laughed while handing me the reins.
“Take good care of my daughter, Phaedra,” he said, patting the horse’s shoulder, and then he turned away from us.
Finn emerged from the crowd riding a dappled gray horse, a riderless black horse following on his heels. Dad headed toward them. The black horse’s ears flicked forward, and it made a happy-sounding noise, like it was glad to see my dad. From the way my dad smiled and rubbed its nose, I guessed he was glad to see it, too. He looked completely at ease as he climbed gracefully into the saddle. I, on the other hand, found myself squirming to find a comfortable position. Phaedra snorted and stomped her foot, which I interpreted to mean “stop fidgeting.” I put one hand on the saddle to steady myself and did my best to hold still.
We must have been among the last to arrive. No sooner had we all mounted up than the caravan started forward, a pair of Knights leading the way to an oversized doorway in the gatehouse. A handful of uniformed border patrolmen guarded the doorway, but they were more concerned with not letting any unauthorized creatures of Faerie come into Avalon than with paying attention to who went out. (Which was how the Knights who’d attacked Finn a few weeks ago had managed to escape without the slightest repercussions or even an investigation.)
I took a deep breath as Phaedra danced impatiently beneath me, waiting for her turn to join the procession.
It took a while. The prince apparently had to be in the absolute center of everything, so there were a handful of Knights telling everyone when they could and couldn’t move. I couldn’t help noticing that even though we were supposed to be under the prince’s protection, we were directed almost to the very back of the procession, with only one Knight and a baggage wagon behind us.
I saw from the tightening around my dad’s mouth that it was exactly the insult I thought it was, though he didn’t protest. I remembered him saying that the prince’s men were going to be more focused on defending Henry than on defending me, and I was glad that I had both Keane and Ethan with me.
Finally, it was our turn to move. Ethan rode up beside me, giving me a jaunty salute, while Keane and Kimber slipped in front and my dad and Finn took up the rear. I was well protected. But that didn’t stop my hands from sweating as Phaedra bore me ever closer to the door that gaped open.
“Be sure you focus on Faerie when we get to the end of the passageway,” my father called to me from behind.
My power as a Faeriewalker meant that when I looked out over the border of Avalon, I could see what was known as the Glimmerglass, a blurry double image of the mortal world and Faerie, superimposed upon each other. If I focused my gaze on the mortal world, then when we reached the end of the passageway through the gatehouse, I would see nothing but a brick wall, which I wouldn’t be able to pass through. I’d have to make sure not to let my fear blind me to Faerie.
When we entered the passageway, my hands were not only sweating, they were shaking. I was about to leave everything that was normal and familiar behind, and enter a world where magic reigned supreme. A world where at least one Faerie Queen wanted me dead, and where creatures who haunted mortals’ nightmares lived. I wanted to turn around and gallop the other way.
Okay, so maybe if I went through with this and made friendly with Titania, I would no longer be in any danger from the Seelie Court. That would be great, but it was only a maybe. And I still had to get there, which didn’t seem like any sure thing to me.
Staring ahead, I saw the wall that marked the border between Avalon and the mortal world. It was slightly indistinct, but I couldn’t make out the image of Faerie that I knew was there, too. With another deep breath, I tried to relax and let my eyes lose focus, searching for the second image in the Glimmerglass.
For a moment, I feared my nerves were going to get the best of me and my subconscious was going to refuse to let me see anything past the mortal world. But then my stomach gave a familiar sickening lurch as my vision blurred and things seemed to move within the bricks. I swallowed hard, hoping I wasn’t going to puke, and tried to focus my gaze on the movement behind the bricks as Phaedra carried me ever closer. I wondered what would happen if I couldn’t get my gaze focused on Faerie in time. Would Phaedra go through the wall? And would I then find myself dumped to the floor, trapped on this side?
The added worries about humiliating myself didn’t help. Blood clamored in my ears, and I had to remind myself to breathe every once in a while. I kept my gaze as unfocused as possible, letting the images blur until I could make out vague shapes behind the bricks, rather than just movement. The shapes resolved themselves into figures, the members of the caravan who had already passed over the border and into Faerie. I picked out one figure, a Knight on an imposing black horse, and stared at him until I could see him clearly, the brick wall now nothing but a faint afterimage making him look almost like he had scales.
I managed it in the nick of time. The moment I was finally able to focus on something that was purely Faerie, Phaedra stepped through where the wall in the mortal world had been.
Chapter Six
There was a part of me that expected the transition from Avalon to Faerie to be dramatic and flashy, that thought it should be like going through the looking glass into a world that was completely foreign and unfamiliar. This despite the fact that with my Faeriewalker’s vision, I’d had numerous glimpses into Faerie already and knew it wasn’t a world of giant toadstools and beanstalks. When I’d dared the disorientation of looking through the Glimmerglass, I’d seen what looked like untold miles of forest. Trees, trees, and more trees. Which, if you think about it, really isn’t that unusual a sight, unless you’d never been outside a city before.
I held my breath as Phaedra crossed the border into Faerie, waiting for the thunderclap, or whatever, and I was almost disappointed when nothing particularly out of the ordinary happened. There was a broad dirt road leading away from the gate, but it curved out of sight within a hundred yards or so. The prince and his entourage were already making their way down that road.
I forced myself to start breathing again, looking all around me in search of something to give me the immediate evidence that we weren’t in Kansas anymore, but there was no yellow brick road, no lollipop trees, no monsters from out of my nightmares. The trees were a little odd in that I could identify almost none of them. Not that I’m a naturalist or anything, but I could usually recognize your basic pines, maples, and oaks. I spied a couple of oak trees, but aside from that, they were all mystery trees, which made the forest suddenly look a lot more foreign. Still, if I didn’t look too closely, I could almost fool myself into believing we were riding down a nature trail somewhere back in the U.S.
“You were expecting more fanfare?” Ethan asked, grinning at me. He looked like he was having fun, although there was still that hint of sadness in his eyes that reminded me how much he had changed. As if the Erlking’s mark on his face wasn’t reminder enough.
I shrugged a bit sheepishly. “I don’t know what I was expecting,” I admitted.
“Something more exotic, I presume. I know that’s what I was expecting the first time I came to Faerie. But it’s really a fairly normal place—except where it’s not.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Yeah, normal. I’m sure.” Never mind that I hadn’t seen anything outlandish yet. I was sure that would come.
“
“Fantastic.” Phaedra snorted and tossed her head, the movement startling me enough that I almost fell off. I patted the side of her neck uneasily. “Take it easy,” I said. “I didn’t mean to insult your homeland.”
She snorted again, as if to say,
“Phaedra hates me,” I told Ethan in what I hoped was a haughty voice. “I figured it wouldn’t hurt to kiss ass a little in hopes that she won’t dump me on my head.”
Ethan laughed again. I noticed he seemed to have no trouble with his own horse. He rode with a kind of easy confidence I would have envied, if I’d had any desire to become a better horsewoman. He looked fantastic astride that white horse, with his blond hair loose around his shoulders, his comfortably worn jeans clinging to the muscles of his thighs. For the thousandth time, I wondered how I’d managed to catch the eye of someone like him, who
