Page 52 of The Princess of Portals

The Apprentices inside the cages rose slowly, cautiously, to their feet, as though they were afraid that it was all a trick.

Except for Kylie. She burst out of her cage and threw her arms around me. “Savannah.” Her voice was hoarse. “I knew you’d come for us.” She clutched me tightly. “I knew you’d save us.”

“I’m sorry it took me so long to find you.”

She took a step back to shine her smile upon me. “I never stopped believing that you would. The others, they said there’s no escape from this place. They said it’s impossible. But they don’t know you. I do. Savannah Winters always finds a way.”

The spell bombardment stopped. I turned and saw the dome peel open and fade to smoke. The seven Polymages stood there, looking disoriented.

I came to stand beside Capricorn. “What did you do?”

“We freed their minds.”

“How?”

“By returning their memories to them. Fenris erased them so that he could more easily control them.”

“You brought back their memories? How do you bring back something that’s been erased?” I asked.

Scorpio pressed his palms together, putting out the magic sparks sizzling across his skin. “Nothing is ever truly lost. There’s always something: an imprint, a clue, a string to unravel. That’s how we returned their memories to them. It’s a spell we recently learned from the Princess of Portals.”

“The Princess of Portals? She’s one of the Paragons of Magic, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” he replied. “But most people know her by another name: Portia.”

“Portia is the Princess of Portals?” I struggled to fit that revelation into my understanding of the universe. It was a hard fit. “What does that mean? What are the Paragons? What do they do? Where does their magic come from?”

Capricorn set her hand on mine. “Savannah, I know you have a lot of questions, and I will answer them as best I can. But right now, we need to bring these people to safety. That is our top priority.”

“She’s right, Savannah.”

I turned to Seriana. I’d totally forgotten that she was there.

“Ok.” I looked at Capricorn and Scorpio. “Can you make a portal to bring the Apprentices back to Gaia?”

Capricorn drew a large circle in the air. A portal formed in front of us. Ok, I guess she could.

“Apprentices, this way.” Scorpio waved his hand. He stepped through the portal, and the Apprentices followed.

“See you soon, Savannah.” Capricorn fell into step behind the final Apprentice in line.

Seriana stepped up to me, sheathing the sword in her hand. She must have stolen it from one of Fenris’s soldiers.

I looked at Fenris, sitting inside the ring of his fallen guards, hugging his knees. “What do we do with him?”

“We bring him in front of the Court for judgment,” she said coldly.

Suddenly, Fenris was on his feet. He moved with preternatural speed, so fast I hardly knew what was happening. In the split of a second, he threw something into the portal and then pushed us inside.

CHAPTER 5

DISRUPTED

The portal stuttered and groaned, spinning and swirling, tossing me around like a log stuck in an ocean storm. Then everything came to a crashing halt. The portal spat me out. My body smacked against hard pavement.

“Savannah!”

I lifted my head just far enough off the ground to see a blurry shape walking toward me.