Then the air shifts. Thickens. I don’t need to look to know what’s coming. The temperature drops. Shadows bleed across the floor. A hiss like the rattle of a thousand bones sounds behind us.
And there he is.
Henny.
The Hendroy appears in a swirl of mist and malevolence, his towering form even more imposing inside closed quarters. His head tilts, glowing eyes zeroing in on Kael with no attempt to hide his distaste.
He doesn’t speak, but I feel it—a brush of his power skimming across my mind like a warning. Kael steps half in front of me. Reflexive. Protective.
Varek, unbothered, gives a nod. “We’re ready.”
Henny extends an arm, palm up, fingers tipped in wicked claws. The mist coils tighter, forming into a vortex of spinning black-and-violet energy.
My stomach flips. “Oh, fuck me,” I whisper.
“Later,”Kael murmurs through our bond.
My startled snort breaks the tension, and I shoot him a sideways look as we step towards the portal.“As much as I love you, I hate you a little right now.”
“You love me?”Kael says—asks?—through the bond, quiet, awed.
I freeze.Shit.That wasn’t supposed to slip out, but I don’t take it back.
“Unfortunately,”I say, because sarcasm is safer than sincerity, and I’m already halfway undone.
Kael doesn’t reply, but the flare of heat and emotion through the bond is unmistakable. He heard me. Felt me. All of me.
The vortex pulses beside us. Varek moves first. Then Kael. Then me.
As I step into the swirling dark, my heart thudding against my ribs, I send one last thought into whatever dimension fate is listening to.Please let there be answers on the other side.Because if not, I think we’ll definitely be royally fucked. Maybe even here in this black void that wipes away my vision.
I barely have time to take a breath, though, before we land hard. Like, arse-meets-stone, ungraceful-as-hell hard.
The ground beneath me is cool and rough, the scent of moss and distant smoke catching in my throat. I sit up, disoriented, the mist still curling around my shoulders like ghostly tendrils, until it’s gone—vanished as though it never existed.
Panic grips my chest. “Shit,” I mutter, spinning. “Did no one think to talk about where we were actually going?”
Kael appears beside me, already upright, hand on the hilt of his blade. Varek is standing, too, brushing dust from his coatlike he didn’t just get yeeted into another part of Terrafeara via a scary-as-fuck mist vortex.
“Is it safe here?” I ask, scanning the area. It’s… eerily quiet.
Stone structures rise around us—weathered buildings with jagged spires, smoothed by time and the subtle thrum of energy that hums beneath the surface. The stone itself almost seems to pulse faintly, like it’s alive. Or maybe that’s just the panic making my brain short-circuit.
No Glowranth in sight. No crowds. No chaos.
Just empty, watchful silence.
My arm aches suddenly—sharp, hot. I wince and glance down. “Uh. What the—” A mark glows faintly on my forearm. Ink-black with hints of purple, it spirals into a rune I don’t recognise, sleek and otherworldly.
Kael’s eyes land on it and narrow. “It’s from the Hendroy. His tracker. A tag.”
“Great,” I say, flexing my arm. “Mystic LoJack.”
His lips twitch. “We’re close to the citadel. The palace is further east.”
“Define ‘close,’” I urge. “Close enough for guards to skewer us, or just ‘hey, we’re in the neighbourhood’ kind of close?”
Kael’s eyes flick to the tallest spire visible in the distance. “Too close. But not immediate danger. Yet.”
