Contents ( 41)
- CAST OF CHARACTERS
- ACT ONE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- ACT TWO
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- ACT THREE
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- ALSO BY NAFIZA AZAD
She finds a stream nearby to slake her thirst and washes the mud off her face. The pixie looks at her curiously, so Croi shows her the face she has been hiding under the veil. Tinder flies up and pats her cheek.
“Did someone hurt you?” she asks.
Croi smiles, her first smile in a very long while. “Yeah,” she replies. “Someone did.”
The hours pass swiftly and soon the sun is sinking. Croi gets ready; she doesn’t know if she can give her magick to the pixie, but she will try. As soon as it is dark, she brings her hands up, and the green magick in her pools in her cupped palms.
“Are you ready?” Croi asks the pixie. Tinder looks nervous but nods. Croi asks her to raise her palms, and she transfers her magick to the pixie. Tinder gasps and hurriedly casts the spell. Soon Croi feels a slice of the night enveloping her; the darkness becomes tangible. The cloak is slight, but it covers both Croi and Tinder. It also has a voluminous hood. Croi scoops Tinder up and places her on her shoulder under the cloak. She takes a deep breath.
The portal shimmers in the night, a liquid gold curtain veiling the secrets of a different world. Croi takes a look around the forest, trying to see if it still feels like home. It doesn’t. The darkness obscures trees she doesn’t know in a part of the forest she is unfamiliar with.
“Hold your breath,” she whispers to the pixie.
Run straight. Run through. Run true.
Croi, hidden in the cloak, starts running. She tears through the night and approaches the portal. As she passes the Roods, the hood of the cloak falls, revealing her head. The Roods screech, extending their hands to stop her, but it is too late. They are left with the disintegrating cloak. Croi is through the portal and into the Otherworld.
ACT TWO
THIRTEEN
A MOUNTAIN, SO TALL ITS peak brushes the sky, is the first thing Croi sees when she emerges into the Otherworld. In the next second, fear, irrational and sudden, swallows her in one rapid gulp.
A beast slumbers in the depths of these mountains. If he awakens, we will die.
Panic nips at Croi’s feet. In response, she turns to flee, back through the portal, back into the arms of the Wilde Forest, ruled by the need to survive. But when she turns around, she discovers that the portal has disappeared. She stands alone on a narrow, dark road. Behind her is the mountain with the beast in its belly, and in front of her is a forest, full of seemingly hostile shadows. The skies above are full of stars Croi doesn’t recognize, and the air is tainted by a stink whose origins she doesn’t dare to investigate. Fear squeezes her heart tightly, and she squats down, trying to make herself smaller and less of a target.