Page 81 of The Blood Queen

Weak and staggering, I stand. It’s still night, but the acrid stench of burning is gone, the sky as clear and deep blue as Beira’s skin. There are no tents, no people. A field, empty except for a few trees. In the distance, where the town of Forres burned, nothing there but trees as well. A flicker of movement—is that the stags we left behind?

“Alyth!”

My heart stops. I thought I was going to die—to never see him again. I feared maybe he already had. But now, out of nowhere, Samson rushes me, his bloody sword crashing to the ground as he throws his arms around me, but he stops as soon as he notices the hiss of pain that escapes my lips. His eyes go immediately to the blood on my arm, and he blanches.

“Potions,” he says, fumbling for the bag with the bottles he stole from the fae realm. Before I have time to process any of this, he’s thrust an unstoppered bottle into my hands. As soon as the golden liquid touches my mouth, I feel my wound closing, the aches disappearing.

“You too,” I whisper, noting the various cuts and red marks that will bruise, the way he’s standing off-center, as if he’s hurt a leg or his back.

He looks as if he’s about to refuse but then grins wryly and tosses back a bottle. After, he picks up his sword again and sheathes it.

“What happened?” I ask, still addled. “Where…are we?”

This is still the same landscape as Forres, but it’s not. Just like the fae realm is a mirror to Scotland, similar but not the same. Except I know this isn’t the fae realm either.

It’s some strange in-between place.

“No idea,” Samson says. He’s cheerier now, and I’m glad to see the potion worked on him as quickly as it did on me. He reaches for my hand, grabbing it. “Lots of magic though,” he adds, flinching. “Near blinding me.”

I frown. I can’t see magic the way he does, but I follow his eyes, turning around to see the stone I’d been backed against.

Sueno’s Stone is as sharp as if it had been carved yesterday, every line so vivid and stark that I can see the individual marks of the chisel. It was shaped and set by the Picts, the ancient people of this land.

The ones the Damhan-Allaidh referenced with old magic.

The stone had been worn so much before that it had been nearly impossible to distinguish the shapes on it, and now?

Good as new.

“Impossible,” I mutter.

“The way it’s all glowing?” Samson asks. He doesn’t look directly at the stone, and he’s squinting.

This is the source of all the magic?

But the portal was killed.

I step closer to it.

“Careful,” Samson warns, but when I touch the stone, nothing happens. “Alyth.” Samson’s voice grows more serious. “Something’s happening.”

He tugs on my hand, the blood and mud making his grip slide. I step back just in time to see the stone shifting, the images carved into it moving and morphing, the lines forming the outline of a door.

Now I can see the glowing light. Samson shields his eyes, blinded by it all, but I can still see the rounded archway and the shadowed figures of people. Three people, stepping closer, becoming more real.

Three.

That number has been haunting us, following us around at every major turning point since I was captured. It can’t be a coincidence.

The first to step out is an old woman with snow-white hair, back hunched, a cane in one hand made of knobby wood. Trailing behind her is a woman about my age, followed by a middle-aged woman with thin lips and a fierce countenance.

“Ah, there you are,” the young woman says, giving me a smile that is warm, almost personal.

I glance at Samson, confused.

“They don’t know who we are,” the old woman says.

“They should,” the middle-aged one says. She levels me with a cold glare. “She called to us.”