us. “Here’s a bit of fact for you,” he said. “The havens’ tunnel systems accelerate our actual speed. A day’s walk in the human world takes only about an hour in a tunnel. Notice we don’t feel like we’re going any faster than a stroll.”
“Really?”
Arik grasped my shoulder and pulled me to a stop. “Your shoulder is tensing.”
I shrugged his hand off. Every time he touched me, my stomach reacted, and it was starting to freak me out. Get a grip, already. He’s just a guy.
“Let me take over the light for a bit,” he said.
“Okay.” I wasn’t going to argue with him. My shoulder was tired and sore. I lowered it, and the globe popped. Sparks shot across my hand. My arm felt like a rock at my side after keeping it raised so long.
“Why would anyone want to go to these havens?” I asked. “They have hounds and hunters and compelling creeps.”
“The havens were once peaceful.” The globe he carried lit up the side of his amazing face. His silhouette bounced across the cave wall. “There’s been unrest lately,” he said. “Caused by a vengeful wizard named Conemar. Don’t trust anyone. Just Merl and myself. We aren’t sure where loyalties lie.”
“What does this Conemar guy want?”
Something crunched under his boot, something that had a hard shell. I cringed and fought the urge to scratch my skin off.
“What do most lunatics want?” he said. “Power. He wants to rule over both the human and Mystik worlds. He needs the keys to release an extremely powerful being. One that can cause natural disasters and bring people to their knees.”
“That makes me feel so much better.”
He gave me a sideways glance. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to scare you. We’ll keep you safe. That compelled man found me fast in the subway.” He kept his voice low as we continued toward the others, who were scaling a set of steps in front of us. “It makes me think the wizard compelling him was tipped off by someone from our Haven. So we must be careful.”
I stopped. “Then why are we going there?”
His foot paused on the bottom step and he turned to face me. “Because it’s the only place to protect and prepare you for whatever may come. You’ll be safe as long as we keep who your biological father is a secret. Shall we continue?”
I nodded.
“All right, then.” He sprang up the stairs.
I carefully went up after him, my leg wound screaming at me with each step. The idea of a wizard casting a compulsion spell gave me the creepy-crawlies. So did the enormous rats in the tunnel. There was no way I was going to be left alone down there for even a second.
Halfway up, I looked back over my shoulder. Without the light globes, it was eerily dark. Somewhere in the depths, there was a sound like nails scratching on rock. It’s only rats, I reassured myself. Arik went through the door. My heart sputtered as I scrambled up the last steps, ignoring the pain. I froze there on the landing, stuck between two worlds, desperately clinging to one while called to embrace the other. If I went through the door, my mother’s stories would come true, and I could never go back.
Arik reached his hand out to me. “It’ll be all right. I won’t leave you.”
Stop fooling yourself, Gia. There’s no going back.
I took his hand and crossed over the threshold, unsure of what I would find on the other side.
Chapter Nine
We came through a trap door into a stark room about the size of my bedroom. A bluish light peeked in from a door left ajar across the room. We headed for it, the floorboards squealing under our weight and disturbed dust clouding the air. I coughed.
We exited a small outbuilding, and I took a deep breath of fresh air—an earthen smell of mud and grass. Thin streamers of silvery light hung from a crescent moon that tilted in a black sky stippled with stars. A shadowy silhouette of a castle protruded from a dark hill like a shrine. Smaller buildings surrounding the castle reminded me of grave markers in an eerie cemetery.
“The castle ahead is our tribe’s haven,” Arik said. “Do you see the light on the horizon? Just beyond the hill is the city of Asile.”
We crossed a long pasture. The silhouettes of the others disappeared over a rise in the path ahead of us.