I nod. “Jack from Queensland. Which is on the complete opposite side of the planet from Portugal. But if you put a ruler through the Earth—” I mimic drawing a straight line with my hand in front of his face. “—their locations are practically parallel.” I exhale, thinking back to the discussion I’d barely had with Varek about this before I left. “No one’s ever heard of something like this happening. Not that I know of. Ever.”
Kael is silent, his fingers pressed against my ankle, but I can tell he’s thinking. Finally, he nods. “True. I’ve met a lot of Riftborn over the years, and only one rift, in one area, has happened at the same time.”
A fizz of excitement bubbles in my gut that I’m onto something. “I think that’s what went wrong.”
He blinks, looking over his shoulder. “Wrong?”
I nod. “He wasn’t just pulled through a rift. He was pulled through the centre of the Earth to get here. Maybe the rift got confused, maybe it was unstable, maybe something else messed with it—but whatever the case, he came through wrong.” Jack’s words filter into my brain about the possibility of someone being responsible for the rifts, but I keep my mouth shut.
Kael’s jaw tightens. “Dawson’s arrival wasn’t natural.”
“No,” I say, wondering at his word “natural.” Does he also think someone was responsible? Fuck, considering his position, what if he knows more? Knows the truth? I forge on carefully, saying, “And now something’s happening to him. Something’s wrong, and if we don’t get him help soon?—”
Kael doesn’t let me finish that thought. His grip flexes slightly on my leg before smoothing out again.
“We’ll get to the doctor,” he says, voice full of certainty. “We’ll save him.”
I let out an unsteady breath. Dawson has to be our focus, but the lingering thoughts of the reasons behind the rifts remain. “Yeah.”
We stay silent for a moment, the terrain changing gradually around us to something?—
“Holy shit!”
Gone is the snow and rock. In its place, a landscape so familiar, my throat closes up. Green grass spreads like a dream, the rolling hills and rich earth stretching towards the horizon. The air is different here—softer, thick with the scent of damp soil and sun-warmed leaves. And in the distance, something that makes my heart stutter.
A windmill.
The blades turn slowly, lazily, against the palebluesky, exactly like the ones I grew up watching in movies. The kind that dotted countrysides back on Earth, where the air held the faint, distant scent of wheat and cattle. My breath catches in my chest, my pulse hammering too fast.
“Put me down,” I murmur, my voice shaky, my fingers tightening in Kael’s tunic.
He hesitates, his grip on me firm, his warmth grounding. A muscle feathers in his jaw, but after a beat, he obeys, setting me carefully on my feet. The cold shock of missing his heat barely registers as I sway slightly, legs shaky beneath me.
Kael helps unstrap me, his hands sure and steady as I stare at the impossible sight before me.
Home. It looks like home.
A lump rises in my throat, my body caught between longing and the eerie wrongness of it all. This can’t be real. It shouldn’t be real. Something isn’t right.
The wonder curdles into unease when Kael stiffens beside me. I feel it before I see it—the shift in the air, the way the world suddenly holds its breath. His eyes sharpen, darkening as hescans the horizon, his body moving subtly, positioning himself between me and whatever lurks unseen.
Every hair on my body rises.
“We’re not alone,” he says, voice quiet but edged with steel.
Dread lurches through me, cold and thick. My stomach knots painfully.
It has to be him. The Hendroy.
I swallow hard, forcing my feet to move forwards even as every instinct screams at me to run. My pulse roars in my ears, my breath sharp in my chest.
“I know you’re here,” I call out, trying to keep my voice steady, though it wavers just enough to betray me. “I come in peace.”
Silence. A heavy, unnatural silence that presses against my skin. Something moves at the edges of my vision. A ripple in the air, a disturbance in the stillness.
I wet my lips, forcing myself to keep going. “Do you remember me?” My voice is too fast, too desperate, but I can’t stop. “I know Iris. She liked me! Not like that. I’m into dudes. I’m just saying, she didn’t hate me.”
The wind changes. The air thickens.
