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the In-Between. He hands an anchor-stone
     to Shane, then Shane grips the fae’s forearm, and they disappear into the light.
    It takes an effort to wrench my gaze away from the shadows the fissure leaves behind,
     but Aren takes my hand and leads me to the blur at the edge of the pond. He presses
     an anchor-stone into my palm. He can fissure to locations he’s memorized without it,
     but if I want to go along with him, I need it. Otherwise, I’d become lost in the In-Between.
    Aren reaches into the pond, opening his own gated-fissure. Before he pulls me into
     it, his hand tightens around mine, and he says, “I’ve missed you, McKenzie.”
    Then he finishes the kiss Brenth interrupted.

THREE

    I ’M BREATHLESS WHEN we step out of the fissure. That’s probably the In-Between’s fault, but I’m blaming
     Aren. He kissed me until his chaos lusters slid into my skin, making me forget everything
     but him. Then, just when the lightning built to a level where I swear I was seconds
     away from losing control, he pulled me into the In-Between.
    The
icy
In-Between.
    Going from hot to cold like that was both divine and torturous.
    As soon as I’m able to stand without swaying, I glare at him. He gives me a maddening
     grin in return.
    My hand is still in his, the anchor-stone still pressed between our palms. The lightning
     darting between our clasped fingers is white in this world, not blue, and it originates
     from me. Even so, it’s as hot and tantalizing as his is on Earth.
    I slip my hand free before the lightning builds further—it’s already difficult enough
     not to press my lips to his again—then scan the cobblestoned area outside Corrist’s
     silver wall. Brenth must have taken Shane back to Vegas because they’re not here.
     No one else is, either, and that makes me uneasy. Two weeks ago, this place was filled
     with fae haggling and making purchases in the shops to my left.
    We call the thirty-foot buffer zone between those shopsand the silver wall a moat even though it’s level with the rest of the city and not
     filled with water. Kyol and the Court fae fissured me to this area hundreds of times
     over the last ten years, but it’s never felt so wrong to stand here. The pale yellow
     stone of the shops facing the silver wall is usually tinted blue at night, but no
     one has lit the orbs topping the streetlights, and I’m pretty sure most of the buildings
     are deserted.
    Deserted by the merchants, at least. Remnants have used the abandoned buildings for
     cover during their attacks. Some of the shops are two or three stories tall, and from
     down here on the ground, there’s no way of knowing if a fae is hiding on a tiled rooftop
     or behind closed curtains.
    “Any later and you would be dead, Jorreb,”
someone shouts in Fae from the silver wall, using Aren’s family name.
    “Then my timing is perfect!”
Aren shouts back, turning his grin on whoever’s watching us from one of the spy holes
     above the lowered portcullis.
    I clench my teeth together. Since the remnants have been launching random attacks
     on the wall, Lena’s issued an order not to wait to identify the fae who step out of
     opening fissures; the guards on the wall are to shoot immediately except at the “safe”
     fissure locations. Those locations change every half hour. Lena and Kyol devised a
     rotating pattern, a code of sorts, that only the people they trust the most know.
    “Let us in,”
Aren says.
    We duck under the rising portcullis. It’s made of pure silver. The metal doesn’t prevent
     fae from using their magic inside the wall—it only prevents them from fissuring in
     or out, or around inside the Inner City and the palace. Necessary of course, to keep
     us safe from attack, but it’s a significant handicap given that the fae are so used
     to being able to appear and disappear at will. Aren looks completely at ease, though,
     when he crosses to the other side.
    Two swordsmen emerge from an opening in the