Black Heart

7

BECAUSE I WAS ANGRY, AND MY ANGER OFTEN MADE me blind and deaf to everything around me, I blundered over the crest of a hill and nearly walked into a troop of patrolling Cimice.

I skidded to a stop, the loose gravel shifting beneath my boots. The lead insect called a halt just a few feet away, its mantislike head twisting this way and that. I stayed perfectly still, pulling my veil tighter around me, and hoped the Cimice would not be able to sniff me out. My veil would never have fooled a werewolf, but I knew nothing about an insect’s ability to smell. I had no idea where Puck was, but presumably he had more sense than I did and hadn’t practically walked into the Cimice’s arms.

After a few long and tense minutes in which the little band of six crawled all over the immediate area looking for signs of intruders, they finally decided to continue on their way.

I exhaled the breath I’d been holding and waited for Puck to reveal himself. His voice at my ear almost startled a little scream out of me, but I swallowed it. I did not want to draw the Cimice back to me.

“We must proceed with caution from here,” he said. “No more temper tantrums.”

I wanted to say that a temper tantrum implied my anger was unjustified, and that was definitely not the case. I wanted to say that I would not have been angry at all were it not for his behavior. But I did neither of those things. I did not feel like being drawn any further into Puck’s logic. Plus, even when I was right, I always had the vague sense that I was losing when I argued with him.

That happened a lot with Lucifer, too.

We continued in silence for a while, passing two more small Cimice patrols. The cicada-like buzzing had started up again, but this time I was able to block out the noise by concentrating on my will and my magic.

We went farther into the mountain, surrounded by rock and the noise of the Cimice. Every so often Puck would put his hand on my shoulder so I would know he was still present. And then, suddenly, we were there.

It looked like a hive because it was a hive. There was a great gash torn in the mountain, and from it the Cimice spilled forth. The giant insects crawled all over the side of the mountain.

We drew off behind a series of large rocks and dropped the veil so we could counsel.

I wasn’t sure what the Cimice were doing, but the place hummed with activity. All of the creatures moved with a purpose in and out of the cave. I could see the problem immediately.

“How do we kill them all?” I murmured.

According to the fae, the Cimice bred like city rats. One or two breeding pairs could replace the whole population within a few months. So the only way to do the job thoroughly was to make sure every last Cimice was eliminated. But how could I possibly do that?

“How did you kill all the vampires?” Puck asked.

“The vampires had all taken Azazel’s serum in order to walk in daylight. Azazel had infused the serum with his magic, and his magic was also in me, since I was his daughter. So I called the vampires to me using that link, and once the magic was activated and we were bound, I sent a spell of destruction out through them.”

“Blood,” Puck said. “So mundane and yet so powerful. I suppose that does mean that you are, in fact, Azazel’s daughter and not Lucifer’s.”

“Off topic,” I said. “We already covered that. So how do I make sure to get all of the Cimice?”

“You’ve already presented the answer,” Puck said.

“Blood?” I asked. “How will that work? I don’t have the blood of the Cimice inside me.”

“So crude,” Puck chided. “You just need some of the Cimice’s blood to direct the spell. Since only a few of the creatures settled here, all of the subsequent generations will share genes from the first group.”

“So I just need to catch one of them, take its blood, and then use the blood to push the spell through?” I asked skeptically. “I’m not sure about that. I don’t know if I can do that kind of magic. All of the spells I’ve used thus far have been internally motivated—you know what I mean?”

“Just because you have not done something like this before does not mean you cannot,” Puck said. “Madeline, now that you have fully opened yourself to Lucifer’s legacy, you have a vast, untapped store of power. You have not even begun to plumb the depths of that power.”

“If you say so,” I said.

It was extremely scary to think that I was sitting on a massive well of power. What if I lost control? I could go off like a nuclear bomb. More than once I’d suspected that I’d barely skimmed the surface of my magic, but I didn’t like to think that I had unlimited abilities sitting at my fingertips. That would make me like Lucifer, and I did not want to be like Lucifer.

Even if I had crossed a few lines in defense of my life, I still believed I was on the side of good. I was still trying to be something better than my grandfather wanted me to be. But every time I went deeper into that pool, every time I drew a little bit more of that power and made it my own, I was also drawn a little deeper into Lucifer’s web. Puck may have known, or at least suspected, most of my feelings on that count.

He wouldn’t want me belonging to Lucifer any more than I already did, unless it served his purpose. And Puck’s purpose was just as opaque as that of his brother. If I used my magic in this new way, I would get rid of the Cimice, thereby eliminating a threat to my city and thwarting Titania at the same time. But it was also possible—even probable—that I would play myself right into the middle of some scheme of Puck’s.

Could I avoid being trapped by Lucifer’s brother? Was the risk worth it if I could save innocent lives? If I wanted to stay on the side of good, then the answer had to be yes. But maybe I could clear myself of an obligation at the same time.

“If I do this, I want one of the favors I owe you wiped off my ledger,” I said.

Puck shook his head, tut-tutting. “Oh, no, no, no. A favor from Lucifer’s best beloved is far too valuable a quantity to give up for something such as this. Besides, you would go after the Cimice whether I were here or not. You were going to do it when you thought I was Litarian.”

“Yes, but it also benefits you if I do your dirty work. So I want one of my favors cleared.”

Puck continued to shake his head. “Are you telling me you would really allow innocent humans to die just because you didn’t get what you want? I don’t believe that of you. If you did behave that way, I would say you were more like Lucifer than I thought.”

“Of course I won’t allow anyone to die because I didn’t get my way,” I said.

Puck spread his hands wide. “Then I rest my case.”

“But if you don’t clear me of my obligation, then I’ll call the dragon here, and you can take your chances.”

Puck stared, his jewel-blue eyes carefully blank. “You wouldn’t,” he said.

“I would,” I said, and made sure he could see the conviction on my face.

I was definitely taking a gamble. If Puck became angry that he had been boxed into a corner, he’d find a way to pay me back later—and I was certain I wouldn’t like the payback. It was always possible that he wasn’t actually scared of the dragon. Maybe he’d feigned fear just to see what I would do.

I was giving myself a headache, thinking in circles like this. How did Puck and Lucifer and Titania do it—weigh all the angles, contemplate all the possibilities?

Beezle had once compared me to the Hulk, and it was an apt description. I liked to crash and bash and worry about the consequences later. The trouble was that everyone around me was playing the long game, and if I continued the way I had before, I was always going to be on the losing end of the stick.

I watched Puck, and waited for his decision. I didn’t have a hint of what he was thinking.

Finally, he said, “Deal.”

I couldn’t conceal my shock. “Deal?”

“You don’t want it?” Puck asked craftily.

“Of course I do,” I said. “I want your word, by the blood we share, that you forfeit your right to one favor from me if I kill all the Cimice present on this world.”

I was careful to add that last qualifier. If there were Cimice alive on other worlds, Puck could easily claim that I had not adhered to the letter of our agreement. He would then absolutely use that as a loophole to put my favor back in his ledger.

“I give you my word, by the blood we share, that I forfeit the right to one favor from you if you kill all the Cimice present on this world,” Puck said solemnly, but his eyes twinkled.

Had he thought of something that I hadn’t? It was very likely he had, but my brain was pretty much done with exhausting the options. I’d have to accept that I wasn’t as well equipped in that department as my relatives.

“So now we’ve just got to catch one of these suckers so I can use its blood to direct the spell.”

“We?” Puck said.

“Aren’t you going to help me?” I asked.

Puck shook his head. “You are fulfilling an obligation to me. You must perform the task on your own.”

I bit my tongue so that I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of listening to me curse him out. “Enjoy the show, then,” I said.

I veiled myself and stalked away, Puck chuckling softly behind me.

I surveyed the situation. The Cimice were all pretty centrally located around the cavern. Even if I was under a veil, the Cimice would notice if I grabbed one of them. Then an alarm would be raised, and I would lose the element of surprise, and this whole enterprise would quickly become more annoying than it already was.

If I had known I’d need the blood of one of the creatures, I would have taken out one of the patrols we had passed earlier. They were nice and isolated from the rest of the population. Now it would be too time-consuming to double back. I was just going to have to take my chances here. That was pretty much the default of my life, so at least I was in familiar territory.

I crept carefully over the ground between me and the colony, mindful of any place where there was loose rock or dirt that I might dislodge beneath my boots. I skirted around the entrance to the cavern and took up a spot several feet away from the epicenter of activity.

The Cimice were carrying rocks of various sizes inside the cavern. They were obviously building something, and I was really not interested in what. Understanding them was not going to help me get rid of them.

After several moments, a Cimice drifted close to my location. First, I quickly dropped a veil over the creature. I could still see the Cimice underneath, but it seemed see-through, like a ghost. I wondered why I could see it when I couldn’t see Puck under my veil before. Was it a product of my will? Or because I hadn’t expected to see Puck then, but needed to see the Cimice now?

There was a lot I still didn’t understand about my powers. Regardless, the insect did not seem to be aware of the veil. The creature went about its business, busily collecting rocks and loading them into the sack it had slung around its neck.

The Cimice were well armored, with shiny green carapaces everywhere except at the soft joints. I remembered killing one before, in Chicago, under the Southport El. That creature had known I was coming, had fought me to the point of exhaustion. But I had managed to kill it by shooting electricity through it at the vulnerable exposed flesh just under its head. Using electricity now would attract a lot of attention. In any case, I needed the creature’s blood, and frying it wasn’t the best way to achieve blood loss.

What I needed to do was use the sword to slit the thing’s neck. There were a couple of logistical issues I needed to work out first, though.

For one, the Cimice were tall—like, NBA-player tall. I am decidedly un-tall. I could fly up behind the insect in order to reach its neck, but it’s a lot harder to be stealthy that way. The Cimice might sense my presence behind it—feel the breeze from my wings or something like that. It seemed better to do it from the front, especially if the insect was distracted into looking up. Which gave me an idea.

Sheer rock rose above the Cimice’s cavern, and above the place where I stood. If I very carefully caused a small piece of rock to break off and tumble down . . . Yes, that could work.

I moved into position. I was close enough to where the Cimice worked to lunge forward and slice its neck. It was kind enough to help me in this regard by suddenly deciding to work on all fours, which made it a lot easier for me to reach the soft throat with my blade.

Now the tricky part. I needed to hold the veil over myself and over the Cimice while using a very small, focused amount of power to dislodge an eensy bit of the rock wall above. I didn’t want to start an avalanche, although that would have been better suited to my skill set.

I took a deep breath, focused my magic and my will to hold the veils steady, and then shot a tiny amount of nightfire at the rock wall. A chunk the size of a potato was dislodged, and it tumbled down in front of the Cimice. It then immediately did the logical thing and looked up.

And when it did, I pounced. The blade sliced through the Cimice’s neck. I put a lot of force into it, nearly taking the thing’s head off entirely. As it was, the creature’s head flapped backward, bending the remains of its neck in an unpleasant way and exposing the cut muscle and veins.

Blood spurted, covering my sword. And my arm and chest and face and hair. This thing had a lot of blood. But at least I had what I hoped was enough of the stuff to perform the necessary spell.

I was congratulating myself on a job well-done when a nearby Cimice let out a high-pitched cry of alarm. And then pointed one of its pincers right at me.

The veils still held steady, so I couldn’t figure out what had given me away. Then I noticed the blood spatter all over the rock. Ah. Yes. That would attract some attention, wouldn’t it?

I raised the sword up, ready to take down any Cimice that came for me. But the creature who had raised the alarm wasn’t actually pointing at me.

It was pointing at the splattered blood, which was behind me. My veils were holding. The insects gathering now could see neither me nor their fallen brethren. They saw the blood, and didn’t understand where it came from. It frightened them.

Good, let them be scared, I thought. It was such an un-Maddy-like thought, such a dark-side impulse that I shook my head immediately. No, I was not going to enjoy their fear. I was going to get the job done and then make sure Puck got me out of this place.

Puck had been adamant that flying was a bad idea, but it was the fastest way for me to get out of the corner I was boxed in. More Cimice were gathering, pointing at the spattered blood and chittering among themselves. I really needed to get away before they approached the wall. They would bump right into me, veil or no veil.

I lifted off, debating whether or not I should drop the veil on the dead Cimice’s body. There were already on to the fact that something was amiss. I would have an easier time with the blood spell if I could focus all of my attention on it. That settled the question.

I dropped the veil on the dead one and flew away. Behind me was an explosion of noise and activity as the body was revealed.

I went straight to the spot where Puck waited, still hidden behind the rock. He laughed out loud when he saw me.

“I told you to get blood, Madeline,” he said, his eyes crinkling with merriment. “I didn’t tell you to roll in it.”

“Shut it,” I said. The Cimice’s blood was drying stickily all over me. I felt like I’d been dipped in a vat of caramel sauce. Except I didn’t smell that good. “Okay, obviously I’ve got the thing’s blood. Now what?”

“I’m sure if you think about it, a solution will come to you,” Puck said.

“You . . . are . . . useless,” I said.

“We could renegotiate our deal,” Puck said.

“No way,” I said. “I’ll sort it out without you.”

“Just as I thought,” he said, but he looked a little disappointed that I hadn’t changed my mind.

I studied the grayish-green substance clinging to the blade of the sword. When I had called the vampires to me I’d used the magic in their blood, the traces of magic Azazel had left on the serum the vamps had swallowed.

But there was no magic for me to latch on to here. All the Cimice had in common were their genes.

Although creating life is its own kind of magic, isn’t it? I thought. And magic always leaves a trace of itself behind.

I touched the tip of my finger to the blade, brushed some of the blood onto it. Then I sent my power through that drop of blood, just a little questing thread looking for a spark of magic. And I found it.

Deep inside the blood of the Cimice was a minuscule remnant of magic, the magic that was life itself. And this magic bound all of the Cimice together. I knew it with the same certainty that I knew my own name. My power welled up inside me, knowing instinctively what to do.

It surged through the magical spark in the Cimice’s blood, searching for the next connection, the next link in the chain.

It touched that Cimice, and sped through its bloodstream. And then it stopped the insect’s heart.

Once my power had done that, it looked for the next link, and the next. And the next. And so on and on.

The Cimice’s voices rose as one as they screamed their anguish to the sky. The spell plowed forward, knocking the Cimice down one by one, squeezing their hearts until they stopped.

I felt them die, their agony in their final throes, and the pain brought me to my knees. I hadn’t calculated this. I hadn’t considered the possibility that I might feel sorry for the monsters. But there was no stopping it now, and in any case my purpose was still clear. They meant to kill innocent humans at the behest of the Faerie Queen. I couldn’t let that happen.

This was preventive medicine. It was necessary.

The spell went deep into the heart of the cavern, to where the vast majority of the Cimice were. I gasped as I felt the presence of all of them. There were not hundreds, or thousands. There were millions, stacked up on one another in a vast hive.

My spell was killing them all, and I could feel every one. I closed my eyes, covered my ears, tried to drown them out. But I couldn’t drown them out. They were inside me, their screams and their pain. I couldn’t escape the truth of what I had done.

I believed I had done this for the right reasons. But there was no disguising this darkness. This was a shadow on my soul, and it would stay there forever.

I thought it couldn’t get any worse. I thought my body was numb to what was happening. Then the spell hit the hatchlings.

They were just little monsters, I told myself. They weren’t children screaming.

If I hadn’t done this, there would be children screaming—human children. The Cimice hatchlings would grow up to be just as ruthless as their parents.

“They’re just monsters,” I said over and over. “Monsters.”

But what are you? a voice in my head asked, and that voice sounded a lot like Beezle’s. You keep justifying what you do, but when do you draw the line that’s not supposed to be crossed?

“I’m still myself,” I said as the spell ravaged the Cimice, worked its destruction on them. It seemed to take a long time, but then, there were a lot of the creatures.

I don’t know how long I kneeled in the dirt, muttering to myself, hands over my ears, tears running down my face.

Eventually the spell found the last of them, every last insect out on patrol, every creature hidden in a cavern in the darkness. I opened my eyes and dropped my hands.

The spell was over, but I could still hear them screaming in my head. I could still feel them in my heart.

I felt weary in a way that I had never been before. I had pushed my body to the limit on countless occasions, gone past the point of pain and exhaustion. I had suffered in my body and soul—when Gabriel died, when Ramuell had torn my heart out, in the Maze. But this was worse than any of that.

This was not the weight of my own pain. You can carry your own suffering, learn to adapt, learn to live with it. But this was not my suffering. This was the hurt of another, of many, many others, and I was the one who had deliberately done them harm.

The burden was tremendous, almost incomprehensibly huge. I felt broken inside.

I stood slowly, like an old woman. Puck sat on top of a large boulder, his legs dangling down. He looked like a child who had just seen a wonderful show.

“That was excellent,” he said, clapping his hands together. “They never knew what hit them.”

“No, they didn’t,” I said wearily.

“Are you not pleased?” Puck asked. “You have done what you set out to do. You have destroyed the Cimice utterly.”

“Yeah,” I said, looking out over the place where the creatures had built their colony.

Everywhere I looked there was death. Death, my constant companion, the truest friend I had ever had. There was no point in denying my true nature any longer. I was now, and always had been, an instrument of Death. As I thought this, something shifted inside me. The mantle of darkness settled more comfortably on my shoulders.

I opened my arms wide, and rose up into the air.

“What are you doing?” Puck called, and there was real alarm in his voice.

“Burying them,” I said. “If you don’t want to be buried yourself, you’d better get the hell out of the way.”

I threw my head back, let the power flow through me, the power of the sun tempered by shadow, the power of Lucifer that I had tried for so long to suppress, to deny. Now that I was no longer holding it back, it burst forth in a great array of light.

The ground beneath began to shake, and I rose up, higher and higher. Puck shot into the air as the rock he perched on began to crumble.

He did not have a visible pair of wings, but I’d long suspected he could fly anyway.

Puck came to my side as my power hit the mountain before us and the whole thing started to fall. First rock sheared off the sides and crashed hundreds of feet below. Then the mountain seemed to cave in, collapsing inward upon itself.

I rose higher in the air as giant clouds of dust billowed upward. The sound was tremendous, like the earth itself was being rent to pieces. And in a way, it was.

Puck said nothing as the final resting place of the Cimice was covered with the remains of the mountain. Then we both turned in the direction of the forest, because we could feel him coming.

The dragon.

“I told you it was dangerous to fly,” Puck said, cursing. “You’ve attracted his attention.”

I shook my head, closing my eyes. I felt his approach like fire in the blood, a blaze that spread throughout my body, all-consuming. “That’s not what draws him here. He felt my power when I brought down the mountain. It pulls him to me.”

“Great,” Puck said, obviously disgusted. “The two of you are connected.”

I opened my eyes again, looked toward the forest. The dragon was coming for me with all speed. Smoke and flame trailed behind it.

“Who is he?” I asked Puck. “I know you know. Don’t pretend otherwise.”

Puck appeared more annoyed than I’d ever seen him. “You know yourself. You do not need me to give the knowledge to you.”

And just like that, I did know. My heart had known him from the moment I’d see him.

“Daharan,” I breathed.

“Yes,” Puck said. “My brother.”

Beneath us the ground shifted and settled as the last of the mountain crumbled to pieces. I flew away from the Cimice’s graveyard, toward the dragon. Toward Daharan and the strange pull I could not deny. Inside my body, my son fluttered his wings in welcome.

I had never felt this way about Lucifer or Puck or Alerian. With them there was always dread and repulsion and annoyance and fear on a sliding scale, depending on which brother I was dealing with. But Daharan—he was the one the others feared the most, yet from the moment I’d met him I’d felt a sense of safety, of coming home.

“Daharan,” I said.

The dragon curved its body as I approached. I landed on its neck, on the smooth expanse in front of the ridges that covered his back. I laid my head there. The dragon snorted in response and flew off in a different direction.

My mental map of this world told me we were heading toward the ocean. I wondered what Batarian and the other fae would make of the collapse of the mountain and the destruction of the Cimice. Maybe Batarian would finally realize he’d dodged a major bullet, and that he should never have messed with me in the first place.

I settled more comfortably on Daharan’s neck, glancing behind only to see what had become of Puck. He followed several feet behind. If a person could fly resentfully, then Puck was definitely doing it. He obviously didn’t want anything to do with Daharan, and he was glaring at his brother like he’d just taken Puck’s favorite toy.

I turned back, smiling to myself. I have to admit that it was enjoyable to see Puck being thwarted.

Daharan flew over the forest. It was even wider and longer than I had thought. Even when I’d done the tracking spell to find the portal, I hadn’t fully conceived of the size of this place. It made me realize just how difficult it would have been for me to reach the portal, even with my wings.

I was so warm and comfortable. I didn’t feel like I could fall, even though I wasn’t holding that tight to Daharan’s neck. My exhaustion caught up with me again, and I drifted off to sleep, waking only when Daharan nudged me with his nose.

The sound of waves rolling to the shore filled my ears. I could taste the salt in the air. I opened my eyes and slid off Daharan’s back to the sand below. Daharan took off flying again, and I covered my eyes to watch him circling above, expelling flame.

“He wants to change to his human form, but he’s got to get rid of some of the fire first,” Puck said behind me.

He’d done some kind of magical quick-change act with his clothes and was wearing a pair of leather pants with a black T-shirt. His hands were stuck in the pockets and he was glaring at Daharan, his jewel-blue eyes bright with anger.

“What are you so pissed about?” I said. “Aren’t you happy to see your brother?”

“We don’t get along,” Puck growled.

“So why don’t you just leave, then?” I said.

“I can’t,” Puck said, and there was a wealth of frustration in his voice. “I cannot show such disrespect to the eldest.”

I looked thoughtfully up at Daharan. “He’s the eldest, huh? Who’s second?”

“Alerian, then Lucifer, then me,” Puck said.

“That explains a lot,” I said. “Lucifer seems like he has middle-child syndrome.”

Puck snorted out a laugh. “Yeah, that’s his problem. Middle-child syndrome.”

“Wait—you told me that Lucifer was the firstborn,” I said. “You told me that in my apartment, when you revealed yourself as Nathaniel’s father.”

“He is the firstborn of his kind. But Daharan is the eldest,” Puck said.

“Aren’t you all the same kind, from the same parents?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” Puck said, grinning. He was enjoying my confusion.

His smile disappeared as Daharan slowly descended in lazy spirals until he landed farther down the beach. I’d never seen Puck look so genuinely unhappy as he did now, not even when he’d discovered that I’d accidentally undone the spell he’d put on Nathaniel at birth.

Daharan’s claws touched the sand, and for a second he looked blurry. Then the dragon was gone, and in his place stood a man made of fire.

He walked down the beach toward us, and the flame gradually receded until he looked like an ordinary man. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and work boots, and he looked a lot like a guy headed to a construction job. His hair was as black as mine, a little shaggy and overlong.

But when he reached me I realized he would never look normal. He would never be able to disguise those eyes. They blazed with the fire that he could not bank completely.

“Madeline,” he said, and he took my shoulders in his hands. He kissed both of my cheeks very gently, like I was something precious to him, and tears came to my eyes.

This is what it feels like to have a father, I thought. This is why he makes me feel so safe.

Then he turned from me to look at Puck, standing with his hands still shoved in the pockets of his pants.

“Brother,” Daharan said. “Will you not greet me?”

Puck gave Daharan the barest of nods, then dropped his hands to his sides and approached his eldest sibling. The two of them embraced, with much stiffness on Puck’s side and, I think, amusement on Daharan’s. It was very apparent that Daharan was the more powerful of the two, and they both knew it.

“I was surprised to find you here, in this place,” Puck said when they parted.

“As I was surprised to find you, and Madeline,” Daharan said.

Some unspoken undercurrent passed between them, and they stared intently at each other. I wondered whether they were communicating telepathically, or whether they were just trying to stare each other down.

After a few long moments Puck looked away.

“Now, my niece,” Daharan said, turning to me. “I believe you wish to return to your world, and have had some difficulty doing so.”

I nodded, and Puck glanced at me in surprise.

“You want to go back to Chicago? To the Retrievers? But I brought you here to keep you away from them,” Puck said.

“No, you brought me here to manipulate me into doing something for you that you were too cowardly to do yourself,” I said. “The fact that I needed to escape the Retrievers was just a happy coincidence for you.”

“You always think the worst of me,” Puck said, the twinkle back in his eye.

“That’s because you always prove me right,” I said. I addressed Daharan. “So, do you think you can help me get out of here? I tried to open a portal myself but the world wouldn’t let me. The fae told me that Lucifer had closed all the ways out of this place, but I found a permanent portal across the ocean.”

“The fae told you that, hmmm?” Daharan said, looking significantly at Puck again. “Yes, Lucifer did close all the ways to and from here, save that one. It is just possible, with the right manipulation of magic, to come into this world. But the only way to leave it is that permanent portal.”

My heart sank. “So I’ve got to cross the ocean.”

Daharan nodded. “Yes. But I will help you. It will take less time for my dragon form to take you there. However, there is a catch.”

“There always is,” I muttered.

“The portal does not lead directly to your world. You must pass through it to another place, and then you can go on,” Daharan said.

“And where does the portal lead?” I asked, dreading the answer.

Daharan looked at me, and the flames in his eyes burned more brightly than before.

“The land of the dead.”