I turned toward the bowl, fury tightening every muscle. “I don’t trust it.”
Sadie snorted. “You don’t have a choice.”
“There has to be another way ...”
“You are the one who told me about this, so you know there’s not. Like it or not our choices are you drink, or we die here.”
I hesitated, the hum in my skull growing louder, insistent, as if the ley line itself was leaning in to listen. My pulse thundered.
“What if it takes something from her?” My voice came low, almost a whisper. “What if it hurts Meera? Or it takes her?”
“Meera is a person, and it’syoursacrifice, not hers. Right? It wouldn’t take a person, would it?” Sadie’s gaze was steady.
“I don’t know.”
“It said it wants us to learn something. I’m not dying here, Vareck. Drink it.”
I hesitated one heartbeat too long, and the shadows stirred, inching closer. Cold pressed into my spine.
I dipped one hand into the bowl, the silver clinging to it like mercury. My reflection warped on the curved surface, dark-eyed and grim.
I raised it to my lips. The liquid was colder than ice, slicing down my throat in a rush of fire and frost all at once. My chest seized. The hum became a roar.
For a second, nothing happened—then a tearing sensation ripped through my chest, clean and merciless.
The bond. The thread that had been there—warm, unshakable—snapped.
I staggered, gasping, reaching for it instinctively, but there was only emptiness.
Meera was gone from me.
The ley line’s voice rang through the hollow it left behind, satisfied.
“Once whole, now broken ... and the gate opens.”
Chapter 27
Sadie
Magic surged beneath my feet. I barely had time to curse before a wave of power swept through the cavern. The ground shuddered, then rolled as the ley line bucked, spitting us out with all the grace of a landslide.
I hit the grass hard, the softness doing nothing to cushion the blow. Air left my lungs on a tight exhale.
I pushed up onto my elbows, coughing, and then froze.
The Fold was unlike anything I’d ever seen.
Cliffs hung in the air, weightless. Waterfalls spilled from their edges in purple streams, free-falling into pools stacked one above the other. The cliffs moved slowly, deliberately drifting across the sky like islands pushed by an invisible current.
Everywhere I looked, the world was packed with color. Deep greens, sun-drenched golds, a sky so blue it felt unreal. The air was heavy with mist and magic. Warm. Alive. It smelled like crisp autumn air and felt like something older than time.
A place like this shouldn’t exist.
But it did.
And somehow, that was more terrifying than anything we’d left behind.
Behind me, something broke the spell.
