Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 136009 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136009 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
She was hoping that the portal gate would show her how it was done. If she could reconnect this to Emporia, then maybe more gates could be created to hold Kerrigan’s portals without draining her eternally.
She closed her eyes and ran her hands along the markings still visible on the stone archway. She could feel the magic in them. Not ancient Fae but some other long-lost language. One that she could use. One that her mother’s bangle seemed to recognize.
With a twist, the bracelet latched on to her arm and Kerrigan drew a portal door into the archway, thinking of the beautiful country of Byern with its mountainside castle and rolling hills—Cyrene’s home.
For a second, the distance overwhelmed her. Emporia was four months by sea. It was less time by dragon flight, but even still, the distance was so great that no dragon would make the crossing unless under duress. This would be the farthest she had ever pushed, and she didn’t know if she had enough of her mother’s strength to do it.
Then it was like the magic shifted.
A bridge formed. Not in the place she had been envisioning—a meadow she had landed in on Tavry’s back in battle when she had gone with Helly—but to another gate.
The gates knew each other.
It was the only way she could describe it. They were meant to join. She didn’t know where this one was. It was dark and shadowed. She had never been there before, so perhaps it would not give up its secrets until she answered the call.
Another moment and Kerrigan could see all the potential gates in Emporia. There were at least a dozen—as if all the countries in Cyrene’s world had once been connected by these shadowy gates as well and they had fallen over the years as Kerrigan’s had. If she pushed past that, she could feel the gates left abandoned in her own world. Within the House of Shadows, the Holy Mountain, each of the dozen houses—they were all already there, all waiting. If she wanted to, she could connect them all.
“Yes,” she breathed.
With a blink, it was done. The gates all glowed as one, connected and functional. She held on with a shudder as the final one in Byern materialized and the shimmery iridescence once again filled her portal door.
“To Byern,” she whispered. And then she stepped back, breaking her connection to the portal, her magic gone with it. But the door remained.
In its place was a ruin of a castle.
“You did it,” Fordham breathed.
“I connected them all. All of them in Emporia and Alandria. There’s one to the House of Shadows,” she told him as a tear fell down her cheek. “One in each of the houses.”
“What a magnificent creature you are.”
She laughed. “Shall we walk through?”
“Yes,” he said simply.
They took one step thousands of miles away and went to find Cyrene to tell her the good news.
Chapter Sixty-Four
The Homecoming
With a heavy heart, Kerrigan flew Tieran to Waisley, holding her father’s ashes. They’d used the portal to step into the House of Shadows and back in a matter of hours. She hadn’t had to use a drop of magic. It was revelatory, and there were already talks of them needing to be heavily monitored.
What she had done was a gift; what came out of it was bureaucracy. As with all things.
She was on the new government council to determine the state of affairs and already had a litany of issues to discuss about how to use the portals. But as the leader of the resistance and a council member, she’d bowed out for the weekend. Everyone needed the break.
Rebuilding was going on at a rapid pace. The workers, no longer subjugated, wanted to fix what Bastian had broken. Not to mention the coin the council was sending their way for doing it. That sure helped everyone around. The city would feel the scars from the events that transpired for a long time, but it was beginning to heal. That was the first step.
With the weekend off from her duties, Kerrigan had thought about staying the whole time to watch over Clover. She was in a sort of stasis, with Amond’s magic holding her between life and death. He and Darby alternated with the healing, but the chronic illness that had plagued Clover seemed to be tipping her closer to darkness than light.
But Fordham had insisted that there was nothing more that could be done. He was right, and for now, Kerrigan needed to put her father to rest.
They landed in the clearing inside Corsica Forest and trekked the short distance to Waisley, giving Tieran and Netta the weekend off as well. Kerrigan still wasn’t sure if they were an item or not, and maybe it wasn’t any of her business as they sorted it out.