My eyes widened. “Is that hard?”
“Nothing a few hundred years of practice can’t achieve,” she muttered as she spread hands that began to glow. “I have a temporary gate created at the other end. I just need to build the path from here to there.”
A fewhundredyears? I felt her gathering the energy from somewhere beneath us, and then reaching a tendril of it beyond the gate. Like a headlight in the darkness, it ranged far before she paused it and pulled more energy from elsewhere to weave it together. The far gate flared brightly as she connected it to this end.
Trix whined and tilted her head, trying to fit all these new and exciting experiences into her doggie world.
The Watcher pumped more and more energy into her creation. The pathway brightened into a pulsing road of light, and the far end snapped into sharper focus as a glowing archway.
Cara grunted in satisfaction and lowered her hands before gesturing to me and Trix. “All done.”
“Can you build a gate anywhere you wish?” I asked.
She pushed her braids over her shoulders. “It helps if I’ve been there before. To do it in a place I’ve never been takes a huge amount of power. And there are risks. But it is doable.
Risks. Maybe Matt wasn’t as paranoid as I’d assumed. “But this one is safe?”
She smiled and reached out with a hand.
I scooped Trix up, accepted Cara’s hand, and the Watcher took us through.
The crystal in my ear cuff burned as we passed through into a field that ran alongside a river. Not a peaceful waterway. It tumbled and roared over the rocks below, and I wrinkled my nose at the smell coming off it. Remembering my last experience with rapids, my stomach clenched. I found myself reluctant to put Trix down.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Yitar realm. I have friends here, working on a project. You can put her down. She will stay with us.”
Thankfully, Trix merely sniffed around in the field and didn’t immediately fling herself into the rushing water.
It helped that the water didn’t look like anything she’d want to spend time in. Filled with debris, the murky fluid swirled with clumps of brown gook. Pollution?
Cara gestured to it. “My crew of Bellatis is providing alternatives to the old dam. We are planning to restore the river’s flow while still enabling the residents to harness power from it.”
I stared at her. “You have a crew of Bellatis?”
The Watcher paused as we navigated the path along the river. “Our Elders gave them permission to remain off our home realm for special reclamation projects overseen by me. This area is in desperate need of help.” She stared upriver. “I’ll just give Cassiel a shout.”
It seemed Cara had her fingers in more pies than just the academy. As I scanned the dam in question, built between two cliffs about a mile away from where we stood, I sensed her reaching out. Her tendril of energy was met by another, before she pulled it back.
“We can wait here,” she stated.
Shortly afterward, hoofbeats drummed through the scrub. Two Unicorns appeared, running in near-perfect unison, their shoulders and hips often brushing against each other.
Their gray coloring marked them as Bellatis, and as they slid to a halt, they immediately embraced their humans.
I averted my eyes until they were clothed in their distinctive silver hair, then I regarded them with interest. Sebastian and Nikolai were the only other Bellatis whom I’d ever met.
“Anna, this is Cassiel and Elijah,” Cara said.
Trix wiggled at their feet—she liked them. Neither were as tall as Sebastian, and both were more heavily muscled. The shorter of the two, the one with a square face and darker eyes, raised a brow at me as he petted Trix. “Cass,” his thumb indicated himself, “and Eli,” with a gesture to his friend.
The way they stood, with their shoulders touching, indicated thatmatemight be a better descriptor thanfriend. I was starting to recognize the signs. When both Bellatis’ eyes flashed, I knew they were talking.
“Any news on Sebastian?” Eli asked, his eyes dark with concern.
“Not yet,” Cara replied.
“We want in when you find Galeran.” Cass’s pale eyes searched Cara’s. “Is it true? What Galeran did to him?”
