Chapter 47
Ifinally had my rings back on my fingers—after scrubbing them with soap at least ten times—and my sapphire hung around my neck, nestled in my throat.
I’d strapped on leather and armour and a sword gifted by Commander Loyal.
I’d warmed up this morning, running through drills with the new additions to the soldiers’ ranks. I was ready.
Time to get our home back.
“You’re absolutely certain this will take us home?
” I asked, staring at the small, stone bridge covered in moss.
It was a tenth of the size of the giant bridge that led to the castle-island-barracks, practically green with all the plants growing all over it, and both walls held up three statues of legendary people I didn’t recognise.
“There was a bridge like this in a picture book I read as a child,” Kier said in a quiet voice. He walked close to my side. “Whenever the pain got too much, I’d escape to a crawlspace in the attic and take that book with me.”
I linked our hands. “Maybe it’s your brain’s way of telling you we’ll be okay.”
“Optimism?” he drawled, a smile flickering on his serious face. “From my wife? Wonders never crease.”
I elbowed him. The armour meant he probably felt nothing, but that smile settled on his mouth, curving his cheeks.
Behind us, a hundred soldiers flowed all the way down the glen where the bridge arched over a trickling brook, the sounds of relaxing water clashing with metal jolting and leather creaking. Sounds of nature with sounds of war.
“It will take us home,” Kier said, finally answering my nervous question.
His eyes had gone full-white as he called on his power over fog, the Haar rising within him.
I squeezed his hand, grateful he was connecting with the Haar when I knew it was still difficult for him to face his grief.
“Bridges are gateways between this world and ours. Anyone who carries the mist would be able to cross.”
“Interesting wording,” I mused, watching my husband. If I carried a piece of the Haar in a locket, would I be able to come and go as I pleased?
Kier glanced behind us to where Loyal and several warrior leaders who attacked us on our first day in this realm—but who’d decided we were innocent after all, big surprise—followed our every step.
“I’ll open the gateway, and hold it for you to pass through. Zabaletta and I will be the last to enter,” he told them. “I can’t promise you’ll find a warm welcome on the other side.”
That was putting it lightly. But the commander and the other leaders knew what had become of the goblin lands. Like me, they were ready for a fight. That’s why we’d spent the morning running drills. We weren’t returning to a placid pastoral scene. We were entering a war zone.
I brushed my stomach where the wound left by Jyrard’s wand still ached, pulsing like it was alive. A reminder of my main objective when we returned, not that Kier was aware of my little task (of beheading his brother and cutting his body into teeny, tiny pieces.)
“You know how to open the gate, right?” I whispered to Kier, a soft wind rippling through the air, brushing his hair back from his face. Even a full night’s sleep hadn’t erased the shadows on his face, or that bleak flatness to his eyes.
Instead of answering, Kier lifted a hand and fog rose from his ankles, swirling higher, winding around his arm like a serpent.
The fog crept across the old bricks of the bridge, climbing up the statues of armoured men and fierce-looking women and an androgynous figure holding a book like a weapon.
The moment the Haar’s mist reached the other side of the bridge, coating it entirely, the fog parted down the middle.
“Woah,” I breathed, watching a slit appear in the dense, white wall, another world visible within it.
“It’s safe to cross now,” Kier told Loyal. The commander wasted no time leading his flock onto the bridge and through the doorway in the Haar’s mist.
“That is… impressive, Kier,” I breathed, staring, not quite able to accept that I was seeing people walk from one realm to another.
I watched them gather into neat lines on the other side, crammed into a broad avenue lined with silver-blue buildings.
I don’t know why I’d been expecting an actual battlefield or maybe even the grounds around Lazankh.
This was a city, gritty and dirty and lived-in.
And the Bluescale warriors simply walked from this world, through the fog’s gate, into the next world.
“Our turn,” Kier said when the last warriors passed through, their boots trampling mist before they met cobbles on the other side. “That’s Skayan. Get ready to draw a weapon if we’re confronted.”
I smirked. “Don’t you mean when?”
“Stop thinking fondly of bloodshed,” he chided, squeezing my hand as we took the first steps onto the bridge.
My smirk became a smile. “But I am fond of bloodshed.”
He snorted, glancing my way, and I met his gaze. We should have both been paying attention to the scene on the other side of the gateway, where our warriors had been noticed, too soon.
If we’d been looking, we might have seen the soldiers dressed in steely blue close the end of the street. But we didn’t see anything until we stepped into the gateway, finally facing forward again. One more step, and the solid fog around us turned to fire.
I opened my mouth to gasp, but Kier’s roar of agony devoured my voice, and it was all I could hear, his pain all I could feel.