“Travis?” a voice murmured. “Travis, can you hear me?”

The voice was warm and familiar, like the memory of the sun. In the darkness, two lights appeared. They were stars, each as green as a summer forest. He let the stars pull him in with their gravity.

“Please, Travis. I know you’re still in there. Talk to me.”

The stars grew brighter, closer. Only they weren’t stars, he realized. They were eyes.

Grace Beckett’s eyes.

A shuddering breath rushed into him, and Travis sat up.

“Grace?”

She was kneeling beside him, along with Beltan. Vani, Nim, Larad, and Hadrian Farr stood close by. Beyond them, the dim air flickered, as if lit by a lamp swinging on a chain.

Grace smiled, a look of relief on her face. “There you are, my friend.”

Beltan gripped his hand. “You scared me. I thought after all this that . . . I thought you weren’t going to . . .” The blond man pressed his lips together and shook his head.

Sorrow pierced Travis’s heart. Why was Beltan so sad? Travis tried to think back, to remember what had happened. It was hard. He felt thin and hollow, like a candy wrapper with nothing good left inside. Only that wasn’t completely true. He still felt good when he looked at Beltan, and Grace, and Nim. They all looked well and whole, though Grace did have a small cut on her arm.

“What happened?” he said. For some reason, he couldn’t stop shivering.

“There’s no magic,” Farr said. His face was haggard, haunted, but there was a note of wonder in his voice. “It’s gone. The Imsari and the morndariwere what brought it into being in the first place. When the Stones and the Seven came in contact, when they eliminated one another, magic ceased to be. We feared you would share their fate.”

Travis frowned at him. “Share whose fate?”

Farr stepped aside and gestured to something on the floor. It was a heap of black cloth—a robe. Shriveled hands jutted from the sleeves of the robe, skeletal fingers curving like claws. A black veil half concealed a skull stretched with withered skin.

It was Phoebe.

Travis started to stand. He was still shaking, and would have fallen, but Grace and Beltan helped him. Beyond Phoebe, he saw the other five on the floor. All of them were dried mummies.

“The Philosophers,” Travis said, the words a croak.

Farr stood above the mummy that had been Phoebe. “It was magic that sustained their lives all these centuries. Drinking the blood of the Seven gave them the gift of immortality. Once the Seven were no more, that gift was taken away.”

Travis swallowed hard. “And you thought . . . you thought the same had happened to me.”

“We didn’t know,” Grace said. “Orú’s blood hadn’t extended your life, at least not yet, but it hadchanged you. You collapsed at the same moment the Philosophers did, and we feared the worst.”

Beltan touched his cheek. “Only you’re all right, aren’t you?”

Again, Travis shivered. It felt as if there was a hole in him where something had been excised, something rich and warm and golden. And something else was missing as well—a familiar presence.

Jack?he spoke in his mind. Jack are you there?

There was no answer. And there never would be again. Travis touched his right hand, but for the first time in five years he didn’t feel the familiar itch beneath the skin of his palm, the faint tingle of the hidden rune.

“Travis?” Beltan’s green eyes were worried.

Travis breathed. “Yes. I’m fine.” He smiled, laying his hand over Beltan’s, pressing it against his cheek. “I’m more than fine.”

Already a new warmth was filling the hole inside Travis. And while it was not so golden and fiery as Orú’s blood, or as shimmering as rune magic, it was every bit as powerful in its own way. And as long as Beltan was at his side, it would never fade.

“Now that he is awake, we must make our decisions,” Vani said, hands on her hips. “Time grows short.”

Travis shook his head. What was she talking about? A note of alarm cut through his confusion.

“Where’s Deirdre?”

“She’s gone,” Farr said simply.

Travis staggered, leaning against Beltan. For a moment he felt disbelief. Then memory returned. Phoebe had chilled him with a glance, as well as Beltan. Travis had watched, unable to move, as the circle of the Seven closed in around Nim and the Imsari.

And Deirdre.

The last thing he remembered was an orb of brilliant silver-gold light encapsulating both Nim and Deirdre. The final image he could recall was of the light beginning to dim, and of a single, tiny figure standing in its midst, like a chick inside an egg lit from behind. There had been no taller figure standing beside the little one.

“Gone,” Travis repeated the word, as if it was unfamiliar to him.

Grace gripped his hand. “She was happy, Travis.” A tear slid down her cheek. “I felt her, right before . . . right before she was gone. She was so happy. She understood everything. She knew that—”

“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” Larad said with an uncomfortable look. “But I don’t think we have time for that now.” He gestured behind them.

Travis turned around, and he tried to understand what he was seeing. “Where are we? On Earth or Eldh?

“Both, for the moment,” Farr said. “But perihelion is drawing to a close. The worlds are beginning to drift apart.”

Travis understood. It had seemed the shadows in the room were shifting. But that wasn’t it at all. It was the room itself that was shifting. The chamber in London and the throne room on Eldh were no longer blurred as one. Instead they were discrete, separate. First one flickered into view, then the other.

However, even as Travis watched, the area affected in this way shrank inward. It was limited to the center of the chamber, to the area around the dais. The rest of the chamber was solidly, unwaveringly the room in London. Again the air flickered, and the area around the dais became part of the throne room in Morindu. Orú’s mummy still sat shackled to his throne. A few moments later the air seemed to wrinkle, and the throne was gone, replaced by the jumbled heap of stones that had been the gate.

Farr took a step toward the dais, his black serafiswishing. “I don’t think we have much longer. We have to decide which side to remain on before perihelion ends.”

His words stunned Travis. Decide? How could he possibly decide between two worlds? Before, when he had returned to Earth, there had always been the possibility that he would return to Eldh. Only this time there would be no chance of that.

“Perihelion won’t come again, will it?”

Farr shook his head. “It was the pull of the Imsari and the Seven that brought the worlds close together. They will never draw near again. And nor will gates function, now that magic is no more.”

“I suppose these aren’t worth anything anymore,” Travis said, pulling the silver coin from his serafi.

Grace smiled. “It’s still worth something, Travis.”

True. But it couldn’t take them between worlds, could it? Travis’s heart ached. He didn’t want to say good-bye. Not so suddenly. Not forever.

The air in the center of the room rippled. The nexus between the two worlds shuddered, then shrank until it was no larger than the dais. One moment it was Morindu, the next London.

“I’ve made my choice,” Farr said, moving onto the dais. “I intend to stay in Morindu.”

“But sorcery doesn’t work anymore,” Travis said.

A smile flickered across Farr’s handsome face. “It was never about magic, Travis Wilder. That’s not why I searched for other worlds. It was for knowledge. For wonder. All of Morindu the Dark remains to be explored. Who knows what secrets remain to be discovered? I cannot throw away the chance to learn things no other living person knows. Deirdre would have understood.”

Travis sighed. Yes, she would have. But Deirdre knew more than any of them now.