inhuman voice repeated my name as if he were tasting me, learning me, flipping through my memories so fast I was about to throw up.
When it stopped, I stood on a field. No moon was out, but the sky glowed with vibrant colors, swirling and weaving like the aurora borealis. The air snapped with magic; the countryside was stuffed full of figures battling. Screams and sounds of metal clanking shredded the night sky. I whipped around to take in the chaos, fear shooting up into my chest.
Creatures I had never even seen before tore into each other, and birds the size of planes flew in the sky. Creatures as little as brownies and as huge as giants dotted the landscape. The night rang with death, the field drenched in blood.
In the distance, it looked as if there was a curtain of energy that crackled and sputtered with light, holes forming in it. Behind it I saw an outline of a castle. It looked exactly the same as some of the drawings and pictures I had seen in books of the Fae War, of Queen Aneira’s castle, the Seelie leader before the wall between the worlds fell twenty years ago.
I was there. The night Earth and the Otherworld became one.
The night I was born.
I could feel guts squishing between my toes, smell the bitter odors of blood and fear, hear every clank of metal, every shriek of death. People were dying right in front of me. Everything was so real. So vivid, overwhelming me.
“Let me out,” I spoke to the book, but nothing happened. “I want out!”
Why would it bring me here?
“Warwick?” a man boomed, spinning me around. I gasped, my gaze landing on a familiar figure.
Ash.
Dressed in layers of dark clothes, his hair was longer than he wore it now and tied up in a knot. Most of his face was covered in blood. Carrying a sword, his belt dripped with more knives and guns.
The guy next to him was tall, lean, dark-skinned, wearing the same outfit, with sharp but pretty features. There was something familiar about him I couldn’t quite place.
“Where the fuck did he go? What did he tell you?” Ash asked his comrade, but the guy didn’t seem to hear him, his eyes moving frantically over the terrain. “Janos? Hey!”
Janos’s head whipped to Ash. In a gesture I wasn’t expecting, Ash reached out, touching the man’s cheek gently. “It’s okay, we’ll find him.”
“Don’t lie to me, Ash,” he muttered. “I can read your face. They caught him, didn’t they? How could he just run off without us? If they finally found him, they will show him no mercy.”
“Come on, this is Warwick we’re talking about.” I could sense a deep intimacy in the way Ash’s fingers rubbed the other man’s cheek. “The guy is tougher than anyone I know. He’ll be fine. We’ll find him. Okay?”
Janos nodded, pulling away from his touch, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He sniffed in and pulled his chin up high, readying himself to go forward. Looking regal. Refined.
Holy fuck.
In one action, I saw someone else in Janos’s face. My jaw dropped in shock.
Madam Kitty.
There were rumors of transgender people in the Savage Lands. But in Leopold? There weren’t even whispers of them. I hadn’t even known what the word meant until my late teens. When I met Ms. Kitty, I didn’t even consider she was trans.
I had been so sheltered within the walls of HDF.
“Come on!” Ash tugged on Janos’s arm, giving me no time to think more about it as I followed them through the combat. They sliced into bodies and fought as they moved over the field swiftly.
Gunshots volleyed past, and small bombs dropped from the giant birds in the air, spurting dirt and flesh into the sky, landing on me like hail. Ash and Janos moved with skill and partnership through the battle, ascending a small hill. They came to a stumbling stop, my feet slowing next to them, their eyes latched on to something below.
“Warwick!” Janos screamed before he took off, running to a large object lumped on the grass. Janos’s legs gave out, and he dumped himself onto the damp earth next to the form, his body curling over the burned mess, a sliver of a face showing through the scorched blackness. “Noooo!”
It took me a moment to put the pieces together. To recognize what I was seeing. Acid tore up my throat, and I covered my mouth, emotion punching me in the chest as vomit burned