She wiped sweat off her forehead—the humidity was oppressive—and noticed that Nikolai’s back had gone completely rigid ahead of her.
“Is this...” Aria cleared her throat and tried again. “Why is everything dead? What happened?”
“I happened.” His deep voice had rasped to almost nothing, barely a whisper.
Her heart slammed to a halt. “You didn’t do all this, did you?”
He shot her a glance, and she swallowed. A swirl of black passed over his pale-gray irises. “No. Demeti pulled power from the forest as well. Some of this is old damage. But most of it is new.” He looked away again, then closed his eyes, his dark brows drawing down.
Aria sensed a tide of energy sweeping from him across the dead grass to the forest. Everywhere it touched, life began once more to breathe. Dead leaves dropped away to expose swelling buds, and deep in the old leaf litter, insects began to stir.
Nikolai opened his eyes. To her shock, they gleamed a brilliant blue. Then he blinked, and they were gray again. Had she imagined it?
He sighed. “It is too late for many. I cannot pull too much from those still living without risking them as well. But it is a start.” He looked around. “The life essences of this place—I do not have any idea where we are. I have never been here.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure what realm we are in,” Aria confessed.
Nikolai shot her a look. “Realm?”
“Yeah. I was in the Martinak realm before Demeti brought me here.” She stared at him. His eyes swirled chaotically, as though he were confused. “Where did you come from?”
He frowned. “The Kalahari Desert?”
“What realm?”
“Realm?” He looked around him, and back to her, and now his brows were low enough to shadow his eyes. “Are you saying we are no longer on Earth?”
Earth? His Formal had the same inflections as Lucas’s... “Well, I’ve never been to the human realm. Is that where you came from?”
“Well, there are humans there.”
“Human realm, then.”
Nikolai glanced around. “So this isn’t in the human realm?”
“How many moons do you have?”
His eyes widened. “One.”
She pointed to the sky lightening to dawn. Barely visible through the trees, two moons sank toward the horizon.
He looked, and his breath hitched. He really was a realm rookie.
“You said Demeti went through a gate?”
His eyes flashed to her, and away again, before he nodded.
“If we found crystals, we could get through it, too.”
“No.” He sounded almost panicked. “The ones who are after me—I sensed them, through that doorway. I think they are coming through it. I have to go.” His gaze roamed to the road that had been blasted through the forest.
“Looks like only one way out,” Aria commented. She took a deep breath. They needed a plan, and she assessed the situation.
Nikolai lifted his head, as though scenting the still air. He looked not down the road, but off to one side. Into the swampy forest.
Aria followed his gaze, but it looked impenetrable. “We can’t get through that.”
“Others did,” he said. “The wolf creatures. When they fled the house, some went that way.”
