone, Rielle flailed about, instinctively trying to dig her toes into the ground and reach for something to take hold of, but found no purchase. She fought back panic, aware only of white nothingness and that she had no idea how to reach the next world. Was she stuck here now?
But something told her she was moving. Calming herself, she concentrated on the sensation. The feeling grew stronger. When the Angel had shoved her away the momentum had propelled her towards… somewhere.
Perhaps it had been deliberate. Rielle considered Inekera’s last expression and shook her head. She was afraid of me keeping hold of her. Wherever she wanted me to be, she didn’t want to go herself.
To her relief, she could see distinct shapes in the whiteness now. As colours and shapes formed, it all began to make sense.
A desert.
Inekera had sent her home.
CHAPTER 5
Rielle learned the exact moment she arrived back in her world when pain speared through her head. Her lungs were suddenly consumed by the need to breathe as deeply and rapidly as possible. Her legs refused to support her, and she dropped to the sand. It was as if she had held her breath for too long. No–as if someone had tried to suffocate her; she would never have been able to hold her breath so long.
Her temples throbbed. Her muscles were numb or shaky. Her lungs rattled and wheezed. She lay on the hot sand and gasped like a sea creature scooped from the water and thrown into a seaman’s basket to die. Eventually she was able to swallow, which only led to a fit of coughing. As she recovered from that, her mind stopped spinning and the ache eased enough for her to think.
Why did Inekera send me home? she wondered. Why didn’t she take me to Valhan’s world, as he said she would? Had he found his world in a terrible state, and figured it was better she return to her own?
He could have given Inekera a message for me, explaining the problem, Rielle thought crossly. She rolled her head to the side and gazed out over the dunes. Unless… unless there was no need.
Perhaps this was his world.
Lifting her head, Rielle examined what appeared to be the top of a dune. She pushed herself up on her elbows, then slowly rose to her feet. Sand extended in all directions. There was no sign of a road. No mountains in the distance, either. She brushed at the grains on her clothes. They were a different size and colour to those that blew into her family’s dyeworks during storms. If she was in the mortal world, she was nowhere near her home town of Fyre.
Having grown up in a city on the edge of a desert, in a merchant family whose male members handled transportation of dyes and cloth, she knew a little about survival in the desert. She knew that she was dangerously ill-prepared to be where she was. She had no water. A human could survive without food for several days, but without water no more than a few hours.
Why didn’t Inekera deliver me to Fyre, or Schpeta, or some other safe location?
She thought of the Angel’s fear when Rielle had held onto her. What would have happened to her if she’d entered Rielle’s world? Of course! The answer was obvious, now Rielle had found it. The Angel had removed a great deal, if not all, of the magic. Perhaps if Inekera had entered Rielle’s world she would have become trapped, with no magic left to take herself out again. The only way she could send Rielle home without joining her there was to propel her towards it. Perhaps she’d had no way of aiming for any particular place in this world when she’d shoved Rielle in its direction.
It was simply bad luck that Rielle had arrived in a desert.
The sunlight was beating down relentlessly and she had begun to sweat. She massaged her aching temples. She needed to think past the ache and fuzziness in her head. A bad decision now could propel her towards a slow death.