Chapter 1
Acold that chilled his bones woke Rorie, and he rolled over in bed to find that he was uncovered. Reaching out to snatch his soft blankets, he instead encountered a metal object attached to his hip.
“Roriethiel,” a groggy voice murmured.
“Go away,” Rorie responded. It was too early to get up, and he didn’t even want to engage his brain long enough to figure out why he was fully dressed. Shifting his head slightly to burrow into his pillow, he gained a mouthful of a sandy substance. His eyelids drifted upward, and he jerked back when he discovered hisbemollo’sface within inches of his.
“What are you doing in my bedroom, Drekkoril?”
The Noble Protector’s swirling gaze of pale gold and cream narrowed, and his expression twisted into one of pure disgust. “This is no bedroom. Wake up.”
Irritated, Rorie took stock of his surroundings and the strange landscape left an unsettled feeling in his belly. “What is going on?”
“I have no notion.” The infinitely proper Drekkoril straightened his velvet vest and rose. “Our magic is drained and nothing here is familiar. What do you last remember?”
Rorie lifted a handful of the odd dirt. It was tan, unlike the gray of his homeland. With what little was left in his well of power, he tried to cast, and his fear grew when nothing happened. “This is not the realm of the Fae. How is this possible?”
“I do not know. I fail to sense our realm, and there is no pulse of our people.”
As the ruler picked byBétea, Drekkoril could detect the heartbeats of every Fae that had not corrupted their magic by turning dark. “We have many thousands of people. They cannot simply be gone.”
“I can only tell you what my senses convey to me, Roriethiel.”
“You need not take that tone with me. I refuse to sit here and accept that we have been carried off to some peculiar land where the sky is blue instead of the beautiful pink or purple it should be. Perhaps this is a bad dream.”
“Thanks to your foolishness, my soul is connected to aFaedrekan, as is yours. I would know if you used that damn spell again to force me to relive parts of my life or yours which hardly bear repeating.”
On his feet, Rorie slapped the cape that wanted to twist around his boots away from him. Enchanted, it settled against the ground but picked up none of the weird dirt. “You should be happy to have a Faedrekan. The moment I became one with Orlami was the best of my life, and I choose to dream of it often.”
“I have no desire to stand here in this…whatever this is and argue with you,” Drekkoril snapped, with a wave of one of his large hands.
Rorie’s gaze narrowed at the tall bemollo. “What do you suggest we do then, mighty Noble Protector?”
“I am very frightened, Roriethiel. This realm has no thrum of magic. We are standing on what amounts to a dead rock. I sense there are sorcerers on it, but my well is too drained to discern what they are capable of. There is dark as well as light. This is most dangerous. Try not to pick fights, and help me determine how to get home.”
“I am not picking a fight. You are the one who gave me your haughty attitude,” Rorie retorted, laying a palm on the hilt of his sword. “The best we can do is start walking until we find some person who will direct us to a leader of sorts that can transport us back to our home. I was most unaware that anyone beyond Fae even existed.”
Drekkoril said nothing as he put one cream-colored boot in front of the other and led their walk. After several minutes he turned to Rorie, who was doing his best to keep up with his bemollo’s long strides. “How do we not remember how we came to be here?”
“I am almost too frightened to ponder the question.”
“This is no time to lose your courage, Roriethiel.”
“Did I not become the first person to bind my soul with a Faedrekan? How can you accuse me of being craven?”
“As usual, you lead off with temper. I am simply stating that we both need to explore our thoughts. I have nothing but blackness in my mind. Perhaps you will find more success if you try.”
Since rolling his eyes would solve nothing, Rorie trampled over the brush and marveled at the enormous mountains as he forced himself to concentrate on any moments before he landed on the strange rock. All he could remember was a quiet dinner in the castle where he ate alone. The food was pleasant, he recalled, but a sharp pain ripped through his head if he tried to force himself to think beyond his meal. Raising a hand to his throbbing head, he halted. “Ow.”
“I have the same issue. Whenever I try to think on it, a horrific agony plagues me.”
“For the sake of Bétea, I do not like any of this.”
“For once, we are in complete agreement.”
∞∞∞
To the disgust of Rorie and Drekkoril, they learned that while their magic was slowly returning, the pair tired easily with them both so heavily drained. They didn’t get far, and it was days of walking and napping in the open air as they tried to orient themselves to their new reality. It scared Rorie that Drekkoril could still sense no Fae, and they’d had no further success in trying to recollect their last moments in their home. What he wanted was to find his way to the castle or his realm, but he’d settle for having enough power to summon his Faedrekan so Rorie could fly on his back rather than continuing to stroll across the uneven ground.
