Page 126 of The Beast King's Bride

But then I think of Talen and my heart misses a beat.

He doesn’t want you there.

No, he sent me away to keep me safe.

What a ruse. And I fell for it.

If you go back, you’ll need to shed your blood. The curse will want your death, Ash.

I don’t care. This… all this, the quiet life with Pete, the tending of the orchard and the vegetable patch, it isn’t a life. This is the dream, a shadow. My real life is over there, with Talen. Only with him I felt alive. I know that now. I can accept it because I’m going back.

Somehow.

All the horses and provisions and weapons in the world are useless without knowing where and how to cross over.

Meanwhile, time is pressing. How much is left? I have no way to calculate exactly how fast time passes here compared to there. I think days. A few days of which we have already wasted three getting ready for the journey and asking around how to cross, something that hasn’t earned us any favors with the townspeople.

The way they stare at me should scare me. It reminds me of those Fae townspeople who pelted Talen with rocks as he tried to help them. No human in their right mind wants to take a plunge into the pool of nightmares.

Except for me.

Not willing to wait any longer, not getting anything more out of the suspicious people of Kyrene, I decide that we should ride and ask along the way. I have a vague idea of where I came through after Embar left me in the human world, though my thoughts had been all jumbled up and I hadn’t cared to look and mark the way.

But even if I find the lake, or the well, will the gate be open? Can just anybody cross on any random day?

Poe flies over us as we ride, swooping down sometimes to feast on some dead rodent or dog. Just in case Talen is looking through his eyes, I want to ask him to open the gate for us—but what if the Empress is looking, too, like last time?

So I keep my mouth shut and we ride, skirting towns and villages under the big blue sky. I think we’re going in the right direction, but who can tell?

At night, we stop at an inn on the road, tie our horses, and head inside to get a room, or at least a corner to curl up and rest. It’s a filthy place, raucous and too full of travelers passing through. The long tables and benches inside are full, the innkeeper bustling between them, carrying trays with food and ale.

“Well,” Pete says, sitting down with a weary sigh at the end of one of the tables, “let’s look at the bright side. Plenty of people here to ask how to cross over.”

“And have them lynch us on the spot.”

“Yeah, that wouldn’t be ideal. Not before eating something, anyway. Innkeeper! Ale and stew!”

“It’s not funny, Pete. Time is quickly running out.”

“If it hasn’t run out already.”

“Don’t say that. My arithmetic is shaky but I think we can still make it—if we cross by tomorrow.”

“That implies knowing where to cross.”

I turn the ring on my finger and nod. He’s right. We’re cutting it very close, but who might know? I’ll interrogate the innkeeper later but—

“She kicked me out of her bed, that stingy whore,” a man is saying, his voice rising, “but that’s not the point.”

“The point is you didn’t pay her and deserved that kick in your fat ass,” someone else says and they laugh, pounding their fists on the table—our table, making it shake.

“My coin wasn’t good enough for her,” the man protests, and I listen with half an ear as he spins his yarn. “Her hut was out in the meadow, far from town. So there I am, stumbling around in the dark of night, still lacing my shirt, when it happened.”

Pete grins and rolls his eyes toward the man, a big, beer-bellied fellow with scant hair on his head and a bushy beard.

“What?” I mutter.

“You could ask him,” he whispers. “A man with life experience. I bet he knows where to cross.”

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