With that, he strode out, leaving her staring after him. The ground felt unsteady underneath her feet as the enormity of what he had said rang in her ears.

She really was no longer on Earth. Not only had she been transported to an Other land, she was in Avalon.

Avalon, the land of apples and faerie, fabled for its beauty and danger. She had remembered that Isabeau was a monarch of the Light Fae, but she had not even realized that Isabeau was Avalon’s Queen. Her knowledge of the Elder Races demesnes in Great Britain was that sparse. Angry at her own ignorance, she clenched her fists.

And without any magic, she had no way of getting home, at least not without help. Much as she hated that guard for his scorn, he had a point. She was going to have to lose that ignorance and learn as much as she could, as fast as she could, if she had any chance of coping with her new reality.

She was still shaking as hunger compelled her to go inspect the contents of the metallic bowl. Inside there was a plain hunk of bread and a piece of hard cheese. The cup contained water. Carrying both to the cot, she ate every scrap, and she drank all the water too.

After eating, she had barely finished taking care of some private business when the same guard strode to her cell door. As he unlocked it, she said, almost conversationally, “I was kidnapped and brought here illegally, you know.”

“Out,” he said as he stood back and held her cell door wide. He didn’t tie her up or threaten her with any other kind of confinement.

He didn’t really have to, did he? Simmering with fury again, she strode out. “Do you have any reaction to what I just said?”

“Not my place to have a reaction. I just follow orders.” He put a hand at her back and shoved her so hard she stumbled. “Move.”

How much evil had been committed by people who claimed they were just following orders? Regaining her balance, she clenched her fists and barely managed to keep from lashing out. If she lashed out, she would get tied up again. She might even get beaten.

That was okay. If he followed orders, he wasn’t who she wanted to talk to anyway.

She wanted to talk to someone who gave the orders. That would be the only way to change her situation.

He led her to the back of an empty wagon and made her climb into it. Sitting in one corner, she wrapped her arms around her knees as she watched an entire squadron of guards gather. Most of them had horses, and several drove wagons that were stacked high with barrels and boxes. Some of it, if not all, had to be the real trolls’ tribute.

Her kidnapper had known enough about the Light Fae to know when the tribute would be delivered, and where, and he had used that knowledge to insert her into the situation without causing suspicion. The calculation behind that was chilling. He might have cried when he held her, but that hadn’t stopped him from planning the details of her kidnapping with precision.

Despite her continued tiredness and worry, she grew fascinated by watching the Light Fae work at assembling a wagon train. She had never seen anything like it before.

If someone gave a signal to start, she missed it, because suddenly a wagon pulled out, then another. Eventually the wagon carrying her as its sole cargo lurched to a start and fell into line behind the others. The guards on horseback arranged themselves at either the head or the back of the train.

For most of the day they traveled through dense, overgrown forest. Quickly growing bored with the monotonous scenery and sore from the constant jostling, Sid counted all the wooden planks in the wagon bed several times over, then she tried to brace herself in the corner to doze.

They took a break at midday, and she got another hunk of cheese and bread, with another cup of water.

In the afternoon, they stopped at a few villages, where conversations occurred just beyond her hearing between the one Light Fae that she had identified as the wagon train leader and others that appeared to be villagers.

After the conversations, some soldiers led people to her wagon. As they climbed in, she studied them as curiously as they stared at her. Most were young girls, but a few were boys. All were Light Fae, and they were also quite a bit younger than she. Were they tribute too?

She tried talking to them a couple of times, but while they glanced at each other and shuffled uneasily, her attempts at starting a conversation were met with silence. A few of the girls stared unabashedly at her, their expressions filled with such fascinated repugnance, she was taken aback.

As Sidonie glanced around, it dawned on her—she was virtually the only person present who had dark hair and eyes. Also, her skin was pale and creamy, quite unlike the hue of the tanned faces that surrounded her. She might even be the first person these youngsters had ever seen who looked the way she did. Perhaps she was the first human they’d ever seen.

Compressing her lips, she settled into her hard, uncomfortable corner of the wagon and kept to herself after that. The passing scenery might be pretty, but so far, her first impressions of Avalon sucked.

That night they camped by a wide, lazy-looking river, and despite her problems, it was wonderful to get a few minutes by herself at the water’s edge to wash. Supper was the same fare as lunch and breakfast. She found a spot close to the warmth of a campfire for the night. Gathering up a handful of pebbles, she curled into a tight ball to keep warm as she counted them, while wild scenarios galloped through her head.

She could steal a horse (she had lived in New York for most of her life and had no idea how to ride a horse). And she could steal weapons (from seasoned fighters who had the weapons and knew how to use them). Then she could race back to the crossover passageway (which she couldn’t sense or use on her own).

Then, somehow, she needed to capture and force one of the soldiers there to walk her across to Earth, slip past the troops stationed on the other side, and walk until she made contact with normal civilization.

She had self-defense skills and some knowledge of unarmed combat, but those were all skills she had learned in a training environment. She had never had occasion to use what she had learned in an actual fight.

The likelihood of getting out of the wagon train encampment alive was slim to none, let alone facing the towering list of unlikely events after that. No, her only real hope of getting home again was if she appealed to someone in command.

In the morning, when she tried to approach the commander of the wagon train, a soldier stepped in front of her and forced her to go back to the area where her other travel companions stayed.

Simmering with frustration, she complied. No matter what the time slippage was between Avalon and Earth, her concert tour was almost certainly ruined now. Julie had to be worried sick, and both she and Rikki would have an administrative nightmare on their hands. Just the thought of it tied Sid’s stomach in knots. She’d never had to cancel a tour before.