Chapter 6
I sipped the hot coffee while Ace wrapped my wound.
The bite marks still wept, and I wasn’t healing as quickly as normal.
Maybe the poison was still working its way through my body.
Maybe I had misunderstood my reaction to it, and I wasn’t a part of the same bloodline as the phaanon who made the poison.
And maybe, I was just looking to separate myself from the mess of this situation.
“There,” Ace said, “All fixed up. You’ll probably have a wicked scar.”
“Thanks,” I said, and meant it. “I’ll have to make up a good story.”
He didn’t move away. Instead, he stayed sitting by my side. “Did you change your mind about seeing my associate?”
“Associate? Are you in a street gang?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call her a friend.”
I groaned and leaned back in my chair. “Is this an ex by any chance?”
Ace blinked at me. “No, why would you think that?”
“I don’t know. Just the way you were talking. It makes me think you don’t really want to see this person.”
“I don’t.”
“But you're offering to take me there anyway.” I didn’t need him to respond. His expression already told me the answer.
He shifted his gaze from me to Nala. “She needs help.”
“Is it dangerous to meet this mysterious associate of yours?”
“Travelling through the forest will present certain dangers,” he said slowly, as if stalling for time.
Did he think I would crumble in the face of danger? Did he not know me at all? “That’s not what I asked, and you know it.”
“My contact will not pose an immediate danger,” he said carefully, without making eye contact.
“You’re making it very hard to trust you right now,” I said. “And I’m trying.”
He sighed. “I can’t vouch for her behaviour indefinitely.
You will be safe with me for this visit, and only this visit, and only because you’re with me.
She will also ask for some sort of payment.
It’s always been reasonable in the past—a small fee or favour that was within my abilities to grant.
I can’t say what she’ll ask from you. Her request might also place you in danger. ”
“Okay.”
“So, I don’t want to say you’re going to be safe, and I don't want you to lower your guard. I also don’t want you to feel betrayed. You will have the option of saying no and leaving safely.”
“You could’ve just told me all this at the start.”
“And I would’ve done exactly that, but you stomped out of the cabin before I had a chance.”
I sat back in my chair. He said he would’ve shared this information freely, but was that the truth? Right now, it felt like I was pulling teeth, prying snippets of information from him, one small painful detail after the other.
He bit his lips as if to stop them from tugging up at the corners. He failed.
“What?”
“I was going to say something that would probably get me shot.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I have an empty quiver. Now’s your chance.”
His grin widened. “I don’t like it when you’re angry.”
I waited. Something incredibly condescending or infuriating was about to fall out of his mouth. “But?”
“You’re kind of hot when you’re angry?”
I huffed out a breath. “Seriously?”
“Empty quiver, remember? You can’t shoot me.”
Technically, all my arrows were in his quiver. We hadn’t redistributed them yet, so my quiver was empty, but his wasn’t. And his very full quiver was within reach. “What do you mean, kind of hot?”
“Well…” He scratched his chin as if he needed to think about it. “You’re also pretty scary.”
“I’ll show you scary.”
“No, you won’t. Empty quiver. Hissing at me won’t change anything.” He nodded at me. “How’s the arm?”
“It hurts.”
“You’re not healing,” he said.
“Not as fast as I would like.”
“Did you ever question why you heal so much faster than the average hunter? You always have, even before you bonded to Nala.”
Now it was my turn to look away.
“Trust works both ways, Mouse.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“About sharing the information with me?”
“No. I don’t know why I am the way that I am.”
“You have your suspicions.” He spoke the words as a statement, not a question.
“That’s all it is—suspicion.” Knowing Ace and the uncanny way he read my body language and seemed to anticipate my every move, even my thoughts, he’d probably already figured everything out.
He’d suggested as much when he’d warned me I’d reveal more than I planned if I went back to Orion.
Hopefully, he just assumed I was a pureblood galeon.
“If I figure anything out, I’ll let you know,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Will you?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
He shook his head and stood to collect the first aid supplies. His gaze cut to Nala. I’d insisted he treat her first. She needed a few stitches but the fight with the pack hadn’t left her that much worse off. She lay on her side on the floor by the couch.
“We should head out soon,” Ace said.
I looked out the window at the lightening skies. The worst of the storm had passed. Now only a light drizzle sprinkled down to hit the roof and the small front porch.
“I agree,” I said.
We quietly gathered our stuff and left the quiet, safe warmth of the cabin.
Nala loped beside me as I followed Ace on a small game path. She didn’t quite have the same spring to her step, and we stopped often to give her breaks. The trek through the woods felt eerily like the last time Ace led me to an unknown location.
After a short walk, we came upon an area where the air ahead rippled like a mirage.
The very atmosphere twisted and shimmered with an unnatural pulse.
I halted, heart thudding loud in my chest, and narrowed my eyes at the spot where the sunlight bent and wavered like heat rising from a scorched pavement in Wast.
The edges of the path blurred and twisted as if reality melted, and a faint hum thrummed beneath the silence, like a song just beyond hearing.
I swallowed hard. This wasn’t just a trick of the light. Every instinct screamed to turn away, but something deeper held me rooted in place. Something called to me and dared me to step closer.
The air rippled again, thickening and humming.
“Ace,” I warned. “Stop.”
He paused to look over his shoulder. “It’s okay.”
“No,” I hissed. “There’s something distorting the light up ahead. I think it’s magic.”
“I know.” He turned toward me. “It’s a portal and it’s okay.”
A portal? Like the ones in the storybooks about galeons and phaanons? No. Those were just make believe.
Weren’t they?
“Where are you taking me?” I asked.
He sighed and raised his arms. “There is a land connected to ours, but we can only access it through certain entry points.”
“You’re taking me to Phaantasia?” I balked, taking a step back. “It’s real?”
“Of course, it’s real. Where do you think phaanons came from?”
Long before Earth fell under the shadow of magic, two ancient races tore through the veil between worlds. The phaanons and the galeons arrived immortal, otherworldly, and terrifying in their power.
No one knew where they’d come from. Not truly.
Some whispered they were born of starlight and twisted by time, others claimed they clawed their way here from parallel realms or bled through cracks in the fabric of reality.
But what was known was that they came from somewhere else.
This unknown magical realm was called Phaantasia
People also whispered that long before the first rift ever opened in our world, the war between the galeons and phaanons had already waged for generations in the magical realm. The cause of this conflict varied depending on who told the tale. The truth was no one really knew.
And now Ace talked about Phaantasia as if I should’ve known all along it existed outside the cautionary bedtime stories.
“Phaantasia?” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“Phaantasia,” I let my mouth form the word again. “And you have the audacity to try to explain Phaantasia to me as if I’m a moron?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t know how much you knew. Clearly, you doubted its existence.”
“Of course I doubted. But I know more stories about it than an average five-year-old,” I said.
“And you’re just dropping its existence into conversation like we’re going to Vitor instead of a phaaning mystical place from fairytales.
” How did he know about portals? What exactly had he been up to all these years?
“Do you want your familiar healed, or not?”
I hesitated and glanced at Nala. Ace had saved us.
He’d marched into a storm and rescued us from a pack of hungry wolves at great risk to himself.
He could’ve let us die. He could also be saving us now to use us later, but I’d cross that bridge when I got there.
I looked around the forest, taking in the lush green foliage of the bushes, healthy needles of the evergreens and vibrant colours of the flowers.
Would Phaantasia look the same as our realm?
Would it smell like dried pine needles, sun-ripened blackberries and wild roses? Would I be able to come home?
“How will we get back?” I asked
“Same way we get in,” he replied. “From what I can figure out, there are a smattering of portals throughout the forest, and they all open to different pockets of Phaantasia. I don’t know if the pockets connect or if their world was broken when the war spilled into our realm.
Phaantasia seems to mirror ours, though, so concrete landmarks like mountain ranges remain the same as will the location of this portal. It’s like a simple doorway.”
Simple. Right. Nothing about any of this was simple.
Something in the bushes caught my eye. I turned toward the sparkling light.
Metal jutted out from under the bush, just enough to catch a beam of sunlight breaking through the canopy overhead.
An arrow. I stepped to the side of the path and reached down to pull the arrow from the bushes by the shaft.
The arrowhead glistened in the sunlight.
“Think it’s one of theirs?” Ace asked, leaning over my shoulder.
“Same fletching.” I sniffed the arrowhead. “Smells like the same coating.”
I held it out to Nala. My familiar whined and hid her snout behind her forelimb. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Ace straightened and turned back to the portal. “We should go.”
I nodded and shoved the arrow in my quiver. “They’re everywhere.”
“All the more reason to get moving.” Ace stepped toward the shimmering light. Despite all the warning bells blaring in my mind, I followed, stepping through the waver in the air and into Phaantasia.