Regardless, his fae appearance is as beautiful as ever with the shaggy dark hair and brilliant blue eyes against golden skin. I still can’t fathom why he doesn’t make his human appearance closer to his real one because he’d be able to bag all the chicks he wants.
“Ready?” Carrick asks me before taking one last sip of coffee and setting it on the counter. I turn my phone off, leave it on the counter, and slide off my stool.
Nabbing my backpack, I sling it over my shoulder. “Ready.”
I expect Carrick, Zaid, and Stan to head back toward the elevator. In my mind, we’d have to travel somewhere nearby to access the portal or whatever the hell we’d be going through.
Instead, Stan takes a few steps away from us to stand near the kitchen table. Lifting his arms, he holds his palms facing outward. At first, nothing happens, then I see the air in front of him start to shimmer. The table starts to become a little distorted, as if there is a gossamer film in between it and Stan.
With a sweep of one hand, Stan makes as if to grab the shimmery distortion at the edge and my jaw drops wide open when he pulls it back like drapery. All around the edges of the iridescent curtain he peeled back, I can still see the edge of the kitchen table, the windows overlooking the sound, and the pantry door.
Through the area he peeled back, I can see a different world.
I wasn’t sure what to expect of Faere, but what I didn’t imagine was the vibrancy of colors, which almost hurt my eyes to look at. The doorway steps out onto a gravel path of pearlescent stones, and the grass on either side is a rich, kelly green that shimmers. I get a glance of trees with purple leaves and a teal-colored river in the distance, but that’s all I glimpse as Stan reaches over and grabs my hand.
Before I can protest or understand what’s happening, he pulls me through the opening and we step into Faere.
“What about Carrick?” I jerk frantically away from him and whip around, fearful I’ve just been kidnapped.
But right behind me is the opening into Carrick’s condo, and he steps through it toward us. Zaid is still visible in the background, casually leaning against the kitchen island as he watches.
When Carrick moves to my side, Stan wastes no time in moving toward the opening without even a backward glance at us. He steps through, waves a hand not in farewell but to undo the portal, and the veiled doorway disappears.
I stare at it, stunned. “Did we not need him to escort us through Faere?”
“No,” Carrick replies, hitching his backpack onto both shoulders. “Stan was just to get us in. We’re on our own now.”
I trust Carrick—moderately. I feel safe with him—all the time. But I can’t deny the little bit of fear I have that we are in a strange land full of hateful fae and dangerously weird animals with no apparent way out.
“How do we even know where to go?” I ask, my voice only semi-hysterical.
Carrick chuckles and puts his hands on my shoulders, turning me a mere forty-five degrees to my right.
And there in the distance, not but maybe a quarter-mile away, stands a massive castle made of what appears to be white crystal with silvery adornments. It rises dozens of stories in the air with a large square center structure, battlements on the perimeter, and several round turrets of differing heights with colorful flags flying from the peaks. It even has a moat of the same teal-colored water, which is fed from the river with a drawbridge and portcullis leading to the inner keep.
It might have been beautiful if it had been made of stone and wood, given its medieval-architectural style, but the fact it’s made of silver and crystal is just… gaudy.
I take a few more moments to slowly turn and discover more of this new realm. As expected, the air is cool and refreshing. It smells of spicy florals, and none of the landscape looks remotely like earth.
Sure, there are hills and mountains in the distance. Trees, bushes, flowers. But all the colors are abnormal and bright, many with a faux shimmer to them. Leaves on trees are purple toned, and while the grass is green like in our world, it appears to be coated in a dusting of diamonds that doesn’t make it look at all inviting to walk across in bare feet. The sky isn’t blue, but more of a pale golden color, reminding me of the color of the dress Carrick bought for me for the auction and which I wore to my ill-fated birthday party. There’s no obvious sun nor a single cloud, but the champagne-colored sky seems to add a surreal glow to the whole environment and makes everything sparkle.