House of Darken (Secret Keepers #1)(50)

I have to find them.

I couldn’t consider any other possibility. My sanity could not handle another loss.

When we turned down the rose-covered lane, nerves kicked in again and wiped all other thoughts from my mind. Star was half dragging me; my feet were slowing on their own accord apparently.

“I’ll take her from here.” Lexen’s deep voice cracked through some of my nerves and I was able to recover enough to glare at him. “Don’t make me carry you,” he warned, before he reached out and pulled me away from his sister.

My eyes were no doubt wide and panicky as I turned to Star, silently begging her not to leave me. She just shrugged and hurried forward. Traitor.

“I don’t need your help,” I snapped at Lexen, hating the way he made me feel like a burden.

“I’m the only one you should trust to bring you to Overworld safely. But hey, feel free to try and make it on your own if you want.”

I growled at him. Like an actual growl rocked out of my chest. He blinked once, before one corner of his lips lifted slightly, like he was fighting a grin and had lost. Before I could growl at him again, because I was tempted to, a flash of light stole all of my attention and I found myself shuffling closer to the grumpy Daelighter without even thinking about it. The ball of light had been scary enough before I knew it was dangerous to cross. I was even less keen now to step into it.

I reached out and grabbed Lexen’s hand. “You won’t let me die, right? I know you hate humans, and I’m a human, so therefore you must hate me. And when you hate someone you give zero shits about them dying. Sometimes you even wish they would die.” I sucked in a few deep breaths, leaning forward and bracing my free hand on my knee like I was winded.

His strong hand wrapped around mine as he pulled me back up. I tilted my head all the way back to see his face better.

“I won’t let you die, Emma. You’re safe with me.” His voice was a low caress across my senses.

I swallowed hard. “You didn’t say if you hated me or not,” I whispered.

He shook his head, that half-smile back on his face. “Don’t push your luck, little human. Now come on.”

I silently followed, blinking rapidly as the light blinded me. It seemed larger than I remembered – more intense – and as we got closer I noticed details I had missed last time. Understandable … I had been a little shocked and panicked yesterday. Seriously, had it only been a day? Time was doing very strange things at the moment.

Focusing again on the light, I saw it wasn’t actually a huge ball. It appeared to be made up of thousands of thick strings of illumination, all intertwined and meshing together. Strands randomly flicked off from the main group and I let out a gasping shriek when Lexen grabbed my hand and reached out to capture a strand.

“Hold on.”

His warning registered just as I opened my mouth and started screaming. Loud, gulping sounds of panic continued to tear up from my chest and out through my lips. My brain couldn’t quite compute what was happening. It was too far beyond my understanding of travel and physics. Somehow we were being yanked along a string of light, through darkness and light, fire and ice. Lexen’s hand firmly wrapped around mine was the only thing keeping me together.

The end of the string appeared in the distance. We hurtled toward it and I had to close my eyes because it felt a lot like this was the last moment of my life. At the speed we were travelling, there was no way to survive. We would either hurtle off into space, off into the darkness of this wormhole we traveled in, or we would splat against the end. Whatever was at the end.

So eyes closed it was.

I waited. And waited. Finally, when it was clear that I hadn’t squished into a wall, I slowly popped one eye open and looked around. We were no longer in the darkness. We now stood on a well-lit platform, a few feet from another ball of light.

Eyes so wide that I no doubt looked ridiculous, I took a moment to take it all in. Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.

We stood near the center of a huge circular metal platform. Well, it looked like metal – gold and shimmery – with lots of symbols carved across it. The symbols seemed vaguely familiar, but as I ran my gaze across the ones near me, I couldn’t quite place them. They definitely weren’t hieroglyphics or Mayan.

“This is the point where Earth and Overworld intercept,” Lexen explained, distracting me as he pulled me further away from the light. “Our worlds exist parallel to each other, in alternate universes. There are these scattered points where the energy of the two overlap. We use our network to create portals in those spots.”

“That’s why Astoria was the place you first emerged, not because of trade with the north.”

He grinned. “Yeah, trade with the north was not exactly a priority.”

“So … why did you come to Earth at all?”

A beam of light shot out from the ball then and Jero appeared, stepping out gracefully. I figured I wouldn’t get any more answers from Lexen now, but he surprised me when he said, “Daelighters have been crossing to Earth for thousands of years. That network I mentioned, it’s linked to the energy of multiple universes and worlds. Earth is one of the few we are totally compatible with.” He was staring out across the platform now. I didn’t know what he was looking at though, because I was too busy watching him.

“About a hundred and twenty years or so ago, our network started to fail. The energy was disappearing, and our world was on the brink of total annihilation. Without the network, we wouldn’t be able to power our land, or the beings living within it. There was a possibility we would all fade away.” Holy crap, we were getting to the serious part of the story. “It was someone from my house who noticed that every time he opened a transporter there was a surge in the power in the network …” At my blank look he explained. “The balls of light are called transporters.”