Author: Audrey Grey
Category: Fantasy
Go to read content：https://readnovelfree.com/p/26854_12
I can’t leave them. If Cal or his father catch me . . . there is no law here. No courts or justice. In the borderlands, the Millers are the law—which means I’m screwed.
Unless . . .
I take a step toward the Shimmer, heart thundering in my chest.
It’s mesmerizing. Completely, utterly wonderful in its strangeness. The way the rainbow surface seems to move and slide like the shell of a bubble. A breeze emanates from the other side, cool and biting against my bare arms. A few fluffy snowflakes break through and cling to my cheek where they immediately turn to water.
In this infernal heat, it seems impossible that only a few feet away lies a place of frost and magic and strange, dangerous beings. A place where day is night and summer is winter and the ordinary is extraordinary.
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I place a hand on the wall. It’s frigid and smooth and gelatinous, not at all solid like I imagined. “Wait.” Bryce’s nervous voice marks him only a few feet away. “Please don’t go any farther, I’m warning you.”
My fingertips indent the slippery surface. The idea that if I push real hard I could break through comes over me in a wave of impossibility.
This wall is supposed to be impenetrable.
The only time something goes into the world of the Fae is when they want it to. Usually a foolish mortal who bartered with a Fae and then couldn’t pay the price, or let a Fae give them something without understanding the consequences.
An Evermore never gives anything for free.
“Come to me before—before I’m forced to shoot you.” Bryce is terrified, his voice pleading. He refuses to draw any nearer. “Please, Summer. If Cal knows I let you get away . . .”
Chatty Cat brushes against my leg. Then he disappears through the Shimmer like it’s mist. Holy shit.
If Chatty Cat can do it . . .
Clutching my bow tight, I say a prayer and lunge through the Shimmer, straight into the Everwilde.
That was easy. Probably too easy.
Bryce yells at me on the other side, but it’s warbled and hard to make out. Then the mofo shoots at the wall a few times. The gunfire sounds like those little fireworks you throw onto the ground.
The bullets don’t pierce the Shimmer. They don’t even indent it.
After that, everything goes quiet.
3
The moment I pass through the Shimmer, a blast of icy air envelops me, and it takes a second to make my lungs work again. When they finally do, I watch in wonder as my breath spews on in a milky cloud and spreads through the forest.
Huge winter trees with winding trunks and silver leaves rise from the icy ground. The branches all grow in one direction, making the trees appear to reach toward the heavens at an angle.
Bright red bark clings to the trees, peeling away to reveal grayish skin beneath, and strange fruit peeks between the leaves. Each perfect golden teardrop shimmers with ice.
And the frost—it’s everywhere. Dusting the foliage, the soil, the leaves. Near the Shimmer the snowfall is thin, exposing thick green grass. Each blade is frozen solid, and when I walk, my boots crunch the delicate strands, the sound like shards of glass ground together.
A screech pierces the crisp air, and I duck just as the snowy owl from earlier swoops onto a crooked red branch. His snow colored feathers fluff out as he watches me with amber, unblinking eyes too sentient for my liking.
This world is alive with animals. Two white rabbits hop between the trees, and a squirrel with black tufts above his ears scampers over a branch. Chatty Cat flicks a glance at the squirrel and then slides his lazy gaze to me and yawns.
No wonder you’re starving.
A red cardinal drops from above and lands near us, pecking at the snow.
My jaw clenches. Perhaps the Fae are purposefully keeping us out because they want us to starve. First they took half our land, then they poisoned the earth along the tainted borderlands so those of us trapped here have nothing. They decimated our population, made orphans of the children, and expect us to obey their laws.
And now they get to sit behind some faulty, pretend wall in their stolen lands and watch us die?
Anger rushes through me, hot and pungent as a newly tarred highway in the middle of summer.