on a far grander scale, if the Esri weren't stopped.
A fury of determination swept through her as she tightened her hold on Charlie.
If she had one purpose in her life, it was this.
To save the human race from the same fate as her own.
So long as she remained free, the Esri would fail.
Chapter 23
"We're running out of time," Charlie growled.
The sky had turned russet a couple of hours ago.
The best he could figure, the gates would open in less than three hours, but he couldn't possibly know if his calculations were correct.
This world was affected by the sun and moon of his own even if they didn't rise and set in the Esrian sky.
Sunrise and sunset, or their equivalent, had shifted as they'd traveled, just as they would have in his world, moving from time zone to time zone, though far more quickly here.
Both Tarrys and Kade had said they believed their world to be far smaller than his and he suspected they were right.
If he found the gate that was supposedly somewhere in this forest, he'd probably find himself in a completely different part of the world than D. C.
But where, he couldn't begin to guess.
And unless they found their way through these endless woods, nothing else was going to matter.
Not arrows, which they didn't have enough of.
Not gates, which neither of them had the ability to locate.
Not even the Esri.
Tarrys stopped suddenly, her wide-eyed gaze whirling toward him.
"What's the matter?" "I hear something.
Music."
Charlie listened.
He was about to shake his head when he heard it.
The faint strains from some kind of medieval-sounding stringed instrument drifted to him on the ever-present breeze.
"The Esri like music? I thought torture was more their speed."
"All people enjoy music."
Charlie gripped her shoulder, relief and adrenaline flooding his system.
"We're almost there."
Tarrys pointed left.
"Look.
I see the faint glow of a red crystal.
Do you see it?" Charlie dug his binoculars out of his gear vest, put them to his eyes and followed the direction she pointed.
Sure enough, he could definitely make out the red glow and part of a structure of some kind.
No people, but he was looking at a very tiny slice from a large distance.
He lowered his binoculars.
"That has to be the clearing.
If we'd continued the way we were going, we'd have walked right by it."
"Which is probably why they played the music.
To catch our attention."
Charlie looked at her, the comment making him pause.
"Damn.
I keep thinking we're sneaking up on them, but they know right where we are, don't they? They've been following our progress, waiting for us to come to them."
"Waiting for you to come to them.
It's your death mark they follow.
They might not even know I'm here."
He looked at her sharply, not liking the sound of that.
"You're not going in there alone."
"I won't leave the forest.
I just want to take a look around and see where they're holding Princess Ilaria."
The rust of the night sky did little to light the forest, casting her face in shadow.
But he recognized the determined jut of her chin.
"All right.
But I'll be right behind you."
Her head tilted.
"That defeats the purpose, doesn't it?" "Doesn't matter."
His need to protect her grew stronger every day, every hour.
It was all he could do not to order her to remain deep in the forest and let him handle the Esri alone.
But he needed her help.
"I'm not going to let them have you.
We believe none of them can enter the forest, but what if we're wrong?" "Charlie, with your death mark, they know where you are every second.
If you go anywhere near that clearing, they'll attack you.
Either let me scout out the situation alone, or we go together and take out as many Esri as we can with the arrows we have."
She was right, dammit.
"Wait.
I brought something that might be helpful."
He dug under his tunic, grabbed a lighter and slipped a folded piece of paper out of one of his pockets.
He turned his back on the forest, flicked the lighter and illuminated the page.
"Just a reminder who we're looking for."
Tarrys moved beside him to look at the photograph of a painting of an Esrian woman standing in a human forest.
When the Sitheen were researching the whereabouts of the seven stones, they'd stumbled upon this and another painting that Kade had eventually confirmed depicted Princess Ilaria.
Apparently the nineteenth-century Danish painter had been a Sitheen who'd seen Princess Ilaria...and Esria...in his visions.
"If the stories are true, she's the only woman here."
Charlie grunted.
"The last thing we need is to get home only to find we rescued the