“Tanvir!” Evelayn lurched forward, but made herself stop, realizing if she crossed through the same thing would happen to her.
Kel was slow to get back up; Tanvir had to help him to his feet. Evelayn couldn’t see any visible injuries, but his usual verbena and mint was laced with something sharp and lingering—a scent that made her think of pain and suffering.
“What happened?”
Tanvir glanced up and followed her gaze to Kel, whom he still supported, even though they were both standing.
“He fell and snapped a bone in his leg. We didn’t have time to properly set it and have any hope of reaching the border in time, so he insisted we keep going. It’s healing wrong.”
Kel wouldn’t meet her eyes, staring at the ground the entire time Tanvir spoke. Guilt mingled with the pain, creating a thick, fetid musk.
There was a long silence and then Tanvir said, “You have to keep going.”
“And leave you in Dorjhalon?” Though she couldn’t see the wall that now separated them, she could sense it—could feel the draw of power through her stone. Evelayn wished to beat her hands against it, to tear it down.
“You don’t have a choice. Summer solstice is nearly here, and Bain will attack.”
Kel finally lifted his head, his eyes dark with pain. “Listen to Lord Tanvir, Your Majesty,” he urged, clinging to formalities even now.
“No. I’m not leaving you there. You’ll be captured or killed. Or you’ll have to journey through the Undead Forest …” She trailed off with a shudder, not needing to say any more about the risks of a journey through the sacred—but terrifying—woods on the eastern shore of Lachalonia, where it was rumored more than one Ancient lived, including the Spirit Harbinger. She refused to let them suffer any of those fates.
“Step back,” she ordered.
Alarm flashed across Tanvir’s face. “What are you going to do?”
“Just get back,” she repeated pointing toward the trees from which they had emerged a few minutes prior. “I’m going to try and break down the wards, but I don’t know what will happen when I do.”
Tanvir helped Kel limp back toward the forest while Evelayn took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
She could sense the magic of the wards—the power being drawn through her stone by the priestesses. But she’d never tried to unravel it before, to figure out how the priestesses did it—or how to tear it down. When she reached for the power it was there, a massive well waiting to be tapped, and it surged up at her call almost effortlessly.
Evelayn opened her eyes and glanced up at the nearly dark sky. The sun was completely gone, so calling a beam of sunlight to burn a hole in the wards, which had been her only idea, was not an option. Her stone burned hot in her breastbone, waiting for her.
What do I do?
Evelayn took a step closer, so that she stood on the edge of the border, but she couldn’t feel the invisible wall made by the priestesses far away in Ristra, where the largest battles had been fought. She knew there were some priestesses who traveled up and down the line of the border, making sure the wards held all across the two kingdoms, from the ocean to the west to the Sliabán Mountains that marked the eastern edge of the borderlands before the Undead Forest. But they couldn’t wait for one of them to show up and help them—that could take days or weeks.
She lifted her hands, palms out, trying to touch the wards. There was something there, but it felt like an elusive dream, a slippery, hazy half-remembered thing that she couldn’t quite hold on to. Evelayn closed her eyes again, trying to shut out everything else. She slowed her breathing. There was only her and the power for which she was a conduit.
She had to be able to figure it out.
And finally, there, beneath the slight breeze that brought the scent of juniper from Dorjhalon into éadrolan, was an intricate web of Light Power. Evelayn exhaled softly. The subtle complexity of the exquisitely crafted tapestry was … stunning. No wonder it took decades for the novices to study and learn before becoming full priestesses.
But Evelayn was no ordinary Draíolon, and she didn’t have time to be subtle.
She let the tiniest bit of power trickle out of her fingertips into the wards, testing their makeup. Instead of releasing from her body, the power wove itself into the wards, connecting her to them. She could feel the strands stretching to the mountains on her right and back to Ristra, a day’s running away on her left, and beyond. There were two unbelievably thin layers—one on the Dorjhalon side and one on the éadrolan side—a subtle but important difference between the two. That difference had to be the key, she realized, because the wards allowed Draíolon to leave éadrolan, but kept them from returning.
If she could somehow push the layer closest to éadrolan through the second layer … perhaps it would create a hole that Tanvir and Kel could come through.
Evelayn sent more power out of her hands into the invisible wards, her eyes still closed, trying to feel her way through. Her power coiled around the delicately woven strands of the first layer. The only thing she could think to do was to send it out, toward Dorjhalon, much as she’d done when she had trained with Kelwyn, trying to hit targets. She swallowed once, hard, sending up a silent prayer—please let this work—and then pushed the threads away from her, toward King Bain’s kingdom. There was a blink of time, the space between one heartbeat and the next, when nothing happened. And then the first layer exploded through the second in a collision of power that blasted Evelayn off her feet, throwing her backward through the air to land flat on her back, staring up at the velvet sky, unable to breathe.
EVELAYN!”
She heard someone shout her name as if through a tunnel, echoing distantly. Her head ached. Her whole body ached. And then someone was there, hovering over her.
“Ev, are you all right?”
She blinked and Tanvir’s face came into focus as he knelt beside her, lifting a hand to brush her hair back from her forehead.
“I … I think so—”
And then it dawned on her.
“It worked!” Evelayn slowly sat up, still a bit dizzy, but exultant.
Tanvir grinned at her just as Kel limped up to them. “I knew you could do it,” he said.
Kel sat down heavily next to her on the ground, allowing Evelayn to look at his leg more closely for the first time. It was definitely crooked.
He noticed her gaze and waved her off. “You two go ahead without me. I’ll be safe now that we’re in éadrolan. I can find a healer to help me when I make it back to the castle.”