Page 88 of Trial of Thorns
She nods somberly. I grip her behind her neck gently and kiss her cheek before marching back toward the summit. I flick my hand and turn her into a black owl with blue eyes this time. That will help a little at least.
Maybe in a few days, if she does a god job of following my rules, I’ll reward her with being a raven again.
Because if she dies out here...
I’ll lose the last good thing I have left.
Rev
The sun has set bythe time I wake, darkness hanging over the trees. I groan as I stir, although the pain is nowhere near as fierce as it had been.
A small fire burns, Ty and Caelynn sitting beside it, warming their hands.
“It’s colder than it should be, isn’t it?” I ask.
Ty jumps at my voice. “Welcome back,” he says with a smile. “And yes. We’ve got a theory about that, though.”
“Oh?” I ask, not daring to let my eyes move toward the female fae with him. I could like Tyadin. I’d like to pretend she’s not here, though. That would make my life a lot easier.
“This isn’t the Winding Mountain range,” she says simply.
“You can’t see it now,” Ty says, “but the desert can’t even be seen from here.”
My eyebrows pinch together. “How?”
“We’re thinking some dimensional magic. They want us to traverse the entire fae lands so some points must skip hundreds of miles, while we only walk a few.”
I bite my lip. That sounds complicated.
“There was a clue on the horizon. I remember seeing southwest. What else?”
“The Black Gates.”
“The real Black Gates?” I ask.
Ty nods. “We think so.”
