sorcery and science 04.5 - masquerade by Ella Summers

it, but he said nothing.
    “Anyway, I should probably get going. I managed to lose Davin in the library while he was busy chatting with some girl, but he should be back home soon. If he gets back before I do, I’ll have a hard time convincing him that I wasn’t with you. And he will tell Father.”
    Jason didn’t care if King River found out. But Terra clearly did.
    “Will you be able to get away and come here during the break?” she asked him as she stood.
    “The question is more whether you will.”
    She put her backpack on. “I’ll try. How shall we let each other know—”
    Jason tackled her to the ground. A black throwing knife shot over their heads. Jason rolled and shot his hand up to catch a second knife aimed for Terra’s leg. He sprang up and scanned the trees for any hints of movement. Behind him, Terra got up.
    “Elitions,” Terra said, her eyes frozen on the Leaf knife in Jason’s hand.
    “Yes,” he whispered back, taking her hand.
    At Terra’s nod, Jason ran into the trees, avoiding the main cluster of Elitions he could hear hiding in there. A man with pale lilac hair and amber eyes jumped at them, throwing a scattering of Leaves their way. They avoided the knives—barely—and Jason hit the man with a Phantom mind blast that sent him crashing hard into the nearest tree. He pushed his legs faster, trying to put some distance between them and the Elition assailants. Terra gripped his hand and matched his pace, but from her stuttered breathing, he knew she wouldn’t be able to maintain that speed for long. They wouldn’t be able to outrun the people after them.
    Terra seemed to be thinking the same thing. “The portal…Rosewater,” she coughed out.
    “It’s too far,” he told her, wishing he could channel some of his speed into her.
    “Fight?”
    “There are ten of them.”
    That was all he needed to say. They both knew they had no chance of winning in a fight against ten full-grown Elitions.
    “Then what?” she asked, stumbling in her step.
    “I’m still working on it.”
    Their assailants were closing in fast, looping around to enclose them. Terra looked about ready to pass out from exhaustion, and the fact that the ground was heavy and slippery from the slowly rotting wet leaves wasn’t helping matters. Jason pulled her harder. There would be time to rest later, when they were safe.
    “Hold on,” he warned, regaining his grip on her sweat-slicked hand.
    And then they dropped as the ground dipped two meters. The area below was a small clearing in the forest, filled with young and slender trees. One of them was a maple the color of fire, and it had a very odd halo around it, almost as though the tree were a picture—or an illusion.
    “Do you see it?” Jason asked, pointing that way.
    “The tree?”
    “It looks a bit like a portal.”
    “Looks…like a tree…to me,” she huffed.
    But Jason was sure there was something magical about that spot, so he angled toward it. When Terra realized he was running straight at a tree, she slowed.
    “No, hurry. We need to get through.”
    “But…”
    “Trust me, Terra. That’s a portal.”
    And he pulled her forward, yanking them both through the halo. The air there felt heavy and slow, as though time had nearly stopped. Everything—the trees, the ground, the sky—looked milky and diluted, and it began to slowly dissolve. At the same time, the rush of waves on a beach roared up, followed by the arrival of the harsh scent of seawater. The remainder of the forest melted away, leaving them standing upon a rocky shore.

 
     
     
     
    ~ 4 ~
    516AX April 18, The Sapphire Shore
     
     
    “YOU WERE RIGHT,” Terra said after she’d caught her breath. She turned to scan the beach. “How did you know it was a portal? That tree looked a bit weird, but I didn’t see a portal.”
    “Maybe it’s a Phantom thing.”
    All Elitions could see portals, but Jason had come to realize that they didn’t see them quite the way Phantoms did. He