Eliska woke up first the next morning. She sat up, built up the fire, and watched Marine sleep.

Marine slept soundly considering she’d never slept on the ground before—or never been aware that she was sleeping on the ground.

She lay curled up on her side with one arm folded under her head. Her smudged face relaxed in sleep. She looked angelic like this—almost as angelic as she looked when she cleaned herself up into a stunningly beautiful princess.

Eliska took that moment of silence to truly marvel at what and who Marine was. No one in the Black Watch would ever have believed it if they didn’t see Marine change with their own eyes.

Eliska didn’t want to take Marine back to them.

Eliska didn’t have to wonder how Yann and Anríq would both react to seeing Marine like that—all happy and bubbling with fun and excitement and glowing with magnificent beauty.

Eliska didn’t even really feel jealous at the thought of Yann and Anríq liking Marine better. Any guy would jump at the chance at her attention.

No guy in his right mind would look sideways at Eliska as long as Marine was around. No one had to explain that to Eliska. She understood the world well enough to expect that.

She wouldn’t have resented either of the boys for liking Marine better. That wasn’t the reason Eliska wanted to delay going back to them.

She didn’t want to share Marine with anyone. Eliska might be the only person alive who knew what Marine was really like when she wasn’t out of her mind in the Dark Layers.

Eliska wanted to keep Marine to herself for as long as possible. Eliska didn’t want to take Marine out of this Island. Eliska didn’t want Marine to go back to being a raving mad woman snarling and hissing at unseen forces.

The thought of losing Marine hurt worse than anything. Eliska finally made friends with someone. Marine liked and admired Eliska as much as Eliska liked and admired Marine. Eliska couldn’t lose that—not after everything she’d already gone through.

Eliska didn’t even really want Marine to wake up this morning. Eliska didn’t want to face the moment when the two girls had to leave this Island.

She would rather preserve Marine like this—happy and contented despite her circumstances.

Marine did wake up eventually. She sat up, frowned at her surroundings until she remembered where she was, and then grinned when she saw Eliska sitting there.

“What’s for breakfast?” Marine joked.

Eliska had to laugh. “Chocolate truffles with a side of quadruple-layer chocolate cake.”

“Now you’re speaking my language.” Marine looked around again. “I guess we don’t have anything else to do but leave.”

“I guess not,” Eliska murmured.

“How do we find our way back to the Watch?”

“How should I know? I already told you I can’t find them on my own. What’s your master plan?”

“Combine our magic.”

“How?” Eliska asked.

“How would you look for them if you were by yourself?”

Eliska opened her palm and projected her miniature version of the Coil. It revolved there while Layers collapsed and others expanded.

She scrolled through a few different Layers trying to find…well…anything.

“What are you looking for?” Marine asked. “You said you wouldn’t be able to find the Watchmen.”

“I was trying to find some of the Islands we visited before. Some of them might still be intact. If I can find them, I might be able to trace the Watch back to the last place we saw them.”

Marine extended her hand and placed it an inch below Eliska’s. A rush of heat flooded through Eliska’s hand as Marine radiated her magic into the Coil projection.

It blew up to three times the size. Eliska could see tiny landscapes in some of the Layers along with Islands of towns, cities, and settlements, but she couldn’t see any people.

She gasped out loud. “How are you doing this?!”

“I’ve never done it before,” Marine replied. “I’ve never met anyone who can create something like this.”

The image of the Coil revolved to its other side, and in a second, golden lines started to trace their way between Layers.

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They threaded back and forth, up and down, from one Layer to another. Some of the lines broke off in certain places and reformed in others.

“Ooo, look!” Marine pointed her other hand at a Layer billowing with fire. “The lines all separate there. That must be the snow Island where we lost track of the Watch.”

“This shows three different lines going off in different directions,” Eliska pointed out. “So the Watch might not be together.”

“You don’t know that. Wesh or Anríq or both of them could have gone off somewhere else to do something. The Watch could still all be together in one place.”

Eliska frowned at the projection. The more magic Marine added to the image, the bigger and more distinct its Layers became.

“All of the lines seem to be traveling through stable Islands,” Eliska pointed out. “That’s good.”

“Not this one.” Marine pointed to one particular line. “This one is going into the Dark Layers. I wonder why.”

Eliska got ready to shut her hand. She didn’t want to find out about the Watchmen going into the Dark Layers. “This is getting us nowhere….”

“Wait!” Marine grabbed her wrist and forced Eliska’s fingers open. “Look! They’re coming together again! These two are rejoining!”

Eliska stared as the lines converged. “They’re in a different Island. We have to go there and find them…..”

“Wait a minute!” Marine pointed to another Layer. “That’s us.”

“Yeah?” Eliska asked. “We already know where we are.”

“Look at it. It looks different from here.”

Eliska opened her mouth to say that it didn’t look any different from here. The miniature version of the landscape looked the same.

The scorched planes, the Dark river, the enormous wolves, and the not-white White Spire in the distance—they all looked the same.

The rest of the Layer surrounding this Island didn’t look the same, though. The vapors moved the same way with shadows morphing, taking shape, dissolving, and reforming between clouds of dark color.

Different random images of people, landscapes, buildings, and animals formed in the Layer, but they didn’t come together to form Islands. She also didn’t see any Darklings. The shadows didn’t form Darklings.

“Oh, my God!” Eliska breathed. “It’s an illusion Layer!”

“Then all of this….” Marine’s gaze skated over the woods and the horizon beyond. The White Spire framed the skyline in the distance. “This is all an illusion, too.”

“That explains why we couldn’t get near that city,” Eliska pointed out.

“It doesn’t explain why the Voyant is using so many defenses to stop us from getting near the spire.”

“It could explain….” Eliska broke off, gasped, and her eyes popped. “Marine! Do you realize what this means?!”

Marine frowned at her. “What do you mean? What does it mean?”

“It means we don’t have to go near the tower! It means we can find out what he’s doing without triggering any of his defenses! It means we can use the illusion Layer to spy on him right inside his spire!” Eliska clapped her hands. “This is perfect!”

Marine furrowed her brow. “Are you sure? Wouldn’t the Voyant have defenses against that, too?”

“He might not that this illusion Layer is showing us the Island with the White Spire in it. The Layer could be showing us something from a completely different Island. We might not be in an Island at all. We could be completely trapped in an illusion.”

“Then why are the other defenses still working?”

“Because the illusion shows us exactly what’s happening in the other Island!” Eliska grabbed Marine’s arm. “Come on! This is great! We’re going to find out what he’s doing and how to stop him.”

She pulled Marine back into the woods out of sight of the spire—not that it made any difference.

Marine dragged her heels. “I don’t know about this,” she murmured when Eliska finally returned to the spot where they camped the night before.

“Just help me,” Eliska told her. “We’ll combine our magic and manipulate the illusion. Understand?”

“No,” Marine replied.

Eliska laughed. She was too happy about this discovery to care about much else.

“What do you want me to do?” Marine asked.

“Give me your hands.”

Marine placed both her hands in Eliska’s. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Nope,” Eliska replied. “I’m making this up as I go along.”

Marine rolled her eyes and smirked. “You’re as bad as I am.”

“Here we go. Send your magic into me and we’ll use it to morph the Layer.”

“Morph it to what?”

“To get ourselves close enough to the spire to see inside it. The Voyant should be….”

A flash of brilliant light cut her off. It blinded her for a second.

She forgot to hold onto Marine. Eliska raised one hand in front of her face to shield her eyes from the glare.

The flash burst a dozen yards to her left. It appeared in the trees—and then her blood ran cold when she saw an old man with long white hair and a long white robe standing there.

Light radiated all around him. It lit him up as bright as the sun, but his cold black eyes glittered with menace.

He didn’t wear a handlebar mustache like Wesh’s. His clean-shaven face showed a hard, compressed mouth tightened with fury. The muscle of his jaw clenched and his eyebrows came together in a deadly scowl.

Eliska didn’t recognize him, but the power coming from him blasted across the clearing and drained her of all hope.

She would definitely remember if she ever met a wizard as powerful as this. This had to be the Voyant.

He didn’t do anything but appear to them. Marine and Eliska both whirled around to confront him. Eliska raised her staff and Marine raised her hands to attack him.

At that moment, the whole landscape around them vanished along with the Voyant himself. The woods, the river, the wolves, the spire—the landscape didn’t crumble or implode or collapse like a normal Layer. It just….wasn’t there anymore.

It changed to a massive vortex of multiple Layers all colliding and churning together.

Eliska and Marine still stood on some solid surface, but everything else solid around them evaporated in a blink.

Entire landscapes revolved through multiple Layers and came close to crushing the two girls before the Layers wheeled off somewhere into the chaos.

Eliska and Marine moved closer together and grabbed onto each other.

“We need to get onto one of these Islands!” Eliska yelled over the noise.

“What about that one?” Marine pointed at a bunch of mountains shrouded in clouds.

“That looks good. Let’s go!”

Eliska pulled her forward and both girls burst into a run to get to the Island before it rotated off somewhere else.

Eliska launched herself off whatever surface the two girls had been standing on. She and Marine soared through the vortex, but at that moment, another Layer whipped across them and smacked them down into a completely different Layer.

The two girls burst through and landed on an ice sheet with no visible landscape features at all.

Freezing wind slammed into Eliska from the side. “Hold onto me!” she bellowed. “I’m going to shatter the Layer to get us out of here!”

Marine yelled something back, but Eliska couldn’t make out the words. The wind shrieked in her ears and numbed her lips and nose. The girls couldn’t survive here.

End of Chapter 51