Poppy explains as she pulls her horse to my side. “I haven’t been here myself. It’s astounding, right?”
This girl needs to get out more.
I smile. “It’s interesting, but I prefer Earth simply for the beaches and sunlight.”
She laughs. “One day you can take me to your Earth.” She sighs, and her eyes take everything in. “You will be able to see the royal castle as the gate is right in front of it, and it houses the academy students within the lands of the castle.”
I don’t know why she is excited to see a castle. If you go to Earth, they have dozens of them, and they usually smell like dust. I tightly smile, though Poppy grins back before clucking her horse forward. Stormfire follows Poppy’s horse, and I look down, shaking Mossy’s shoulder to wake him up. Damn reaper magic knocked him out again. Mossy doesn’t wake up until we are out of the market area and passing through small white stone houses with black doors and black-framed windows. These are decorated with small hanging crystals and flowers that catch the moonlight, and others have a range of flowers growing in their gardens. They look after their houses here, that’s for sure. A few faces fill the windows as we pass, but I don’t catch many people’s actual faces.
“You need to hide and follow from a distance. Make sure no one sees you,” I whisper to Mossy when we get to the bigger houses of the lot. He looks up at me with worried eyes before jumping off Stormfire and onto a windowsill of a house. Knowing Mossy, he won’t be far behind me, and I trust he can sneak himself into anywhere.
I pull my gaze back to see we are coming up to a walled part of the city with a big archway that everyone is heading through. The archway is made of pure blue crystal, and I gulp as we get closer. No one seems to look twice at the archway, even though I am aware that it is from the Otherworld, and a strange feeling ripples over my skin as we go through it. Torfinn looks back at me, and he narrows his eyes like he is feeling the same thing that I am. Who knows, he might be. He is a demi-god, and I don’t have a clue what his powers stretch to.
On the other side of the wall, the houses are bigger, and each has their own gates and gardens hidden behind them. The cobblestone looks cleaner, almost white here, and there are fewer reapers walking around than before and pretty parks with children running around inside them. It takes us at least half an hour to get to the end of the rows of pretty gated houses and to another walled area. This one is different than before. Instead of an archway, there is a huge golden gate. The gate is made of winding metal formed into the shapes of the strange rune symbols I saw on Torfinn’s dagger. The gate is slightly open, a gap big enough for one person at a time to walk through, and it shimmers silver, making it look like it would be impossible to walk through at all. I can’t see what is on the other side of the gate because the walls are too high, but I can see the crowds of reapers behind a roped pathway up to the gate.
Torfinn and Alun lead their kelpies to the side where a row of similar looking kelpies are tied up. Poppy and I follow them over, and I steer Stormfire into the space next to Mistress and slide off her back. I tie her reins around the wooden pole in front of us like Poppy does, though my knot isn’t as well-skilled as hers.
“I cannot walk with you, you must go alone, my child,” Alun tells Poppy, holding her close to him. I avoid them as I go around Stormfire, but Alun calls for me before I can actually escape.
“Come here, Daesyn.”
I groan and walk to Poppy’s side, feeling more than a little awkward. I’m the assassin he picked up from Earth and swapped with his daughter. I’m the girl he is happily letting possibly die. I’m just the stupid one who is going through with this plan. Alun smiles at me and pulls out two daggers from his cloak. The daggers are gold at the end, drifting up into silver, and the leather is blue. They