of things. Granted, her childhood had shaped that, as her father and the therapists had—well meaning or not—blocked off her imagination, her initiative. But that was then and this was now, and she needed to quit being afraid, not just of danger, but of making a mistake, making a choice. Back home, she had stopped moving forward, and her soul had begun to wither. In the wolfyn realm, however, she had started doing, thinking, moving, deciding.
Maybe she had made a huge mistake falling for Dayn, had almost made an even bigger one by blindly following him to Elden as his lover. But the first mistake had burned her but not killed her, and the second one wasn’t going to happen. If she followed him to Elden, it would be by her own choice, and not as his lover. And if that brought a stab to fresh wounds, heartbreak wasn’t fatal, after all.
“Okay,” she said to the waiting voice. “I’ll do it.”
Good.
The fog rose up around her, curled toward her and touched her here and there, tingling where it landed. And then it started moving with more purpose, sluggishly at first and then faster and faster, she found herself hoping to hell that this wasn’t going to go into the “mistake” column. She drew breath, but before she could say anything—or even really decide what she wanted to say—the world lurched around her, the fog turned dark and ominous, and whoomp! She suddenly found herself standing on a grass-covered hill in the middle of a dense, ominous forest.
Dayn wasn’t there. In fact, she was completely and utterly alone. And in realizing that, she became aware that it was the first time she had been alone in days.
She stood for a moment, testing for signs of panic. But while she was tense and most certainly on alert, she wasn’t terrified, didn’t want to stand still and wait for something to happen.
Let’s get moving, her instincts said. Daylight’s wasting.
Overhead, she glimpsed a sky that was a far deeper blue than that in the wolfyn realm, making her blink at the difference. The trees, too, were strange; they were twisted and stunted-looking, though they stretched high overhead to knit their branches into a high canopy of dull brown leaves. The sunlight that filtered through those leaves was a dingy brown color, making her feel oddly dirty.
“Welcome to Elden,” she said under her breath. “Doesn’t look much like I expected.” Both her mother and Dayn had made the kingdoms sound like lush and fertile paradises, like something out of a fantasy movie. But maybe it would get better once she was out of these woods.
Given that realm travel wasn’t known in the kingdoms, it stood to reason that the access points would be hidden away, forgotten.
Thinking she’d do best with a good defense, she unslung her bow. And stared.
What before had been a plain but serviceable hand-carved bow was now a slick, high-tech compound bow of the type she had favored in the human realm, but made of a springy, unfamiliar wood and strung with a natural-looking fiber of the proper tensile strength. Her arrows, too, had transformed; she was wearing a sleek quiver that contained a dozen perfectly balanced shafts and offered hooks where she could secure the bow fully strung.
“Upgrades,” she said to herself. “Nice.” Better yet was the small purse of gold she found in her pocket.
Feeling more optimistic than she had moments before, she struck out in the direction where the light seemed brightest up ahead. She would find herself a village, get her bearings and go from there. If nothing else, she knew where Dayn would be tomorrow night: Castle Island.
Dayn awoke in a darkness so complete that he might have thought he was still unconscious except for the ammoniac smell of guano. It burned his eyes and si-nuses and had him holding his breath as he pawed in his rucksack for one of the small wolfyn hand lamps.
It lit, but only partway, emitting a bare and fitful glow even after he dialed it to full power. Too much science and not enough magic in the gadget, he thought, not daring to say the words and risk inhaling.
A quick scan showed that the vortex had dumped him in the dead end of a cave. He thought there might have been paintings on the walls, but the smears of guano and the tears blurring his vision made it tough to tell for sure. With only one way out, he didn’t have