Their return to the cabin was a blur of action. Dorian and Jasper held Caius suspended between them while Echo navigated the unpredictable path through the in-between, bouncing from country to country to muddle their tracks. She felt the darkness tug at her as she traversed the void between doorways, as though it were hungry for her to become lost in its fathomless depths. The sensation reminded her of a book she had read about mountaineering disasters that described, in vivid detail, what it felt like to succumb to the siren song of hypothermia. It would’ve been so easy to let herself go, to sink into that velvety blackness. But she pushed onward, leaving smears of shadow dust and blood in her wake. She didn’t trust Tanith’s sudden change of heart. If a battalion of Firedrakes tracked them through the in-between, metaphorical guns blazing, Echo would not have been the least bit surprised. They had to get away, and fast.
Echo laid her palm against the door of a utility closet in a Nairobi railway station. When the door swung open, instead of disused Cairo Metro track, they were greeted by heaps of snow—not something one encountered often in Egypt in autumn. There were train tracks half visible through the snow, though they stood not on the platform but on the solid-white-blanketed ground that stretched as far as the eye could see.
“Where the hell are we?” Jasper said. He had one of Caius’s arms looped around his shoulders as he helped Dorian support the unconscious Drakharin.
Echo looked around wildly for any marker or sign that would inform her of their location. Perhaps if she could recognize the language, she would have a better idea of where they were. But even without a sign—of which there were none—Echo had a general idea of which part of the globe they were currently standing on.
The sky seemed to hang lower than it did in New York or Edinburgh. Above their heads ribbons of green and blue light danced against a dusky backdrop.
“Are those the northern lights?” Jasper asked. Dorian had been silent since they carried Caius from the temple ruins.
Despite the urgency of their situation, Echo found herself momentarily mesmerized by the unexpected sight. “Yep.”
“That’s fascinating,” Jasper said, “but we need to get out of here.” He looked around for some indication of how this patch of land operated as a gateway to the in-between. “How did we even get here in the first place?”
A very fine question.
Echo started kicking at the snow around her feet to clear it away. The toe of her boot connected with something hard, and she dropped to her knees to dig it out. The snow was bitterly cold against her bare skin, but she kept digging until her efforts revealed a signpost that had fallen to the ground and been buried during a storm. She worked her way along the metal post until she reached the sign at the end of it.
KIRKENES–BJ?RNEVATNBANEN.
“We’re in Norway,” Echo said. “This must be an abandoned stop on this line.”
“Great,” Jasper said. “I’ve always wanted to visit an abandoned Norwegian train station. Now that I’ve done so, I can check it off my bucket list.” Jasper hefted Caius up a little bit higher; he had begun to sag in their arms. “Can you get us out of here? He’s a lot heavier than he looks.”
Without answering, Echo pulled the pouch of shadow dust out of her pocket. The bag was distressingly light. If they ran out of shadow dust before reaching the cabin, they would be in deep trouble. Caius’s condition was worsening with every trip through the in-between. Every breath he drew seemed to be shallower than the last. There was a very real possibility he would die propped up between Dorian and Jasper.
Echo had never tried to access the in-between in the middle of a train line, without a doorway to aid her, but if the magic along the railway was strong enough to bring them there, then maybe it was strong enough to get them out.
She dipped her fingers into the pouch, and they came away stained black with dust. It was a minuscule amount, but hopefully enough for the next leg of their journey. With a silent prayer, Echo dragged her fingers along the cold steel track and pictured the nearest gateway to the cabin they’d been able to find: a ring of tall oak trees, humming with magic older than any railroad station. She didn’t want to waste any time jumping from gateway to gateway, not with the condition Caius was in. They’d taken a circuitous route back from the temple, but with the in-between as volatile as it had been lately, it was unlikely anyone—no matter how strong his or her magic—would be able to track their progress through it.
Black smoke slithered from the snow, like the first stubborn spring blossoms sprouting up through a layer of frost. Power shivered up Echo’s arm, from her fingers, which grew cold against the rail, to her shoulder. It was a weak thread. Tentative. But it was enough if they worked together.
“The trees,” Echo said, grasping the thin stream of magic curling outward from the in-between. “The ones near the cabin. Focus on them.”
She hoped Dorian and Jasper did as they were told. With three minds envisioning the same destination, perhaps the in-between would be less likely to lead them astray again.
—
Echo stumbled into a copse of trees, stomach roiling with nausea. Travel through the in-between didn’t bother her as much as it had before becoming the firebird, but struggling to resist the ceaseless pull of the void wore on her more than she had realized. She wanted to stand still just for a moment, to let her legs appreciate solid ground beneath both feet, to give her stomach a chance to stop bubbling threateningly. But they didn’t have the time. Caius didn’t have the time. She could tell from the way Jasper and Dorian struggled to keep Caius balanced between them that they, too, were feeling the effects of too much travel through an inhospitable in-between.
With no small amount of difficulty, the three of them wrestled Caius out of the woods and into the cabin. Echo was once again grateful for its isolation. How they would explain carting a bruised, bloodied unconscious man, body decorated with whip marks and scales, should some hapless passerby stumble upon them, Echo hadn’t the faintest clue.
Once they were inside the cabin, she felt something loosen in her chest. They had done it. They had saved Caius and brought him back to safety. The hardest part was behind them. All they had to do now was patch him up.
“On the bed,” Echo said as she pushed open the bedroom door.
Dorian and Jasper deposited Caius on the mattress with as much gentleness as they could muster, which was not much at all. Caius’s head lolled on the pillow and one arm dropped off the side of the bed. It was hard to tell through the blood and the bruises, but Echo thought she saw a spider’s web of black veins near his wrists.