“Let’s go,” Xander said, and we all jumped clear of our hiding spot to follow them.

  Overhead, the Shadow ship stopped just behind us.

  “Guys, I think it’s opening,” Kent said.

  “Keep running,” Xander insisted.

  We made it to the portal just as Jalene slid from Dominik’s back. She threw herself against me in a fierce hug that knocked us both a few steps sideways before I caught my balance.

  “Goddess, I was so worried about you guys,” she said, and then quickly let me go to grab Xander’s hand in a tight squeeze. She looked at Kent then away again as we stepped into position for the portal opening.

  “We’re fine,” I told her. “We have the key.”

  She cast a worried glance over her shoulder toward the hovering ship. “Good, because we’re out of time.”

  As she said it, Dominik began calling the portal open in the ancient language. A breeze picked up, chilling me thanks to the cooler air provided by the lack of sunlight penetrating here.

  But I didn’t care.

  The faster the wind swept up, the faster we could get out of here.

  A strange buzzing sound came from the ship behind us. I twisted to look as a side door slid open. A dark figure appeared in the opening.

  “Oh shit,” Kent said.

  He stepped closer to Jalene and slid his hand into hers. She whirled on him, eyes wide. “For the portal,” he said to her.

  She didn’t argue and instead slid her hand into mine. I joined my other one with Xander and he and Kent circled around to grab fistfuls of Dominik’s fur.

  “There will be more coming by now,” Xander warned us.

  “Where are we going next?” Jalene asked over the whirring of the wind.

  We all stared at each other for a moment, and I tried to think of somewhere safe to tell them.

  “In my other dreams, the woman I saw stood in front of mountains,” Kent said, yelling now to be heard. “Red clay and brown packed dirt in every direction.”

  “I know the place,” Dominik said.

  Relieved, I kept my face down as my hair whipped around me. The wind reached its peak, and I looked up at the narrow tree as it bent and swayed before us. Just before it disappeared, I caught a glimpse of something black and thick flying towards us through the jungle leaves.

  Then the portal opened, and we were sucked away.

  Chapter Eleven

  Year: Reign of Tharos 5

  Planet: Pterrada

  System: Ursuna

  The jungle was gone. In its place was an endless open terrain in varying shades of reds and oranges. In the distance, mountains rose, the same color as the dry-packed dirt where I now stood. The space between here and there was dry and vast—and smoky. The only tree in sight was the one we had travelled through. It was hardly even a tree; dead and blackened and burnt looking, its branches gnarled and broken. Not a single leaf grew anywhere.

  My nose wrinkled at the smell of smoke laced with burnt wood. My throat burned with every inhale, the smoke clogging my airways.

  Jalene coughed, and when I looked over to check on her, I saw that Xander was showing her how to lift the collar of her shirt to cover her mouth. I did the same and then turned to Kent.

  He looked a little green beside me, but he hadn’t vomited. I gestured for him to use his shirt as a covering for his face, but he didn’t seem nearly as put off by the smoke as he was with the nausea.

  “Everyone okay?” Xander asked in a rough voice. “Kent?”

  “I’ll live,” he said, alternating now between bending over and leaning back to stare at the sky.

  “Jay?” Xander asked.

  She nodded.

  “I’m good,” I said, then looked over at Dom who’d been quiet through the portal transition. “What are the chances we lost them?” I asked.

  “They can’t follow us,” he assured me.

  I was trying hard to ignore the tightness in my stomach at how close that had been. “Right, but can they figure out where we went?”

  “Not from the portal but…” Dominik exchanged a look with Xander.

  “They have a presence here,” Xander finished ominously.

  I didn’t ask what he meant. The evidence of the fires around us made it clear what that presence was. They’d come and conquered this place already, and there was no telling when they’d be back—or if they’d even left in the first place.

  “We have less time here than we had in Girona,” I said.

  Xander nodded.

  Jalene coughed again—the sound scraping along her throat. I glanced at the mountains in the distance with a new sense of worry. We’d left before repacking our supplies—which meant we were out of everything. Food. Water. Clothes.

  All we had was the damned key.

  “Are you sure this was the place you saw in your dream?” I asked Kent.

  “The smoke wasn’t a part of it,” he admitted, staring out over the valley. “But those mountains are right.”

  “I guess they figured hiding the medallion in a place the Shadows already thought they’d destroyed was smarter than trying to outrun them,” Xander said. His gaze was thoughtful but not exactly full of hope.

  “What now?” Jalene asked, her voice croaky.

  “We walk,” Xander said with a sigh.

  “Which way?” I asked, noting the distant mountains in three directions—they all looked the same. To the north, there was nothing as far as I could see through the haze.

  Xander didn’t answer as he and Dominik silently surveyed our options.

  “Let’s pick a direction,” Kent said. “I feel like I’m being watched out here.” He shuddered, and I couldn’t disagree with him.

  The hair on the back of my neck prickled.

  “I don’t see anything but that doesn’t mean they aren’t here,” Jalene said. She glanced at Dominik then back to me. “You guys saw that ship way before we did, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, how did you miss it?” I asked.

  “We didn’t miss it,” she insisted. “It just wasn’t there. Until it was.” She looked a little green now too, and I knew she’d been shaken by how close they’d come to being overtaken.

  “I have a theory about that,” Xander said. “I think that planet used some sort of magic that cloaked them.”

  I frowned, thinking about how the ship had just blinked into view all of a sudden. “The jungle,” I said, and it all made sense. “The animals, I mean. We could hear them but we couldn’t’ see them.”

  He nodded. “I think they were right there the whole time.”

  Now, I shuddered too. “I don’t want to think about all the creepy-crawlies we probably walked past.”

  “Or swam past,” Kent added.

  We shared a horrified look.

  “But then how did you see the Shadow’s ship at all?” Jalene asked. “Especially when we didn’t.”

  “The key,” Dominik said, and I could feel him probing my thoughts to test his theory.

  “We touched it,” I remembered, staring at Xander. “You think that broke the spell?”

  He shrugged. “It makes sense.”

  Dominik did another quick sweep of our surroundings. “Well, it either doesn’t apply on this planet, or we’re alone for the moment. Either way, we should move before that changes.”

  I glanced up at the sky, but there was no sign of any Shadow ships. Still, an uneasy feeling settled in my stomach. Just because we couldn’t see them didn’t mean they couldn’t sense us.

  “We shouldn’t use our glow, either,” I said. “In case they use it to sense us.”

  Xander nodded.

  “What about that key?” Kent asked. “The magic coming off that thing has to be major. Won’t they detect it?”

  “It’s not as much as you think,” I assured him.

  One by one, everyone turned to me. “How do you know?” Jalene asked.

  I hesitated, trying to figure out how to explain something I’d never tried putting into words before. “I don’t really know how to explain it. I guess the magic inside it calls to the magic in me. The stronger the magic doing the calling, the harder it is to keep control of my own. Some of the things I found in that cave had a strong signal but the key…” I shrugged. “It’s very low. I can even ignore it if I want to.”

  “If the magic is so low, how did it make me go all ice-sculpture then?” Kent asked.

  “No idea,” I told him.

  “Maybe it’s you,” Xander said, and Kent immediately opened his mouth to snap a retort. But Xander went on, “I’m not trying to talk shit, man. I touched the key without an issue, remember?” He paused and Kent frowned, obviously thinking back over the experience in the cave.

  “What happened to Kent?” Jalene asked.

  Xander quickly filled her in, but Kent was still frowning over Xander’s theory. “Why would I be the only one it affects?” Kent asked.

  “Duh.” Jalene rolled her eyes and shook her head impatiently. “You’re the one destined to find the medallion, genius. Of course the magic would only affect you. Am I the only one paying attention here?”

  I chuckled at the look on Kent’s face—surprise, irritation, and reluctant agreement. He couldn’t seem to summon the words for a reply.

  “We should go, we’re too exposed here,” said Xander. “We can theorize over the key’s hold on Kent later.”

  Kent scowled and mumbled something.

  “But which way?” I didn’t see any sort of cover for miles.

  Dominik turned to gaze at the mountains on our left. “It’s been years since I’ve visited the bird planet,” he said. “Once, the birds were our friends. Our allies. They were the sacred keepers. But sadly, nothing of what I remember remains except for the mountains themselves.”

  There was pain in his voice, and I wondered if he was thinking of Zorovia, like I was. Was this what it looked like now?

  “We should head toward the closest cliffs to get some cover,” Xander said quietly.

  Dominik grunted an agreement and led the way forward.

  Jalene walked beside him, a hand on his fur in a comforting touch. Kent kept pace behind them, and I could feel his gaze on Jalene. Beside me, Xander reached for my hand and held tight.

  I shot him a smile, glad for the connection.

  While we walked, I let my eyes follow the plumes of rising smoke, glancing up at the sky. The smoke created a thick layer of fog in the air above us, obstructing the sun—or suns.

  We walked for what felt like an hour, my throat and mouth so dry that it hurt to inhale. The ground grew hotter as we went, and I wondered about Dominik’s toughened paws as they ate up the distance steadily.

  My own feet burned too, but for every blister, the magic in me swirled and surged, healing the worst of it as I went—and threatening to do much more than that if I’d only let it. Our slow progress didn’t help. And for every inch my uneasiness grew, so did the magic inside me. By the time we’d made it halfway across the canyon, I was drenched in sweat from the effort of holding my magic at bay.

  “Alina,” Xander said quietly. “Let me carry you.”

  He’d been tense for over a mile now as he’d watched me grow exhausted underneath the weight of it all. But I shook my head. “I can make it,” I said, my voice breaking thanks to my dry throat.

  He sighed but didn’t argue.

  We walked on until a high-pitched, keening call crashed through the silence. I looked up in time to see a huge orange bird swooping in from directly above us.

  I ducked and Xander bent, both of us whirling to watch as it circled back up and around. It made a figure-eight loop, high in the sky, and then it gave a final call and swooped away toward the cliffs. I watched it go until the haze swallowed it up.

  “What the hell was that?” Kent demanded.

  “The birds know we’ve come,” Dominik said.

  “And is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Kent’s voice pitched high with uncertainty.

  Dominik looked from the sky to Kent with wide yellow eyes. “We’ll see.”

  We continued on in silence, the quiet becoming eerie and then heavy. After a while I felt my eyelids drooping as exhaustion finally overtook my remaining energy stores. My throat had gone beyond scratchy to bone dry. Even my pores felt tight with dehydration.

  “We need to rest,” Jalene said.

  Xander’s hand in mine tugged me to a stop. I looked up at him through bleary eyes. He frowned down at me. “Ten minutes,” he said.

  I wasted no time taking a seat right where I was. My entire body sighed in relief.

  Someone grabbed my shoulder and my eyes flew open. Xander hovered over me, his mouth moving as he tried to convey a message. For a moment, the exhaustion won out and none of it made sense. Disoriented, I blinked and tried to focus on the words until they came together in my mind.

  “Alina, get up,” Xander was saying.

  I let him pull me to my feet. The others were already standing restlessly nearby. “How long was I—”

  “We have to go,” Xander interrupted. “Now.”

  I blinked, noticing the tension in the others as they waited for me. Dominik’s ears twitched back and forth. Jalene held a throwing knife in each hand. Kent looked paler than before, and he was nearly pacing with nervous energy.

  “What is it?” I asked, a fresh rush of adrenaline kick-starting my sleepy body.

  “Up there.” Xander pointed toward the sky, and I peered through the gray cloud cover, squinting.

  Just beyond the haze, I could make out something else darkening the sky. A second later, the smoke cleared just enough for me to get a good look, and my body went cold despite the heat all around me. Above the layers of smog, a giant black dome hung motionless and silent.

  I stared up at it, my stomach tightening.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I asked.

  “A Shadow ship,” Xander answered grimly.

  “It’s huge,” Jalene added in a panicked whisper.

  “Probably a base of some kind,” Xander said. “I’ve never seen one this big before.”

  Considering how many missions he’d been on, it didn’t make me feel better to know that.

  “Can they see us?” I asked, staring up at the black mass that hovered high in the sky above us.

  “I don’t know. But chances are they’ll know we’re here soon enough.” Xander sounded grim.

  “Where’s Dominik?” I asked, finally realizing he was missing.

  “He’s scouting ahead to make sure we’re clear to head to the cliffs,” Xander said. “In the meantime, we keep moving.”

  He nudged me forward, and we all headed onward, this time faster.

  The aching in my feet vanished as adrenaline coursed through me now. The clay-packed ground was spotted with patches of glowing embers that stood out against the already blackened path. I avoided those where I could, but Kent led the way straight toward the mountains ahead, embers or not. Burned feet were the least of our worries now.

  Dominik appeared out of the smoke so suddenly, I bit back a scream.

  He kept pace with us as he spoke through labored breaths. “Something’s headed this way about a half mile behind us.”

  “Shadows?” Xander asked sharply.

  My magic rose as if called. I wrenched my hand free of Xander’s, not willing to put the magic away if we were in real danger now.

  “I think so. We need to move faster,” Dominik said.

  I nodded. “I can do it,” I assured Xander before he could voice the question in his eyes.

  “It’ll exhaust us and use up the little water we have left in our bodies,” he said. But then he flicked a glance to Jalene and Kent. “We don’t stop until we reach the cliffs. It’s our best shot of escaping the threat and making it to a water source in time.”

  The others nodded grimly, and we broke into a run.

  Dominik hesitated. “I’ll stay behind you.” He paused then added, “Don’t come back for me.”

  I swallowed hard, but it stuck in my throat. “We’re not leaving you—”

  “I insist, Your Highness,” Dominik said firmly.

  I wanted to argue again, but Xander tugged on my hand, increasing our pace as Dominik turned and ran in the opposite direction. The smoke swallowed him up before I could get a word out.

  “Don’t stop running,” Xander said, and we sprinted for the cliffs.

  I tried not to think about how far away they still were—or how little energy we all had left.

  Kent made a straight path toward the cliffs which meant stepping on the hot coals in our way. My bare feet sizzled and hissed at the rising temperatures, but I gritted my teeth and kept going.

  Jalene cried out, but she didn’t slow.

  Kent stayed close beside her.

  The magic inside me roared to the surface, and I let it come, using it to chase away the exhaustion that threatened to knock my legs right out from under me. Steam rose from my palms as the skin heated well past the temperature of the air.

  Xander shot me a look, but he didn’t tell me to stop it.

  With a sudden burst of energy, I increased my pace, willing my feet to keep moving.

  Finally, we reached the far side of the canyon.

  Directly in front of me, the jagged cliffs rose high into the sky, their smooth surface untouched by the fire. Up close I saw the cliff face wasn’t a sheer wall but made of rocky indentations that formed uneven paths straight up. The reddish tint in them reminded me of Arizona. But even the memory of that felt so far away now.

  I blinked, focusing on the moment—on living through it.

  Xander slowed and shuffled right as he looked for a ledge low enough to jump onto. “Here,” he called, and we all followed quickly.