“This is an... odd place,” Nales said.

He’d been quiet since spotting the displaced piece of Matteo’s neighborhood. He did that, she noticed. Closed his mouth and watched. Calculated. He rarely acted rashly. The few times he had were—well, there had been extenuating circumstances. Usually, he thought things through.

She liked that about him. Even if it was frustrating to wait at times.

“You mean, Lorka doesn’t look like this?” she teased, mock surprise coloring her tone as she gestured around. “That’s disappointing.”

He snorted.

“He did say he was from a future time. By almost two hundred years, if I remember correctly. With an entirely different system of government. Makes sense things would look different. Hells, even the Raidt changes over that much time.”

Elves, like Fey, were somewhat known for their lack of change. Visible change, anyway. They had long lives and even longer traditions, though Catrin had started to question that latter, as of late. Growing up, it had felt like she was falling in line with those traditions. They’d weighed on her, told her which lines to stay within, how to best live and serve the Raidt.

But Doneil had pointed out a number of things that had her reconsidering how the Raidt, and more specifically the rnari, operated.

Even if she ignored his irreverent criticisms of the current monarchy and its heirs, a lot of what he’d said did ring true. The Raidt had shifted from what it had once been, and the rnari had shifted with it. Both had grown more insular, and more aggressive.

The rnari used to be a benevolent force, its edicts applying to anyone it came into contact with, not just those in the Raidt. Now, they were more like the Raidt’s elite attack dogs.

People feared them.

She hadn’t noticed it much before she’d left the Raidt. Those in the Raidt didn’t fear them, after all. But outside?

Everyone was wary of her.

That had changed at Pemberlin, once people had gotten used to having her around—and, probably, after seeing Treng kick her ass with a sword on the front drive six days a week. And with Nales, she found herself relaxing the cold exterior. It had been different when she’d been guarding Prince Tarris. Then, she’d been as cold and impersonal as a blade.

But then, Nales was as different from Tarris as blood and bile.

Not quite as different as this place was, however.

Some of it was recognizable. The street was a street, even if it was oddly paved and decorated. It was wider than she was used to. In fact, much about this place seemed so much more open than normal. Some businesses were close together, sure, but there was still more space around them than she was used to, and none appeared to have apartments near them.

Where did everyone live? Sure, there were some houses, but not enough to allow a business to survive. At least they were somewhat familiar, though. They’d passed one with wood shingle siding. Worn looking, with pieces missing, but still recognizable. Another appeared to have some variant of plasterwork for its exterior, and its front steps molded from cement. The nearest one, though... Although its exterior appeared to be wood, it felt off. Too perfect. Fake?

The vehicles she could... somewhat understand, too. Most of them had four wheels, though they all looked strange. They felt more like the vehicle Nales had used to get to Pemberlin than a train or carriage, though none possessed the magical power source his did.

What made them move? Wind power, maybe? Or some magic from Matteo’s world that they didn’t have and couldn’t feel? Her woodcraft had dropped out in this space, much like it had when they’d walked onto displaced land from the demon world, but surely she’d notice if there were something magical inside all these vehicles?

Gods. They looked very smooth, too. Apart from a few which had patches of rust, and the varying levels of dirt they carried, they were all incredibly smooth. Especially that glass.

Most distracting to her, however, were all the weird wires in the air.

What were they for? And why did they need so many of them? Why put them out of reach? Why were they going to almost every building she saw? What was in the cannisters that sometimes appeared?

She pointed them out to Nales. “Any idea what those are?”

He glanced up. “Electricity, I think.”

Her brows arched. “Electricity? As in—like lightning?”

“Yes.” His attention slipped over the wires, following one to where it connected to the nearest building. “The goblins were experimenting with it. Kind of like in the carriage I brought to Pemberlin. If you have a power source, you can use copper wire to transport energy from one place to another in the form of electricity. These look... similar to what they were using.”

That would... make sense that the wires would go to most of the buildings—the only places they didn’t, she was now noticing, were sheds or other storage places.

But... “Why would they need energy everywhere?”

“They use it for lighting and heat, mostly,” he said. “My carriage runs on an electric motor, using an Ashton energy crystal for power. Telegraph lines also use electrical current.”

They did?

He glanced at her. “You knew that, right?”

“Of course,” she said quickly, scrambling to remember all the times she’d seen a telegraph in use. There weren’t many. “We just use... different things. In the Raidt.”

“Ah, yes. You elves and your magic.” He scoffed. “Not everyone has as much of that as you do, you know.”

“You have kimbic,” she pointed out.

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“I have kimbic, but I also have the luxury of time, money, and a royal education. Most don’t.”

Ah.

She glanced back at the power lines.

“Do you think they have power in them now?”

Nales shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t studied them much.”

“We should ask Matteo about them.”

They headed toward the nearest house. It had a low silhouette, perhaps only one story and an attic, but seemed to sprawl. Gravel crunched under their boots as they crossed the drive. A narrow pathway, flanked on either side by overgrown grass, led to the front porch in a slow curve. The wood squeaked under their weight. Beside the door, a worn wicker chair with a newer-looking floral cushion sat next to a small glass side table. A magazine had blown onto the chair, its foreign text unreadable to her.

The pictures were… astounding. Vibrant and clear. Like they’d captured the moment exactly and put it on the page as sharply as her eyes could see.

She hesitated at the door. There were two of them, one made of metal and glass with a fine mesh behind it. To keep insects out?

The glass was so… smooth. Absolutely no distortions. Just like on the vehicles.

If she cleaned the dirt off, it’d be hard to tell it was there at all.

It took her a few seconds to figure out the handle, but after a couple of tries, she felt it unlatch when she depressed it. The hinge creaked as it opened, a small mechanical arm at the top pulling softly against her so that it would close again if she let it go.

She paused as she considered the main wooden door.

“Knock?” Nales suggested.

Probably a good idea. If someone was home, it’d be better to not… invade. Especially if they hadn’t seen an elf before.

She remembered the way Matteo had stared when they’d first met.

She raised her fist and knocked.

They waited. And listened.

Nothing.

After a few seconds, she tried again. This time, wetted her lips and mimicked the greeting she’d heard Matteo using.

“Hu-Low?!”

The sounds felt odd through her lips. She hoped she’d got it right.

Still nothing.

The wooden porch creaked as Nales moved to the side, cupping his hands around his eyes and peering through the windows.

“I don’t see anything,” he said. “Try the door.”

She did.

“Locked,” she said.

His jaws worked, thinking.

“Let’s go around back,” she suggested. “Better to break a back door than a front door.”

He nodded.

Just a low chain-link fence separated the back from the front. The gate was easy to unlatch. Like the front, the yard was overgrown with grass. Slight breaks and dips suggested landscaping of some sort, with two decorative shrubs backing it up. An old, worn shed sat in the far corner. A concrete path, similar to the one out front, but straight, hugged the house, leading to another, larger porch. Smaller windows framed the entryway.

One of them was open. Perfect.

When the back door also proved to be locked, she turned to the open window, pried the screen off the frame, and squeezed her body through.

She climbed over a counter and landed in what appeared to be a kitchen.

The house was quiet around her. By that, and the smell of rot and mold from the apples on another part of the counter, she suspected the place was empty, but she tried calling out again, anyway.

“Hu-Low?”

She didn’t wait for a reply. Spotting a doorway to the right, she walked around, found the back door, and unlocked it for Nales.

“I don’t think anyone is here,” she said.

“No, but be careful, anyway,” he said. “Remember what Matteo said—they’ll be afraid.”

She nodded, then broke off to search the house. With only one level, it was easy.

“No one here,” she confirmed a few minutes later, coming down from the attic’s trap door. “A lot of odd things, though.”

“Indeed,” Nales replied from a different room. “It’s fascinating. And the quality in these…”

She followed his voice to one of the front rooms, which appeared to be a mix between a dining room and a sitting room. A couch and several large, cushioned chairs sat in a semi-circle in half the room, with a large table in front. Shelves to the side held a mix of artistic ceramics, hardbound books, an ornate clock, and some strange metal contraption. More artistic ceramics, a few photographs—some as vibrant as the ones in the magazine outside, others less sharp and lacking color, and one appearing as a miniature phantom above a pedestal—sat on the mantle above the fireplace.

The wall was strangely unadorned above that.

Nales was on the other side of the room, studying another phantom photograph. This one showed a small child and her mother smiling from the chair they sat on.

“Is it magic?” she asked.

“None that I recognize,” he said. “Can you feel anything?”

She tried reaching out with her woodcraft.

It seemed even quieter in here than it had been outside. Like something was interfering with it. She’d felt something like this before when they’d found the incursion of the demon world into theirs south of Pemberlin. This, at least, didn’t feel so caustic. Instead, it was as if someone had simply put a glass jar around her ability to sense the world around her.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “But my woodcraft is acting up.” She reached out and edged the side of her finger through the phantom. Neither mother nor child reacted—they were still, captured in time like a frozen ghost. Parts of the scene smeared over her skin in colored light, but she felt nothing.

“Let’s keep going,” Nales said. “We’ll pick it up on our way back and ask Matteo about it later.”

She nodded, and they headed back out.

They continued down the street. Like before, the buildings felt so far apart to her. Maybe it’d feel different in their natural setting—what was their natural setting? She couldn’t tell. Not forest. There weren’t enough trees around for that. Maybe there’d been a forest nearby? Surrounding the place? Perhaps it’d been a mountain valley, or close to a river. If Nales’ overlapping world theory was correct, then perhaps the geology might be similar?

No. Grobitzsnak’s mountain fortress conflicted with that. It had appeared in what had been a river valley in their world.

And what of the Fey? How did their geology match up?

She had no idea. Apart from paintings and brief visions through her connection with Kodanh, she’d never seen it.

Her runes prickled at the reminder of their severed bond.

She missed his ice. It had felt so… familiar to her. Oddly familiar, considering she was a forest elf and he lived in a much different place, but mercari pacts were often like that, and theirs had been hard-won.

The next building they tried was a business of some sort. No one answered their knocks or mimicked greetings, and there hadn’t been any convenient open windows to crawl through. She ended up breaking one into the basement level, then breaking an interior door to access the main floor and let Nales in.

Some sort of bookstore. No one had been there.

She’d had to drag Nales out of it to keep going.

They searched another three buildings—one large, seeming a set of small offices. They couldn’t read what they were for, though one appeared to be a dentist and another a seamstress. The other two were a pair of boarded-up houses in disrepair.

Then, they reached the end of the world.

The roadway ended in a jagged rip, just as it had begun, the pavement ending like a piece of fractured eggshell. The marsh’s water flowed against it roughly two arm spans below, muddy with run-off from the mountains.

She stared at it for a moment, then directed her gaze to the side. The broken line of Matteo’s world continued, some of it slumping at its edges to meet the swamp. She wondered how far down the displacement went. It clearly went some ways underground, but did it completely replace the swamp underneath or were parts of it still there?

Would this all, eventually, sink?

And where had the swamp gone? Was it now in Matteo’s world?

Would they ever get the chance to find out?

She hoped so. She really hoped so.

“What could have… caused this?” she asked. “A demon?”

Nales’ mouth flattened into a grim line. “If it was, then we’re in trouble. The only demon I know of who was capable of something like this died a long time ago.”

His ancestor. The one who’d sealed the demon world’s access away in the first place.

“Are you sure he died?” she asked.

He didn’t answer that. By the way his jaws had tightened, locking in place, she doubted it would be a good thing if he yet lived.

Her runes prickled, the phantom of ice creeping across her skin again, and her own jaws tightened in response.

Whatever had happened, it had to be fixed.

They needed their worlds back in order again.

A high-pitched whistle pierced the air, undulating slightly. She cocked her head, then turned.

“Come on. Doneil found something.”