his jaw tightening. “Only one person can contain her evil and that is my king. Give her over to me and I will let you and your companions go free.”
He had an altered sense of reality. “We’ve killed or taken hostage all of your men, buddy. Not sure why we would concede anything to you. And I don’t need you. I’ll question your friends.”
“They aren’t my friends. But they are true believers and I assure you they will not answer questions. They know what to do if it appears the Destroyer will win.” Kor stopped because the ground started to shake.
I took a stab at him, but my stabbing was way off the mark because the shaking got worse. I seemed to have found myself in the middle of an earthquake, except it was more than the ground shaking. The whole forest seemed to shimmer and shine as though it was changing right before my eyes.
Reality was bending and it made me sick to my stomach. My vision seemed to go hazy. One minute I was surrounded by forest and then next I saw white marble all around me. The columns rose up toward a sky I knew wasn’t the physical one above me, and it was so disconcerting. The world was shifting and it wasn’t natural.
“This is her doing,” Kor said, taking a step back. “And the longer she is allowed to deny her true fate, the worse it will get. You have a hand in this now.”
I didn’t know what “this” was. There were people here. Not here here. Other here. They were dressed in flowing gowns and looked like they’d been going about their everyday lives until the world had shifted. One stared at me, her face a mask of horror. I wasn’t sure if that was about the plane quake or my demon arm. Could have been both.
“Kelsey!” Marcus shouted.
The ground settled and the world around me became forest again. The sick feeling in the pit of my stomach lessened and I could breathe again.
Until I turned to Kor and saw that not all of the world had returned to its normally scheduled reality. A tear was right there, ripped through the plane we were on, showing off the one behind it. I stared for a second, unable to process what I was seeing. Darkness came from the tear. It wasn’t even the place I’d seen before. This was someplace else. Some place without an ounce of light.
If I went there I would be nothing. If that darkness took me, I would cease to be. I would become a part of it.
Kor began to scream as he was pulled toward that darkness.
I could feel it. A vacuum had begun and it was going to suck us all in. My feet started to move toward that darkness.
It looked like I was heading on another trip, and I prayed this one wasn’t the last.
Chapter Five
Zoey
“He’s up to something.” Sarah paced back and forth on the balcony of her tenth-floor apartment. She had one of the upper-floor units. They were more like houses than actual apartments and reserved for those closest to the royal family. So basically my friends were all here.
And Myrddin. His unit was one of four on this floor. It had been empty for years, waiting for Daniel’s mentor to move in. Dev had arranged for all of Myrddin’s possessions to be moved from the pocket world Nim had imprisoned him in to those apartments and then kept them up. A housekeeper had cleaned once a week, though no one had resided there for years. When I’d wanted to let someone move in, I was voted down. One of the many ways the wizard managed to trump me.
“Of course he’s up to something. Daniel’s lost three of his closest advisors and protectors in the course of a single day. I know Myrddin’s behind it.” I poured the tea I’d made ten minutes before and sat back. The sun was starting to go down and Ether would be open in a couple of hours. We used to spend our every free moment in the nightclub where we’d first met Dev, but now we tended to spend our nights working or having quiet meals and time together. We still found ourselves down there a few times a month, but it was hard. No matter how much we wanted to be a part of things, we were still the royals and there was a wall between us and everyone