 
All characters in this publication are fictitious, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Oblivion Gate

Episode One

Copyright © 2018 Odette C Bell

Cover art stock photos licensed from Depositphotos.

www.odettecbell.com

Oblivion Gate

Episode One

There is a gate to another world. The government has known about it for years. Beyond lies a land like no other.

Xandia, the treasure of the gods.

Sergeant Mark Sheppard is a member of the Earth Taskforce sent to explore Xandia. A soldier at heart, most of the time he has to play diplomat to the beautiful Lady Tallet.

But Xandia has its secrets.

So does Grace Brown. She's just an ordinary human, but her whole life she's been obsessed with Xandia. Her dreams of its lush plains and mountainous lands eat her up from the inside out.

Those dreams are about to turn into a living nightmare as an accident on Earth pulls her through to the Otherside. Sergeant Mark Sheppard will have to do everything he can to take her home.

But it won't be enough.

For when Xandia beckons, all fall.

...

Oblivion Gate is a thrilling, fast-paced action adventure blending sci-fi and fantasy. It is sure to please fans of Odette C. Bell's Ki and Betrothed.

## Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

# Prologue

They call it the doorway to heaven. The rest of us call it the doorway to hell.

I don't know exactly when it opened; the Army spread so much misinformation about it that ordinary citizens like me have no idea what the true story is.

All I know for sure are two facts. It's a wormhole to another world – a door to a different place.

And it's calling me. It's been calling me my entire life. Long, long before news of the wormhole hit the public, I dreamed of that other land.

It beckoned me from childhood, shadowing my every step, chasing through my every dream. And today, it will finally catch up to me.

# Chapter 1

Sergeant Mark Sheppard

Another day, another ridiculous request.

I don't know why I kept up with them. Okay, I do – my superiors told me to go through with them, and I was a loyal little Army brat. Plus, considering the current situation with the realm on the other side of the wormhole – X4 90, or Xandia, as they called themselves, we had to keep the Othersiders happy.

Shit, Othersiders. Even though I'd been part of the special military taskforce who restricted and controlled transport through the wormhole for three years now, sometimes it still hit me like it had the very first day I'd found out about the door.

Once upon a time, humanity had thought it was alone. It had always been wrong. Out there, connected through a network of wormholes, was another realm.

I could fondly remember over five years ago when I'd been nothing more than a brat in the Academy and the news had hit. Though the top brass had known about it for a full 50 years before that, it had finally got out, as the portal had grown so large, even the top military might in the world hadn't been able to hide it from view.

Now everyone knew about it.

Everyone.

Though the Othersiders weren't exactly aliens – as they didn't come from another planet, but another dimension – it was close. Close enough that it had changed everything. Or it should have changed everything.

I'd grown up on a steady diet of sci-fi films as a kid, and I knew what was meant to happen on first contact. The world was meant to freak out, lose its shit, riot, and then change. You know, deep-seated, meaningful social change. The kind of change that would finally get rid of inequality and man's lust for grabbing the resources of others.

But it hadn't changed.

Sure, the media's favorite topic was the portal, and politicians around the world vied for control of it, but that was it. To the common man, the portal was an incredible fact, but nothing that would change their day-to-day lives.

It had changed mine, though. Three years ago, when I joined the Taskforce, after half a year of specialized training, I'd been allowed to go to the Otherside.

I'd seen the footage, read the reports, and known what to expect. But actually going through the portal? It was indescribable. Firstly, the process of walking through a stable wormhole to another dimension was just... nuts. Excuse me if my words have abandoned me, but that's honestly the only way to describe it. It feels like you're being torn apart, ripped to shreds, then re-knitted again all in a few precious seconds. And that happens to me every time I have to switch posts from Earth back to Xandia.

Which is what I had to do this morning. I'd been given another unreasonable request by Lady Tallet of the Zentaria Royal Family to buy her yet another set of Tahitian pearls.

That's why I was right now standing in line at a seriously expensive jewelry store, in full dress uniform, trying not to smile too uncomfortably as the rich hoi polloi around me looked at me suspiciously from over the tops of their diamonds and gold.

Me? I just brought up a hand, flattened my hair again, grabbed my wallet, and kept playing with the hard plastic of the military credit card that would furnish dear Lady Tallet with another set of pearls.

The military would do anything to keep the Zentaria Royal family on-side. Why? One word. Resources. Of the mineral variety.

The other realm was an untapped Earth. Kind of like our planet would be if we hadn't stripped it away through millennia of mining. All the gold, all the precious metals, all the rare earth elements – all the coltan, the lithium, the uranium – it was all still there. And it was ours for the taking.

And Xandia's mineral resources were only the beginning. Their true wealth lay in Candarian Ore – a metal that plain didn't exist on Earth but one that had the potential to completely change our technological evolution. Of all the resources the Xandians had, Candarian was the one they held onto the tightest. We'd only just managed to get our hands on some samples over the past several years, and they'd blown our scientists' minds. Get enough Candarian, or so the theory went, and Earth's clean energy crisis would be a thing of the past.

Heck, if you believed some of the ancient Xandian scriptures, Candarian was just the beginning. Scratch deep enough under the surface of Xandia, and there was yet more magic for the tacking.

So we played nice. The military did everything conceivable to keep the ruling family of Zentaria on-side.

As a loyal representative of the Army, I had to play nice too. So I smoothed a smile on my face as soon as the lady at the counter dealt with her final customer.

"Here for the special order?" She let her gaze tick down my dress uniform.

I pulled out my card. "They called ahead?"

"They always do."

Thankfully she was quick and efficient and had the pearls boxed up as soon as she could. Which meant I could get out of that stuffy store and onto the street beyond before I lost my nerve and started to question if jewelry errand-boy was the job I'd signed up for when I'd decided to serve my country.

It was a blisteringly hot day, and the only reason I was being forced to wear a full dress uniform was that this was official business. Hell, I was even being forced to wear my hat. Though I'd taken it off in the store out of politeness, I had to cram it back on my head the moment I was out on the street.

I'd even been a good, dutiful little soldier boy and straightened my pin. Both were requisite branding when it came to the Portal Taskforce. It was part of the UN's attempts to keep the portal front and center in people's minds. Part of their attempt to show everybody that we were winning – that we were safe, and that we were getting everything out of the portal that we needed.

As I looked around the street, casting my glance over the various pedestrians as they chatted on their phones and drove past in their cars, I kind of wondered what the point was.

When the portal had first been discovered – or at least made public – it had been done so with the promise that this would change everything. They'd said there'd be a quantum leap forward in human technology, but that promise hadn't come to fruition.

Yet.

Who knew how many more Tahitian pearls I'd have to buy to get our hands on more samples of Candarian?

There was another option – we could just take it. Earth's military might far outstripped that of the Othersiders.

Technically.

And there was a big damn technicality.

Though the majority of Xandians led a relatively simple life compared to humans, there were glaring exceptions.

Your average Xandian had a roughly agrarian lifestyle centered around farming and trade.

Their gods, however, did not.

Yeah. I just said gods. Once upon a time, I'd been a religious man. Then I'd met them. They looked roughly the same as an average Xandian, but they had... Christ, how do I put this without sounding like an imaginative kid?

They had powers.

Super strength, agility, quick healing, extreme physical resilience – you name it. They also had strange powers that couldn't be explained.

So while technically Earth could just assault Xandia and take what we want, their gods were a wild card we couldn't estimate. Though we'd tried to study them, they were strictly off limits. You'd see them walking through a crowded marketplace or off in the distance in one of the Royal palaces, but never up close.

There was a standing reward out for any military officer who could get close enough to a god to figure out how they worked.

Until that happened, Earth would have to play by Xandia's rules.

And there was a bucket-ton. They were a highly superstitious race. I wasn't talking black cats and broken mirrors, here – I was talking demons and myths. You couldn't shake the hand of a Xandian if yours were cold – cold hands meant you'd been infected with demon breath. You couldn't speak if you had a stutter – a stutter meant an evil spirit had hold of your tongue.

That was just the beginning. The list of Xandian rules was so extensive, every person sent from Earth was given a pocketbook of them they had to keep on them at all times.

Those were just the small rules. The big rules were even more insane.

It was forbidden to drag the sun from the sky.

It was forbidden to wake up the sleeping Goddess of Death.

And it was forbidden to bring Pandora home.

Though the first two didn't make any sense, that last one at least struck a chord.

Pandora was no transliteration mistake – it was the same word as the ancient Greek. It was the same damn myth too. To the Xandians, if Pandora was ever brought home, she would open a box of all that was bad, evil, and forbidden. She would unleash the demons of Xandia upon the world once more, and the realm would be swallowed up.

Though I usually didn't believe in coincidences, this one got to me. By all accounts, the portal hadn't opened 50 years ago – it had only been found then. So it technically was within the realm of possibility that other humans had wandered into Xandia before, and maybe they could have brought their knowledge of Greek myths with them. Yet there was a problem with that theory – the primary portal gate was a full kilometer above international waters in the Indian Ocean.

Just thinking about the sheer possibilities gave me a headache, and I yanked a hand up, pressed it across my brow, and tried hard to massage away the pain.

That's when my phone rang.

I picked it up, not even bothering to look at the screen. "I've got the damn pearls. Keep your shirt on. Have you set the coordinates for the sub-portal?"

"You always sound so grumpy in the morning," Cadet Sparks commented with a lilting laugh.

"That's because I am grumpy. How are the negotiations with the Vandax going?"

"Badly. I tell you, the more we negotiate with the Othersiders, the savvier they get. If you believed the reports 15 years ago, they were nothing but primitives."

I growled. I hated that word. "Then we came along, screwed them over for their minerals, and they eventually got wise. It happens, Sparks. And it's their right to demand adequate compensation for loss of material wealth."

Wherever Sparks was, I swear she was rolling her eyes at me.

So I just set my teeth into a grim line. "How about that sub-portal, though? Is it up? I was told by Colonel Ventari that these pearls are an integral part of negotiations with the Zentaria family."

"They are, they are. And we've got a sub-portal opening up in a secure transport station in the middle of the city. You don't need me to guide you there, do you, Shep?"

"I've been there thousands of times; I think I'll be fine," I said grumpily.

"You should try to catch a bit of beauty sleep before you go see dear Lady Tallet. She'll be disappointed if you're this gritty."

"Had to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning to transport over here and buy these damn pearls. Lady Tallet can take me as I am."

Sparks let out a significant laugh. "I'd be careful, Sergeant – she'll take you up on that offer."

I winced. Once upon a time I'd liked to think that my life had been complicated. Five years ago before I'd found out about the existence of the Othersiders, I'd thought there'd been too much on my plate. From shifting family relations to growing up as the son of a decorated general, there'd always been too many machinations for me to juggle.

Now?

Now I was right in the middle of two frigging realms. If I thought my life had been complicated then, I could now appreciate that I'd been nothing but naïve.

Now the whole goddamn world was complicated. Because now the world was two.

Turning off the phone and returning it to my pocket, I rubbed my face and made an automatic beeline for the security station. There were several in the city, but only one big one. My team and I referred to it as the train to oblivion. Though that wasn't the technical name of the continent on the Otherside, it was close. They called it Oblevia. We called it oblivion.

Humans always love a shortcut, after all.

And that right there – looking for shortcuts – summed up everything to do with Earth relations with the Otherside.

Before I could descend too far into my twisting thoughts, I heard a siren.

It wasn't that unusual – this was a big city. But it was a loud siren.

A second later?

A second later there was an explosion.

Not close enough that it threw me onto the road and blasted my eardrums to smithereens, but close enough that I ducked down instinctively and shifted toward a parked car.

With my heart in my throat, I turned, and I saw a plume of smoke rising over the city.

Everyone began to scream and run in the opposite direction.

I tucked the pearls under my arm and ran toward the smoke.

I wouldn't get there fast enough.

# Chapter 2

Grace Brown

I was having another one of those days.

A day when I felt more connected to the portal than any other.

Which was crazy. So goddamn crazy. I didn't want to be another one of those psychiatric nut cases you hear about on TV every other day. Ever since news of the portal made it to the public five years ago, crazies had been crawling out of the woodwork, claiming they were long-lost citizens from the Otherside who'd stumbled through the portal to our realm. Everything from wizards to goddesses to lost princesses – you name it.

The DSM now recognized it as an extant psychiatric condition – Otherside grandiose delusion. OGD for short. And I wasn't an OGD-er.

I just wasn't. So as I walked past the security line that cordoned off the block from one of the numerous Earth Security Stations in the city, I clenched my hands into fists, locked my teeth together, and stared at my shoes.

Maybe the guards always on patrol outside thought I was dodgy, but it was the only thing I could do not to twist my head and lock my gaze on the station. I knew what happened inside. I didn't need to look it up on Wikipedia. I didn't need to ask any passing schoolchild. Everyone knew what happened inside one of those stations.

But not in the way I knew. For I swore I could feel every time the portal was opened up between our world and the Otherside. Feel it like something being yanked back and forth in my heart.

My obsession with the portal aside, I was usually a happy person. Plucky, funny, the kind of girl who always tried to make light of a situation. Or at least, that's what I'd had been before news of the portals had struck.

Now... it just felt like I was being pulled closer to it every day. Things that once distracted me no longer had any effect. From friends to family to TV shows to culture to politics – it was like my world was unavoidably narrowing. Every single time I walked past the security station on my way to work at the bank, it got worse. It got to the extent where I wondered if I should go book myself into a psychiatric clinic.

Today was no different. In fact, today was the worst it had ever been.

It was already a sweltering hot day, and while everyone around me was in shorts and T-shirts, I was cold. To the bone. It was almost making me rigid like a steel pole as I encouraged my limbs to move and pull me across the street away from the security station.

It felt like someone had injected something into my blood. Ice, maybe, maybe just space. The endless space that should separate us from the Otherside, but no longer did – all because of the portal.

All because of the portal.

Incapable of stopping myself any longer, my head tilted up, and I stared at the security station.

It... it was in the center of my chest. Right there in my heart. This pulsing. This throbbing. This beat that didn't feel like it came from me but rather came from outside.

The more I concentrated on it, the more the world around me just seemed to... disappear. Almost as if it were whittled away. Almost as if my vision had become a tunnel – a tunnel connecting me only to the security station and the portal beyond.

Though the guards who always stood outside the security station were usually pretty lax, they were still trained. And when I stopped right in the middle of the street to stare at them, I watched one raise an eyebrow. "You all right, ma'am?"

Come on, turn around. Turn the hell around, I told myself as I clenched my hands into such tight fists it was a surprise the fingers didn't punch through the other side.

But I couldn't do it. Something had its hooks in me, and I simply couldn't turn around. I'd been wrong – this wasn't just worse than yesterday, the last time I walked past the security station. This was on another level. Because now I just couldn't....

There was a beep right behind me, and I realized a car had come in close. That alone gave me the distraction I needed to shove past the pull of the portal. In an ungainly wobble, I staggered out of the way.

I caught sight of the car as it drove past and the guards at the security station made way for it. It was black and had government plates, and despite the fact it had tinted windows, I could see who was traveling in the back as the window was wound down due to the heat.

He was a handsome young man, maybe a couple of years older than me with glasses that couldn't hide some of the most piercing eyes I'd ever seen.

He shot me the kind of look that told me he was genuinely concerned as he muttered, "You shouldn't stand in the middle of the street, ma'am."

No, I shouldn't. Nor should I stare, but I couldn't stop myself as the car wound its way in through the security station past the guards, past the massive reinforced doors that opened for it and beckoned it into the huge, reinforced facility.

... Just for a fleeting second, just for a fleeting frigging second I had to fight the urge to run in after it. My rational mind knew what would happen – the guards at the front with the heavy rifles would shoot me dead. The military took the security of their sub-portals very seriously.

But do you think I could see reason?

Do you think I could control the growing, crazy desire to reach toward the portal like a child calling out for her mother's hand?

I... I couldn't... control myself.

I took a step forward.

But the guards didn't shoot me. They didn't have time.

Something exploded out of the side of the facility.

The force of the explosion slammed into me. It was strong enough that it sent me flying.

The two guards were closer, and they weren't as lucky. One of them smashed against the wall with bone-breaking force and the other one copped a face-full of the explosion, his body being blasted apart in seconds.

Though I'd been in the path of the explosion, it didn't kill me.

I... was alive. I was down on the ground, and I could feel blood trickling from a deep gash in my head, but I was alive.

With one look at the street around me, I knew I shouldn't be. The bodies of the guards were joined by several other pedestrians who'd been walking past at the same time. Cars had been flipped on the opposite side of the street, and the building directly across the road from the explosion had lost half of its front.

But me?

With a shaking hand pressed into the hot street below me, I rose, blood still trickling down from the wound in my head and dashing over my pale white cheeks and wide-open eyes.

My ears rang. I couldn't hear a thing, not a goddamn thing other than the reverberating beat of my heart as it pounded away in my chest.

My sight was blurry as if somebody had grabbed my eyeballs, chucked them in a jar, and shaken them about until they'd cracked.

But none of that mattered.

The only thing that mattered?

There was a hole in the side of the facility. And my little broken mind told me one thing – to walk toward it.

Go inside.

I had to walk inside to find the portal, to finally travel through to claim my destiny.

As sirens blared and people screamed, I did it – I took another step forward.

I couldn't control myself. And with no guards around, there was no one else to control me, either.

# Chapter 3

Mark Sheppard

I ran with everything I had, making a beeline for the security station. That's where my gut told me the explosion had come from. It wasn't the exact strange blue crackle in the plume of smoke erupting over the city – it was just plain old intuition.

And my intuition wasn't wrong. By the time I hooked a right down the wide avenue that led to the security station, I saw it. The side of the building had been ripped in two as if by a giant hand.

There was pandemonium. Guards had spilled out of the facility to deal with the injured and dead.

I ran straight toward a contingent of guards rushing out of the open security doors. I caught the guy in the lead. "What the hell happened? Have we been attacked?"

Though I didn't know this guy specifically, all he needed to do was take one look at my uniform – and more importantly my pin – and he snapped a salute. "We have no idea what caused the explosion. At this stage, there are no aggressors. It's being treated as an unknown accident."

"Casualties?"

"Two soldiers, three civilian pedestrians. Four injuries, including Major Phillips."

"James?" I demanded, the color draining from my face. "How is he? Is he—"

Before I could say alive, I heard a humorless chuckle. Somebody walked from the other side of the partially open security doors. It was James. He had a massive gash in his head, and his glasses were askew. There was a profusely bleeding cut in his arm which had been hastily bandaged. "Alive. Yes, I can confirm I'm alive. Were you close to the explosion?" he asked in the same efficient tone James was legendary for.

"No. Ran here. Do we know if it had anything to do with the portal? Is it open? Has it been affected?"

"We don't have any answers yet. I've ordered a contingent of soldiers to clean up the area, deal with casualties, and keep civilians out of the way."

"How can I help?" I asked immediately. Though James wasn't my direct superior, he was my best friend. We'd gone through the Academy together, and though he'd quickly risen through the ranks, I held no animosity toward him. Because he was a brilliant strategist and a competent manager. Me? I just knew how and when to get my hands dirty.

I turned around and quickly surveyed the situation. I'd managed to run here within 2 to 3 minutes of the explosion occurring, so the scene was still pretty fresh. Civilian injuries hadn't been cleaned out, and though a few medics were picking over the remains of casualties, they hadn't been bagged yet.

I shifted hard on my foot and threw myself forward, intending to head for the old woman sitting on the side of the street close to me. She looked badly shaken up, and she was quivering on the spot, her eyes plastered wide.

But that would be when I saw her. There was a woman standing there in the middle of the road, not too far from the front of the security station. She was just standing there. Blood was dripping down her brow from a superficial scrape, but that appeared to be her only injury. The wind had picked up, and it was catching the ends of her loose, messy hair, blowing them over her face, making her still figure look all the starker as she remained as locked as a mountain rooted into the earth.

While everyone else who'd survived the explosion was sitting or lying down, she was just staring at the security station in total shock.

I'd been in situations like this before. Terrorist attacks weren't that uncommon on the Otherside – while some groups welcomed our presence, plenty didn't. So I knew what people did when there was a sudden, unexpected attack. Some ran for cover. Some ran toward the trouble. Some collapsed in fear and pain. And some people? Some people were immobilized. They just became locked on the spot as if somebody had hit pause on a TV.

I approached the woman warily, slowly reaching a hand out, sure not to make any sudden moves. "Ma'am – ma'am, you've been in an explosion. But you're alright. It's going to be alright," I kept repeating in a clear, gentle tone, sure to keep my voice at an even, steady pace.

She ignored me.

I took several more steps toward her. That's when I noticed her hands were curled into tight fists and her body was as rigid as a mountain range.

It looked as if she was using all her might to hold herself in that one spot.

There was sweat beading across her brow, shifting under the angled cut of her fringe and tangled, shiny black hair.

Her face was all crumpled up, tears trickling down her cheeks, her jaw so clenched it looked as if someone had wired it shut.

"Everything's going to be okay," I defaulted to saying as I took another step toward her.

That would be when she yanked her head up. She looked right at me, then her eyes jerked off and locked on the facility behind. I watched in perfect slow motion as her eyelids pulsed wide and her pupils dilated. "No it won't," she had time to say.

There was another explosion.

It caught me in the back, shunting me forward, and it pushed me into her. Instinctively, I wrapped my arms around her back, finding the strength from somewhere to cradle her head so it wasn't smashed against the pavement as we plowed into it.

Heat seared across my back, my ears rang, and my head felt like scrambled eggs – but that was it. There was no shrapnel and nothing was torn from my body.

I even managed to dodge the rubble as it hailed down around us. I shifted further over her, using the bulk of my back to ensure nothing struck her face.

She remained as rigid as a pole beneath me until the echo of the explosion died out and the heat disappeared.

Though my ears were ringing, I still had enough acuity left over to hear the soldiers behind me screaming.

I shoved a hand into the hot asphalt below me, turned hard over my shoulder, and stared in horror at the facility.

The doors had been blasted clean open. The several soldiers who'd been standing close by – including the Sergeant I'd questioned earlier – were dead along the street.

"James?" I bellowed, gaze darting to the last point I'd seen him, my heart telling me to prepare for the worst.

That's when I saw him moving – shifting up from underneath a pile of rubble.

He was shaking and looked as if he was bleeding from every limb.

"James!" I shoved up.

So did he. He staggered forward, but before he could reach me, he turned, tipped his head back, and stared at the facility.

I pushed to my feet. I turned fully to face the facility. My gut bottomed out, my heart shaking with a horrifying punch as I realized the facility had been half destroyed. Plumes of acrid, blue crackling smoke spun high into the air, pushed on by violent eddies of wind that seemingly came from nowhere. The street around me was a mess of rubble, chunks of molten steel, and melting sections of asphalt.

"James?" I tried once more.

From the look of him, he wouldn't be able to hear. I could only just pick up the sounds around me – the sirens, the far-off screams, and the fire burning out of control in the facility beyond.

They were all loud, immediate sounds. I picked up something else, too – a shuffle of feet and stiff joints as the woman behind me finally rose to her feet.

Though I didn't want to take my eyes off James, there was something about her that saw me twitch my head to the side.

Another blast of wind sailed into the back of her head, caught her hair, and sent it scattering over her face. I could only pick up a few scant glimpses of her wide-open eyes. They were still locked in rigid fear on the facility.

When you're a soldier, you're trained to deal with sudden, unfolding, violent situations. They take you through multiple scenarios, push your body to the limits, and teach you about natural physiological reactions so you can act when everyone else freezes.

But there was something about the exquisite, total look of soul-shaking shock in that woman's eyes that held me to the spot.

I stayed there until James staggered over to me, reached a hand out, and clamped his bloodied fingers on my shoulder for support.

"Get everyone out of here. Something's gone wrong. We have to evacuate. There could be more explosions."

Don't ask me how he managed to string together his words. He looked as if he could barely stay on his feet, let alone think of a coherent sentence and wrangle his cracked, bloodied lips into speaking it.

Though he gripped my shoulder hard, his swaying body shifting into mine for support, he still managed to keep on his feet.

"Mark, run," he managed one last time.

I finally tore my gaze off the woman.

I shifted around, brought an arm up, and caught James just before his knees could give way.

As I guided him down to the rubble-covered street, I watched the woman twitch. It was such a full-body affair, it was as if someone had suddenly struck her in the gut with a bat.

She fell down to one knee, twisted, scraped her palm against a hard section of broken metal, cut it, spun on the spot, and ran.

Finally she ran.

Droplets of blood splattered out over the street as she sprinted through the chaos.

From behind me, the facility's alarm suddenly cut out. I doubted it was because they thought the situation had been controlled – it was still unfolding at a breakneck pace. No, the alarm mechanism would've presumably been burned or blown up.

Dammit, what the hell had happened here?

No time to think.

Just time to act.

I hooked an arm around James' hips and hauled him to his feet.

He may have always been the smart one, but I was the athletic one, and despite his tall lanky form, I had the muscles to drag him forward, his limp shoes tracking trails through the dust and ash.

"Come on, stay with me," I spat through cracked lips, ignoring my own shaking body as I pulled James forward.

For some damn reason I kept my gaze locked on that woman until she was out of sight. When she finally turned the corner at the end of the street, I actually smiled.

She saved herself.

Which meant I could concentrate on James.

"Just leave me, Mark. I'm a dead weight. You need to contact the local authorities – tell them to clear this entire sector of the city. We have no idea—"

There was another explosion from behind me. It wasn't massive – probably just a gas tank or two going up. It was enough, however, that it shook the road, and my already adrenaline-filled body jolted with gut-punching fear. I skidded down to one knee but didn't drop my grip on James' stomach.

I hauled him back up as I turned over my shoulder, stared at the facility, then pulled my gaze away.

More of that blue-tinged smoke was reaching up into the sky, the flames crackling like damn lightning.

Something must have happened to the portal.

There'd been accidents with sub-portals before, but nothing like this to my knowledge. Then again, I was just a grunt who was sent to the Otherside to do footwork. I wasn't like James – someone privy to the portal's real secrets.

I finally reached the end of the street and hauled James around the corner.

The street wasn't clear. Too many pedestrians were out on it, staring gobsmacked at the tall flames and spires of smoke spilling over the city.

"Get the hell out of here. Run, dammit!" I screamed until my voice went hoarse, spittle flying from my lips as I hunched forward from the muscular contortion of shouting so loud.

A few pedestrians either reacted to my angry blast, or caught sight of my uniform and figured out what it meant. They turned on their shoes and sprinted in the opposite direction.

Too many of them remained there in the middle of the road, staring like frozen statues.

My gaze ticked through them for some reason, as if I was looking for someone. And I was. Her.

Despite the chaos of the past few minutes, the image of that woman stuck in still-frame as her hair scattered over her face seemed burned onto my retinas.

It was there even as I closed my eyes, trying to blink back the grit and smoke that had made it even this far away from the facility.

"Just leave me here, for God's sake, Mark. That's an order."

I grunted through a laugh. "You're not technically my superior."

"I am now. Who knew who was killed in that explosion?"

It was a cold damn thing to say, and it brought me back to Earth.

Though the entire facility hadn't been destroyed, a fair chunk of it had been. That meant a lot of lives lost.

Goddammit.

Goddammit.

But James was right. If my direct superiors had been killed in that explosion – and odds are they had been – Mark was now above me.

"I'm gonna say this one last time – let me down here. That's an order, Sergeant," James growled.

"Dammit, James, I'm not going to leave you behind."

"You're not leaving me behind. I want you to grab a phone, call headquarters, and find out what the hell happened. Ensure they are coordinating a total evacuation."

"Sorry, total evacuation? Before you said we just needed to evacuate this sector of the city?" We'd stopped just beside a Café. Someone had knocked the chalkboard sign down, and my heavy, ash-covered boot was now propped on it, the board cracking beneath my weight.

There were wrought-iron chairs and tables beside me, all of them knocked over, all of them starting to become covered in spots of ash that were hailing down from the plumes that continued to blast high over the city like pillars from heaven.

James had his head turned up, his gaze locked on the crackling blue flames, even though I knew his sight was bad enough that through his cracked glasses, it would all be a blur to him. Still, there was something about the tension riding up his cheeks that told me he didn't like what he saw.

"The entire city needs to be evacuated, Mark, and I need you to make that happen. Put me down here. Get me a phone, if you can find one."

James didn't wait around for me to put him down – he bodily shoved himself out of my grip, and short of dumping him onto an upturned table, I guided him down, pulled up a chair with the toe of my boot, spun around, and shoved him into it.

I took a staggering step back, wicking away a few dribbles of blood from my brow.

I'd already done a quick injury count, and I'd gotten off extremely lucky. My back was sore, and the skin was no doubt scorched, but it wasn't a particularly bad burn. I had a few cuts and scrapes, and I'd have countless bruises from slamming into the pavement and protecting that woman, but none of them were life-threatening.

I shoved a hand into my pocket, ready to pluck out my phone, but my fingers just brushed up against cracked glass and splintered metal.

I pulled it out only to realize I must've landed on it and cracked the damn thing through the middle. I didn't chuck it to the ground. The phone might be broken, but it was still military-issue, and with some sophisticated tech, you could probably scrape some top-secret data. So I dutifully shoved it back into my pocket.

Don't ask me how James managed to hold himself up in that chair, but he did. His tall form crumpled in half as he locked his shaking elbows on his knees for support. He cradled his bloodied head in his hands, pulled off his broken glasses, stared at them through bleary eyes, then shoved them back on his face.

I pivoted to the side, ran toward one of the pedestrians still standing in the middle of the road, and demanded their phone. When the guy didn't give it to me, I saw it bulging out of his pocket, and I just shoved a hand in and grabbed it.

"Hey!" he stuttered.

"Military business, sir. This is being confiscated. Now get the hell out of here. We don't know if there'll be more explosions."

The guy didn't look happy, but maybe he took another good look at my uniform and appreciated I wasn't stuffing around, because he turned and ran.

I shoved the phone at James, and he grabbed it up, making an emergency call.

I stood dutifully by his side as he patiently told the dispatcher on the other end of the line who he was and waited to be patched through to his superiors.

James wasn't the kind to let me just wait around and guard him, though.

"Get all of these people off the street, now. Check the buildings, too. The two streets around the facility are going to be the worst affected."

"What are you talking about? Do you know what happened?" It was a crazy question. In my head right now, no one could possibly understand what had just happened. This situation had unfolded like a book whose pages had been ripped from it and chucked in a blender.

James looked at me seriously. "The sub-portal must've malfunctioned. Two things could happen from now on."

My skin chilled as I realized from the look in his eyes he knew precisely what he was talking about.

"We could have a critical cascade failure and lose half of the city, or the portal location could shift due to energy fluctuations."

"Sorry, shift?"

"I'm telling you a portal could open anywhere within two blocks. You need to get these people off the street. Now."

I reeled.

Though I didn't understand the underlying temporal-spatial physics involved, I understood one thing. The military didn't just exist to negotiate with people on the Otherside – we were here to stop people from Earth wandering through.

We couldn't do that if an uncontrolled portal opened up in the city.

I didn't need any more encouragement. I spun on my foot just as James got through to one of his superiors.

I started to scream at the people standing in the street, bodily hustling them on.

When that was done, I jogged back to the street in front of the facility, checking it again for any sightseers.

There were none.

Just before I ran back to James, I saw a maintenance pit to my side that was open.

There were trails of blood along the mouth of the pit. But that wasn't it.

There was a red scarf that had snagged on a jagged piece of metal, and it was fluttering in the wind.

I'd seen that red scarf. If I closed my eyes right now, I could conjure up a close-up of it, in fact.

That woman had been wearing it.

Before I knew what I was doing, I bolted toward the maintenance pit, skidding down to my knees as I locked a hand on the edge and screamed, "Is anyone in there?"

Nothing.

Though I could easily assume the woman had ditched her scarf – considering it was too hot for one anyway, my gut clenched, and before I could stop myself, I skidded on my knees, further ruining my white dress pants, and I climbed down the ladder into the pit.

"Hey, is anyone down here?"

I heard nothing.

I took a step forward, my better judgment telling me to get out of this pit and go help James, but that's when I heard soft sobbing.

It was unmistakable, and it reached in, grabbed my heartstrings, and damn well plucked them out of my chest.

The pit was dark, and if there'd ever been any lighting in here, the explosion had obviously taken it out.

I ran through it, focused on the sobbing.

This pit must've connected to sewer maintenance or one of the support tunnels for the subway, because as I stumbled in the dark, I reached a cold, smooth, half-open door. Anchoring my hand on the handle, I wrenched it open only to see a few flickering lights leading down a shaft to another section of the maintenance tunnel below.

There was a small ladder. I turned, grabbed hold of it, and practically slid down it.

By the time I jumped off, the sobbing was louder.

I was definitely in some kind of maintenance tunnel belonging to the subway, because I could see control wires neatly bundled along the walls. A few lights flickered on and off above, giving me surreal flashes of the darkened tunnel around me.

As sweat dripped down my back and my heart beat harder at the sound of that sobbing, I reached a wider section of the room as it suddenly opened out.

And I saw her. The woman from before.

She was down on her haunches, her back propped against the wall, her head buried between her knees.

There was a guy a few meters away, face down and still. From the blast marks over his skin and his proximity to a chunk of sparking wires in the wall, it looked as if he'd been electrocuted.

The explosion must've disrupted the power under the street, caused some kind of overload, and killed him on the spot.

... Did this lady know him? Or was she just down here to hide?

"Come on – you have to get out of here." I made it toward her, wrenching my gaze off that guy's still form.

She shook her head, never drawing it away from her knees.

She was wearing stockings, and they were torn, blood trickling down her shins and peeking through the ladders in the nylon.

I got down on one knee beside her, hesitated, then placed a hand on her shoulder. "You need to come with me," I said each word slowly, breathing through them. "It's okay. You'll be okay. It'll all be okay."

The last time I'd said that, the facility had exploded a second time. This time, it felt like I was tempting fate again.

Sure enough, she yanked her tear-streaked face up, and it was the first time I got a good look at her eyes. They were white-rimmed, her brown irises shimmering with tears.

There are a few scenes that will always stick in your head after a disaster. Maybe it's a kid's shoe sitting on top of a chunk of rubble. Maybe it's a pot plant cracked down the middle, its dirt mixing with dust. Maybe it's the still, frozen face of a corpse, its eyes open as it stares up to the heavens that betrayed it.

Or maybe it's this. Here. Right now. This lady's expression as she stared at me as if the entire world had been yanked out from under her feet.

It forced me to swallow, nerves scattering down my throat and into my chest. They tightened my muscles until they reached my arms and hands, and I gripped her shoulders harder. "We need to—"

"It's too late." Her face scrunched, her cheeks twisting hard into her eyes as more tears trailed down them.

"It—" I began.

The hair started to pick up along the back of my neck.

It was a distinct sensation. One I'd felt all too many times before.

I started to taste something – this burned, acrid bitterness that somehow filled my mouth, despite the fact my olfactory senses were still overcome from the explosion.

My eyes had a chance to widen before a crackling started to build in the air.

Dammit.

No.

Not here.

The portal was opening.

James had been right.

God—

The woman suddenly barreled into me, wrapping her arms around my chest and pulling me forward.

It was so sudden, I couldn't stop her.

She fell on top of me, her messy black hair scattering over my face.

It fell over my eyes, but I could see through just a slit of it. And it provided a frame for the air directly above me.

The portal started to open. Right where my head had been.

In a controlled setting, you weren't this close to a portal. It opened first, and you went through it second.

Now I was close enough that I could touch it.

The rest of reality fell away as my every sense locked on that pinprick of light building a meter above me.

The woman stopped crying, her sobs cutting out as if someone had wrapped their hands around her throat.

She became limp – or at least most of her did. Her hands were the only things that tightened, and they locked around my back, fixing me in place against the ground.

My senses became overwhelmed as the crackling became so loud it was like I was in a forest that had suddenly burst alight into a raging wildfire. My eyes began to burn from the light. And yet I couldn't close them.

There was something... so goddamn profound and compelling about watching that pinprick of light grow. It was almost like watching a new reality being born.

The woman shifted, drawing her face up, pushing it against my own, forcing my eyes to close as her cheeks pressed into them.

When a portal opened, everything within its radius was pulled into the Otherworld.

I felt it begin to open.

That crackling in the air suddenly cut out as everything became eerily silent. It was as if I'd gone from a bustling city into the world's deepest cave.

The air became cold – not like the frozen depths of space, but like a frost had suddenly picked up over the maintenance tunnel.

I knew my breath would be nothing but cold sheets of white as it hit the air.

Then I felt something shift through me.

It was a memorable sensation. It felt like you were being pulled but pushed, expanded but contracted, hugged but ripped apart.

It was a sensation I knew would linger hours after you transported through.

... Transported through. Whatever slip of my mind that still functioned told me I was about to appear on the Otherside.

Silence – that deadly still silence – was suddenly cracked by the call of a bird. Then the rustle of wind through trees.

They were far off for now but getting closer.

Then it happened.

Everything shuddered. Just once.

And I was pulled to the Otherside.

I didn't have my pearls anymore. I'd dropped them in the chaos.

I had a woman from Earth instead. Or maybe she had me, because her arms didn't drop from around me until the portal grabbed us and stole us away.

# Chapter 4

Grace Brown

No.

No.

No.

I... I'd been pulled... through a portal. One had found me. It had swallowed me up.

It had—

I could hear the call of birds behind me and pick up the sound of a clipping wind rustling through trees.

The air was cool – cold even, missing the warmth of summer heat.

It was clean, too, instantly lacking the scent of burned metal and rubble.

No.

I—

I felt the man beneath me shifting.

It was the first time he'd made a move since I'd shoved into him before the portal had appeared to swallow me up.

My arms were still locked around him as if I was using them as chains to keep him in place.

Now he pivoted from the hip, pushing against me and forcing us both to sit.

I fell into his lap, still not brave enough to unclamp my hands from around his back and pull my face away from his cheek.

"It's okay," he managed in that same deep voice he'd used outside of the facility. It was the kind of voice that could reach in past even the greatest confusion and hold you to the spot.

But this wasn't confusion anymore – this was abject horror.

The nightmare I'd been dreaming of my entire life had finally come to pass.

I'd been sucked back to the other side of the portal.

I—

He brought up a hand and placed his palm and rough thumb against the back of my head, cradling it gently. "It's okay. There's no threat. You've just been transported to Xandia. You—"

At the term Xandia, I freaked out, clamping my hands around him even tighter until I ground my face into his hard jaw.

"There's no threat here, ma'am. The portal has closed."

The threat had never been the portal. It was the very ground beneath me, the sky above – the very realm that had pulled me back.

Pulled me—

I... I had to get a hold of myself, didn't I?

This was all paranoia, wasn't it? I tried to tell myself that, using the same firm voice I'd developed over the years to deal with my phobias and fears, but it wouldn't work.

I'd woken up this morning knowing I would be pulled through the portal, and I'd been right.

I—

Still cradling one hand on the back of my head, the guy broke my grip on his shoulders with a gentle but firm tug.

He sat me down, and he stood.

I crumpled, instantly folding my knees up and locking my face against them as if I couldn't dare face the world around me.

I heard him take a shaking sigh. Then he straightened, his muscles creaking from the effort. It sounded like he brought a hand up, clamped it over his mouth, and breathed through his fingers. "Dammit," I heard him spit quietly. He took another breath. Then he shifted toward me. He placed that same broad hand on my shoulder. "I need you to look at me, ma'am. I need you to listen to me, too. And I need you to trust me."

It was that last bit that finally got my attention, that finally saw me pull my head from my knees.

I knew I would look like a mess – tear-streaked, covered in ash, and nothing but a shaking puddle of fear and used-up adrenaline. But I still looked at him.

He was handsome, though this wasn't the time to note that. It also wasn't his defining characteristic. He seemed to have this kind patience, if that made any sense. But what made it more confusing was it sat alongside this hard determination. It was obvious he was a soldier, though his dress uniform had seen better days. But from the deep look in his eyes, he was no ordinary grunt.

Now he could see my face, he forced a broad smile. "Please just trust me, ma'am. This is... an unusual situation, and you're going to need to listen to everything I say."

I couldn't help but listen to him. That deep rumble of his voice was the only thing that could drag my mind off the fact I was finally here.

"We've been transported through the portal. But we can get back. And we will get back. All we have to do is head to a military base on this side, and we can return to Earth. Do you understand?"

... It took me a moment, but then I actually listened to what he was saying.

I could return to Earth?

Just the possibility saw me unwrap my arms from around my knees.

This saw an even broader smile spreading across his lips. "You're okay, ma'am. Your injuries don't appear to be significant. Are you hurt?"

I shook my head.

"That's a relief," he managed.

He cast his gaze around us.

"What's your name, anyway?" he tried, that large smile still pressing across his lips.

How he could find the strength to smile after that ordeal, I didn't know.

If being drawn back here weren't bad enough, the process of being sucked through a portal was... one that would stay locked in my skin for the rest of my life. It felt as if someone had scraped off every cell, put them into a blender, and then scraped them back on. Terrifying tingles raced up and down my back, over my chest, into my legs, and over my face. They sank into my jaw as if they were tiny drills that wanted to unhinge it from my face.

As I brought up a hand and clutched it onto the side of my chin, I managed to part my lips. "Grace. Grace Brown."

"Nice to meet you, Grace Brown." He actually reached out a hand.

I couldn't have stood if I'd wanted to. My limbs were so weak, if I tried to push up, I knew I'd face-plant the dirt beneath me.

Yet there he was, looking as if he hadn't just been sucked through a wormhole to another realm. He kept his hand reached out until, reluctantly, I pulled up the hand still locked around my knees and placed it in his.

I let him do all the shaking.

His fingers were warm.

"You're pretty cold. It's an aftereffect of traveling through the wormhole. You get used to it. Believe it or not, you get used to everything. And, Grace," he nodded toward my face, "the tingling in your jaw subsides, too. Trust me."

There it was again – he wanted me to trust him.

And I would, if he could deliver on his promise.

My gaze flicked up, and it must have been so concentrated with desperation that he thought I would explode, because his fingers tightened around mine before I could drop. "You okay? You going to hurl? It happens sometimes on your first transport."

I shook my head, my lips about to open to tell him this wasn't my first transport. But that was crazy, because it was my first transport.

I'd never been to this realm before, despite what my dreams told me. It was one thing being crazy in the confines of my own head. I couldn't afford to let this man know anything about my unhinged past. "I'm okay. Just... were you being honest? Will it be simple to get back home?"

He held onto my fingers for just a few seconds longer then dropped them. He stood up straight, and that for some reason gave weight to his words as he nodded once more and said, "It'll be easy enough. We've just got to figure out where we are. Then we can make contact with an Army unit. If we're lucky, we might even spot one out here. Once we make contact, we can call in a transport, head to the local base, and you will be home by the end of the day."

I'd just met this guy, but I trusted him. Or at least I wanted to trust him, and that saw me finally let my hand drop from my face. I even pushed up and managed to stand.

"Whoa, be careful there. You might not have your balance back—" he began. "Nope, you've got your bounce back. You must be a natural. First time I transported through, I was a mess for an hour."

I could tell his words were meant to encourage me, but they did the exact opposite. The terror I'd managed to push away at the prospect that this man would be able to get me home crawled back in. It grabbed hold of my throat, shook me, and told me my nightmares had finally come real.

I was back home.

As those words echoed in my mind, I finally turned from him and gathered the courage to assess just where I was. Sinking my nails into my palm and hiding it beside my leg so he couldn't see, I tilted my head up.

We were in another world. That was apparent.

We were on the side of a grassy, rolling hill that fell down into a massive valley. Beyond it was a ridge of mountains that were so high, they appeared permanently capped with snow, clouds hugging them like curtains.

Behind us as I stretched my head over my shoulder, I saw forested peaks tumbling into the distance.

The air was cold and clean, completely lacking not just the acrid scent of the smoke that had filled the city after the explosion, but the particulate pollutants, too.

I was never one for trekking, but even when I had managed to get out of the city, I hadn't experienced wilderness like this.

The guy appeared to leave me alone for a few seconds, as if he wanted to give me a chance to drink in the view. His gaze was still locked on me, and out of the corner of my eye, I watched a specific smile spread his lips. "She's beautiful, isn't she? Welcome to Xandia."

I couldn't pull my gaze off the view, let alone thank him for welcoming me.

I... felt strangely connected to this view. From those mountains pulling up in the distance to the forests behind me, I felt as if I'd trekked these very woods and hills. But how the hell would I have done that?

This insanity of mine had to stop before this guy got any inkling that I was an OGDer.

Though it was hard, I managed to bring up a hand, lock it on my mouth, breathe through my fingers, and turn toward him. "What's—"

Before I could finish asking my question, he pushed out his hand. "Sergeant Mark Sheppard."

I grabbed his hand, letting him do all the shaking, thankful for his warmth.

He frowned at my coldness. "We'll try to get you out of the wind. We'll head up to the forests behind us."

Before I could balk, he chuckled.

He shrugged expressively. "I know the story you get told on Earth. Xandia is meant to be a dangerous place with fantastic creatures, warriors, and brigands. It's not really. It's pretty safe. Plus, we're both instantly recognizable as humans." He brought up a hand, grabbed the pin on the tattered front of his white jacket, and polished it with his thumb until it sat proud.

"What's that?"

"This?" He kept repositioning it for a few seconds until it was dead straight across his broad chest. "It's our ticket out of here. It will identify us as humans from the Portal Taskforce. If we come across anyone in this region, they'll take us to the closest market. There'll probably be a few members of the Taskforce there. And then," he shrugged, "home again. It will be easy."

... Why did I believe this man while everything I had inside me told me he was lying?

His words were one thing – that haunting feeling that had been shadowing me my entire life was another.

It promised me that now I was here in Xandia's clutches, this place would never let me go.

I brought up a hand, clamped it on my shoulder, and shrugged into my grip, shivering slightly.

"Okay – Let's get out of the wind. Plus," he ticked his head up, appeared to get his bearings as he swung his gaze methodically from the mountain range in the distance to the forest, "I think we might be lucky."

"Lucky?"

"Pretty sure I've been to this region. It's only a couple of hours' walk from one of the main cities."

"Okay," I managed, not that he needed my input.

"It's a pretty vastly explored area, so they'll probably have a touch base."

"Touch base?"

"Waystations the Army have in areas just like this with dense mineralogical deposits," he began, before pausing and twisting his jaw to the side.

I frowned. Despite the fact I'd just walked into a living nightmare, I always had pretty good empathetic skills, and I could appreciate he'd just shared a little too much. I shrugged. "It's no great secret that the Earth has mining contracts with this place. There's plenty of speculation about it on the news all the time."

He conceded my point with another shrug but still looked uncomfortable. "Though now's not the time, you're probably going to have to sign a very strict secrets act when you get home. The Army has to control information about this place."

I nodded. At the prospect of getting home, if this guy wanted me to give up a kidney, my cat, and everything else I had, I'd do it.

"Anyway, in areas that have been surveyed a lot like this one, there are waystations. Just concrete bunkers with everything you need to stay the night. Spare packs, clothes, food. If I'm right and I know where I am, we shouldn't be more than half an hour away from one. It will be just up this rise in the forest."

With nowhere else to go and no one else to trust, I waited for him to pivot and stride forward.

Though he had a tall form, he didn't walk too fast, and rather kept methodically swinging his gaze to me to check that I was okay.

Okay. How could I be okay? Sure, I was keeping it together better than I thought I would, but inside, something was still twisting. Back when I'd been a kid, the nightmares I'd had about this place had been unreal, violent, desperate affairs. They'd been bad enough that I'd been taken to psychologists. I'd never told them my dreams had come from another world – because at the time, no one had known about the portal.

And since, I hadn't said a word to anyone about my condition.

But as we dwindled into silence and Mark appeared to concentrate on finding the waystation, I had no one to distract me.

Fortunately I still had the trim jacket I wore at the bank, though I'd lost my winter's coat in the chaos after the explosion. I could shove my hands into the small pockets and at least try to keep some warmth locked in them.

The rest of me tried to pull away from the green grass below us, the forest coming up in front, and those damn mountain peaks behind. I wanted to withdraw in on myself until nothing else was real anymore and I woke up from this nightmare.

For some reason something told me that on those mountain peaks, amongst the forested, snowcapped crags, would be a nightmare far worse than any I'd ever been able to imagine.

This was just a prelude to what would come next.

Though Mark was clearly concentrating, every minute or so, he kept sharing words of encouragement, promising me we weren't that far off.

Did I really look that broken?

The answer was probably an emphatic yes. I would look like a bedraggled mess.

It took us a surprisingly long time to reach the line of the forest. We had to climb a precipitous steep hill to reach it, and though it was covered in green swaying grass that shifted and undulated with the chasing wind, it was wet and slippery. I tumbled over more than a few times, though Mark was always by my side, pulling me up before I could roll back down the incline.

By the time we reached the top of the hill and turned around, my stomach had tied itself into such a tight knot, it would require a surgeon with a scalpel to undo it.

I took a deep, chest-seeking sigh, curling my hand into a fist again.

I wasn't careful this time, though, and Mark watched as I curled a hand into such a tight fist, I almost cut my palm.

He cleared his throat and, without invitation, patted his hand on my shoulder.

The move didn't linger, though his heat did, and at least it distracted me as I tilted my head up to him.

"I know this must be hard, ma'am," his voice changed register, dipping down, becoming low but sure. "But you will get back. Trust me on that."

He was close enough that it was unavoidable as I looked up into his eyes.

And as I looked up into his face, it blocked out the forest behind us, the mountain ranges beyond, the wind, the grass, everything.

"Can you promise me that?"

He tilted his head to the side, an odd smile curling his lips. Then the smile broadened, and he nodded once. He had a strong nod, and his whole body got in on the act. This wasn't some cursory move – this was him confirming with his every muscle that he could promise me that. "You couldn't stay here anyway. It's against the rules. Trust me, everyone will help you get home."

He turned away sharply.

... All this time I'd been focused on my own emotion – now I saw his. Sure, he was putting on a brave face for me, but every time he looked away, I watched the tension march up his face, clench his jaw, and squeeze.

... He was a soldier – that much was clear. And back there in front of the facility, I'd watched him screaming his friend's name.

God... his friend.

I hadn't known a soul in that facility.

Mark had probably known everyone.

As he turned and headed into the forest, I hesitated. I wanted to reach out and grab hold of his muscular arm, but I shoved my fingers back in my pocket.

What could I say to make this better for him?

It was clear I was nothing more than a burden to him at the moment. If I kept quiet and did nothing, at least I could minimize any inconvenience.

So I folded in on myself as I shoved my hands into my pockets once more.

I'd been trekking a few times – like I'd said – but it had always been on recognized paths. And, unsurprisingly, it had always been on Earth.

This place was....

A shiver ran up my back as I stared first at the unknown trees reaching high into the canopy above, then through them to the twisting, winding tracks beaten through the shrubbery and undergrowth.

I was no expert, but it looked as if they'd been made by large-footed beasts.

Mark took a step forward, his expression still distracted, his face hooded in shadow as a soulful frown marked his lips.

When I didn't follow, he turned to me. "It's okay. It's relatively safe here. The dangerous forests are more northward." He paused as he realized what he'd said. He brought his hands up and spread them. "There's never been a serious attack here." Again his jaw twitched to the side as he appreciated that wasn't great encouragement. "Ma'am, you'll be all right with me. Come on."

I brought a shaking hand out of my pocket and pointed to those twisting paths through the trees. "What caused those? Some kind of... animal, right?"

His eyebrows peaked as he shifted around and looked where I was pointing. "Yeah, it's a babook. Kind of a beast of burden. They're pretty common in this forest. They're friendly enough. Especially if you've got food."

My skin crawled, and for the life of me, I couldn't allow my hand to drop. It seemed frozen there as my brain caught up with the fact that I was no longer on Earth.

I might've been dreaming of this place since I was a kid, but there was a difference between being haunted by an impression of it and the real thing.

I knew nothing about Xandia.

He cleared his throat. "I'm pretty sure the waystation's close. We'll only be in the forest until we get to it. Then we'll head back out onto those grassy plains. They'll be the easiest way to get to the city. You coming?"

I looked at him. I waited for him to say what I knew would come next.

And sure enough, his lips parted as he added, "Do you trust me?"

Usually you didn't trust people who asked if you trusted them all the time.

I guess Mark was different. Because I found myself nodding. Then I finally took a step into the forest.

The first thing I noted was the scent. It was woody and earthy, sure, but had these undertones I'd never smelled before. It was like burned orange mixed with honey and iron shavings.

That wasn't to mention the trees themselves. They were these humongous, broad-trunked, gnarled affairs. While the wood was mostly gray-brown, the branches weren't. They were green tinged with purple, and there were slicks of blue luminescent moss further up into the canopy.

I got so distracted staring at them, I walked into Mark's back a few times.

"We really don't need any broken ankles. Try to look where you're going," he encouraged.

"Sorry. It's just—"

He tilted his head up and stared at that luminescent moss. A fond smile marked his lips. "Yeah, I get it. It's amazing. Nothing like it on Earth. I'll warn you, kind of ruins you when you go back home. The forests and wilderness of Xandia are unlike anything else. The air is unpolluted, life is relatively simple," he added, but his voice twisted strangely on the word relatively, "and the food is something else. Makes you want to stay," he chuckled to himself. Then he obviously realized his mistake, and he shook his head. "Not that you can stay. You understand—"

"There's no way I want to stay in this place," I said firmly.

He looked at me, a slight frown drawing down one side of his lips, then he nodded. "Come on."

We dwindled into silence again.

I could tell from the fact Mark unconsciously sped up that we had to be close to the waystation.

The forest was thankfully silent. Though maybe that wasn't a good thing. Without the sound of wind rushing through the trees above, I could pick up even the faintest crackle of a twig meters away.

I could sure as heck pick up Mark's frequent sighing. It was heavy, and every time he breathed hard, his shoulders dropped a few centimeters.

I'd promised myself I wouldn't mention what happened back on Earth, but now I changed my mind. "I... I'm sorry for what happened back there," I managed weakly.

"Don't be sorry. You did pretty good. You pulled yourself up—"

"I mean on Earth. I mean... in the facility. That explosion. You had friends there, didn't you?"

Sharp silence spread between us.

Dammit, I shouldn't have mentioned anything.

My skin crawled. "I...."

"It is what it is."

"Sorry for mentioning it," I said weakly and pressed my lips together as hard as I could. I would think twice about opening them again. Obviously this guy was only just holding onto his emotions.

Several seconds went by in grim silence before he took another sigh. "It's okay. Probably needs to be mentioned. I still have no idea what happened, but... I hope it wasn't so bad that it took out the entire facility. And I guess there's one thing I can be thankful for."

"What's that?"

"That portal opened and sucked us through."

I twitched. Thank God he wasn't looking at me and was instead locking his morose gaze on the forest floor before us. It meant he couldn't see just how overcome I was by that statement.

He was thankful I'd been sucked through to Xandia?

He brought up a hand, clamped it on the back of his head, and rubbed his thumb over the dent in his Atlas vertebra. "I'm assuming – not that I really know enough about portal mechanics – that when the portal opened up, it stopped whatever energy cascade was causing those explosions. I guess I can live in the hope that means the city is fine and it will be how we left it."

There was a long pause.

"I probably shouldn't have shared that. You really have to sign a secrets act now."

"I don't understand anything about quantum physics," I explained softly. "And I have no idea what you just said. I just hope everyone's okay."

He hadn't looked at me. Until now. He turned his head to the side, a crumpled smile on his lips. I got the impression this was how he really smiled. Don't get me wrong – he didn't come across as a fake guy. But all those broad grins he'd offered earlier had been for my sake, not his. Now the crumple marking his lips was more for his own benefit. "Yeah. Same here. Come on – I think we're only a couple of minutes away."

I... trusted him. And he was right. Before too long, we came across a squat bunker.

As soon as he saw it, Mark bounded toward it, and I got the impression that even if a concrete wall had suddenly sprung up between him, he would've just leaped over it.

The bunker was locked – but not with a padlock. It utilized some kind of biometric scanner.

My stomach instantly twisted as I saw it, and a frown marked my lips. "Isn't that expensive?"

There was a beep as the scanner recognized Mark's identity. He turned his head over his shoulder and shrugged. "The Portal Taskforce budget is the largest in all of the military."

"Right."

The massive, thick metal door un-clicked and swung inward.

Mark encouraged it with his shoulder as he pushed in faster.

"Finally," I heard him mutter in relief under his breath.

I inched in carefully after him, not knowing if I was welcome inside or whether it was top-secret.

Mark didn't bark at me to stay outside.

Nope.

He went straight over to a neatly lined up rack of backpacks.

Beside them were guns.

He didn't go for the backpacks or the rations.

He went for the guns.

It wasn't until he plucked up a handgun that his shoulders relaxed.

A frown dug right down into my lips. "You were lying, weren't you?"

He looked up at me, confusion crumpling his brow. "What?"

"That forest isn't as safe as it seems, ha?"

"The forest is safe. But Xandia can sometimes be unpredictable," he explained in a muffled voice. "Now, let's pack."

I don't know why he said let's. It wasn't like I knew what I was doing.

I hung out in the doorway, the cold forest wind at my back, playing with my tangled mess of hair as I watched him shove rations into one of the already stuffed packs.

When he reached a row of neatly folded uniforms and boots, he paused. He looked down at his uniform, and possibly for the first time realized how ruined it was.

I turned on my foot and walked out of the bunker. "It's okay, you can change. I'll be fine out here."

"Thanks," he muttered.

With my hands still in my pockets, I pushed my back against the cold bunker wall behind me. Slowly, I tilted my head up, and I watched the canopy above. It didn't even sway. I don't know what the branches of those trees were made out of, but they were more like metal and less like wood.

They... felt like a web.

This entire world felt like a web. And the further I walked into it, the more trapped I became.

I squeezed my eyes closed as another wave of emotion took me.

It didn't have time to do much.

I heard a rustling from behind me.

Mark was a quick hand at dressing, because he appeared in fatigues, heavy boots, and with a holster around his hips. There were two guns in it. There was also one over his shoulder.

My gaze darted to them.

He pressed his lips together. "It's more for ceremony than anything."

"Ceremony?"

"Believe it or not, when we get closer to the city, it's our weapons that the ordinary Xandians recognize us for."

I gave a twisted chuckle at that. "Oh, I believe it."

He paused. "The politics in this place are complicated," he began, obviously about to launch into a defense of military engagement in this realm.

I shook my head. "I understand. You don't have to explain yourself to me. Do you have everything you need?"

"Yeah. There are boots in there that might fit you. They'll be better than those ballet flats."

"I have very small feet," I informed him as I walked in, hands still in my pockets – always in my pockets.

I took one look at them and shook my head.

"At least try pulling them on."

"They are at least two sizes too big. I'd break my ankles in them. And as you said before, that's not allowed." I was trying for a joke, but it fell flat.

I could tell I was doing the one thing I wanted to prevent. I was adding to this man's stresses when I knew they'd be as high as the Empire State building.

"Sorry," I added.

"It's not your fault." He shrugged. "I'll still pack them, though. Worse comes to worse, we'll pad you out in them." He pulled the pack off his shoulder, shoved the boots inside, then took one last look at the bunker around him. "I think I've got everything. I'll have to put in a requisition order to refill this place."

He went to the door, then paused. "You need a jacket?"

I shook my head. "I'm not cold. I've warmed up now," I lied.

Though it wasn't technically a lie.

I was always cold. It was just a feature of being me, I guess.

If you had me in front of a fire, my hands would still feel a good five degrees cooler than the rest of me.

"Well there's a jacket in the pack if you need it. Right, let's head out."

I walked out first, and he swung in behind, closed the door, slammed his hand back on the biometric panel, and waited for it to beep. Even then he reached forward and checked the door, putting his full weight into it in case the handle hadn't locked properly.

It didn't shift a millimeter.

... Which further reinforced that it was expensive.

Hell, the biometric panel looked like it had been made out of titanium or some other reinforced substance. Fair enough – it was out in an unguarded forest.

Point was, it would be expensive.

I get it. In terms of potential resources, there was nothing on Earth that was anything like Xandia. So of course the Army spared no expense when it came to securing their interests over here.

But... this felt wrong.

Mark's mood had changed now he'd gotten new clothes and rations. Or maybe it was to do with the weapons slung over his hips and shoulder.

He kept asking me to trust him, but I could appreciate that trust could only go so far. He wasn't a dodgy guy – he seemed the exact opposite. I don't think I'd ever met someone with as much direct genuineness as him.

But he'd be constrained by what he could share.

If the few snippets of information he'd randomly blurted were enough to make me sign a secrets act – I shuddered to think what else he'd know.

We walked in silence, quickly exiting the forest.

Though I'd been terrified when I'd come in here, something about this place had started to soothe my nerves. Or maybe that was the wrong way of putting it.

It had started to draw me in, enfolding me like the strong arms of the trees above.

If I closed my eyes for long enough, I swore I could remember dreams I'd had in places just like this. Moon-swept forest floors with rigid purple-green canopies. Houses and villages built in the trees, with nothing more than the glowing luminescent moss for light.

When we finally reached the edge of the forest, Mark turned to me. "Can you believe people actually live in forests like that? Up north, they have whole villages built in the trees. You've gotta see it—" he shook his head. "To believe it," he added before it could sound like he wanted to take me there.

I looked at him sharply.

It was just a coincidence, right? That a few seconds after I'd partially remembered a dream of villages just like that, he'd mentioned them?

Yeah, a coincidence – it had to be.

Plus, those trees were so sturdy and the branches so tough that of course people could live up them.

You could deduct that it would occur – this wasn't me remembering anything. This was just me being crazy.

"You okay?" Mark frowned.

I shook my head and tried for a smile. "Fine. I guess I just grew accustomed to the forest. Don't really want to leave it now," I said honestly as I brought my hands up and rubbed my arms.

He chuckled. "This place can do that to you."

"How much longer—"

"Maybe three hours along that plain there." He pointed to a rolling glassy plain that seemed to lead down to a winding path.

Apart from the bunker, it was the first time I'd glimpsed any sign of civilization.

The muscles up my back clenched, and I hid my hand behind my back to curl it into a tight fist.

There was something about that path. It felt like as soon as I set foot on it, I'd be dragging myself back to Hell.

"It'll be easy from now on. Promise." With that, Mark repositioned his pack and pushed off.

I wanted to stay in the forest – I really did. I felt protected in here. If I climbed up into those trees, maybe no one would be able to find me. Maybe I'd just be able to slip into oblivion.

Oblivion....

That word... it drew something out of me, rekindling some memory.

Maybe Mark could tell I was slipping, not just behind, but emotionally, because he made more effort to draw me into a conversation. "What do you do, anyway?"

"I'm a teller at a bank."

"Got any family?"

I shook my head. "I live alone. I have a cat, though. At least she's out – maybe the neighbors will see her and feed her when I don't come back," I commented to myself quickly.

He chuckled. "Like I said – we'll be back by the end of the day."

"... Yeah."

There must've been something about the way I said that, because I watched him straighten. He opened his mouth, and I got the impression that he was about to tell me to trust him once more. That it would all be okay. That I'd come back in one piece. That it was only hours until I would see my home planet again.

But it wasn't okay.

Before he could open his mouth and give me another empty platitude, I reminded myself of one thing.

When I'd woken up this morning, I'd known I'd end up here.

When I'd walked past the facility, I'd known it would draw me in one way or another.

And when Mark himself had faced off in front of me after the first explosion and had promised me that it would all be okay, I'd known it wouldn't.

I'd known another explosion was just around the corner.

And right now, that same certainty climbed me, hunkering around my shoulders, feeling as if the weight of the world had suddenly descended from above.

Mark did it again, reaching a hand out and placing it gently on my shoulder. His hand was large and broad, his thumb and fingers rough from overuse. But like I'd said before – at least they were warm.

And I'd take any warmth to eke out the cold that had settled deep in my soul right now.

"It'll be fine. I'll make it fine," he added.

I looked at him.

I wondered if he had any idea just how much he would have to sacrifice to achieve his promise.

# Chapter 5

Sergeant Mark Sheppard

I hadn't trained for this.

This was beyond the realms of possibility. Or at least it was meant to be.

Technically back in the bad old days when the portal had been discovered 50 years ago, it had taken years to understand the underlying temporal-spatial dynamics involved. There'd been accidents with wormholes that had opened randomly.

But that wasn't meant to happen anymore.

Yet it had.

A goddamn uncontrolled portal had opened up and sucked me through.

It would be one thing if I was on my own. But I wasn't on my own, was I?

My gaze swung toward Grace Brown, and my stomach twisted yet again.

This was something I hadn't trained for, I reminded myself once more, but it was at least something I had in-hand now.

With rations and a relatively good idea of where I was, I could lead us back to a base. Then it really would only be hours before Grace was home again.

Then?

Then the cleanup would begin.

I controlled my emotions, even my expression, too.

I didn't let any of my internal conflict show, even though it raged within me.

My mind was locked on James. Dammit, he better be alive.

And the facility... hopefully the damage wasn't as bad as it had seemed. Hopefully most people had managed to get out of there.

Hopefully....

That was the thing about hope, ha?

You had to clutch hold of it when you didn't have facts. But I wouldn't need it in a few hours, I kept promising myself.

I just had to concentrate on putting one foot in front of another.

Oh yeah, and I had to keep encouraging Grace along with me.

She was doing well, and yet not great at the same time.

I was pleasantly surprised by the fact she hadn't reacted physically to being transported here.

I hadn't been lying – when I'd first gone through the portal, it had taken me an hour to get back on my feet.

It was only people who'd transported frequently who were meant to be able to pick themselves up and dust themselves off in seconds.

So at least Grace had that going for her.

Emotionally?

She was fraught.

I couldn't expect anything different.

This morning, she'd been on her way to the bank, presumably, when she'd barely survived a series of deadly explosions.

For all I knew, she might've known people who worked at the base or some of the pedestrians who'd been killed.

She was traumatized, in other words, so I had to be careful where I trod.

"What kind of cat have you got?" I asked, realizing the one thing I could do right now was to distract her. And hey, maybe I'd be distracting myself, too.

I winced at my own weak question, but I knew nothing about this woman, and she wasn't exactly embracing our conversation.

She seemed haunted by something.

And it wasn't like I had to stretch my mind far to appreciate what that was.

She'd just been through hell.

"Just a domestic. Long-haired. Name's Jim."

"Good name for a cat," I tried, wincing again.

Usually I had better conversational skills around women.

We dwindled into silence. As soon as we did, it would take only a few seconds until one of Grace's hands would clench into a fist. Though she was usually careful to ensure it was the hand that was hidden from me by the rest of her body, I could tell from the angle of her elbow and shoulder what she was doing.

So I cleared my throat yet again. "You..." I trailed off, about to ask if she was single, but I reminded myself quickly that she had no family, and it was a really inappropriate question.

"You don't have to keep drawing me into a conversation, Sergeant. I'm okay."

"It's to while away the time."

"You don't look like the kind who has trouble living in the silence of his own mind."

... That was a strange comment. It wasn't just strangely worded – the delivery was all wrong. Her voice twisted, and she had a far-off, almost disconnected look in her eyes, making it clear she was talking about herself.

I cleared my throat, brought up a hand, and scratched my chin. "You've got to have questions about this place. Not that I can answer most of them," I quickly reminded her and myself firmly, but right now, I'd do anything to take her mind off her fear.

"I don't have questions."

This woman had intrigued me since the moment I'd seen her. It wasn't just the raw emotional nature of our first meeting – it was every interaction since.

She was... odd. Though odd wasn't the right word. I couldn't figure out a better one.

She was the kind of woman who commanded your attention and kept it. The kind of woman who, if you closed your eyes for a second, you feared you might miss her doing something important.

Realizing I was allowing my thoughts to get the better of me, I scratched at my jaw.

The both of us were remarkably healthy, considering our ordeal. As I trailed my nails down my throat, I dislodged a few scabbing scars, and a little splattered blood, but that was it.

I knew there was a light gash in my brow, and when I got back to base, I'd patch it up.

As for Grace?

She was on her feet, and there was a little bit of blood splattered down her knees and over her cheek, but that was it.

I got the sudden desire to ask her how she'd survived the explosion, but my better mind quickly kicked in and told me not to mention it. Do that, and I could accidentally unleash a tidal wave of emotion.

It was clear this woman was just holding on.

"If you want to converse, I guess we could... talk about the weather?" she tried.

I couldn't help it, and a kinked smile climbed my lips, my brow scrunching. "Scintillating topic." Now might not have been the time for light banter, but I slipped into it all too easily around this odd woman.

She shot me a bashful look, squeezing her lips in and scrunching them. "I was just wondering why those mountains are like that." She appeared to reluctantly pull her hand out of her pocket and point toward the range in front of us.

I shrugged. "Like what?"

"The clouds haven't shifted around those peaks since we got here. They look like they're permanently enshrouded."

I let out a small chuckle and opened my mouth to tell her she had great observational skills, but then I damn well stopped myself.

Keeping her distracted was one thing – sharing military secrets was another.

You see, she was right – they were permanently enshrouded with clouds. It was an odd meteorological phenomenon no one had been able to adequately explain, and just another to join the long list of peculiarities about this realm. But importantly? It was something Grace really didn't need to know.

She looked at me expectantly.

I shrugged. "They're just clouds. Anything else you'd like to know... about the weather?"

She looked at me, and either I was starting to get to know this woman, or my emotional intelligence was on-point, because I got the distinct impression she knew I'd just smoothed over her question.

"How long have you been over here?"

"Do you mean how many times I've traveled? Or the longest amount of time I've spent here?"

She took several quiet seconds to answer, her lips pressed together uncomfortably. "You say travel like it's the most natural thing in the world. Like you're just going overseas or something."

I chuckled, scratching along my hairline. "I guess you're right. I've never noticed. But to be honest, it is. It's overseas travel without... well, without any seas being involved. Or planes."

"What's the longest amount of time you've spent over here?"

I shrugged. I quickly tried to ascertain whether it would be too much of a breach to explain this to her, and concluded it was hardly top-secret. "I think the longest I've spent here is about a three-week stint."

She paled. "That long?"

I let out a small chuckle. "Yeah. There's a lot to do. You've got to justify portal travel, too. If you don't have to go back, you don't go back."

"But what do you do?"

We'd promptly strayed into a conversation I could not continue.

All I had to do was wince, and she shook her head. "Never mind."

She looked at her feet, making it clear the conversation was over.

"As for your other question," I continued, even though she hadn't had another question, "I haven't really kept count, but I guess I've transferred a couple of hundred times."

Her eyes practically boggled. "A couple of hundred times?" she asked quietly, her voice strangled.

I went to chuckle again, but it seemed disingenuous. She was really shocked for some reason.

I pressed my lips together instead and shrugged. "Yeah. Like I said, I've lost count. I guess," I let out a stupid laugh, "it's no different to someone taking the bus to work every day."

"Except you're being pulled across space to this soulless place."

My brow twitched up. "Sorry, soulless?"

She paled slightly, her cheeks dropping, a blast of wind catching her hair and sending it whipping around her face, framing her surprise once more.

I remembered that surprise. Like I'd said back on Earth, an image of it seemed seared into my mind. Even once I left this woman far behind and I returned her to where she belonged, I imagined I'd still be able to re-create that scene exactly. There was something about her stilled fear that would stay with anyone for life.

"Sorry. Ignore me. I get verbose when I'm stressed out."

"You're hardly verbose."

"Well I usually am," she said distractedly as she looked to the side.

"... Yeah."

I did it again – I trailed off into an awkward silence.

I'd traveled with enough different people over the years to appreciate that some people didn't like chit-chat. I could swing both ways. You wanted to talk, I'd join in. You wanted silence so you could contemplate the vast wilderness around you – I'd join in with that, too.

But every time this woman stopped speaking, for some reason, it pulled me further into her story and made me want to know more.

Like why she'd run down that maintenance shaft to hide. I could answer that question myself – she'd been overcome and her hindbrain had told her to look for the first quiet, protected place she could find. She would've seen that open maintenance tunnel in a split second and decided to throw herself down it.

"Why did—" I began, but then I stopped myself.

"What?"

"Never mind."

"... You were going to talk about the explosion, right? You want to know what happened?"

Prickles danced over my back, into my cheeks, and along my throat.

I'd been doing such a damn good job of attempting to distract this woman that I'd forgotten all my own troubles. Now they flooded back in.

"I don't know what happened. I was walking past. I watched this car drive in, and the next thing I knew, the side of the building exploded."

"... How close were you?"

"I was exactly where you found me. I don't know, 20 meters back, I guess?"

"You were damn lucky, then." Thinking back, Grace had been standing in the path of the explosion. Twice. Yet she'd gotten off with barely a scratch.

"... Yeah, lucky."

We dwindled into a much sharper silence this time, and I rued the fact I'd dragged her into this conversation.

But it did the one thing my other pathetic questions hadn't been able to do – it got her speaking again. Because without another question, she opened her lips and volunteered, "Thank you."

"For what?"

"Saving me. From the second explosion. And sorry... I got you dragged here."

I pressed my lips together and nodded. Then I shook my head. "You didn't get me dragged here. That portal opened randomly. And in a way, it's lucky I was there when it did. If you'd been dragged here by yourself—" I stopped abruptly. It wasn't because I didn't want to share any secrets of this realm with Grace – it was because I didn't want to make her any more scared.

Yeah, I'd pretended we were safe out here. And mostly we were. But if there was one rule about this place, it was unpredictability.

There were brigands. There were untamed beasts, much larger and more violent than anything there was on Earth. And there were those who did not agree with the Portal Taskforce's presence.

It was the last group you had to worry about this far out from the military base, especially when you didn't have other soldiers to watch your back.

"I guess I would've stayed here till I died," Grace said abruptly.

It took me a moment to link her comment back to our conversation. I paled as I realized I'd freaked her out. "You would've been fine. Someone would have found you."

She got the strangest expression as she stared distractedly at the ground. "Yeah."

Why were this woman's reactions so off-kilter? Why did every second thing she said make the skin along the back of my neck crawl?

I scratched my ear. "None of that matters, though. We were transported together. So let's concentrate on making it to Maglite, the closest city."

We'd finally reached the path at the base of the grassy plain.

Grace seemed to hesitate before she strode onto it.

She had the oddest crumpled expression.

She kept twisting her head up, her gaze tracking along the beaten dirt road.

"It's really quite safe," I tried.

She didn't respond.

We dwindled back into silence. I racked my brain, trying to think of something to say to draw her out of her own head.

I didn't have to rack my brain for long.

"When we get to the city, you'll be able to see one of the Royal palaces. Quite a sight—" I began.

Grace's knee buckled suddenly, and she fell harshly to the side.

"Whoa." I skidded over to her, grabbed a hand on her elbow, and helped her up.

She anchored her other hand on my wrist as she pulled herself to her feet.

And that's when I felt her fingers.

They were as frozen as flesh that had come directly from the freezer.

"Dammit." I re-gripped her hand and let my fingers linger around hers, her wide eyes opening further when I didn't promptly drop her hand and shove away.

"... Ah, why are you still holding my hand?"

"Your fingers are cold – seriously cold. I thought it was just the aftereffects of the jump. But it's been too long." I brought my thumb around and ran it up the side of her palm, checking the rest of her hand.

It was as icy as a frost-covered rock.

Looking bashful, her bright cheeks flushing with a touch of red, she shrugged. "It's a genetic condition. They're always cold. Sorry," she added, as if it was her fault. "... Is there a problem?"

"It's not ideal considering traditions around these parts."

"Sorry?"

I finally dropped her hand; I had no good reason to keep holding it, though my fingers were tempted to linger to heat her up. I pulled my pack off my shoulder, shoved a hand in through the top, and started rooting around for a pair of gloves. Technically, they were tactical issue, and were intended to assist you in gripping onto your gun during cold conditions, but they'd do for now.

Anything would do for now, I told myself firmly. All I had to do was get Grace back to a military base, and this misadventure would be history.

I proffered the gloves at her.

When she blinked in confusion, I picked up her hand and pushed them into her open palm.

I had a fleeting moment to wonder why I was being so tactile with Grace all the time, then she shook her head and shoved the gloves back. "The cold doesn't bother me. Never has. Plus, those gloves look at least four sizes too big—"

"Just put them on." I shoved them back at her. "It's a sin to have cold hands around these parts."

She gave me a look – one that told me this place made no sense.

I laughed softly. "Yeah, I know – mad. But it's their culture, not ours. And until we can get you back to a base, we're going to have to live by it."

She shrugged and pulled on the gloves. She was right – they were far too large, and the fabric bunched around her knuckles and fingertips, looking like they would fall off if she so much as gestured too quickly.

Before I could think it through, I shifted in, my boot crunching against the loose gravel below us, and I scooped up her left hand. I pulled the glove on properly, hooking the base under her sleeve so it was more secure.

I did the same to her other hand, then stood back.

It was only when she looked up at me with that slightly surprised expression she always had that I realized I'd done it again. Why was I so hands-on with this woman? It wasn't like she couldn't have secured the gloves tightly on her own.

Before I could look too confused by my own actions, I turned, cleared my throat, shouldered my pack, and shrugged forward. "The market is just this way. A head's up, though – it won't be too much longer until we start seeing traffic."

Though I had my back to her, I could just see her out of the corner of my eye as she took a step forward. She brought her hands up and rested them on her elbows as she appeared to warm her arms.

It didn't work, and she shivered, her slight shoulders trembling under her small jacket.

"I thought you said you didn't feel the cold?" I pressed my bottom lip up and tried for a friendly smile.

It took her a moment to pull her eyes off the dramatic view of the snow-capped mountain ranges in the distance. She looked up at me from under flattened brows, her mouth ticking into a half-frown. "I'm not cold... I guess."

"You guess?" I laughed. I couldn't help it – Grace's reactions were always so strange.

She blinked quickly and looked away.

Realizing I'd gone too far, and reminding myself swiftly that this woman had just been through hell, I pulled my pack off yet again, shoved a hand into it, and grabbed out the jacket I'd packed for her. Just like my gloves, it was far too large for Grace, but if she zipped it up, it would still keep out the cold.

She looked at it, hesitated, then only took it off me once I shoved it closer.

At least this time I didn't bodily put it on her. I just watched out of the corner of my eye as she pulled her hair over her shoulder, pushed into the jacket, and zipped it up. Or at least she tried to. She was having a legitimately hard time considering her gloves were too large. After a few attempts to push the zip into the base of the jacket front, she gave up, shoved her glove into her mouth, and went to bite it off.

I stepped in, then hesitated.

Stop dressing the woman, Mark – I chastised myself firmly. She's a frigging grownup.

She looked up at me.

I cleared my throat. "Do you want me to, ah—"

She pulled the glove off in one swift move, grabbed the jacket firmly, and zipped it up.

Then she pulled her glove on tightly, tucking it under the sleeve just as I had.

My stomach sank as I realized I shouldn't have offered, but before it could bottom out too much, she arched her head forward. "Let's go."

She appeared to hesitate, one foot shivering slightly, then she pushed off, her ballet flats crunching over the uneven earth.

Her gaze was locked on the rough path ahead – for a few seconds at least. All too soon it ticked up like clockwork and locked on the mountain range in the distance.

As we walked in silence, and as I tried to recover from that damn uncomfortable interaction, she never pulled her gaze off the mountains. It was like she was being drawn toward them or something.

I shook my head to dislodge that stupid thought, and I jogged to catch up after I'd shouldered my bag once more.

In the distance, the wind howled along the dara wood forests. Chill and fast, the gale seemed to howl in off the mountains, and it brought with it the frigid promise of snow.

I just hoped we reached the Maglite before the storm hit.

Tugging my head back down and angling my face toward Grace, something told me we wouldn't make it.

# Chapter 6

Grace Brown

There was only so long I could keep this charade up. With every second, I felt my grasp on my mental health slipping like icy fingers against a smooth steel wall.

I could tell Sergeant Mark Sheppard already thought I was mad.

At least we were walking in silence again.

Maybe he realized our conversation had dried up, or maybe he was wondering just how insane I was.

The answer?

Mad enough to think that those mountains in the distance were calling me.

Though I'd been dreaming of this place since I was a kid, the dreams had always been diffuse, nothing more than flashes that were easily forgotten. They'd formed lasting impressions, sure, but more than anything, I remembered the feel of Xandia, but nothing specific.

Now I swore I was getting these detailed sparks that flooded my mind randomly.

From that village up in the treetops in the forest, to massive great big beasts of burden that were halfway between an elephant and a snuffling dog.

They were just the beginning. When Mark had spoken of a Royal palace in the city we were headed to, I'd lost my balance because a memory had slammed into my head with all of the force of a bat to my brain.

I'd seen it – right there in front of my mind's eye. Fully detailed, as if somebody had burned it onto my retinas.

The image in my head was so real – so damn real that it couldn't be a hallucination.

... Right?

But if the Royal palace was bad, those mountains were worse.

I... was obsessed with them.

I had to continually readjust my path so I didn't end up veering toward them.

They... they seemed to hold the key to all of this. If only I was brave enough to walk up them, I'd find out precisely why this land had been haunting me my entire life.

"You hungry? Thirsty?" Mark tried for the fifth time.

He probably thought I was about to drop – that, or have some kind of hysterical fit.

His face was permanently crumpled with concern now, and I could tell he wanted to get this babysitting of me over and done with so he could get back to his real work.

Though I'd been so consumed by my own troubles since appearing in Xandia, at least one thing could hold my curiosity.

"Why did you put your hand up to work on the Portal Taskforce?" I asked out of the blue.

Mark swung his gaze toward me, and I could tell from the small smile on his lips that at least he was happy I was initiating a conversation finally. I could also tell from the crumple in his brow that it would be another conversation where he would have to measure his every word lest he let some all-important secret out. "I was in the Army before news of the portal hit." He shrugged. "I've always liked adventure. And there's nothing—"

"Quite like Xandia," I finished his sentence.

He shrugged and gave another affable grin. "Yeah. Once you come here, it gets in your blood, you know?"

I stiffened. Realizing I couldn't keep clutching a hand into a fist every time I became emotionally fraught, I settled for grinding my teeth instead.

If I wanted to hide my reaction from Mark, I didn't do a good enough job. He brought up his hands and winced. "Though you do technically need to go through a quarantine bath every time you transport back to Earth, there are no significant contagions that Earth antibiotics can't fight. Which kind of sounds bad," he conceded. "What I'm trying to say is it's very unlikely you'll pick up an infection."

I just watched him. An infection I could deal with. Xandia somehow getting into yet more of my blood – I couldn't.

I brought up a gloved hand, latched it on my shoulder, and tried to rub some heat into it.

Mark became fascinated by the move for some reason. "You're still cold?"

"I told you, it's genetic. I can never really heat up."

He winced. "Just don't touch anyone," he said randomly.

"Sorry?"

He shook his head. "This place is great, sure, but their superstitions are something else. In Xandia, it's a sin to have cold hands."

I swallowed.

"Don't worry. They're not going to do anything to an outsider. But maybe don't provoke them."

Rather than tell him I didn't randomly go around touching strangers and trailing my cold hands down their backs, I sharpened my gaze. Interest curdled within me for the first time since our conversation had begun. "What... other superstitions are there?"

He snorted. "They are innumerable. You're meant to travel with a book detailing them whenever you come here."

"... Can I have a look at it?" Why was I suddenly so interested?

Right, because I couldn't stop myself. This curiosity was coming from somewhere inside me, and I couldn't damp down on it like I had before.

Mark opened his mouth automatically, but obviously thought better of offering me one. No doubt it would just contain more secrets. "They're mostly just random things. You can't stutter in public."

I twisted my lips to the side.

"Yeah, I know, cruel and unusual, right? Stuttering means you've got a demon grabbing your tongue or something."

I winced harder.

"... You don't stutter, do you? I haven't heard you—"

I shrugged my shoulders tightly. "M-maybe when I'm nervous," I volunteered, and for the first time, I demonstrated fully well that I stuttered as the m in maybe wavered.

Mark did not look thrilled, but he shrugged it off, his shoulders retaining some stiffness he couldn't shake out. "It won't be a problem. You won't have to talk to many people."

"So shut up and keep my hands to myself?" I summarized.

He let out an uncomfortable laugh. "Sounds bad when you put it like that."

"... What... other superstitions are there?"

I could tell Mark was infinitely gladdened by the fact I was finally involving him in a conversation where he didn't have to bend over backward to keep me interested.

He ticked his gaze up to the left, and I could tell he was probably sifting through his mind to find information he could readily share. It didn't take him long for his lips to kink. "You want crazy, try this. It's forbidden to pull the sun from the sky."

Something in my stomach kicked.

He must've taken my crumpled expression as confused amusement, because he let out another laugh. "I know, right? It's illegal to wake up the Goddess of Death."

I clenched my teeth.

"But number one," he brought up a finger and pressed it forward stiffly, "it is forbidden to bring Pandora home."

Pandora.

That word... made its way in. It forced its way into my mind, then from there, down into my body. It felt like a knife someone had stabbed into the center of my forehead and dragged down, down, down.

I couldn't control my expression.

I wasn't obsessed with Greek mythology. I'd never studied it.

And back on Earth, the few times I'd come across that word, I'd never acted like this. But here, with the backdrop of those damn mountains, my gut tried to pull itself from my body.

"That was a little freaky, I know, right? It's just a transliteration error. It sounds like Pandora to us, but it's probably Pandarra to them or something," he tried.

I'd just met this man. Our interactions had been fraught, and I'd hardly gathered the experience to enable me to read his mental state. But right now I could tell he was lying. It was to do with the stiffness of the skin around his eyes, the pale touch to his cheeks, and the tightness of his neck muscles.

"... Yeah," I managed, somehow forcing my lips to move though all they wanted to do was remain clamped shut like a vice.

It was forbidden to bring Pandora home.

It was... forbidden to bring Pandora home.

That phrase repeated in my skull. It was like the verbal equivalent of a drill that was meant to strip back my gray matter and search for something buried deep within my mind.

Mark stretched out his shoulders. He went to open his mouth, but I watched his head yank behind us, a deep frown marking his lips.

He stared back the way we'd come, his gaze narrowing.

"I think traffic's coming," he said, voice careful.

I watched him reposition his weight, his hand brushing toward his side.

I could see from the tension riding up his wrist and fingers that he was getting ready to grab one of his guns if he had to.

I was hardly conversant with the great outdoors, but I could appreciate that in valleys like this, sometimes you couldn't accurately detect in which direction a sound was coming from.

Mark would know more than me, though, right?

So why did I suddenly draw up a hand and point it in front of us? "It's coming from that direction," I said calmly and matter-of-factly.

"What?" Mark swung his head around and blinked in front of us, just in time to see clouds of dust starting to lift up the twisting path that disappeared behind a hump in the hill.

Mark didn't say anything.

He took a step until he repositioned himself in front of me, and without a word, backed off, pressing me further off the path.

"Probably soldiers come to find us," he tried. "Maybe the portal substation wasn't so damaged after all, and they managed to detect where the portal spat us out."

"That dust doesn't look like it's coming from a car to me. It doesn't sound like one, either," I volunteered again, even though I couldn't detect what the sound actually was. It was too far off. And the wind was directed toward it, not away.

And yet—

Just as something appeared over the rise in the hill, my gut bottomed out.

It was as if I'd swallowed a bomb and it had just exploded in my stomach.

I lost all muscular control. It was robbed from me as if someone had severed my spine.

Mark was still standing protectively in front of me, one hand hovering close to his gun, his stiff fingers ready to snap it out in a second.

As my knees cut out, I tumbled into the ditch behind me.

Mark half turned his head toward me, but before concern could rumple his brow, the vehicle finally came into view.

It was a carriage.

Large and ornate, it looked as if it was as wide as a large SUV and just as long.

It wasn't being dragged by horses.

It was being dragged by two dog-like elephant beasts. The very same beasts I'd seen in that flash of a memory from before.

I lost it, a strangled gasp escaping my lips.

I was too weak to even bring up a hand and clamp it over my mouth.

The carriage was one of the most ornate things I'd ever seen.

It was gold, black, and blue, and looked like an amalgam of Moorish design with rococo gilt.

As it came over the rise, sunshine struck it, playing along the metal edges, glimmering along the blue enamel like a sunset over deep blue ocean waters.

I watched Mark practically crumple in relief.

His hand instantly dropped from his gun. I could see a slice of the side of his face, and half a smile crept up his lips.

I twisted. On the inside and the outside.

It felt as if something grabbed hold of my heart and tried to wrench it from my chest. At the same time, I remained crumpled in the ditch, my arms moving around each other, my hands locking onto my elbows as I drew my knees up.

"It's okay. It's just a Royal carriage. Thank God."

I didn't waste the breath to point out that Mark had promised me this region was safe.

I focused on the exact cold, dreadful tingles racing down my back, across my hips, and into my legs.

It felt like somebody had injected ice into my bloodstream and they just kept doing it, second after second until the one thing I feared happened.

The carriage didn't stream past us, those odd creatures at the lead running out of sight, harnessed to the massive wheeled structure with strips of cast metal and gray leather.

No. The carriage stopped. And as it did, my heart stopped for a few beats as if I was going into cardiac arrest.

There was no one up front driving this thing – just those two beasts and the carriage itself.

"It's okay. I know those babook creatures look strange. But you can get up, Grace. Everything's fine now," Mark tried as he brushed some speck of dirt off his pants and appeared to straighten himself as if he was a pupil about to stand in front of the principal.

I didn't get up.

I couldn't.

My gaze wasn't locked on those two chimera-like creatures that looked as if they were out of a kid's flipbook.

It wasn't that my nose was overcome by the strange scent of trodden dirt mixed in with animal hide and this sickly sweet scent I couldn't place.

It wasn't even the imposing look of the carriage itself that felt as if it had been pulled from Tsarist Russia and had come directly out of the mind of Faberge himself.

No. It was what was inside that was slowly destroying me.

Who was inside?

I—

It took several seconds for the door to open.

I heard something unlock. It was faint, so indistinct, it sounded like nothing more than a fingernail tapping another fingernail from across the room. Yet I picked it up, because I felt it.

It was this truly sharp sensation that stabbed into the back of my neck like a knife.

The carriage was big, but maybe I didn't appreciate how truly big it was until the door opened and I saw my first Xandians.

I looked up into the face of a man who looked roughly human. The only thing that gave away his alien roots was the pale color of his eyes. They looked like tumbled glass embedded in white sand.

He also had lines and dots on his skin.

They weren't veins so much as some strange patterning.

A splatter of spots rose up the side of his cheeks and stopped just under those eerily pale eyes.

He was wearing a purple and red, trim uniform that was high at the neck and came down tightly to his wrists. It looked reminiscent of Mark's own dress uniform. There was one difference, however.

There was a massive great sword slung at this man's hips.

It was sitting in a jewel-encrusted scabbard, and along one side was writing I'd never seen, and yet writing I somehow instantly recognized.

It wasn't from Earth. It wasn't even from my dreams. And yet, I... though it sounded completely crazy, I got the impression I'd been seeing it my whole life, almost as if I always caught glimpses of it out of the corner of my eye.

Though Mark had looked unbelievably relieved when the carriage had approached, now I watched his cheeks stiffen.

"I know you," the Xandian man announced. "You are Sergeant Steward or something."

"Sheppard. Sergeant Mark Sheppard." Mark flattened a hand on his stomach, placed his other hand on top of his knee, and bowed low for precisely 5 seconds.

The man in the carriage did nothing. Except for sweep his gaze over to me.

A frown marked his broad lips as those pale eyes narrowed. "What are you doing out here? I thought you would be at the palace," he said to Mark. "I thought you had another present for Lady Tallet." The man's voice had been even until he said the words Lady Tallet.

Mark looked bashful.

I'd seen Mark go through a gamut of expressions so far, but bashful hadn't been one of them. Awkward, sure – he seemed awkward every time he had to touch me. But this?

It was a mix of embarrassment and deep-seated unease. He pressed his lips together then dragged them across his teeth. "There was a slight accident."

"Accident?" The man smiled.

Normal people didn't smile when others had accidents.

From the moment I'd set eyes on this man, I'd been able to appreciate his character.

Sure, he wasn't human, but to me that didn't matter.

I could see past the pageantry and dappled spots and pale eyes.

On the inside was a man I could recognize. A man who devoted himself 150 percent to himself.

You very rarely met people who were truly arrogant. You often met people who were master compartmentalizers and managed to subsume their morals under their desires.

This guy?

He looked like the self-appointed ruler of the world.

"Sir Jarrak, it is good to see you."

This man, Sir Jarrak, flicked his gaze to me once more. "What manner of dress is that woman wearing?" I watched his gaze dart down from my overly large military jacket with my gloved hands peeking through, then down to my blood-stained stockings and ballet flats.

"She's..." Mark trailed off.

I could tell from this brief interaction that Mark hadn't been expecting to meet this man, whoever Sir Jarrak was. Just as I could tell that Mark's mind was furiously attempting to come up with some story as to why we were here.

He'd led me to believe that once we met someone from the Royal family, it would be a hop, skip, and a jump back to a military base and then Earth.

But Mark had to be pussyfooting around this man for some reason.

"She's a guest," Mark lied.

... A moment before, he'd admitted that there'd been an accident. Now he seemed reluctant to mention it again.

"What is her position within your Earth hierarchy?" Sir Jarrak asked as he offered me another flashing-eyed look.

"She..." Mark tried.

I hadn't known Mark long, but I appreciated one thing – he was a terrible liar.

Something in me told me not to open my mouth, yet a far greater force rose up to push that something away.

"I'm what we call a banker. I deal in precious minerals, currency, and wealth," I said, surprising myself when my voice was smooth and even.

What I'd said wasn't technically a lie, so my delivery had come off perfectly.

Sir Jarrak arched an eyebrow, suddenly looking more interested. "I see. An important guest. But why are you two walking along the outskirts of the Dewer forests? I thought we made it clear that there were many brigands in this area and groups of alternative means."

I had no idea what a group of alternative means meant, but I understood brigands.

I shot the back of Mark's head a look. No wonder he'd been so keen to get his hands on his guns.

Mark straightened his shoulders once more, and he was obviously thankful I'd come up with a good enough excuse as to who I was and why I was here.

"I—" Mark began.

Sir Jarrak locked his gaze on me again. There was something awfully penetrating about it. It felt like he was slowly burning you alive with two lasers. "Is she here to assess the mineralogical wealth of this area?" Sir Jarrak said snidely. "I thought your... what was the word again? Oh yes, geologists, had already done that?"

"I'm not a geologist, sir. I'm a wealth creator," I said with a straight face. It was pretty easy. That's what my bank tried to force us tellers to say whenever we advertised credit cards and loans. We were meant to act as if they were services that would make the customer rich, not the bank.

Jarrak's expression changed again. "I see. But you spoke of an accident. Has your means of transportation become lost?"

Sir Jarrak gave the hill behind us a cursory glance.

He was the kind of man who gave you the impression that everything he did was cursory until he chose otherwise. In other words, he would interact with you only as he saw fit until he found something worthwhile in what you did or what you owned.

"Yeah, our transport became lost," Mark lied flatly.

"I see." A fake smile spread Sir Jarrak's lips. "In that case, please come aboard."

Mark hesitated.

"There is no need to stand on ceremony, Sergeant," Jarrak said the word Sergeant with dripping derision. "I welcome you aboard. You are the honored guests of Oblevia."

I tried not to gasp again, even though the urge controlled me.

What?

What had he just said?

... Oblevia?

Why did that word—

Jarrak ticked his gaze toward me once more. He nodded in deference. "Please, honored guest, you're welcome in my humble carriage. What title do you possess?"

Mark was still clearly making his mind up, so he answered relatively automatically, "Her title is Miss Grace."

"Miss Grace it is. A beautiful name, may I add. Grace has an equivalent in our own native language, not that we use it much anymore. You humans opened our eyes to the subtleties and power of English when you visited us 50 years ago, after all."

I looked at him, trying to control the horror that the word Oblevia had created within me. "Ah, thank you," I managed awkwardly.

Mark finally made up his mind. With one last look over his shoulder at the forest beyond, he gestured me forward.

This entire time, I'd been down on my knees in the ditch.

I hadn't moved, and I hadn't noticed until now.

Jarrak obviously had, because a slightly amused smile picked up his lips. "I can pick you up if you would prefer—"

"She's fine," Mark said stiffly. He turned over his shoulder to offer me a hand.

I rose on my own.

Did my limbs still feel like jelly?

Absolutely. Was my heart beating at 100 miles an hour? Yes.

Did my stomach twist at the idea of getting in this carriage?

Of course.

But at the same time, I didn't have any other option.

Mark waited until I was on my feet, then he got in the carriage first, pushing close to Jarrak and waiting for him to shift out of the way.

Mark turned around and offered me a hand.

I reached my arm out and let him grab my hand. He easily pulled me up the high steps.

That's when I saw the inside of the carriage.

Its opulence wasn't what caught me.

I'd been right before when I'd said it looked as if it had been born of Faberge's imagination. The inside looked precisely as fancy as some golden jewelry box.

There were rounded porthole-like windows that allowed one a view of the rolling plains around us, but they were nothing compared to the view inside.

There were two other people.

One was potentially the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.

But her dress, eyes, and perfect complexion could not detract from the man sitting on his own along one side of the carriage.

He was dressed from head-to-foot in simple black robes.

They covered his hands and hung low to his feet, only a pair of thick black boots visible. The hood obscured his face right down to his chin.

I couldn't even see his lips.

But his chin was enough.

While the lady also possessed delicate smatterings of spots up her cheeks and a few twisting lines too, this man... he....

There was a line of light right down his chin, over his jaw, down his neck, and presumably one that tracked over the rest of his body.

It wasn't some kind of tattoo.

It was illumination as if the man had bioluminescence like a firefly.

Though I was overcome by the sight, riveted to the spot as if I'd just met a freaking god, I wasn't the only one who was impressed.

I watched Mark's cheeks twitch, his eyes widening slightly, his brow pushing up high against his hairline.

This carriage might have been large, but that didn't matter.

I felt as if space was suddenly contorted and I was drawn toward the man in the black robe like a magnet being attracted to its opposite pole.

"I understand you are an honored guest," I heard Jarrak from behind me, "but you must not stare at the priests and priestesses of Xandia. I had assumed your Earth Taskforce had spread this knowledge by now."

I managed to jerk my terrified gaze off that so-called priest – though in my head, he still looked more like a god – and I fixed it on Jarrak.

Though his cheeks were rigid with a touch of anger, there was still a slight glimmer of amusement in his eyes as I stared at him in abject terror.

Mark cleared his throat. "She's a fly-in. She isn't here for long. I'll take responsibility."

"Indeed." Jarrak's eyes narrowed as he looked at me, then he gestured for me to take a seat next to the woman in the insanely beautiful dress.

I wouldn't say it looked like it was out of a fairytale. It was far too detailed for that.

The bodice was made of an unusual shimmering soft fabric I'd never seen the likes of. It was comparable to an amalgam of silk, satin, and pearls.

It was embroidered in this shimmering, light silver thread.

Just like Jarrak's scabbard, it was emblazoned with those same haunting symbols.

The ones that reached into me and told me I knew that language though I'd never seen it before.

"Sit down, Grace," Mark said stiffly under his breath.

I took a moment to reposition myself and turn around, somehow hating the fact I was showing my back to that priest.

The carriage had several couch-like seats, and I sat right on the edge of one, as far away from everyone as I could manage.

The woman turned toward me, her perfect eyes flicking over me thoroughly before she nodded once in deference.

Well, I say deference – it was little more than a flick of her neck.

I tried to do the same, but Mark cleared his throat, so I went back to stiffly sitting on the edge of the couch.

Jarrak turned, apparently satisfied, hooked a hand on the door, and closed it.

As it shut, I got the fleeting desire to shove past and throw myself back out into the wilderness.

I'd been wrong. I felt so much safer there than I did in here.

Mark waited for Jarrak to gesture to a seat before he sat down.

It wasn't next to the priest. And I quickly realized it was probably because no one could sit next to that strange man, let alone look at him. Every time I so much as tried to glance at him, Mark would clear his throat pointedly.

"Where is it that you are headed, Sergeant?" Jarrak asked as he arranged himself beside Mark on one of the long couches.

Both men were roughly the same size, but as Jarrak leaned back, hooked one leg over the other, and let his sword bang onto the chair between him and Mark, it was damn obvious he was trying to take up more room.

These were the first aliens I'd ever met, yet they postured precisely like humans.

And they spoke English.

That fact made my mind reel.

Though I'd always been obsessed with the portals and had researched everything I could back on Earth, most of the day-to-day details of Xandia were kept secret to ordinary humans like me.

I had no idea we'd introduced English to Xandia and they'd accepted it wholeheartedly.

Just as I'd had no idea Xandians could be this terrifying.

I clamped down on my jaw, forcing myself not to swivel my gaze to the priest.

Was he looking at me?

There was no earthly way I could tell. The fabric of his hood was dark and thick and completely obscured his eyes. It was so large, the bunched fabric hid the angle his head was turned in.

And yet, for some damn reason, I knew his gaze was locked on me.

I was so uncomfortable, it felt as if I'd swallowed slithering snakes.

"Where are you heading?" Jarrak asked Mark once more.

"The Area Eight Substation." Mark spoke in a monotone, and the entire time, he kept most of his attention locked on me, no doubt to ensure I didn't do anything that would insult Sir Jarrak and his strange entourage.

Though I was seated right on the edge of this large couch, I wasn't the only one attempting to keep to myself.

The lady beside me hadn't said a word to me, but she had bunched her dress away from me, and she held it protectively in one stiff hand, her head imperiously directed toward the view.

"Such a quick visit," Jarrak commented. "Lady Tallet will be terribly disappointed if you don't include her in your itinerary." It seemed that whenever this Sir Jarrak character said the name Lady Tallet, he did so with enough derision to fill a bucket. It practically dripped off him, his stiff lips becoming white as tension climbed his face.

"I will return soon. This detour wasn't planned." Mark didn't look at Jarrak as he spoke.

Jarrak flicked his gaze to me on the word detour. "I see. But it must've been a valuable one. Tell me, Miss Grace, how do you create wealth?" He leaned forward, his leg still crossed over the other, his arms still splayed along the back of the couch.

I watched Mark swallow uncomfortably.

"Are you asking how the integrated financial system of Earth works?" I stammered through my words, realizing that if I had any chance of taking hold of this conversation, I would have to lose Sir Jarrak in complicated concepts he didn't understand.

He arched an eyebrow. "I must admit that my tutelage in Earth economics has been somewhat lacking. But I'm not asking that. I'm asking precisely what it is you trade in."

"Equity, loans, and financial products," I said.

"Before, you mentioned precious minerals. Do you have any on you?" He looked me up and down.

I looked at Mark.

"You see, it is customary to offer a member of the ruling class a gift upon meeting them."

"This is not the first time we have met," Mark tried.

Jarrak didn't appear to be paying any attention to Mark. He still had his full attention locked on me.

I had nothing on me. I'd lost my bag. Even then, I really doubted this guy would want a five-dollar bill or a stick of gum.

Before I could hope that this was just some game Jarrak was playing, the priest shifted in his seat, and this time obviously angled his head toward me.

It sent such a sharp cascade of nerves darting up my back, I almost fell from the seat.

"Unfortunately we lost one of our packs—" Mark lied.

I did a mental calculation of everything that was on me.

I had a used tissue in my pocket – and I really doubted this arrogant man would accept that as an esteemed gift.

I had ruined stockings, a stained jacket that was covered in ash and blood, and—

I shoved a hand down my top.

I pulled out my necklace.

It was simple. It wasn't worth much.

But it meant something to me.

It was a polished piece of maw sit sit – a type of jadeite – set in a silver bevel setting.

I unhooked the clasp competently with one hand, hesitated, then handed it over to him.

He shifted forward and opened his hand, suggesting I would have to get up and give it to him.

I pushed up, but at that precise moment, the carriage set off, and it shuddered so violently, I was thrown forward.

Mark tried to twitch to his feet to catch me, but he was nowhere near as fast as Jarrak who was closer.

The next thing I knew, Jarrak had a hand on my hip and one on my elbow, holding me in place.

I gave a small gasp of surprise right in his face.

Jarrak just smiled, a twisted, broad grin jerking up into his cheeks. "I can't have a guest falling at my feet," he said.

I got the sudden impression that he wanted to add not yet.

Still holding me in place, but thankfully removing his hand from my hip, he ticked his head down and locked his gaze on my offering.

He played with the chain, slid his fingers down it, then grasped the pendant.

It was small, but it was still an impressive example of maw sit sit, struck through with luminescent green lines.

"I have not yet seen this stone. It fascinates me. What a beautiful gift. And still warm from its owner," he added creepily.

My stomach twisted.

"I accept." He took it from me, released his grip on my wrist like a clamp unlocking, then nodded at my seat once more as if I was a dog who was meant to crawl back to the doghouse.

Feeling less comfortable by the second, I shifted over, getting my balance first so the rocking carriage didn't knock me off my feet once more.

I sat right on the edge of the couch this time, my leg muscles locked in case I had to spring up, grab the door, and throw myself at the mercy of the brigands beyond.

Jarrak sat down, taking up just as much room as before, brought up my pendant, and let it twist in front of his face. "Now this is a present. I should have to remember it. I will give you something of equal worth." He looked at me over the top of the pendant.

I brought my hands up and waved them. "No, no. That's fine. Please just accept... my gift."

I loved that pendant. The last thing I wanted to do was give it to a letch like Sir Jarrak.

Suffice to say, Mark didn't look happy. I don't think his jaw could be stiffer. His neck muscles looked so tightly wound, they were like rubber bands someone had wrapped around his throat.

I had no idea how long it would take us to get by horse and cart to our destination – not that the creatures outside were horses.

But I understood that every single second of this would be utter torture.

Yet this freakish Jarrak wasn't the worst part by far.

I could put up with his arrogant advances.

The priest sitting quietly on his own, however, was something completely different.

I kept staring at that flash of light down his chin and neck out of the corner of my eye, begging myself never to look at him directly.

His... just his mere presence did things to my mind.

I started to see things. If I was foolish enough to close my eyes for too long, those impressions would become all the sharper.

I saw valleys studded with townships, farm fields, and great pitted roads joining them.

And then I saw cities, sprawling, cobbled, with three-story thatched homes marching up toward palaces on hills.

And shrines... I saw shrines to gods.

I saw men just like Sir Jarrak, and ladies just like the one who sat beside me.

All of these impressions, all of them on fast forward, all slamming into me, getting faster, getting harder. Every one undermining me further as I sat there on the edge of that seat, my hands curled into bloodless fists as I pressed them against my knees and stared dead-eyed at the floor.

I had to get away from this place.

Because the further I traveled into Xandia, the further its web ensnared me.

Go too far in, get too caught up, and I would never be free again.

# Chapter 7

Sergeant Mark Sheppard

This was about the worst thing that could've happened.

Even brigands would've been easier to deal with. Now I was armed, I would've taken a whole gang of them over this bastard.

Because Jarrak was a bastard.

Of all the affiliated members of the Zentaria Royal family I could have come across, Jarrak was the worst.

He wasn't technically a member of the Royal family – just a hanger on if you asked me.

Technically half of noble birth, he liked to pretend he was a military man, though his only training was in arrogance and self-assuredness.

I'd had run-ins with him in the past. Sir Jarrak had been courting Lady Tallet for years. And Lady Tallet?

Yeah, Cadet Sparks had been right back on Earth.

For all intents and purposes, Tallet would take me as I was.

She was infatuated with me for some reason, and while I tried to keep my distance, my superiors used that infatuation. Hence the fact this morning I'd bought her yet another set of pearls.

She was the daughter of Prince Larat, who nominally ruled this area. In other words, she was an extremely important player.

Sir Jarrak?

He was just an irritating wildcard who most of the time I thankfully avoided. But right now? It was pretty damn hard to avoid him considering he was right next to me and taking up as much room as a bull.

His jeweled scabbard kept banging into my side. That I could take.

The fact Jarrak had locked onto Grace like a targeting missile, I couldn't take.

The bastard had demanded a gift from her.

I knew Xandian tradition.

Though it was customary upon first meeting a new group of people to exchange gifts, the Taskforce had given more than their fair share of presents to the Royal family, including Jarrak.

Yet the prick had made her give him her necklace.

For what?

Dominance. Everything Jarrak did was about dominance.

Now Grace, the poor thing, sat on the edge of her seat, trying to keep to herself, her hands locked on her knees. Though they were covered in my tactical gloves, I could tell they'd be as white and bloodless as a corpse's.

Though the last thing I wanted to do was draw Sir Jarrak into a conversation, I needed to know how long it would take to get to some habitable station. Anything would do.

Earth forces were pretty thick around this area, and they had detachments in most towns. All I needed to do was meet a fellow soldier – that's it. Then this nightmare would be all but over.

Hey, or maybe the nightmare would just be beginning.

Because there was one of them in the carriage.

Seeing Sir Jarrak was one thing – having a priest only a few meters from me was another.

Priests weren't gods. They were close, though. Some subspecies as far as human intelligence went.

The lines that marked their entire bodies, running around their midlines like a rope holding them together, were not ceremonial markings.

It was some form of bioluminescence mysteriously produced by their bodies.

They were the clearest indication of a subspecies we'd seen that had diverged from the mostly humanlike population that ruled Xandia.

Apart from the gods, that was.

The prevailing theory went that the priests and the gods were some kind of evolutionary branch compared to the rest of the population. An unspeakably powerful one.

If you believed scriptures, however, they came from the stars, and they were sent by the rulers of the universe to keep Xandia safe.

I'd seen priests and priestesses before. Unlike the gods of Xandia, they were relatively familiar sights in most populated areas.

So I knew the rules regarding them. You didn't look them in the eye – which was pretty easy considering they always wore hoods over their faces. You didn't even look toward them, though. And you certainly, certainly didn't touch them.

The question was, what on earth was one doing with Sir Jarrak?

As far as I understood it, they were powerful symbols among the populace, and as such, they tended to stay out of politics.

Though you could pretend that Sir Jarrak wasn't a political man, and instead had some passing affiliation with the Army, that was bullshit.

The only reason he was interested in the sweet Lady Tallet was so he could further his career and gather more power.

I distracted myself with these thoughts and more, jerking my gaze toward Grace every minute or so to check that she wasn't about to pop.

Though her legs looked fatigued from holding her against the edge of the seat, she looked as if she was keeping it together. For now. Who knew what would happen if Jarrak kept baiting her?

Though as much as I wanted to keep my mouth shut to reduce the amount of torture Jarrak could put me through, I really needed to know where we were going. We were traveling in the opposite direction to the substation I wanted to head to. "Sorry to interrupt you, Sir Jarrak, however—"

"You would like to know where we're going. We are making just a slight detour, then I will change my plans and take you back to Maglite City."

"... Thank you, sir," I forced myself to say, keeping every single hint of derision free from my voice, though it was damn hard.

I was seated forward, my backpack beside me, propped against my leg, the gun over my shoulder angled on the opposite side of Jarrak.

It wasn't that I thought the bastard would make a grab for it.

It was because I was left-handed and I wanted to keep it within ready reach.

Did I honestly think there'd be any trouble?

Not any overt trouble.

Men like Jarrak didn't specialize in that kind of chaos.

Machinations and intrigue?

You betcha. He was born for it.

I watched Jarrak as he took up even more space, arching his shoulders and shifting his arms around.

It had been five minutes since he'd stopped torturing Grace, but as I watched his gaze tick up from her shoes, over her blood-splattered knees, then up to her face, I realized the bastard was ready for another round.

Just as he opened his mouth to no doubt utter another inappropriate question, I cleared my throat.

"How is the Lady Tallet, Sir Jarrak?"

Jarrak stiffened. "I would assume you know better than me. You've seen her so often lately. Or so my friends at the court tell me." He emphasized the word friends.

Men like Jarrak always wanted you to know that they had their eyes on you even when they were far away.

"Then how are your businesses?" I asked.

This finally tore his attention off Grace, and I felt him swivel his gaze toward me, the first time he'd looked at me since we'd started conversing. He let out a snort of a chuckle. "While I can detail them, I wouldn't bother. You and your kind aren't that interested in the way my people run our businesses," he said the word businesses harshly. "And are rather more fascinated by the things under our ground."

"According to Lady Tallet," I said, realizing that the only way to keep Jarrak interested in this conversation was to keep referring back to her, "you've been asked to train forces out in the eastern forests."

He stiffened. His hand drifted down to his scabbard, and he played with the large jewels encrusted in the top, his thumbnail digging against it as if he wanted to pull it out. That, however, was not what he wanted to pull out. The sword, on the other hand, was.

If Jarrak had his way, mark my words, he'd run me through in the blink of an eye.

Then again, I'd shoot him well before he had the chance.

"I suppose Lady Tallet is quite fond of chatting," Jarrak said stiffly. "She is, of course, true. I have humbly accepted the task of training our forces. But it would be so boring to a military man of your might," Jarrak barely managed to force the word might out as his gaze locked on the guns holstered at my hips.

I just pressed a snide smile over my face. Though my smarter side kept reminding me to play this cool, to keep my diplomacy at the fore, and control myself in every way, I couldn't help it.

The carriage was traveling fast, so it was clear Jarrak was heading somewhere as quickly as he could.

Though it was a relatively smooth journey, and the babook beasts outside were quick-footed and heavy enough that in most patches, the carriage wheels practically glided over the road, it wasn't as if there were highways out there.

Every now and then, we struck heavy potholes. Though the seats were cushioned, Grace was sitting on the very edge of hers, and I kept watching her tense her legs and hold her body to stop herself from falling off the couch.

I was tempted to tell her to sit back, but it was clear she was trying to keep as far away from the lady beside her.

And fair enough. The woman looked as if Grace was dirt that had been tracked over the carpet.

Though I'd grown up as the son of a distinguished general, and I was no stranger to being treated differently, once I'd joined the Army proper, that had mostly ended. Especially when I'd become part of the Taskforce. In the Taskforce, you weren't special – you were just a cog in a moving wheel. Stop moving with the rest of the wheel, and you'd be pushed out, no matter who you were and who your dad was.

So I didn't like elitism. Even though Xandia was built on it.

There was something I hated even more. Intimidation. I get it, most of the Army is built on intimidation and posturing, but it's used judiciously and ultimately for the protection of all.

You tell that to the people in this carriage.

From Jarrak, to his lady, to that damn priest – they were making us feel as welcome as a hole in the head.

My gaze ticked back toward the priest, though I was smart enough to swivel it off before anyone noticed.

The guy had his head turned toward Grace, the angle of his neck obvious from the way the fabric of his hood bunched.

Why the priest was so interested in her, I didn't know, but I didn't like it for a second.

"How are the Taskforce's negotiations with the Ventax going?" Jarrak asked without preamble.

I stiffened.

Though conversing to take this asshole's attention off Grace was one thing, I had to be careful not to spill any Taskforce secrets.

I managed a small smile. "As well as can be expected."

"Perhaps you need some advice. The Ventax are such a reprehensible, rudimentary people. They respond to two things. Threats and resources."

"... Thanks for the tip," I managed.

Just how long would this torture last?

I was half tempted to tell Jarrak to stop the carriage so we could get out.

Seriously, whole armies of brigands would be better than this.

As the conversation dried up, Jarrak let out a derisive little snort, then brought up Grace's pendant once more.

He fondled the chain in a way that made my stomach curl. Then he grabbed hold of the pendant, brought it close, and rubbed it between his thumbs. "Such fine quality and design. It outstrips anything the Taskforce has given me thus far. I'm sure we will become friends indeed." He looked directly at Grace.

I'd left the bastard alone for half a second, and he'd locked onto Grace once more.

Her face twisted at that comment, just as it should, because it had been as sickening as a dose of ipecac.

I went to clear my throat.

Grace straightened her back, her hands still clutched into fists and pressed against her knees. "It's not worth—" she began, obviously about to tell him it was nothing more than a trinket.

I shifted forward. "It's an extremely rare stone on Earth," I spoke over her. "You're correct, Sir Jarrak. You have such a good eye when it comes to valuables."

Though I wasn't above stroking this guy's ego, it made me want to hurl.

I kept hold of my stomach, however, as I smoothed a smile over my face.

Jarrak continued to stare at the pendant, appraising it with his head tipped back and a certain look in his eye.

That look right there?

I'd seen it before in the other men of the Zentaria court.

They were the kind of assholes who thought they could own anything and everything around them, including people.

"I see. I am a lucky man indeed, then. I am indebted to you." He gave a perfunctory bow.

"I really—" Grace said, obviously about to say she really didn't want a man like Jarrak indebted to her.

I cleared my throat again. "Consider it a present from the Taskforce. Grace is a representative, after all," I lied.

"I see. I have never been in such a position of honor with your Taskforce before. Perhaps your estimations of me are rising."

"... Indeed," I managed. I didn't have to tell you that I was not the kind of guy who walked around saying indeed all the time. I didn't have airs and graces. I just had a job to keep people safe.

When dealing with bastards like Jarrak, you had to learn a whole new repertoire.

We thankfully slipped into silence, and Jarrak kept most of it to assess the pendant.

I glanced at it a few times, and I had to admit it was nice.

Though I barely knew Grace, it was easy to tell she wasn't made of money. She was a bank teller, not an investment broker.

While the pendant didn't look important, it was the only jewelry she was wearing, which suggested it was important to her.

... When I was back on Earth, I'd see if I could get the Taskforce to replace it. If they wouldn't replace it, I'd just pay for it out of my own pocket.

She'd already sacrificed enough coming here.

As we slipped into silence, I found my head tilting to the side as I stared through the portal-like window.

The countryside flashed past outside, just a continuous line of mountains and trees and rolling vast grassy plains.

It was beautiful, but starker than usual for some reason.

Maybe I was feeling the cold – perhaps I was coming down from the adrenaline-fueled situation that unfolded back on Earth.

Or maybe there was a dense kind of ominous feeling enshrouding my shoulders for another reason.

It would become worse whenever I ticked my gaze toward Grace. Some niggling impression at the back of my head promising me this situation would only become more complicated and not less so. More than anything, it was promising me I'd lied to her. And I hated lying. It was against my damn character. It was the one thing my dad had taught me.

You speak your mind. And more than anything, you come good on your promises.

But that niggling feeling at the back of my head kept telling me that no matter how hard I tried, I wouldn't be able to come good on my promise to Grace.

It wouldn't be simple to get her back to Earth – it would be the hardest thing I'd ever done.

I let those thoughts settle for half a second before I shook my head at them.

There'd been some hiccups, sure. But we would get back on track. I just had to keep a cool head.

Though I let my mind wander, I kept checking in on Grace, even though I couldn't outright ask her how she was.

I assessed her with a quick flick of my gaze, and though she was still stiff, at least she didn't look as if she wanted to throw herself at the door and jump out onto the road anymore.

Her legs had relaxed a bit, though her hands were still propped on her knees.

I watched as she brushed her fingers over them, the thick, bulky fabric of my tactical gloves snagging the ladders in her stockings.

Dammit. I hadn't dealt with her injuries, had I?

There were superficial cuts along her face and hands, but there was a lot more blood on her knees. She'd probably gashed them badly. What the hell had I been thinking? All this time when I'd been trekking, I could've pulled out the first aid kit in my pack and patched her up.

Now I wouldn't dare do it – not in front of Jarrak.

I reprimanded myself, just stopping myself from slapping a hand on my leg in frustration.

Grace abruptly stopped rubbing her knees, a deep frown marking her lips for some reason.

With a twitch, she pulled her skirt down, arranging it firmly in front of herself so the fabric was pulled as far over her knees as it could be.

She obviously didn't want to make any movements in front of Jarrak in case she got his attention again, though the selfish idiot was far too taken by her necklace to notice.

The priest?

He still had his head turned toward her.

I'd clear my throat and tell him to keep his eyes to himself, but that would be a grave mistake.

Though I was confident I could fight myself out of any battle with Jarrak, mowing down even a peripheral member of the Zentaria Royal family would not be looked on well by my superiors.

As time ticked on, I found myself practically praying. Like I'd said, once upon a time, I'd been a religious man, but that had pretty much gone out the window after I'd come to Xandia.

It wasn't just the fact I'd seen their so-called gods. It was... I dunno.

God kind of made sense back on Earth where things were simple. But here? Where you felt like you'd been pulled into the pages of a fantasy novel every time you traveled through the portal – you realized the universe was a heck of a lot more mysterious than any one religion could account for.

Still, I found myself muttering prayers over and over again in my head, hoping that everything would damn well work out.

At least no one spoke again until finally we arrived somewhere.

I'd been keeping a watch on the windows for a while now, so I appreciated we'd traveled further into the valley – further than I'd ever been.

I was hardly a mineralogical surveyor, but I had been on a few missions with geology teams, protecting them from the wilds of this area.

Still, I hadn't been here, and I frowned as I pushed myself to my full height, angling my chin up, noting we'd stopped in front of some kind of stone structure.

I'd give the Xandians one thing. Their architecture was something else.

It was grand, reminiscent of the palaces and castles back on Earth, but with... I dunno, more importance to it somehow.

They had different construction methods and different amalgams of metal and stone, sure, but it was more to do with their sense of pageantry.

The main palace in this province was something else.

It made you feel like you were walking into a Disney film.

So I wasn't all that surprised when, as I tilted my head up and saw the side of the dark stone structure outside, my stomach twisted with nerves.

"We are here. You're welcome to go outside to stretch your legs and explore the grounds. I doubt you have ever been somewhere like this," Jarrak said each word with grandiose importance. "My business will take less than 10 minutes. Then I assure you I will take you back to Maglite." He rose, Grace's pendant still in his hand, clutched so stiffly I'd probably have to use a crowbar to get it back.

As he shifted past Grace, he reached out a hand to her.

She looked up at him, her eyes widening in shock.

Grace looked pretty normal, though I didn't like to judge people's looks usually.

She did have very involved eyes, though. I get it – involved wasn't usually a description you used when it came to describing people's features.

Her eyes pulled you in, though.

It wasn't that she had long, graceful eyelashes or anything, and her irises were a pretty normal brown. It... was the way she looked at you. There was this presence behind her gaze that tried to pull you in.

Maybe Jarrak noticed too, because the bastard's lip twitched into half a grin. "I'm not sure if you have this tradition back on Earth, Miss Grace, but I have offered you my arm, and it is customary for you to take it. I intend to help you out of the carriage."

Grace looked at me, and she seemed about as terrified as a deer in the headlights.

I just winced.

She pushed up, her legs shaking.

She'd been holding herself on the edge of the seat for about an hour, and I could tell it had taken its toll on her tight hamstrings.

Still, at least she held it together long enough that she didn't fall against Jarrak.

She lightly pressed her arm over his.

He straightened, stretched out his shoulders, and made himself look as big as he could.

Me, I let my jaw fix into a straight line as I pushed to my own feet.

Jarrak helped Grace out of the carriage, which unfortunately was a good thing, because as soon as her feet hit the road outside and her head ticked up to the imposing shrine before us, her knee buckled again.

She fell hard against Jarrak, but his grip on her arm was strong enough that he kept her on her feet.

"Be careful, my lady. I fear your seating arrangements have made your legs weak. Let me assist you."

Grace looked mortified.

Her pale cheeks were turned toward the shrine.

I had to keep reminding myself this was her first visit to Xandia.

While I could see a babook and not bat an eyelid, they would be like aliens to her.

And while I'd come across plenty of otherworldly Xandian buildings, this was her very first one.

She gasped, her white, bloodless lips opening in a tight pull.

Jarrak angled his head toward her. "It's quite a sight, isn't it? Has an effect on you, if you allow it. All the buildings of Xandia do. The architecture of modern times cannot affect the mind and body as those of yore. If you have an interest in such buildings, I can satisfy it for you. I am somewhat of a historian, you see."

My hand involuntarily tightened into a fist as he said the word satisfy. I jumped out of the carriage behind him and locked my gaze on the back of his head.

Though I admittedly loved my work on Xandia, men like Jarrak made me want to retire.

"... What is this place?" Grace asked in a haunted voice.

"It is a shrine to the gods."

Her arm tightened on the word gods, and that had the unfortunate effect that it brought her slightly closer to Jarrak.

"It's...." She shook her head, obviously incapable of finishing her thought.

"Majestic, isn't it? I must say, I like your reaction. It is far more genuine than most of the other people of your Taskforce who glimpse our wonders."

There were two soft thumps as the priest jumped down from the carriage behind me.

I turned over my shoulder to watch him shift past, his billowing black robes making him look like a walking shadow.

He said nothing. He simply walked toward the shrine.

It was made of an old stone that was dark and yet light depending on where the sun struck it.

Though the sun was getting admittedly low in the sky, it still crept into this section of the valley.

We'd come some distance. The carriage had traveled fast, after all.

We'd left the dry wood forests of the grassy plains far behind.

This shrine instead backed onto Tetek woods, and they were far darker and more compact.

They ran up the side of a precipitously tall hill that reached into the mountain ridge beyond.

If I tilted my head all the way back, I could just make out the mysterious cloud-covered peaks.

Jarrak still had a hold of Grace's arm, and though all I wanted to do was break his grip, I settled for taking a step close in by Jarrak's side.

I casually pushed my hand into the pocket of my jacket, my rifle sliding over my shoulder and banging between Jarrak and I as I tilted my head toward him. "You have important work to do, Sir Jarrak. We won't explore very far. Thank you for this offer, though. What a sight," I said as I didn't bother to turn my head toward the building.

Jarrak swallowed an expression of disgust.

"Grace," I tilted my head away from Jarrak, "let's stretch your legs."

Grace didn't need to be told twice.

She slid her arm out from underneath Jarrak's, tensed her legs so she didn't wobble, and headed toward me, a look of utter relief on her face.

Jarrak cleared his throat darkly, then turned and walked toward the shrine.

He strode up the carved steps and soon enough disappeared through the darkened open doorway.

Behind us, the lady remained in the carriage.

We'd come down a twisting path to get to the shrine, and the whole building was ensnared in a deep, darkened valley.

Tetek forests hung around it on all sides like partially opened curtains.

I kept my gaze on them warily.

"You okay?" I finally asked in a genuine tone once we were out of earshot.

Grace was still turned over her shoulder, her head twisted toward the shrine.

I couldn't see her face anymore, but her shoulders had risen up high toward her ears.

"Hey, Grace, you okay?"

Nothing.

She was still staring off toward the shrine.

"Grace?" I shifted out a hand and tapped it on her shoulder before I could remind myself that I'd made a promise I would stop randomly touching this woman.

She reacted to my touch, her head jolting forward.

That's when I saw how white her cheeks were.

And those eyes? Her eyes with the power to draw anyone in? They were just as wide and emotive as ever.

I gave her a crumpled wincing frown. "I'm so sorry. I had no idea we would run into him. If I'd known that carriage had belonged to him, we would've kept walking."

She appeared to take several seconds to compose herself. "It's not—" she began, but she stopped herself as she shook her head.

"It's not what?"

"I'm okay," she defaulted to saying.

My lips crumpled into a small twitching smile. "Really? You're pretty wobbly."

She looked down at her legs then up at me. She gave a shrug.

For some reason I laughed at it. Maybe I just needed something to laugh at; maybe it was the cute, crumpled look she gave me.

"I feel like I've been doing squats for an hour."

"You could've sat further back on your seat," I tried.

"I think that woman would have kicked me off if I'd done that. Who was she, anyway?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "Just another dignitary. Then again, she can't be a particularly smart one if she's joined Sir Jarrak."

I expected Grace to launch into a series of questions about him, but she didn't. She appeared to stop herself from turning over her shoulder to look at the shrine once more. "Who was that man with him?" she stammered forcefully, as if her voice had a mind of its own.

"You mean the priest?"

Her shoulders twitched. "Yeah, the priest. What... what was he?"

I had to commend her observational skills again. She'd been the one who'd accurately detected which direction the carriage had been coming from. Now she appreciated that the priest wasn't an ordinary Xandian.

"That line down his chin wasn't just some ceremonial marking, was it? It was... light coming from within him, right?" Every word she said was more contorted with tension than the last.

"Yeah. He's not your ordinary Xandian." I opened my mouth to explain further, but I quickly realized I couldn't.

The one thing Grace needed from me right now were answers, but they were the one thing I couldn't give her.

We were walking off randomly along the path, but at least with every step we took, Grace's legs started to wobble less.

Her face did not relax. Her expression was still as horrified as ever.

"Sorry about this, Grace. It should have been a pretty simple trek to get us back to the substation. And it will be. We'll just have to endure a hell of a ride to get there. You did a good job, though. If Jarrak tries to converse with you again, just let me deal with it."

"Who is he, anyway?" she finally asked.

"Just some royal asshole," I swore. "Some idiot who's spent his entire life machinating while not doing anything worthwhile."

"I thought people like that only existed on Earth?"

I let out a deep-bellied laugh. "Welcome to Xandia. You'll find that 99 percent of what the Taskforce does is diplomacy."

She stared at me as if she was waiting for something.

I turned slowly and arched an eyebrow. "What?"

"I was waiting for you to wince."

I pressed my lips together, appreciating I'd been nothing but awkward around this woman.

"Didn't you just share something you shouldn't have?" she pointed out quickly.

Thinking back, I realized I probably had, but I shrugged.

Knowing that the Taskforce was mostly here to discuss mining rights with the Xandians was hardly a secret. I opened my mouth to make some kind of joke about her knowing so many secrets she would have to join the Army, but I realized she wasn't in the joking mood.

She kept tilting her head back toward the shrine.

Her neck muscles were tight, her shoulders still high. I got the desire to try to push them down, but I really was going to keep my hands to myself this time. "You okay?" I asked softly.

She yanked her head around and began to nod, but stopped.

"I know this all must be insane. But we'll get back soon. I promise," I began, about to tell her I'd been to Xandia so many times, I knew just how simple this task would be, but my words died on my lips.

Because Grace suddenly skidded to a stop.

Though I'd been involved in this conversation, drawn in by her eyes like always, now my training kicked into gear.

"What's that?" She slowly drew a hand out of her pocket and pointed down the hill beside us.

I repositioned my weight quickly, narrowing my gaze as I looked where she was pointing. "What are you talking about?" My words were sharp and efficient.

"That... path?"

I shifted around her fully now and tilted my head to the side.

We'd walked up a rise and were now on the eastern side of the large shrine.

There was a perpetual shadow beside us, this side of the tall building darkened as the sun set on the opposite side.

Peering through the gloom, I could see there was a path winding up from the back of the shrine into the forest.

Unlike a lot of the paths around these parts, it was well maintained.

There were delicately carved stone lanterns at even intervals along it, and the path itself looked as if it had been swept of leaves recently. There were no branches on it, no twigs, no nothing.

I found myself frowning, then I shrugged. "I guess it's part of the shrine. I didn't think these things were that maintained these days." I forced myself to give another shrug. "Xandia always throws you surprises, though."

Grace wasn't paying attention to me anymore. She was leaning forward, head tilting as she appeared to follow the line of the path up as it disappeared into the heavy canopy of the forest.

She tilted her head all the way back and pushed up onto her tiptoes until she locked her gaze on just the top of those snowcapped, cloud-covered peaks.

My gut clenched with interest as I watched her.

Sure enough, she looked just as freaked out as she had when she'd glimpsed that mountain range before.

Her skin was plastered with sweat and became dappled pink and white with the cold.

"... Grace, you okay?"

Her eyes were wide. So damn wide they looked like two paths down into her soul.

"... Grace?"

She wasn't paying any attention. So I had to do it again. I brought up a hand, hesitated, then tapped her lightly on the shoulder. "Grace?"

She finally tugged her head around.

She shivered violently. "Sorry. I guess I'm just paranoid. Everything is freaking me out about this place."

I tried for a crumpled smile. "You've been through a hell of an ordeal," my voice choked slightly as I tried to stop myself from remembering that I'd been through the same damn ordeal. "Just put it out of your head."

She swallowed, pressing her lips together, her throat pushing tightly against the collar of her zipped-up jacket. "... Yeah. Should we head back?"

"Sure." I turned.

So did she. But rather than head back, she started to walk down toward that path.

I waited for her to stop and turn around, and when she didn't, I ducked forward and pushed in close. "We should go back the way we came."

"What?" She stared down at her feet as if she was only just realizing where she was headed, and she sucked her lips in. "Sorry. I—"

Again I watched her head as it was drawn up like a puppet on a string, her gaze locking on that slim glimpse of the mountain range beyond.

"Don't mention it," I managed with a small, crumpled smile.

I went to turn away, this time keeping closer to Grace's side.

She got several steps before she turned again, her head angling predictably down the path.

My shoulders dropped. "What is it, anyway? What do you think you see?"

She brought up a hand, clamped it along the back of her neck, and scratched her skin as if something was bothering her. "I don't know. It just seems off."

I opened my mouth to tell her that she'd had a hell of a day and she wasn't in any state to be able to tell objectively what seemed off or not. All of her intuition had been bamboozled by the fact that she'd been thrown into another damn dimension.

I didn't get the chance.

Despite the fact Grace's legs were still wobbly, either they had improved remarkably quickly, or she just pushed past the pain, because the next thing I knew, she was already trundling down that path.

"Grace," I called out, though I was careful to ensure my voice wasn't that loud, lest I call the odious Sir Jarrak toward us.

Grace didn't pay any attention.

She looked like a scent dog after prey as she competently skidded down the steep incline that separated us from the side of the shrine.

"Dammit," I spat bitterly under my breath as I pushed off after her.

My pack was on my shoulders. There was no way I was going to leave it in a carriage with someone like Sir Jarrak lurking around. There wasn't that much military-grade tech inside, but who knew what he could do with the goods within?

Probably use them in yet another game of cat and mouse, because I was sure that's all he ever played.

"Dammit, Grace," I called again, measuring my volume but hoping it echoed out to her.

She put on a burst of speed.

What the hell was wrong with this woman? At one point, she was staring at me with sincerity crumpling her features as she promised she hated this place. The next, she was being drawn in by its mysteries.

As I'd already said, the shrine was an odd building. Welcome to Xandia – everything was strange.

It wasn't just the architecture with this one, though – it seemed to have more of a... I dunno, presence about it.

You get that sometimes with certain architectural buildings back on Earth. The Cathedral of Chartres in France was one good example. Something built on such a grand, complicated scale that it gives you an inkling into the human mind, not just a roof to keep the rain off your head.

Though the outside of the shrine wasn't particularly complex or ornate, as soon as I approached, the skin along the back of my neck tightened as if it was plastic wrap that had shrunk in the microwave.

I found my head ticking toward the side, my gaze slicing up the darkened, shadow-encased wall closest to us.

It was dark stone, sure, but it wasn't from lack of cleaning.

The rock was pristine somehow, as if it had only been laid the day before. There wasn't a hint of moss or lichen climbing the side, despite the fact I could tell from this darkened valley that it had the perfect conditions for rising damp.

Now was the wrong time to contemplate this building's mysteries. The small but precipitous dirt incline that separated me from the path Grace had jumped onto was steep, and I was overbalanced with a 30-kilo pack.

The next thing I knew, I skidded hard to the side and fell down to my knee.

Grace had somehow already made it at least 20 meters away.

I cursed loudly.

She turned, one hand clenching into a fist, and stared at me over her shoulder.

Another blast of wind caught her hair.

And again, I stared at her expression in still-frame as her fringe framed it.

It was the kind of sharp, dramatic image that could take anyone's breath away.

There was something about Grace—

She teetered on the spot, then turned to come back to me.

She didn't reach me.

The small path we were on led past the side of the shrine.

The shrine was built off the ground around it, the main rooms within sitting on a large stone plinth.

The building was big – maybe 40-meters squared at the base, and certainly imposing enough that we couldn't see the carriage we'd left further down the path, let alone any doors or entranceways into the shrine.

I knew from experience that dusk set quickly in Xandia, and the side of the building was already plunged into dark shadow.

The lanterns that ran up that strange, perfectly kempt path into the mountains had already turned on.

Their delicate yellow glow illuminated certain sections of the path, and Grace was close enough to one that it played along her blood-spattered stockings and the side of her large military jacket.

So I could see her perfectly well enough when something jumped off the side of the shrine and landed right beside her.

It moved quickly, just a streak of black. Enough that by the time I managed to suck in a breath and shove to my feet, the man already had a hand on her.

Grace let out a gasp then became deathly silent.

"Grace!" I went for my holster, pulling out one of my handguns in a split second.

"This pathway is off-limits," someone growled.

The figure around Grace shifted, and I finally saw the strike of blue light down his chin.

... Jesus, it was the priest.

I relaxed my hand on my gun. I did not, however, automatically lower it. I knew the rules – I understood precisely what I was meant to do in this circumstance, and it was not to continue to lift a gun at one of the sacred symbols of Xandian culture.

You tell that to my hand.

The guy still had a tight grip of Grace's wrist, and she was as stiff as a pole, her body rigid as if someone had frozen her on the spot.

It took me a moment to find my voice – my throat was that constricted from the sudden scene.

Back in the early days of portal activity, your greatest skill as a representative of the Earth Taskforce had been diplomacy. There'd been countless misunderstandings – of course there had been. Take one look at Xandia's countless superstitions, and you could quickly appreciate you couldn't walk two meters without breaking some rule.

The success or failure of the Earth mission was solely based on our ability to smooth over any misunderstandings that occurred.

I finally forced myself to lower my gun, but my fingers and elbow were stiff for some reason as if an invisible force was attempting to hold them in place.

"Sorry – we didn't know we weren't allowed here. Sir Jarrak said that we could explore anything."

"Sir Jarrak misspoke. Return to the carriage."

I waited, getting ready for him to release Grace. When instead his hand remained clamped around her wrist, I ticked my jaw to the side stiffly and cleared my throat. "She's coming with me," I said. It wasn't a question. Nobody would hear the register of my voice and think it was anything but a statement of fact.

Grace hadn't said a word. She'd gasped once, and that was it. From the tension around her chest, it looked as if she hadn't even sucked in a breath since the priest had captured her.

My hand was still on my gun – I hadn't holstered it yet, and that was a good thing, because it made it damn obvious when I tapped my finger along its length, the click of my short nail against the metal echoing out in the relative silence around us.

... Ha, silence. Maybe this wasn't the time to notice this, but it was deadly quiet around here.

It shouldn't be.

I'd been to thick forests just like this, and they were always full of the eerie sound of bird cries, unknown animal calls, and wind rustling through trees. But right now there was nothing.

It sounded like we'd gone into a soundproof chamber.

The skin along the back of my skull tingled.

The priest huffed and finally let Grace go.

He shoved her, and she had to take a staggering step not to fall down to her knee.

Without another word, the priest turned, clamped his hands behind his back, and began to walk down that eerily silent, perfectly clean path into the mountains.

"Bastard," I commented under my breath.

It might have been gloomy out here, but like I'd said – the lanterns had turned on. So as the priest walked past one, its illumination was caught along his exposed hands.

I saw blood running down his long, pointed fingernails.

It would be Grace's.

I still had a hold of my gun.

I didn't use it, but it was pretty damn hard not to point it at him again and demand he apologize.

The hardest thing about working on Xandia wasn't just working around their superstitions – it was working around their injustices.

Earth could hardly comment. We'd made it to the modern age, cured countless diseases, and started to solve poverty, yet we still had innumerable injustices.

At least we recognized what was right and wrong and understood the importance of fundamental rights.

They often got trampled on Xandia.

Priests and priestesses were above the law. Technically if this guy had decided to do anything to Grace, I would've had to think twice before intervening.

Do so, and it could have created a diplomatic incident.

But you know what? I would've intervened anyway.

Though my knee hurt from where I'd fallen, I shook it off quickly as I jogged easily toward her.

She was riveted to the spot.

She slowly turned her head over her shoulder, her messy, tangled, silky black hair all bunched around her shoulders as she stared at the priest.

He took his time, his hands still clasped behind his back as he wound his way down that mysterious path up into the quiet hills above.

"Grace," I dropped my voice so it wouldn't carry as I reached her.

This time I didn't have any qualms about reaching out and gently picking up her wrist. It was the one that bastard had snagged hold of. I yanked down the long sleeve of her military jacket, knowing I'd see a deep wound.

Priests had long fingernails – pointed and sharp, essentially like tiny little daggers they carried around with them all the time.

The knot of tension in my stomach told me there'd be a bloodied gash in Grace's wrist.

... Except there wasn't.

It took her a long time to pull her attention off the priest and shift her gaze toward me.

It was in time to see my completely confused expression as I repositioned my grip on her wrist, tugged the jacket down further, and twisted her arm this way and that.

But there was no injury.

There was blood, sure – it was fresh and deep red and slicked along the cuff of the green fabric.

There was just no injury from which it had come.

As Grace looked at it, she seemed just as shocked as I was.

I opened my mouth, paused, then shook my head. "Must've been his blood. Maybe he got it from the shrine," I tried to rationalize to myself.

Grace didn't say a word.

Far back toward the carriage, I heard someone calling.

It was Jarrak.

The break was over, ha?

Time to get back into the carriage for more torture.

I looked right at Grace and opened my mouth.

She winced. She could tell from my serious expression what I was about to say.

"I'm sorry I walked down the path. I just—"

"Xandia is a dangerous place," I controlled my voice, keeping it low, not just so it wouldn't carry in case the priest had crazy good hearing, but because I didn't want her to think she was in too much trouble.

Though she was.

Before you came to Xandia, you had it drummed into your head that you followed the rules.

This wasn't like going on some innocent overseas trip.

This was a goddamn alien world.

You had to follow the orders of your superiors, you had to keep to the rules, and you had to control your curiosity.

Curiosity had gotten a number of the first team of soldiers to come over here killed.

And though things were much better these days, there were still accidents, especially with the separatists.

Grace looked genuinely apologetic, her expression still crumpled, her lips white as she sucked them in. Her gaze kept ticking down to her wrist, though, and it took me a while to realize I was still holding onto it.

Goddammit, man, I thought to myself. What's wrong with you?

I dropped her hand quickly and just stopped myself from taking a step back and shaking my fingers free as if I was trying to rid myself of the feel of her.

When she was released, she immediately brought up her wrist and rubbed at it with the base of her other palm.

"Did he hurt you?" I asked sharply.

"... I don't.... I'm fine," she said quickly. "We should head to the carriage."

"Sure. No, wait. I'll fix your knee first. Those gashes looked pretty bad back on Earth. Sorry it's taken me this long—"

"I'm fine," she said quickly, the words shaking out in a muttered gasp.

"I can see the blood, Grace."

"It's nothing. Honestly," she pushed those garbled words out again. "I really don't want to keep Jarrak waiting. I don't think he's the kind who likes to wait for others."

On that we could agree.

Though I wanted to insist, I took another glance at Grace and realized she honestly did look fine.

Sure there was still crusted blood and ladders in her stockings, mud and ash too, but nothing looked fresh.

As soon as we got back to a base, I'd get a medic to look at her.

With that promise bolstering me, I shrugged toward the path.

As we reached the steep incline that connected back to the path above, I went to shove out a hand to help Grace.

She'd be wobbly, right?

Nope.

She took to the incline with ease. She might've been wearing thin ballet flats, but that didn't matter.

She practically skipped up the rough rocks as if they were nothing at all.

I couldn't help but shoot an impressed glance her way as I finally hefted the pack up with me. "You've found your footing quickly. You work out or something?"

"... Sure," she answered without answering the question.

She waited for me to join her on the main path, then she pushed off.

And me?

I waited, because I knew what she would do next. And sure enough, she got two steps before she turned, her head practically on autopilot as it twisted toward that mysterious clean path.

I watched her gaze narrow, her cheeks slacken, and a few beads of sweat slide down her temples.

It was enough to make my gut clench. And yeah, it was enough to make me turn my head toward that path too.

Like I'd already said, mysteries abounded on Xandia. Sure, the military had investigated a lot, and these weren't the bad old days of 50 years ago. But there was always more to discover.

And hey, maybe Grace had inadvertently come across yet another curiosity.

Or maybe, I found myself correcting my own thought with quick force as my gaze locked on the side of her face, I'd found a greater curiosity in her.

# Chapter 8

Grace Brown

... I couldn't deny it anymore, could I?

I was... unraveling. Or maybe unraveling was the wrong word. Opening felt better.

I was like a tightly closed box someone had started to pry open.

Every step I took in this place – every breath I inhaled – was bringing me closer to something within myself. Something that had been hidden my entire life, and something that could only come out here, on the soil of Xandia.

By now I was 150 percent sure that Sergeant Mark Sheppard thought I was absolutely insane.

At least he was being nice about it.

At least he was here, too, because who knows what kind of trouble I would've gotten myself into with that priest back there.

Just thinking about it made me clamp my hands on my elbows and try to chase the heat back into my body.

We were back on the carriage, and we'd been traveling in silence for about half an hour.

I was careful not to make any sudden movements.

At least I was fully seated this time. Now the priest wasn't with us – as we'd left him behind at that awful shrine – we'd been able to spread out. I had a seat to myself.

The lady was seated by herself as well, and Mark was positioned alongside Jarrak.

I could tell Mark wasn't thrilled about that.

I could also tell he was presumably using all his training to control his expression, let alone to stop himself from using that very same training to knock Sir Jarrak out.

Jarrak was one thing. That priest had been something else entirely.

I could still remember the moment he'd leaped down from that dark shrine, grabbed me, and sunk his nails into my wrist.

I... I'd felt them pierce the flesh. I'd felt my blood squeezing out, dripping along his fingers, and splattering over my jacket.

I'd been frozen in fear, too terrified to scream, but I'd damn well felt the blood.

Yet when Mark had pulled my sleeve up, there'd been nothing.

... Dammit, there was no going back from this, was there?

I was completely mad now.

I didn't know who the lady was we were traveling with, but she must have had neck muscles to die for, because the entire time, she looked out of the window by the door, never swiveling her gaze to Mark or me.

I could tell she was particularly displeased by my presence. It was in the tilt of her nose and scrunched lips.

If she thought I was any competition for this Sir Jarrak, she had another thing coming.

He was the most arrogant man I'd ever met.

I wanted to tell myself that back on Earth, men like him didn't exist.

But I hardly interacted with the rich hoi polloi, did I?

Still, if I really concentrated and pushed past his snide smile, I appreciated there was something off about his character.

His self-importance and grandiose words almost seemed more like a well-calculated act to keep people off-guard.

... As soon as those thoughts circulated through my mind, I pushed them away.

It wasn't an act. And I hardly had the training to be able to deduct the characters of Xandians.

I just needed to keep to myself, stay seated, and interact with no one.

I could tell Mark was mighty displeased with me walking off the path like that and being attacked by the priest. I could also tell he'd breached some kind of rule when he'd pulled out his gun and pointed it at the man.

I imagined when we were alone, he'd question the hell out of me.

... And what exactly would I say?

The moment my eyes had locked on that path, I'd needed to climb up it. It had reached into me, grabbed hold of something I'd never been aware of, and started to pull it out of me.

Throughout my life, I'd always had impressions – images and senses that didn't make sense and seemingly came from nowhere. But at least back home I'd nominally been able to control them.

Here on Xandia, they were controlling me. And they'd coalesced into a point, becoming impossibly strong when I'd stared up that path.

The carriage hit another pothole, and I was forced to clamp my gloved hands on my knees to keep my balance.

The bulky fabric shifted past the ladders in my stockings, dislodging some of the mud and dried blood.

Mark's gaze flashed toward them.

I stiffened.

He'd promised to patch them up the first chance he got.

But therein lay another problem.

My knees were fine.

I'd discovered that in the carriage ride over here, and it had freaked me the hell out.

Just as I remembered that priest grabbing me and cutting my wrist, I remembered in perfect, excruciating detail when I'd fallen on the road after the attack and hot chunks of rubble had sliced right through my skin.

It wasn't a figment of my imagination. The blood down the outside of my stockings was mine.

The injuries, however, had disappeared.

I longed to tell someone what was going on with me – to touch base with someone who had a firm grip on reality, to get them to tell me if I was really going insane, but it wasn't as if I could open up.

So I just sat there, thoughts becoming more twisted and convoluted as we traveled in silence.

Jarrak seemed lost in his own thoughts. Which was a great thing. I didn't want to get drawn into any more conversations with him.

The more I thought about it, his arrogance and self-importance really did seem like an act. And though I had no reason to assume this, I got the impression that there was a much smarter man sitting underneath. One who knew precisely which buttons to press to get people to do what he wanted.

"It will only be a few more minutes now," Jarrak announced abruptly.

I'd been so lost in my thoughts that I actually jolted at his words.

And that? God, that just brought his attention back to me.

Whenever he dragged his gaze over to me, I felt like I was being put in a prison.

"I apologize for startling you, Miss Grace. I appreciate you must have had such a trying day. I hope tonight will be better."

"Sorry?" Mark said immediately, his voice deep with a note of growling warning.

Jarrak let out a manufactured laugh. He also smiled, and as I watched his face, it was almost as if he programmed each muscle to move in perfect synchronicity. Everything about this man seemed precisely crafted, including the slight lilting laugh he gave Mark. "Do you think I would let such honored guests go without showing them true hospitality?"

Mark's expression softened, though only by a fraction. "We really just need to get back to a base. You can... show me your hospitality later," Mark managed, though I could tell his words were like letting blood from a stone.

"But I must thank my esteemed guest – Miss Grace. No one has given me quite such a nice gift before."

I could tell Mark just stopped himself from rolling his eyes. "Thank you, Sir Jarrak. Perhaps Miss Grace can come back later. For now, we need to return to Earth."

Mark flatly lied. I would never come back to Xandia again.

If I ever got free, my mind pointed out darkly.

There was every chance I would never even leave Xandia in the first place, let alone have the opportunity to come back.

Jarrak slowly swung his gaze over to me, and I could tell it was a timed movement to ensure Mark watched his expression closely.

Jarrak's face lightened as he shifted forward, the mere sight of me warming him, apparently.

He was sitting in precisely the same position he'd been in on the ride over here. He was taking up as much room as he possibly could. It wasn't like Mark was a small man, but he had to sit toward the edge of the seat, his hands rested on his knees to give Jarrak the room to sprawl out.

Now Jarrak twisted and angled himself toward my seat. "As I said before, I'm somewhat of a historian of note around these parts. From your... reaction," he said quietly, "to that sacred shrine, to reward you for my great gift, I will allow you to see more ancient buildings. This would please you, no?"

He had my attention. I knew exactly what he was doing, but that didn't matter. I unavoidably stiffened, my eyes opening.

Before I could say anything, Mark ticked his jaw hard to the side. "Like I said, Sir Jarrak – perhaps some other time. We're on a tight schedule—"

"My own residence in Maglite," Jarrak brought up a hand and tapped the base of his fingers against his chest, his hand sliding off the smooth, detailed, precisely cut fabric of his trim uniform, "has such a shrine in its basement. It is very old. It's built within the catacombs beneath the city."

"... What?" Mark asked. He'd been doing a good job of holding the line and ignoring Jarrak's offers. Until now.

As I watched his cheeks stiffen, I could tell Jarrak's story was sparking his interest.

Jarrak didn't even bother to turn to Mark. "Indeed. My residence is one of the oldest in the city. Parts of it are even older than the Royal palace."

"You've never—" Mark began.

Jarrak dismissively waved a hand at him. "I've never decided to share this with you or the other humans until now. No one's earned my interest as much." Jarrak looked right at me.

I felt like a deer in the headlights. No. Like a target in the crosshairs. I imagined that even if I threw open the door and jumped onto the road, his gaze would track me wherever I went to hide in Xandia.

I could tell Mark was equally drawn on by his interest and his need to control this conversation.

Just before I could wonder if he'd pick his curiosity over me, he sat further back in his seat. He shifted his shoulders, rolling them behind him as if they were sore when in reality all he was doing was taking up more room until his arm shoved against Jarrak's. "Grace will be back in a week. We'll organize it for then."

I thought Mark was a bad liar. Or maybe he was just a bad liar around me. As he smoothed a certain smile over his lips, his expression and delivery were simple and easy and didn't for a second belie the fact this was pure fiction.

In a week, if Mark had his way, I'd be back at home, back at work, and back alone.

Jarrak didn't reply. He kept smiling at me.

I was paying so much attention to him – because my body wouldn't allow me to look away – that I noticed when his gaze flicked down to my arm for just a second.

It was the same wrist that the priest had grasped.

There was a sharp look in his eyes. It was enough that I sat back in my seat and crossed my arms, hiding the sleeve from view.

Unease tumbled through my stomach, as quick and fast as lightning over a grassy plain.

Which was appropriate, because outside, I heard thunder far-off in the distance.

Jarrak glanced up at it. "I fear the weather is setting in. My priest did suggest there would be a storm before he left us." Jarrak smiled as, far up in the distance, there was another clap of thunder.

"What, storm? You sure?" Mark asked, his voice quick, a note of tension infiltrating his tone.

Jarrak flashed his gaze toward him. "Though I have heard it described that you have... what's the word? Meteorological scientists back on Earth to predict your weather patterns, we find the priests and priestesses equally as good if not better. So I can assure you, there will be a storm tonight."

Mark ticked his jaw from left to right, and I watched tension climb his cheeks. "The entire night?"

"Yes, the entire night. Do you find it inconvenient? Ah, yes," Jarrak brought up his hand and clicked his fingers loudly, "the portals won't work when there's too much electrical interference over one of your substations. A shame. You'll have to stay in Xandia just that little bit longer."

Mark did not look pleased. He looked as if he wanted to go outside and scream at the storm.

He settled for resting his hand beside his leg and tapping his stiff fingers on his taut thigh muscle. Which, incidentally, was pretty close to his holstered gun.

I just sat there.

A specific tension rose up my back, tingled along my spine, and sank into the back of my head just as a clap of thunder blasted out overhead.

There was a flash of light close by the carriage, and it shook.

The lady gasped, and Mark jerked his head up.

I didn't move. I'd... known it would come.

And Jarrak?

He didn't move, either. He just kept his gaze locked on me as if he didn't want to miss a thing.

You know that feeling I described before? About how with every step I took into this land, I was walking into a spider's web?

Now I felt as if the spider itself was coming to find me.

The rain started to pour down, thick and hard. It slammed against the roof of the carriage, driving into it like nails from a builder's gun.

I usually liked the rain. Listening to it trail down a pane of glass while I was safely wrapped up warm inside a house was one of my simple pleasures.

Now it felt like a trap, and every single droplet of water a new bar that would hold me in place.

The rest of the trip into the city was a blur.

As we approached the city, my senses sharpened once more, that impending sense of doom wrapping tighter around me like I was a mummy about to be thrown in a tomb.

I was too short to see out of the portal windows that were arranged below the roof of the carriage.

That didn't stop me from tilting my neck on a painful angle as I started to see buildings.

The very first thing we passed was a gate.

This enormous, tall, thick structure that was the first true sign of civilization I'd seen apart from that old shrine.

My stomach wound into a knot as we slowly passed through it. That knot only tightened as I started to see tall three-story buildings.

I couldn't tell what they were made of – it was too dark as the rain pounded down from above. But every now and then, I caught sight of tall lanterns, and the eerie white-yellow glow they cast sent illumination scattering up the side of various houses and taverns.

The light didn't flicker. Though my gut instinct told me it was flame, my eyes betrayed that.

They looked like trapped fireflies or glowing orbs.

The lights were one thing, the feel of the city another.

Though my hearing wasn't usually sharp, I could discern all sorts of things, from carriages shifting past us, to other snuffling babooks. Even to pedestrians somehow braving the rain.

Life, in other words. Civilization. A functioning world other than Earth.

I was seated on the edge of my seat now, my head twisted all the way up, my eyes wide.

Mark cleared his throat. "It's your first rainstorm in Xandia," he said pointedly. "I know they're pretty different to the ones on Earth."

It was completely left of field, and I had to sift through his words to figure out what he truly meant.

We'd told Jarrak I was an esteemed guest.

Meaning, presumably, I, like every other member of the Taskforce, had been trained before I'd come here. So there was no earthly reason for me to stare up at the sides of buildings like I'd never seen them before.

I dragged my teeth over my bottom lip. "Yeah. More intense than most storms I've seen," I muttered as I forced myself to sit back down.

To be fair to me, Mark was hardly controlling his reactions. But rather than staring out at the glimpses of the city outside, I could tell he was itching to stop the carriage, go out, and find someone from the Taskforce.

Our mission here was essentially done, wasn't it?

Ha, look at me referring to it as a mission.

Our accident on the Otherside was almost done.

We were so damn close to getting out of here.

I didn't know where the military base was exactly, but presumably, once the storm was done, it would be over.

... Over.

For the first time in a long time, I let myself hold on to the hope that I really could get out of here.

It saw me relax a smidgen, my hands pulling away from my knees as I leaned back.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jarrak's gaze flick toward me.

It locked on my knees first, then shifted up to my face.

I stiffened.

Though I couldn't explain why my knees were suddenly better and why my wrist had healed seconds after it had been injured, no one else knew, right?

I—

I didn't get a chance to finish that thought.

Mark suddenly jumped to his feet.

"Stop the carriage," he commanded.

"It's raining heavily out there, and we have ladies to think of," Jarrak said sycophantically.

"We just passed a team," Mark said excitedly.

When Jarrak made no move, Mark shifted over to the door, opened it, and yanked his head out into the rain.

I saw the city. But I didn't just see it – I felt it. Rushing all through me, this knowledge that I'd been here before. I'd—

I know I stared at the door agape as Mark judged the speed of the carriage and jumped out.

I immediately felt his lack as he left the carriage.

As if we were tethered together, I found myself pushing up to my feet to follow him.

Before my brain could go through with its crazy plan to jump out of the carriage after him, Jarrak got to his feet.

He shifted in close, angling to grab my wrist – the same wrist the priest had grabbed.

Before he could, the carriage came to a halt.

I could hear someone outside making strange noises.

Jarrak's face stiffened. "We should never have taught the humans how to interact with our beasts," he muttered under his breath.

... I wasn't meant to pick up his words. That thought suddenly struck me. It wasn't the quietness of his mutter.

It was the fact it was in another language.

Terror suddenly gripped me.

My ears had heard a string of strange guttural hisses. My brain had interpreted their meaning.

Before I could freak out completely, Mark's sodden body appeared in the open carriage door again. He looked right at me. He jammed his thumb backward. "Come on, Grace. I found a unit. Show's over."

"Now, now, Sergeant," Jarrak said, his words filled with frayed patience, "you can't really expect a lady to jump out into the cold night, can you? I'm not that odious, am I?"

Mark almost missed the second comment, then I saw his cheeks twitch in a specific way. It told me he hated having to bend over backward to be diplomatic to this man. "Nothing to do with you and your generous hospitality, Sir. I will be telling my superiors about it, mark my words. But we really are on a tight schedule."

"It can't be that tight. You won't be able to leave for your Planet Earth today. You'll have to wait until the storm is over. And if my priest is right, then it will last a whole day."

Even as the rain drove down around him, slid off his forehead, and trickled down his cheeks, I watched Mark blanch. "What? You said it would only last the night—"

"I'd momentarily forgotten my priest's advice. This storm may last more than 24 hours. There is time for you both to explore my shrine. My offer may expire," he added. "If you would like to see the unique structure at the bottom of my residence, please return with me."

Mark didn't even have to think it through this time. "Sorry, Sir. Grace," he flicked me forward with a quick move of his hand, "let's go."

I was on my feet. I was still close enough to Jarrak that I could practically hear his muscles as his neck slid toward me and his gaze locked on the back of my head.

It was as if he was checking to see who I would be loyal to.

Which was foolish.

I'd only just met Jarrak, and I'd only just landed in Xandia. And I would never have loyalty to either.

I shifted over to Mark.

He instantly reached out a hand, and I let him grab mine as he helped me jump out of the carriage.

The rain immediately drenched me.

It was driving down so hard, it was practically monsoonal.

It didn't stop me from seeing the outlines of several soldiers to my left.

The conditions might not have been great, but I could see their faces under their rain hats. And they were human.

They also looked relieved, suggesting news of the accident at the facility had already spread.

I couldn't hide the hope in my eyes as I stared at them.

Mark shifted, clamped a hand on the side of the carriage, and tilted his head up. "Thank you for your assistance, Sir Jarrak. It will be remembered, and you will be rewarded," he said in a quick, practiced tone that suggested he'd made promises like that many times before.

I didn't hear Jarrak's reply if he gave one.

I swore I felt his gaze locked on the back of my neck, though. Which was stupid – I was only just in line of sight of him.

Mark closed the door, shifted around the side of the carriage, made some strange utterances under his tongue, and then patted one of those strange babook creatures on its back before it shifted off eagerly into the rain-drenched streets.

Mark tipped his head back, clamped a hand over his eyes, and sighed. He didn't appear to care that rain splashed into his mouth as he did. He just coughed it out. Then he faced the soldiers again. "Boy am I glad to see you. Where's your superior?"

"Just this way, sir," one of the women said as she jammed a thumb backward toward a tall building behind them.

It kind of looked like a tavern. Or at least that was the impression I got. It was pretty hard to judge what it was from outside.

Mark stayed close by my side, though I could tell he was having to measure his pace as he bounced up the steps and threw open the door.

I'd played fantasy games as a kid, though I'd hardly been an aficionado of the genre.

I couldn't help but feel that this scene was smack bang out of one.

The tavern in a mysterious fantasy city was usually where the hero was given some impossible mission.

I didn't for a second let my imagination get the better of me, and I really doubted Mark would be given some new all-important operation inside.

No. I was a pragmatic woman. And despite the fact I was trying to control my paranoia, it was still getting the better of me. I just couldn't shake the feeling that once we were inside, yet another spanner would be thrown into the works.

Mark opened the door for me, and he had to really lean his arm into it. The thing was large and heavy, and though I was hardly a materials expert, it looked reinforced for some reason.

I walked inside, the three soldiers behind me.

The place kind of looked similar to a pub out of some kind of medieval re-enaction. The building was mostly made out of sturdy wood beams, and there was a large staircase that led up into the top floors. There were tables, chairs, and a bar toward the back.

The decoration, however, was decidedly non-human.

There were strange tapestries on the wall and a mural on the ceiling.

It was the mural that instantly got my attention.

Though I was still in the doorway, I ticked my head back and stared at it.

The painting style wasn't perfect and looked pretty naïve, but that wasn't the point. The sprawling narrative that ran from one side of the ceiling to the other was. It looked like a world being born only to be destroyed.

It—

Mark shifted in close behind me, trying to get past. "Come on, Grace. It's almost over. I promise."

One of the soldiers had walked ahead, and a woman pulled herself up from one of the tables in the corner.

She was wearing army fatigues and had the kind of expression that said nothing would throw her. Except as soon as her gaze locked on Mark, I watched her eyes open in a twitch of fatigue. "Thank God for that. We all thought you were dead."

Mark clamped a hand over his mouth, let his shoulders lower, and shook his head. "Sorry to burst your bubble. But I'm still alive. This is—" he jammed a thumb toward me. He stopped. I doubted it was because he'd suddenly forgotten my name.

Though there were only soldiers nearby us, there were other Xandians in the room.

All eyes were on us.

The woman cleared her throat. "We know. Come sit down, Mark. Things are complicated."

My stomach twitched.

"Colonel Squire?" Mark asked, his voice uneasy. "What—"

She pointed to the seat next to him.

Mark sat.

Squire shifted her gaze to me. "Though you are a civilian," she said as quietly as she could, "you better come sit too."

I did as I was told, sitting next to Mark.

Mark had been hiding his emotions the entire time since we'd arrived in Xandia.

I could tell all he wanted to do was figure out what had happened at the facility, and yet he'd managed to park that fear and uncertainty and look after me.

Now I watched his cheeks twitch and become pale, the skin around his eyes drawing thin. "... How bad is it?"

"There were thankfully few fatalities, and most of them were out on the street. We got off remarkably lightly for an explosion like that," Squire admitted quickly with a relieved sigh.

Mark's shoulders receded, but only by a touch. His gaze ticked up and locked on Squire sharply. "What the hell happened?"

"We don't know."

"Surely it's under investigation. James—" Mark began, his breath catching in his chest.

"Major Smith is fine. Or at least he was the last time we managed to make contact."

Mark frowned. He jammed a thumb up. "You didn't call? Are we having trouble opening even small portals for radio signals?"

Though most of his conversation was going over my head, I could appreciate one thing. Mark was misreading Squire's expression.

The woman looked like she would never be thrown by anything, but I could see the tension around her eyes. It marked her dark knuckles as she kept her hand planted on the table in front of them. "We haven't been able to establish even a communication portal for five hours. It has nothing to do with the storm." Her voice dropped so low, you would've had to be as close as Mark and me to hear it.

Mark blanched. "What?"

"We don't know what caused that explosion, we don't know what it did, and the last we heard, they're still trying to figure it out. We managed to receive some communications after the explosion – enough to confirm what happened and enough for James to warn us it was likely a random portal had opened up and sucked you in. That was it. Since then, all traffic has been cut off."

Mark reeled.

I'd never seen him this surprised. And despite the fact I'd really only met the man today, I appreciated this was significant.

I didn't say a word. I just sat there, my hands clamped in my lap, my nails pressing hard into my palms.

If I was with it, I'd slacken my grip lest I cut myself.

... But a quiet voice in the back of my head told me that even if I did, it wouldn't matter.

Mark reached up a hand, placed it on the back of his head, and appeared to try to hold on to his emotions. "We have to figure out—"

"It might be something to do with the storm. It might be something to do with the explosion and the storm. We are not sure. Our scientists are working on it. Last we heard from Earth, they'll probably have this sorted in several days at the most. We trained for this. We planned for it," Squire said evenly, every single word measured as she shifted back and patted down her wiry black hair. "It was always predicted we'd face hiccups like this. We've been lucky. Portal traffic has been relatively predictable until now. But this is an inherently complicated situation, and complexity will always lead to unexpected outcomes."

Mark finally dropped his hands.

Suffice to say, working at the bank, I didn't really come across women like Squire. I instantly liked her, though. Sure, it wasn't as if she abounded with warmth, but she had something that more than made up for it. This deep-seated competent efficiency.

It was almost enough that it washed away the horror of that shrine and the carriage ride. But it couldn't quite wash away the content of what she was saying. And somewhere in the back of my head, it clicked.

I would have to stay here for at least another few days.

I watched Mark draw a hand into a fist. "What do we do—" he angled his head toward me, but seemed incapable of finishing his sentence.

Squire looked at me directly. "I'm sure Mark here has already briefed you on the fact that everything you learn here you will have to keep to yourself. Once you're back on Earth, you will have to sign a secrets act. Can I rely on you?"

"Grace Brown," I gave her my name quietly. Then I looked her in the eye and nodded. "I understand," I added, hoping my voice didn't sound too weak, "and you can rely on me."

Squire nodded once. "Good. Now, I hate to have to do this to you, Mark, but change your clothes."

He made a face. "Sorry?"

"There's a dress uniform upstairs that's roughly your size."

"Dress uniform?" Mark looked completely lost.

"Lady Tallet," Squire said simply.

I watched Mark's shoulders practically drop off his back. "You serious?"

"Yes, we are. She expected to see you this morning, and we already heard from the palace that she's been continuously asking where you are. Now we've confirmed you're alive and in one piece, you need to go serve Earth."

I looked at Mark, confused. This wasn't the first time I'd heard Lady Tallet mentioned, and as I watched Mark, I got the impression that he hated his job once more.

He brought up a hand, locked it on his brow, and scratched it, dislodging water from his hair and sending it trickling down his wrists.

It splashed onto the hard, polished wood of the table as he slapped his hand onto it and ground his jaw from left to right. "This is bullshit."

Squire arched an eyebrow. "I'm going to let that slide considering the day you've had. It is what it is, though. Go and change. I take it you lost the pearls?"

Mark didn't even have to answer. He just shot Squire a pointed look.

Squire turned her tongue around in her mouth. "We'll try to find something. We've already sent news ahead to the palace that you're fine and you're coming. Go change, and we'll get transport ready for you."

Mark groaned but stood. He snapped a salute.

It was sharp, it was practiced, and it was given with genuine esteem.

Colonel Squire nodded once.

Mark went to shift away, but he stopped. It was as if he'd just remembered that I was still here.

I offered him a crumpled smile. "Go ahead. I'll be fine."

He shifted around and sat straight back down.

"Sergeant," Squire began pointedly.

"You need to be careful. I had to lie." His voice dropped down.

Squire sat up straighter.

"I... goddamn. Sir Jarrak came across us. I couldn't tell him we'd had a portal accident and it had sucked a civilian through," he made sure his words were as quiet as breaths as he tapped his hand on the table. "We told him Grace was a wealth creator." He winced.

Squire looked at me. "What do you really do?"

"Bank teller. Sorry... the lie was mine. Though it's not really a lie. It's what the bank tells us to say." I knew I sounded like an idiot, and I hated being incompetent around this woman.

She didn't snap at me, though. She appeared to look to the side and calculate things for a few seconds, then she shrugged. "We'll keep up the impression. Now head out."

Mark didn't stand. "Sir Jarrak... mark my words, he'll be back. He," Mark seemed uncomfortable with the concept as he obviously tried to pick his words carefully, "latched onto Grace. You know how he is."

My stomach kicked at the term latched on.

Squire didn't look pleased, but she didn't look thrown either. "We'll keep them separate. Is there anything else you need to tell me?"

Mark looked at me strangely, and I watched as his gaze ticked down to my left wrist. It was only a micro movement, but it was enough that a new wave of fear hit me.

I watched as he shook his head. "Nothing. Okay. Wish me luck," he said in a defeated voice as he stood.

He got two steps away from the table this time before he turned. He looked at me. He went to open his mouth.

I just brought a hand up and waved. "You've come good on your promise, Sergeant." I knew I looked like an idiot, but I couldn't stop myself. "Your mission here is done." Crap, I sounded like a fool.

If Mark noticed, he didn't care. He crumpled his lips into a smile. "Sure. Don't mention it. And—" he went to turn to me.

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

I saw the same expression he'd been shooting me the entire day. The one that said he couldn't quite tear his eyes off me for some reason.

But this time, he managed it. He shook his head and walked off.

I watched him until he was out of sight.

Colonel Squire stood, clamping her hands behind her back. "I'll have one of my officers take you upstairs, find you a change of clothes, and run you a bath. Do you have any significant injuries to speak of?"

"Nothing," I said.

"No scratches or bruises?"

I paused. I thought hard, then shook my head, not looking her in the eye as I said, "Nothing," quietly.

She looked impressed. "You got off lightly." With that, she walked away.

I turned in my seat, my gaze being drawn up to the mural on the ceiling.

It promised destruction.

And so did my beating heart.

Before that morbid feeling could settle in, I found myself turning my head up in the direction of the stairs where Mark had disappeared to.

I wanted to follow him. Because while my heart promised destruction, maybe if I stayed close to Mark he'd come good on his promise.

He'd keep me safe and take me home.

And all I wanted to do was return home.

# Chapter 9

Sergeant Mark Sheppard

Did I want to leave Grace?

No.

Did I think my mission was over with her...? No.

I knew what the answer to that should've been. In theory, everything was fine. Yeah, for some reason the portals were down, but as Squire had said, we'd always prepared for circumstances like this. The last several years of portal travel had been relatively simple and predictable. Back in the bad old days, the portals had come and gone essentially at whim.

If our best scientists thought traffic would resume again in several days, then it would.

All Grace had to do was wait, then she'd get back.

I'd buy her a replacement necklace as soon as I could, I reminded myself as I stood and watched the rainswept lawns, the sunrise sending glimmering streaks of light flickering over the pools of mud in front of me.

I hadn't spent last night at the palace. Heck no. I'd made a brief visit and then been forced to come straight back in the morning.

I hadn't even been able to clap eyes on Grace.

Now I stood and waited under the open veranda just beyond the conservatory doors, my hands clamped behind my back, my shoulders uncomfortably cramped in my slightly too small dress uniform.

Lady Tallet had demanded we have breakfast together.

As always, once I'd arrived at the palace, I'd been asked to wait. The table was being set in the conservatory behind me. I always got jumpy legs whenever I was told to wait, so I'd walked out here.

I now faced the palace gardens.

They were spectacular, even though right now they were solidly drenched.

As I tilted my head up, I realized the storm hadn't passed yet, either. This was just a moment of calm as the clouds amassed again on the horizon.

There was a pond just beyond a grass strip in front of me. Deep, carved, and ornate like everything else in this grand castle. Though the calm waters usually caught my attention whenever I was being forced to wait, my gaze kept ticking up to those clouds.

They seem to promise a heck of a lot more than rain.

Behind me, the palace staff worked to set the table and prepare breakfast.

I heard snippets of conversation. None of them were in English.

Though most of the population in cities like Maglite close to portal substations knew English, they didn't bother to speak it when humans weren't around.

The native language of Xandia was an exceedingly complicated one. I'd studied it for five years straight, but I could still only pick up snippets of conversation.

There were very few people competent enough to translate complicated conversations. James was one, but even he couldn't keep track of some of the more esoteric discussions.

Right now, behind me, I could only pick up snippets of what was being said. It was something about some official ceremony to be held in town later this morning.

Just as I turned my head, wondering if it would have anything to do with Lady Tallet and if she would drag me with her to it, I watched the doors to the conservatory open.

The lady herself walked in.

Was she beautiful?

Of course she was. By human standards, she was stunning.

Xandian skin was much clearer than most humans'. And with those smatterings of spots and pale eyes, it was fair enough to say that Xandians looked like creatures out of some crafted and beautifully painted fantasy scene.

Lady Tallet didn't just have a pretty face, though. She had the most elaborate clothes you could imagine. Each one looked like a piece of art. Move over Queen Victoria – Tallet looked as if she wore a jewelry box wherever she went. Pearls dripped off her neck. Every set I'd ever given her. And considering that was about 10 so far, it was a surprise she could keep her neck up.

As soon as she saw me, her face opened with obvious fondness, and she instantly brought up a pale white hand and clutched her pearls, her delicate fingers rolling down the strings. She had smatterings of blue spots over the back of her hands that she usually chose to hide with gloves.

She was getting more comfortable displaying them around me for some reason. No one had told me what it meant, but considering this was Xandia, everything meant something.

I instantly bowed. Going through the motions, I placed a hand on my stomach and one by my left knee, ensuring I remained bent for precisely 10 seconds.

You had to time your bows based on who it was directed to. To a lower nobility like Sir Jarrak – you could comfortably get away with five seconds. To someone like Lady Tallet, you practically had to stare at your navel for the rest of your life.

"Please, Mark, please. Not around me. Stand." She shooed me up with two waves of her hands.

I nodded.

She looked at me hopefully.

My mouth twisted to the side. "I apologize, Lady Tallet. Unfortunately the pearls I bought you were lost. They will be replaced, however."

"Mark, don't be silly. You've brought me so many wonderful presents. I couldn't imagine another. Now please sit. Breakfast is prepared. I've asked our cooks to prepare all of your favorites," she added with another hopeful smile.

For the first time, a genuine grin chased across my lips. Like I'd said, Xandian food was a heck of a lot better than Earth's. I didn't know what it was – something in the soil maybe, or the fact that the fruits and vegetables hadn't been overbred.

It got my stomach grumbling.

She ushered me forward with another cursory bow, and I shifted toward the table.

The massive conservatory doors were open, and they led to the covered veranda beyond. So there was more than enough visibility for me to see somebody walking through the grounds. They were in a long dark robe.

I instantly recognized them as a priest. Even from here I didn't need to see that glimmering blue streak down their chin.

I stiffened.

Tallet saw where I was looking, and she pushed up onto her toe and angled her head beside me. "Oh, yes, a priest." She nodded in deference. "He's here for the ceremony later this morning."

My stomach clenched for some reason, and my back straightened.

Priests nominally looked like each other. I mean, they all wore such large robes, apart from their chins and their occasionally exposed hands, there were no differentiating features. So why did I get the impression that as that man strode across the grounds, I knew precisely who he was?

"Is everything okay, Mark, I mean Sergeant Sheppard?" she stammered.

It was tradition to always have a title when you were speaking to a dignitary in Xandia.

It wasn't like I was a dignitary, and I was usually at pains to point that out to Tallet. Now I didn't bother. I just let my eyes narrow. "He looks like the priest who was traveling with Sir Jarrak," I muttered, though I should've kept it to myself.

"You have remarkable eyesight," Tallet said in an impressed tone. "It is Sir Jarrak's priest."

I snapped my gaze toward her.

She looked confused, and she pressed a finger forward. "I heard that he assisted you with transport last night. You were very lucky indeed to meet his priest."

I made a face. While I'd been traveling with Jarrak, he'd referred to the priest as his, even though I was relatively certain even a nobleman couldn't lay stake to a priest or priestess.

"His priest?" I emphasized the word his.

"Sir Jarrak indeed has a unique relationship with this man. This priest has pledged himself to Jarrak's aid."

"... That can happen?"

"Indeed. When a priest is impressed by the light of someone's soul, they can attach themselves and assist with that person's destiny." She clamped her hands behind her back and watched the priest until he was out of sight. Then she ticked her beautiful wide eyes up to me. "The food is on the table, Sergeant Sheppard." She reached a hand toward it.

"Yeah," I said, categorically the first time I'd said a casual yeah to a member of the Royal family, let alone Lady Tallet. But I wasn't in the mood to pull myself up. "What's the ceremony today?"

"I will attend. You're welcome to come with me," she said excitedly.

Though I usually measured my interactions with Tallet, I nodded once firmly. "I'd be delighted to."

I let her lead me back to the table, but just before I sat, I tilted my head over my shoulder and stared in the direction where that priest had disappeared to.

I got that impression. The one that sank through my gut, the one that bottomed out through my stomach. And the one that told me my mission with Grace wasn't over.

It was just beginning.

# Chapter 10

Grace Brown

I'd slept.

Badly.

The bed had been thankfully soft, though there hadn't been a pillow and I'd had to bunch up my army jacket to manufacture one.

The pillow hadn't been the problem.

The dreams had. Flashes. Blasts. One after another. Glimpses of Xandia, places I'd never been, cities, palaces, shrines, and mountains. Cold snowcapped mountains permanently enshrouded in cloud.

As I sat at one of the tavern tables, considering the ration pack Squire had given me, I kept to myself, my mouth pressed so tightly shut, it was a wonder I didn't lose my lips from blood loss.

I didn't want to get in anyone's way, and I could tell that Squire and the other soldiers who stayed here were frantically busy.

I just hoped it meant the portal system was back up again. The sinking feeling in my heart told me that wasn't the truth.

Though Squire had offered me to have a freshly cooked meal from this place, I'd insisted on rations. I'd already walked on Xandian soil. I'd already breathed its air. Eating its food would be a step too far. Eat its food, and I was certain I would start to become it.

I didn't taste the meal bar I was eating. Either it didn't have a taste, or my mind was too twisted to try to discern a flavor.

I'd overheard a conversation between two soldiers, and though Mark had returned last night, he'd already gone out again to see Lady Tallet.

I thought my life back on Earth had been busy. I appreciated that for someone like Mark, there was never any downtime over here. He must really be loyal to his cause to have to put up with this much work.

I had no real idea what Colonel Squire wanted to do with me, but I could tell she didn't want me to make a scene.

Presumably she'd just keep me in this tavern for the next several days until the portal finally opened and she could get rid of me. So I kept to myself as I sat quietly, and more than anything, I kept hold of my emotions. But it was hard, so goddamn hard.

The dreams last night had been more than intense. They'd beaten through me in a way I'd never experienced before, feeling like I'd pushed coals into my mind and they'd burned right down through my body to my core.

All of them – all my damn dreams had centered around that path up into the mountains.

... It was calling me. That fact was no longer deniable.

But more than that?

That priest. He'd haunted my nightmares last night. I'd seen his hooded face, that strike of light traveling over his chin – and I'd watched it twist to the side as his grim, stiff white lips had finally appeared underneath the edge of his hood and he'd smiled.

Just put it out of your damn head, I tried to tell myself as I picked up my meal bar, breaking off a portion with the tips of my fingers and rolling it around as if I was a kid who didn't know how to eat politely.

One good thing about being in this tavern and under the constant watch of soldiers was I wasn't too far away from the center of action.

There were two men sitting at the table behind me, between me and the door as if they thought I'd actually make a run for it and wanted to spend another second out there in the rest of Xandia.

Though they were technically watching me, most of their attention was held for their conversation.

"I've never heard of it. Just another damn superstitious holiday to add to the ever-growing pocketbook of dumb ass rules about this place," one of the soldiers said gruffly as he took a drink from a steaming mug.

"Keep your damn voice down," his friend chastised him in a quick, low voice.

"There are no Xandians around. Just us."

The men were speaking in low tones, and though their table was close-ish, I got the impression they didn't think I could hear.

I could hear perfectly, though.

Just another problem to add to my growing list of woes.

Was I still freaking out about the fact my injuries had healed?

Absolutely. They had all disappeared. Every cut, every scratch, every gash, every bruise. All of it gone.

There wasn't a mark on me. It looked as if I was in perfect health. And maybe I was. I usually had stomach troubles, yet I was eating this bland, awful meal just fine.

I suffered from allergies and asthma, too. It had taken until I'd gotten to this tavern to realize that all the time I'd trekked with Mark, I hadn't coughed or wheezed once.

Something... was happening. I couldn't deny it anymore.

Whatever it was, I swore it assisted me hearing these men's muttered conversation, despite the fact an ordinary person wouldn't be able to pick it up.

"What the hell is this one about, anyway?" the churlish soldier continued.

The other guy rolled his eyes, clearly unhappy at the tone of the conversation, but too tired to drag his friend up on it again. "I don't know. Something to do with the return of the sun."

"The sun gets up every morning and goes dark every night. What the hell is there to celebrate?"

"Come on, Josh, you've been warned once. Squire hates it when you keep picking holes in Xandian culture. We're not here to judge them—"

Josh snorted. "We're just here to take what we need."

My stomach twisted.

Back on Earth, of course I'd known of the mineralogical importance of Xandia. It was touted in the press. Yet it was meant to be a side note to what was primarily a diplomatic and scientific exploration of another world.

Now I was here on Xandia, I realized how skewed that picture had been.

Everything I'd heard so far was about getting Earth's hands on more resources. It wasn't about cultural exchange – and these two men were making that apparent.

And... that made me bitter.

Don't get me wrong. My entire life I'd been trying to stay away from Xandia, and I certainly didn't have a bone in my body that wanted to defend it. But the thought that these people were just being economically abused by a power greater than them made my hand curl into a fist.

It was a slight movement, a slow one, too, as my fingers dragged over the polished wood of the table and pressed hard into my palm.

This was wrong, a voice inside told me.

And someone had to stop it.

Before it was too late.

Xandia shouldn't be plundered. And its resources would be nothing but poison if they were taken back to Earth.

... It took me a few seconds until that thought settled in.

Poison?

"Look, I don't really know the content of the ceremony today; I just know that it's important. Important enough that a lot of dignitaries will be there, including Lady Tallet and a few other Maglite nobles."

Josh snorted. "Well then, we will have to put on a good show. Wouldn't want Lady Tallet to think anything less of us humans. Then again, showing her human manners," his voice twisted in an odious way, "ain't really up to us, is it? You hear Sheppard came back late last night?" Josh sniggered.

My other hand curled into a fist. Was it out of jealousy?

I don't really know. The tone of this conversation was getting to me in a way I'd never experienced before.

Was I a particularly violent soul?

Absolutely not. I was the kind of person who would run in the opposite direction from trouble, not toward it gnashing my teeth.

I had never once broken up a fight on Earth. I sure as hell hadn't started one. But as these men continued to converse, all I wanted to do was tip the damn table over and scream at them.

"Hold up," Josh's friend said. "Squire is coming. Keep your damn mouth shut. She's warned you before."

"What the hell is she going to do? The portal is closed. Plus, there are too few of us trained soldiers who can put up with Xandia for any length of time. She's not going to kick me off the squad. She's just going to give me another empty warning."

There was heavy footfall down the stairs, and Squire appeared in clean, pressed fatigues. Her wiry hair was pulled back into a tight bun at the base of her neck, though a few strands had already worked their way free.

She grabbed them and shoved them behind her ears with the kind of determined force I imagined marked every single one of her moves. She gazed toward Josh and his friend for half a second before repositioning her attention on me.

Ordinary people didn't reposition their attention – but you needed a new vocabulary when it came to Squire.

She stopped in front of my table. "How are you going?"

It was a direct question, and maybe it lacked emotional warmth, but it made up for it by giving you the impression that if you had a problem, she'd solve it for you on the spot.

I shrugged. "Fine, I guess?"

I could hear that Josh and his friend had stopped talking, and for some reason, I could tell from the specific scrunch of the fabric of their fatigues and the creak of their muscles that they'd turned to look at me.

... I'd never had hearing like this, nor impressions as strong. I didn't let that derail me as I continued to stare at Squire and she assessed me with a half frown. "Did you sleep?"

I scrunched my lips together and forced a nod.

"Your head says yes but your expression says no. Which is it?"

Around Mark, I felt I could lie and hide my feelings. Around Squire, I got the impression she knew more about me than I did.

"... Not really, I guess. There was a lot on my mind," I tried to explain.

"That there would be. You probably want to know what happens today. You stay here," she said smoothly.

I nodded eagerly.

"It would be safest to keep you off the streets. We can't afford to have any untrained assets out there. Not today."

I twisted my lips into a frown. "Why? What happens today?"

She shot me the kind of look that told me I didn't need to know that information.

I shrugged. "Sorry. Jarrak mentioned something to do with some kind of ceremony," I added before I'd even realized what I'd done.

Jarrak hadn't mentioned anything. I'd heard it off the two men behind me.

I didn't usually lie. I usually wasn't this frazzled, though.

Squire didn't look happy, but she shrugged. "Yes, there is a ceremony today. Just another solar festival."

"Will anyone come to the tavern?" I asked quickly.

"No. It'll be out in the town square. This place will be quiet. We'll be thin on the ground, though. We need to make our presence felt at the ceremony, but I'll keep two soldiers here with you." She cast her gaze around the room and quickly locked it on the two men behind me. "Josh and Matthew here will do."

"Come on, sir," Josh said in a drawl. "I'd rather be out there—"

"If that's a poor taste joke about to come out of your mouth, stow it," Squire snapped.

Josh let out the slightest huff. It was so quiet, an ordinary person wouldn't be able to hear it.

So why the hell could I hear it as clear as day as if it was right behind my head?

"You've gone a bit pale. Are you disappointed you can't come—" Squire began, looking straight at me.

I shook my head quickly. "I'd rather be here, sir."

"You're not in the army. You don't need to call me sir. Good to see we're on the same page, though." Squire went to shift away, then paused, repositioning herself as she shifted lightly on her feet toward Josh and Matthew. "It should be quiet. If anyone comes in, though, don't let them know we've got a guest."

Josh snapped a sloppy salute. How I could tell it was sloppy, considering Squire was right, and I was a civilian, I didn't know. I just got the impression he barely put any muscular tension into it and he was just going through the motions.

Squire didn't pull him up on it and just snapped a goodbye before walking briskly for the door.

It wasn't until it was closed behind her that my stomach started to sink. It continued to sink as I watched more soldiers clamber down the stairs and head out onto the city street beyond.

I shifted around in my seat until the last one was out and the door closed.

That's when I felt Josh's attention on me again. I had my back to him. So how the hell did I know that he was looking at me?

He cleared his throat. "Finish off your meal, civilian. We've got this."

"Thanks," I muttered to myself as I turned and continued to pick at my bar. "I might go upstairs, though—" I began.

"Better to stay with us," Matthew said.

I didn't know if I liked Matthew. He let his friend get away with saying a lot of crap, but at least he seemed the nicer of the two. So I turned around and at least looked him in the eyes as I nodded.

I shifted back to my meal.

I didn't have an appetite. I honestly didn't. It wasn't just the fact this meal bar tasted of nothing. It was like my stomach refused this kind of food, as if it was looking for something purer, cleaner, closer to home.

Those three concepts made no sense. I'd never been a particularly health-conscious eater, though I'd hardly had a junk-food diet, either.

I wasn't somebody who worried about unknown pollutants in their food, either.

But it wasn't those concepts that made me curl a hand into a fist again. It was the fact I wanted to eat something closer to home. And by home? I meant Xandia.

I shook my head, ensuring the move wasn't hard enough that Matthew or Josh could notice as they returned to their conversation.

"Squire has cleaned the building out of everyone but us," Josh commented after a while. "You think she's had another tipoff?"

"Who knows? She's probably just being cautious considering what happened last time."

The skin on my back itched.

"If they just took our kid gloves off, we could crush the separatists in a night. Just let me at them," Josh said in a hard voice.

"It's not that easy to take on insurgencies," Matthew tried.

Josh gave a cruel laugh. "Sure is. Especially when you've got our firepower. The only reason they're getting away with it is that they're hiding behind Xandian rules. If I had my way, we'd clear them out in a day. It wouldn't be too hard to go door-to-door and figure out where people's loyalties lie."

"Will you keep your damn voice down?" Matthew tried again, his voice peaking high with exasperation.

"Why? Squire isn't even here anymore. There are no Xandians around. It's not like that civilian can hear us, either."

I was aware of the fact that Josh jammed his thumb in my direction.

... I could hear them perfectly. I could hear him as if someone had taken a recording, cleaned it up, and played it to me through earbuds.

"Just keep your mouth shut," Matthew tried.

"All I'm saying is we can't afford to be lax. The more we let the separatists get away with, the more they'll try to get away with."

"Which I guess is why Squire is taking most of her forces to the ceremony."

Josh let out a snide laugh. "Perfect opportunity to break into a few Xandian houses and confirm if they belong to the separatists."

There was a significant pause. "You wouldn't really—"

Josh laughed again. "Course not. But at the same time, we can't just stand around and do nothing." As he kept speaking, his voice became progressively harder with tight emotion.

Matthew paused, and I could tell he was sifting through his words. "You could see a counselor—" he tried.

Why did I suddenly feel as if the blood drained from Josh's face?

"You think I need a counselor?" he spat.

"Keep your voice down," Matthew tried again.

"I don't need a goddamn counselor. I need Shane. You haven't lost a friend in one of these attacks yet, Matthew, but it's coming. The more we let them get away with, the more they'll try," he repeated his favorite saying. "There is no reason for us to stand around and be goddamn cannon fodder for these inbred cavemen. We know what we want; we should just go out and take it. There's no point in diplomacy."

My entire body was primed to listen into the conversation. Not just the words being said, though, but the way they were being said.

I couldn't see Josh, but that didn't matter. It was like a replay of his expression was going on in my mind, as if I had eyes in the back of my head.

I could tell precisely how tight his lips were, exactly how much tension ran up his jaw, and how white and pale his cheeks had become.

"Look, Josh," Matthew began.

There was a thump from upstairs.

I thought I was the only one who heard it, but Josh and Matthew suddenly grew quiet.

"What the hell was that?" Matthew asked in a tense tone.

"Everyone's out, aren't they?" Josh asked.

There was another thump.

Both men jumped to their feet.

I became riveted to the spot as fear sliced through me. It was fear unlike any I had ever felt. Wait. I had felt it before. It was precisely the same terror that had risen within me when I'd stared at the facility just before the second explosion.

Once more I felt as if my irrepressible destiny was reaching up to pull me further into this labyrinth of hell.

I pushed to my feet, my limbs shaking in horror.

"You sit back down, ma'am. You check it out," Josh said to Matthew.

Matthew shifted lightly over to the stairs and took them quickly.

"It's probably nothing," Josh said, either for my benefit or his as he sat back down. This time I could see him with my real eyes, and I could appreciate his back was stiff.

His hand rested on his gun.

"Couldn't it just be one of the Xandians who owns this establishment?" I tried, my voice nothing more than hope as I desperately attempted to tell myself nothing was going on.

Josh didn't even bother to switch his gaze over to me. "They work in shifts. They should be gone by now. It's probably—"

There was a much louder thump this time, and I could pick up a gasp of air.

I didn't know if Josh did too, but he jumped back onto his feet.

He pulled out his gun.

"What's—" I asked, voice shaking.

"Don't speak," Josh said in a low, controlled growl.

I stood, one hand propped against the table, my fingers becoming white with cold fear.

There wasn't another gasp. But I swore I could hear footfall. Low and quiet.

There was a creak on top of the stairs.

I jerked my head up.

And I saw Matthew.

"Jesus Christ, you scared the hell out of me—" Josh began.

Matthew was dead.

Someone was holding him, a hand around the back of his neck, their grip so strong that they had him propped up as if he was standing.

With a satisfied breath of air, Matthew's assailant let him go.

Matthew tumbled down the stairs, every thump of his body like a nail being driven into a coffin.

Josh didn't wait. He started shooting.

I ducked to the side, the sudden sound tearing through me as I clamped a hand on my ear.

I kept an eye open, though, enough to tell Josh's bullets did nothing as his assailant ran for cover beyond the stairwell.

"Dammit," Josh roared just as Matthew's still body tumbled to the base of the stairs.

He fell close by me. I saw his sightless eyes.

There was a crackle of something sparking along his skin. I discerned it for a single instant before it sank into the floorboards and disappeared.

There were fingernail marks – deep gashes in his throat. Red welts of blood slicked down them. But I doubted that had been what had killed him.

No – it had been that blue crackle.

I—

"Get down," Josh bellowed. "Run for cover," he added as he pushed toward the stairs, his gun out, his fingers steady and locked around the trigger and butt.

There were more thumps from upstairs.

Josh hesitated, then threw himself up them.

"No," I screamed out to him. "It'll kill you—"

There was nothing I could do to stop Josh. By the time my scream cracked out of my lips, he'd already reached the top of the stairs.

I stood, riveted to the spot, tears streaking my cheeks, fear gouging a hole in my heart.

I took a staggering step back just as I heard a thump.

That was it. Just a single thump. No screams, no shots, no nothing. And just as I'd known John's expression even when I hadn't been able to see him, I now knew he was dead.

I took a jolting step back. Then another.

I turned, and I ran.

I reached the door just as I heard something hissing on top of the stairs behind me.

I wrenched the door open, and I threw myself out.

That would be when something wrapped an arm around my middle and a hand over my mouth.

"Sorry, Miss Grace, but it's time."

I had no chance.

There was something tickling along the man's fingers, and in a few short seconds, it robbed me of my consciousness.

I had the time for one last thought.

Mark had promised me he'd take me back home.

But to do that, he'd now have to tear this world apart to find me. And Xandia?

It was about to rise up.

The end of Oblivion Gate Episode One. Oblivion Gate Episode Two is currently available.

Odette C. Bell has written over 100 books. For free series starters, serials, and news, check out www.odettecbell.com.

