Chapter 3 A PORTAL TO THE FAE REALM

AVELINE

I stand between two twisted oaks, staring into a patch of empty twilight air and wondering how many different varieties of fool a girl can be before the universe finally takes pity and strikes her down.

My father’s yellowed map is crumpled in my left fist. I have smoothed and refolded it so many times tonight that the paper is tearing along its worn creases.

Three paces east of the split oak.

I glare at the trunk beside me. It is undeniably split, its dark bark weeping sap like old blood. Whether it is the correct split oak in a forest of ten thousand trees is a question I am terrified to answer.

I take three solemn paces east.

Nothing happens. The air remains stubborn, cold, and entirely empty.

I close my eyes, dragging the damp, moss-scented air into my lungs.

Twelve hours.

For twelve terrifying hours, my sister has been trapped in a sleep so deep it looks like death.

I tried everything my frantic mind could conjure. I screamed her name until my voice rasped raw. I shook her shoulders. I splashed cold well-water on her face. I rubbed pungent lavender and dried pennyroyal beneath her nose. I slapped her cheeks until my own hands burned. Nothing worked. I held Papa’s pungent smelling salts beneath her nose until my own eyes watered. I even forced a drop of his waking elixir between her pale lips, a potion so foul I nearly gagged merely unstopping the crystal vial.

Nothing.

In my desperation, I even sat beside her small, still form on our bed, shaking violently as I flipped through the dark velvet book. But the parchment was utterly blank, the burning embers of text had vanished, as if the tome had consumed its own words the moment Cora butchered them. Even if there had been spells left, I was too terrified to chant them and make things worse.

So I did the only thing I could think of. I carried Cora to our house, laid her softly beneath her thickest quilt, kissed her forehead, and locked the front door tight.

Leaving her locked in our little bedroom felt like tearing off my own skin. Every protective instinct begged me to sit by her bedside, holding her small hand until morning. But staring at her peaceful, unmoving face wouldn't bring her back to me.

And then, through the panic, a memory surfaced, a ghost of Papa’s voice from a time when the world was bright and whole.

“If you are ever desperate enough to seek a bargain beyond the veil, Aveline, remember one truth,” he had told me, brushing dust from his apron. I had been ten, giggling because I thought it was just another one of his splendid, impossible fairy tales. “Never ask a Fae for a gift without knowing what piece of your soul you are willing to leave on their altar.”

I didn't understand him then. I do now.

The old tales all agree on one thing: the Fae do not know mercy, only transactions. A favor for a favor. A secret for a secret. A life for a life. And if you are careless with your words, they will twist your desires into a cage and lock you inside it.

But Cora doesn't have time for my caution. I don't know how long her heart will keep beating. I don't know what wicked enchantment is draining her warmth.

So here I am. Standing in a haunted wood at midnight, holding a dead man’s map and praying that my father was not telling tales.

I unfold the parchment once more under the faint moonlight. A small circle is drawn in fading black ink, and beside it, Papa’s neat, sweeping hand:

The gate reveals itself only when the forest falls quiet.

I lift my head. The woods around me are silent. Not the gentle quiet of a sleeping village, but an unnatural, breath-holding stillness. No night-crickets chirping. No owls calling from the canopy. Not even the whisper of wind through the autumn leaves.

I swallow hard, the sound loud in my own ears.

“All right,” I whisper, my voice trembling slightly. “If anyone is watching... I am here.”

Silence answers. I feel utterly absurd.

I look at my father’s faded parchment and follow his scribbled notes. I kneel in the damp earth, tracing three circles into the dirt with a piece of rowan wood. I press my palm flat against the center and speak the words he wrote: "Open to the dreamers, yield to the desperate."

Nothing happens.

The wind just sighs through the canopy above, dropping a yellowed leaf onto my arm.

“I am not asking for a miracle. I am asking for an entrance.”

Nothing.

Panic twines around my ribs. Perhaps this is pure madness. Perhaps I should run back to the shop, lock the doors, and hold Cora’s hand until the end comes.

No. Cora is all I have. I’ve lost my parents, I can’t lose her too.

"No, no, no," I choke out, my eyes stinging with hot tears as panic claws at my throat. "Please!" I slam my hands onto the cold soil again. "Open!"

Only the hollow silence of the forest answers me. Discouragement hits me like a blow to the chest. It was just a story. A tragic, stupid fairy tale, and I left my sister alone in an empty house to chase shadows in the dark…

A cold hum against my side makes me freeze.

Inside the leather satchel slung across my shoulder, a sudden, familiar warmth flares. Trembling, I reach inside and pull out the spellbook. The midnight-velvet cover is pulsing, leaking a soft, crimson light through the dark woods.

I stare at it, petrified. My breath catches in my lungs. But I am too desperate to retreat.

"Help me," I whisper, clutching the book to my chest, my voice cracking. "Please... help me save her."

Nothing moves. I wipe a stray tear from my cheek, feeling utterly defeated. I am weeping to a book in the middle of a dark wood.

“She is my only family,” I whisper to the dark. “Please.”

Click.

I freeze.

The heavy cover of the book lifts an inch into the air, as if moved by an invisible hand.

My breath catches in my throat. The heavy parchment pages begin to turn. Slowly at first, flip, flip, flip, and then faster, a frantic rustle of paper that sounds like the wings of a hundred trapped birds.

With a sharp, echoing thwack, the book slams open to a single, motionless page and lands on the ground.

I crouch in the dirt, my chest heaving, staring at the open volume.

After Cora read the spells and collapsed, all the words disappeared from the book. But right now, a single passage of silver script glows softly against the dark parchment. It is written in the same jagged, impossible runes Cora tried to read, runes that should be utterly alien to me.

And yet, as I stare at the glowing ink, the cold air leaves my lungs. I don't know the tongue. But my mind fills with the strange, ringing cadence of the words. I know exactly how they are meant to sound.

A shiver cascades down my spine, cold as starlight.

No. I shake my head violently. This magic already cursed Cora. If I speak these words, it might curse me next. It might tear me apart.

Then I see Cora’s pale face in my mind’s eye.

I take a shallow breath and whisper the first syllable.

The forest instantly shifts. The air temperature drops so violently my breath turns to a plume of white frost. The shadows between the oak trees stretch and warp like spilled ink.

My heart thumps wildly against my ribs, but I do not stop. I read the second line, the jagged words rolling off my tongue like smooth river stones.

I speak the final word.

For three terrifying seconds, the universe stands completely still.

Then, with the sound of tearing velvet, the air between the split oaks rips open.

I stumble backward into the dirt, letting out a sharp gasp.

A vertical seam of blinding silver light splits the air, widening, stretching, tearing the fabric of the dark apart. Where there was once only trunk and shadow, a massive, arching gateway now stands.

My mind recoils, refusing to comprehend the sheer, impossible scale of it.

It worked. A portal. A real, breathing gateway into another world.

The portal hums with a dark, intoxicating pull. Terrified, my feet refuse to move. The unknown stretches out beyond that swirling threshold, dark and hungry.

For Cora, I remind myself, closing my eyes tightly. You are all she has.

I stand up, clutch the spellbook tightly against my ribs, take a lungful of cold night air, and plunge forward into the light.

The instant I cross the silver line, the ground beneath me vanishes entirely.

I scream, the sound swallowed by a sudden, rushing void of darkness. I plummet through nothingness, tumbling through air cold enough to freeze the blood in my veins, until…

CRASH.

I hit stone hard, the impact knocking every last drop of air from my lungs. The violent wind vanishes instantly, replaced by a eerie, heavy stillness.

I stumble forward, catching my balance before I tumble down a grand flight of obsidian stairs. Gasping for air, I look up, and the breath completely leaves my lungs.

I am no longer in the woods.

Above me, a sky of bruised purple hangs heavy, dusted with two pale, glowing moons. And looming directly before me, carving a brutal silhouette against the twilight, is a giant, sprawling castle built of black stone and jagged spires.