Page 218 of Bedeviled

There’s a subtle quivering around me, followed by that same sharp stillness, as though it’s waiting.

I roll my lips together, afraid this won’t work. “Long ago there was a woman you helped on this road. You ferried her across Earth, and in return, she gave you items you might enjoy. The last time she passed down your tunnels, she told you a secret. And that secret was that she was pregnant.

“The baby didn’t live. She didn’t live either. An enemy killed her and her child moments after she left.

“But through a strange twist of fate, that woman lives again. And her husband, the father of her child, lives again. They are married. They may have another child.

“Unfortunately, their enemy also still lives, and she was the one who killed the woman I first spoke of. In fact, that enemy recently walked down your tunnels.

“I know all this because I am the woman in the story. It was me who gave you bits of my world. Me who was pregnant.

“Last time I told you a secret, I didn’t survive it. I might not survive it again.”

“I intend to stop Eislyn before she has another chance to kill me, but to do so, I need to get to the Khuno River palace.”

I fall silent, absolutely sure that what I gave the ley line now was less worthy of passage than my hair or the blood I spilled.

But then, ahead of me, the tunnel shudders, then compresses. Placing a hand on Nero, I take a step, my panther following my movements, and it seems as though we’ve leapt across the world.

Which, technically, we have.

I take another step. Again, the tunnels contract.

On my third step, the walls seem to smooth out. To my right is a narrow tear in the ley line. Beyond it I see verdant, familiar trees.

“Ready, Nero?” I whisper.

And then, before the ley line can reconsider its bargain, I pull us through.

CHAPTER 52

My boots squelch as they hit mud, and Nero lands gracefully beside me. Rain dapples my head and shoulders, and from all around us, I hear the familiar sounds of bird and insect calls, and I feel the heavy press of the air.

In my bones, I know where we are. We’ve been here before, done this before. This is some cruel parody of the final act of my last life.

But it all barely registers when a spell hits my back, knocking me to my knees. I hear my protective ward sizzling as it fends off the attack.

The next strike hits Nero. My panther staggers, but when I allow myself to slide down our connection, I find he’s stunned but otherwise fine.

I place a hand on his fur and another on my chest. “Impenetrable armor for our bodies,” I incant in Sarmatian. In my last life when we were ambushed, I was mortally wounded because my wards failed.

I won’t make that mistake again.

Though my magic is slow to flow over us, the spell settles right before two more hits land in quick succession. I hear more of that horrible hissing, but whatever sick spell Eislyn flung our way doesn’t do more than that.

My eyes sweep over the jungle around us. There’re plants and rain and wet earth, but no fairy. But then my eyes snag on the glint of iridescent magic hanging in the air.

She’s enchanted herself from view.

I reach for my magic once more. Sluggishly, it pools in my palm. Nearly spent.

Once enough of it has gathered, I throw a burst of it at the glittering magic.

The enchantment shatters, revealing Eislyn beneath it.

The wound in her stomach is healed, her torn and bloody clothing now mended and clean once more. Her sword is in hand, and Memnon’s blade is tucked at her side.

For a moment, the two of us stare at one another.