She wished she felt some of that same calm. It would do her good now, when her focus was needed.
There was no point in delaying. Every moment she waited was one more where second thoughts threatened her confidence. Taking a deep breath, she dropped through the surface of Toren’s world and into the powerful energy underneath.
It slammed into her, pulling her like a fish caught on a line. Power filled every muscle and bone in her body. Her skin burned as it threatened to explode.
Her first instinct was to control it, to try to hold it within herself. But her body was weak, a vessel poked full of holes ready to burst.
Let it flow through you.
The voice was that of a woman, one Alena had never heard before.
She couldn’t, though. The idea of letting that amount of power flow through her was tantamount to suicide. No living being could endure the onslaught of energy.
Stop fighting!
She wouldn’t. Fighting meant survival, and she wouldn’t surrender.
But she was losing the battle.
Moment by moment, the strength of the gate filled her closer to bursting. For this task, she wasn’t enough.
She searched for the way back but couldn’t find one. Forces beyond comprehension filled her mind. She couldn’t find her ties to Jace or Toren, blinded by the energies surrounding her.
There was nothing she could do.
Except surrender.
Lacking all other options, Alena gave up. She closed her eyes, stopped fighting, and let the current wash over her. Her heart felt as though it would go first, pumping faster than any heart ever had. Every hair on her skin sizzled, thousands of pinpricks of agony stabbing into her.
And then it passed.
She figured she was dead. It was the only explanation for such peace. She opened her eyes, fully expecting to see death’s gate, as she had before.
But she didn’t. She perceived only a milky whiteness. She imagined it like flying through a very thick cloud. Her whole body felt as though it were in motion, although she couldn’t see as much with her eyes.
She wasn’t controlling the flow of power, but had become part of it.
The longer she spent in the space, the further her vision resolved. She reminded herself that none of this was real. It was her mind trying to make sense of a vast power. She floated along the currents, completely at peace. There was a sense of correctness here, of things being exactly the way they should be.
She closed her eyes and relaxed more deeply. Time lost meaning, and she wondered if it even passed in this place.
Eventually, she opened her eyes again. Instead of the fog she’d encountered before, she was greeted with a vast web of connections. She recognized it immediately. This was a soulwalk on a completely different scale. The web stretched forever. The immensity of it defied comprehension. Thousands and thousands of connections. Perhaps all of them.
But some were brighter than others. She counted five.
The gates.
Turning her attention to them was a slow process. Her mind didn’t react with its customary swiftness. Even shifting her attention felt like an effort from a legendary story.
As she studied the gates, two facts became apparent. The first was that they stood outside the web of interconnectedness that bound all living creatures.
But they shared another connection. All five were linked to something else, the heart of the whole web.
What was it?
Even connected to the power of the gate, she perceived the heart as something immense. If the strength of the gates strained her imagination, this broke it completely. It was the source of the gates’ power.
When she understood that connection, Alena also saw the problem, the reason why the Etari gate was failing. Three of the five gates drew immense power from the source. Two of those three shared another bond, providing Alena another clue. Those were the gates Hanns was connected to. She assumed the third was the Lolani queen’s.
They were pulling too much from the source, choking the life from the other two.
But perhaps Alena could fix that.
She looked to the two gates that were more closely connected, then sought the thread which bound them. Like everything in this place, the process seemed to take forever. But her patience was rewarded. She found a single point of light that connected the two gates.
Hanns.
She reached out to him.
In a flash, the scene changed. She was sitting once again in her mother’s kitchen, the smell of freshly baked bread filling her nose. Hanns sat across from her, slack-jawed and open-eyed. He took in the scene in an instant, then fixed his gaze on her. “This should be impossible.”
Alena shrugged. She didn’t fully understand herself. But she had wanted to talk to Hanns, and once she had found him, her mind had shaped the power.
His stare was hard, reminding her that though he didn’t demand formality from her, he was still her emperor. He wasn’t a man others summoned.
Unsure how long this audience would last, Alena skipped the polite formalities. “The Etari gate is dying, and I think I know why.”
It took Hanns a few heartbeats to put everything together. “You’re at their gate, aren’t you? That’s how you did this.”
A hunger came into his eyes, one she hadn’t seen there before.
It frightened her.
But she wouldn’t lie, not unless she saw no other option. She’d learned that lesson the hard way. “I am. And it’s dying. Do you know that all the gates draw from the same source?”
Hanns didn’t react at first, but his gaze never left her face. “Anders I left information which implied as much.”
The confession rocked Alena. She realized that she might understand as much, or more, about the gates as the emperor himself. “Do you know what the source is?”
Again, Hanns didn’t answer immediately. She knew his mind was churning, but to what end she couldn’t guess. “I am not sure. Anders I believed that it might be the planet itself.”
“The planet?” Alena couldn’t figure out how she felt about the idea.
