Read Online Broken Gates by D. T. Dyllin - Free Book Online

laugh if he thought that was going to keep him out of the argument. Macon seemed to already have a clue about what was going on with Jenna, and if he hadn’t figured it out already, it wouldn’t take him long to find out Jenna’s new object of affection was Jeremy.
    A sudden crackling of energy drew my attention to Jeremy and what he was doing and kept it riveted there. I’d never actually seen a Gatekeeper open a Gate before. Sure I’d been taught what to expect but nothing compared to actually seeing it with your own eyes. Jeremy’s hands moved in quick sweeping motions, and he moved back and forth and side to side as if doing some kind of weird dance steps, but he did them with such confidence and grace that I sat back in utter awe of him. Slowly the Gate appeared before us, much like I’d seen in my visions, it looked as if a piece of sky had been ripped into the side of the forest. Different shades of purple and blue with flecks of night shown in a pulsating, changing state. I gasped at its beauty, unable to put into words the true nature of what I was seeing.
    Jeremy stepped aside and Khol tugged me forward, and I pulled Bryn with me. I had an errant thought about why the Queen would require us to make this kind of travel when Khol couldn’t open the Gate. In fact, as far as I knew, no dragon could travel the way we were about to, so how could it be tradition? Fear spiked through me. What if we were making a huge mistake? But I had no time to follow my thought thread any farther before I found myself stepping into the Gate and a feeling of ice raced along my skin. I inhaled the cold crisp air sharply and tried to focus my eyes on what I was seeing . . . or rather not seeing. The colors from the outside of the Gate had given way to complete and utter darkness. If not for still being able to feel Khol and Bryn’s hands clutched in each of mine, I would have panicked.
    “Keep going,” Khol’s voice sounded in my head. “Let her guide us to where we need to be.”
    So I did the only thing I could think of to do . . . I focused my thoughts on the image of the dragon Queen and began repeating her name in my head over and over again.
    Mori . . . Mori . . . Mori . . . Mori . . . Mori . . .
    The last thing I remembered was . . . “Damn it!” I sat up with a start. “Why do I keep passing out, or getting knocked out or whatever? I swear I’ve spent more time unconscious in the last year than not!”
    “Where are we?” I heard Bryn’s groggy voice rumble in response to my rant.
    I blinked the fuzz from my eyes and focused in on Bryn’s prone figure lying next to me in an unfamiliar bed. I won’t lie . . . It kind of made me feel slightly better to know that I wasn’t the only one who’d been knocked out this round. “We’re in the Smokey Mountains,” Khol said, sounding not at all like he’d lost the battle with consciousness anytime recently, much to my dismay.
    I turned toward his voice and saw that his massive back was angled toward us as he stared out a ginormous window that took up almost the whole wall of the room we were in. “How do you know?” I asked.
    “I, as I’m sure you’ve already figured out, did not succumb to the magic inside the Gates and remained awake where as the two of you didn’t.”
    I glared at his back, which seemed to mock me, I swear, or maybe that was just Khol’s tone. “How long have we been out?” I asked choosing to ignore my feelings of annoyance.
    “Just a few hours.” He finally turned so that I could see his face and he regarded me as if his mind was still partially somewhere else. I was just about to ask him if he’d seen the Queen or knew where we needed to go when he dipped down on one knee beside the bed and offered me a letter. “This is for you.”
    I suspiciously regarded the letter resting in his outstretched palm for a moment before taking it. The plain white envelope with my entire name printed on it in elegant script