“I hate to interrupt.” Vel sat down beside them, scratching the patches of stubble that splotched his face. “But it’s time.”

She looked up. There in the wood stood a large rectangle of stone. It was like a cliff face, or the first incline of a mountain, except that there was no mountain behind it. It reminded Scratch of a shelf of quartz from a quarry, or a slab of dough. The beginning of something, be it tiling or bread. She rose slowly, drawn to the thing, her hands reaching before she could stop them.

“Ah, ah.” Brella grabbed her wrist. “Together.”

“Everything all right?” Vel pulled James to his side. “We’re all comfortable with traitors and traps?”

“When we get through,” Scratch asked tentatively, “what will we find?”

“Frances, hopefully,” Brella said, eyes on the gate. Wordlessly, she handed Scratch the knife she had dropped. “We’ll have to figure it out from there.”

Scratch fingered the hilt, slipping the blade into her silken sheath. “Okay.”

“How do we . . .”

“Both hands.” Brella’s voice was steady and soothing. “Both hands on the gate and close your eyes.”

They lined up, all four of them, palms flat on the stone. Scratch closed her eyes and lowered her head, and—

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The stars are bright as blazes here, and they’ve left the sky.

“Sweets,” she tells you. “They’re called Sweets.” She blows gently and one lands on your face. “They’re magic.” They’re blue and mesmerizing, little orbs of something pulsing and warm. And they’re bright, bright, bright, making constellations in three dimensions, gods forming and re-forming. Gods are everywhere here; the air tastes of them.

“Eat this,” she says. It’s a foxfire fungus pulled from the ground, bioluminescent and powdery, depositing shimmering spores on your fingers, your clothes, your mouth and hers—and when you kiss, it’s an explosion, like a hand on your wrist and your back at once, like you’ve never been held before.

“Kiss me,” she demands, and you do, because there could be nothing better. She tastes like, well, like a mouth, but the best one. You tell her. She laughs at you in every color.

“There will be a door,” she says, and she points somewhere. “When we’re ready, there will be a door.” You don’t worry about it right now because you’re not ready, because you haven’t even slipped your small and sweet bodies into the water that flows here, lapping up on a grassy shore, kiss after kiss after kiss.

You can see her how she sees you, and it’s startling.

“You’re wrong,” you tell her.

“About?” she asks, her moonlight mouth pouting and her hot ember eyes so open.

“Me,” you say. “I can see it.”