Strategy

by Layla Heart

  “Someone kept the army hidden for a long time when they attacked the campus, but the people from the town or the academy didn’t find a magic-user later,” Litha says. “What if that was the work of the witch? What if they’re that powerful when they reach the town? What if that was nothing more than a test-run?”

  My heart sinks, because it’s all too likely. “If they’re that strong, then I don’t know what we can do against them. How do we find someone who can keep that many soldiers hidden?”

  “With a simple location spell.” Litha’s mum stands up, putting the notebook she was reading on the table, open to a page with yet another prophecy. “We just need to find the grave of one of their ancestors and use their bloodline to find the witch now. This works whether they’re trying to hide themselves or not, because we’re not going to be looking for them, we’re going to be looking for the family line they’re part of. Each family line has their own magical imprint, and if we can detect that imprint, then we can find them. We don’t need to even see them with our eyes, the imprint will tell us exactly where they are.”

  “Imprints are a low-magic spell, anyone would be able to cast it in the town.” I nod. Parents use it to find their children all the time, it’s very simple and easy to do. But you need a connection to the family for it, something to connect to the bloodline. A grave would work, but you’d need a very strong connection, because we’re not actually part of that family line, which will make our spell weaker than if it came from someone from the same family, but it’s possible.

  “It will get us to the witch, no problem.” Litha’s mum nods. “Which leaves us plenty of time to do other things, like intercept the king.”

  Like that’s going to be as easy as that... A whole group of people who were way more experienced than us failed all those years ago, why will it work this time?

  What makes us think that we can do this when they failed?

  But as I glance at Litha and remember everything we’ve been able to do since she came into our lives... Maybe we stand a chance...

  Chapter 8 - Finn

  As expected, finding a substance which gets the right chemical reaction with the venom is... hard. There’s a reason it’s such a potent venom which has been used to horrific successes, and that was before whatever my dad’s scientists did to it to make it work even faster. My stab wound is slow to heal, but between Phoenix healing it with her magic and applying bandages with soothing mixtures to it, I manage to stay on top of the pain and it appears to help. But, for me, it really drives home how desperate we are to find something to stop the soldiers from using the stuff.

  I mix some powders into the goop we created earlier. The goop has the ingredients of the venom that are most likely to react to other substances, and the powders are our latest combination of things that we hope will harden it out. The mixture fizzes and heats up for a couple of seconds, it does some impressive bubbling action, but as I poke the brown puddle that’s left behind after the bubbles have disappeared, it’s just as liquid as it was before. I sigh, another failure.

  “You need to let it rest for a while.” Kit is sitting not too far away, working on his own tests with the fake venom. “I just had one that got sticky after about two minutes. But then it just stayed sticky, like one of those kid’s toys, and didn’t do much else...” He taps at one of the glass dishes sitting in front of him. “And the smell is really bad on that one too.”

  “Scent doesn’t matter.” I sigh, pushing the dish away. “It’s not like we’re trying to get them to smell nice. The stench may make them more likely to not attack us, if it’s too bad. I don’t know, it may be an advantage.” I try to smile, but I’m just too tired. “How is your other plan going?”

  He looks my way, smiling a little. “I got most of the shadow-walking down, but it’s slow going when you’re so tired at the end of the day. I’m confident that I can do it fluently when the time comes.”

  “Can you do it times a hundred?” I don’t want to spoil his positive mood, but we’re going up against thousands of trained soldiers, not just a small group of random people. These are magic-users who have been through years of harsh education, and potentially even some witches.

  He shrugs. “I’m working on that part of the plan.” He glances at the door, which is closed as we don’t want to get the stench of these experiments to waft all through the house. “I was thinking... Maybe I could get some people from back home involved...”

  “What?” I stare at him. “How were you thinking of doing that without tipping anyone off? Without tipping your mum or any of her court off?”

  “That’s the part I’m still stuck on.” He looks down at his notes, writing a few things down, and then putting the pen away, his hands flat on the table. “We need...” He lets out a slow breath. “We need more people. So many more than we have here right now.”

  “I know.” Slowly, I get up, moving over to him and put my hand on his back. “I know. We’d need a miracle, and I don’t think we can just wish for one.”

  He puts his hand over mine, his touch warm. “I’m afraid we’re all out of miracles by now.”

  “Yeah.” I look at all the things on the table, the vials, the notes, the powders, everything. “I think we’re all on our own against my dad.”

  And that’s not a good feeling. That’s... Definitely not a good feeling.

  * * *

  “Again!” Litha is grinning, almost jumping up and down in excitement, her eyes bright. She throws up another hand of powder, which hangs in the air for a while before slowly falling down.

  “I have a limit to my energy, you know...” I sigh, but send out another electric pulse in front of me anyway, ionizing the powder and with a ‘fizz’ it clings to the fake venom we’ve been testing with. After a couple of moments, it turns into a light brown crust and hardens out.

  Litha bounces over to it and taps on the crust with one of my knives, I wince at the abuse one of my favourite knives gets, but the crust has gone rock hard. As she tries to pry the crust off the piece of wood, it won’t budge. She turns to me, a big smile brightening up her whole face. “We did it!”

  Turns out, Phoenix’ idea of maybe using some epoxy-type mixing with the venom was on the right track, but as barely anything would react strong enough with the ingredients, we had to look in another direction. When I use my electricity as a catalyst, we can get the venom to react to certain substances with pretty reliable results. The thing is, doing this on a big enough scale to work against a handful of soldiers, let alone thousands of them, would require a lot of electric energy, or magic... Which makes this newest development great progress on the ‘how to stop it’ tests, but it also throws up even more problems when it comes to how to use it in battle. Again, like Kit’s idea, there just aren’t enough of us to pull this off on a big enough scale to make a difference. We can use this on a couple of people, but not on thousands of soldiers at the same time.

  Time has been passing slowly, but at the same time, it’s been going way too fast. There are still too many things we don’t know how to fix, and it’s hard to stay positive with all this pressure on us. But we keep going, it almost feels like we don’t have another choice but to stubbornly keep going.

  Litha bounces over, wrapping her arms around me, giving me a kiss on my cheek. “We did it.”

  I slide my arms around her, hiding my face in her hair. “We did.”

  She stills in my arms, her body so warm and soft against me that I can almost imagine the world is a better place than it is. “You’re not happy.” Her voice drops, I’ve also made her unhappy with my mood. Great...

  I want to deny her words, but then shake my head. “We can’t do anything with this. It’s not big enough. It’s just not enough.”

  “Ah.” Her voice is soft, and I pull her closer, revelling in her touch, in having her with me. I wish we could just hide away, find a deserted island or something and just run away, all six of us. Just run away from this world and all the problems
in it. Right now, I don’t wish anything but that.

  Heavy footsteps behind me shatter the dream, and Rune lets out a low rumble, one of his ‘calming’ sounds, which is never a good sign. “Sorry to disturb your little cuddling session, but we need you inside. Both of you.”

  Yep, bad things. As expected.

  Litha slowly pulls back and takes my hand, her grip warm and strong. She meets my eyes for a moment, the sadness in them so obvious, but she’s also looking determined, more determined than I’ve seen her in a while. “This is a good thing. We’ve found something that works against the venom. We just need to find a way to apply it to even more people. We just need to make it big-bigger-biggest, as big as we can.”

  I nod, but she hasn’t seen the soldiers we’ll be up against. She hasn’t seen the horror my dad has been working on. She hasn’t seen any of that. And, since she’s not grown up in this world, she hasn’t grown up with the horror images of the last war... She has no clue. It hurts, knowing that she has no idea of the horrors, because it will make what’s coming even worse for her.

  Litha pulls me along to Rune, who isn’t looking much happier than I feel. We both know that what I’ve been doing here isn’t good enough. All of this isn’t good enough. Not if we want to get out of this whole mess alive.

  “What’s up?” I don’t even have the energy to ask anything else. I can’t even brace myself against whatever bad thing he’ll say. Between using my electricity a little too much in the last two hours and just this feeling of defeat, I’m exhausted, drained, empty.

  “We’ve got a visitor.” His voice is low, not betraying anything, and an even worse feeling settles in my stomach. If Rune won’t even say anything... Oh, fuck.

  “Who is it?” Litha keeps pulling me along, like she’s still got all the energy in the world, but her movements are not as controlled as she’d like them to be, she’s running on fumes too.

  “You’ll find out soon enough. I’m not sure I should say much more out here.” Rune sighs deep and then follows us through the garden and to the house.

  “Rune?” I glance back at him, but he just shakes his head.

  “It’s better if I don’t say anything.”

  The house is quiet as we reach it, strangely quiet. There are supposed to be five people in there, plus whoever the visitor is, but it’s eerily quiet as I open the door. I feel magic fizzing in the air, setting the hairs on my arm on end. Magic? Why is there a magical wall here?

  Litha steps inside first, seemingly oblivious to the border, and then Rune follows her, his back straight. When I don’t follow him immediately, he jerks his head, motioning for me to follow him inside, his eyes guarded.

  As soon as the door closes behind me, the magic fizzes one last time, spiking, and suddenly I can hear some voices, soft voices, and none of them are familiar.

  Someone put a spell on the house? Why? What’s going on?

  My hand goes to the knife on my side, as a guy steps into the doorway to the living room. I don’t know him, but his red eyes, and the way he holds himself somehow feel familiar. He’s wearing leather pants and a thin shirt, traditional dragon shifter style, but the most disconcerting thing about him is the dagger at his belt, a traditional dragon’s war dagger. Not many people would dare to openly carry one, he’s brave, or stupid.

  The guy looks at Rune, then at Litha, and, finally, his eyes fall on me, narrowing. “My sister wasn’t lying when she said that there was a fae with you all... That you were all friends with a disgusting fae.” His face pulls in disgust and suddenly I realise who he is, the movement so similar to someone I know much better. Aideen! He’s Aideen’s brother! The guy who’s in the dragon’s rebel army. Seeing him now, I remember him from way back, but this is not the same guy who used to tease Rune when he was little and would always be too ‘cool’ to deal with little kids. This guy is someone you don’t want to fight with, ever.

  Oh, hell.

  Chapter 9 - Litha

  I stare at the guy in front of us. He’s... Wow. He feels dangerous. From the way he’s holding himself, to his words, to the weapon he’s carrying. Then his words sink in. “Your sister?” I blink.

  “Aideen.” The guy looks at me again. “You remember her, right? Before you darted off with these guys?” He doesn’t look very friendly, but then he takes a deep breath and steps aside, letting us into the living room. There are two people in the room, an older woman, old enough to be my grandma or something, and I need to do a double-take before I recognise the other person sitting on the couch, her back mostly to me. Aideen!

  She’s cut her hair shorter, and she’s wearing clothes similar to her brother, her face tight with tension as she turns around and looks at me.

  I let out a surprised sound, which makes her relax somehow, and she breaks out in a relieved smile.

  “Hey.” Her voice is soft as her tongue darts out to wet her lips, showing her pointy teeth which surprised me so much that first morning.

  I go over to her and take her into a hug, so happy to see her again. My... friend? Can I call myself her friend when I left her at the campus when we all came here? I’ve barely seen her, even before we fled the campus. If she’s my friend, I’ve not been a very one.

  The old woman looks at me and then her eyes fall on someone behind me, narrowing. When I glance back, I see she’s looking at Finn. I get that they’re wary of him, but he’s a good guy, they want his dad dead just as much as he does. Though, I’m not sure if they’ll believe me if I tell them that.

  So, instead, I focus on Aideen. “What are you doing here? How did you know I’d be here?”

  She smiles, sheepishly. “We guessed. This wasn’t the first house of Bane’s family we checked out. This has been the fourth one, I think. But we found you, finally.” She motions to the guy who ‘greeted’ us. “That’s my older brother, Topaz, he’s not as mean as he looks.” Then she turns me to the old woman. “Grandma, this is Litha. Litha, this is my grandma. She...” Aideen glances at Rune. “She took care of Rune’s dad when he was young, and of Rune, sometimes. We...” Her grip on my hand tightens, her face falling.

  The old woman meets my eyes, a warm glow in them, a soft smile on her lips. “We’re here to help. Aideen told me that you know my grandson is in the rebel army. In actuality, our whole family has been involved with them, for decades, if not longer. And we’re here to offer you our help.”

  “What?” I blink, looking from the old woman to Aideen’s brother and finally at Aideen. “Thanks, but... How? What?” Fucking hell, I never expected this, but now that they’re here, I have no idea how to accept her help. I’m still much too caught up in what we’ve been doing that it’s hard to switch tracks and imagine actually getting help from people.

  Topaz speaks, his voice rumbling, though not as low as Rune’s. “We have hundreds of dragons, and witches, for you to command. If we’re not fighting at your side, preventing what happened to us from happening to others, then what’s the reason we even exist? If we’re going to stand by and watch, then we’re just as bad as the fae who invaded us, or those who just stood by and let it happen.”

  “Thanks.” I look at him, and then at Rune, who takes a step closer.

  “Can you share who you have under your command? So we know what your offer is worth?” Rune glances at Finn, who shrugs. “We don’t need names, we just need to know what they can do, in the interest of keeping their identity safe.”

  “I can share that.” Topaz nods. “I’ve been given permission to give you this.” He reaches over to the table and gives Rune a bag, which looks very heavy. “This is all we have and all we know. We even have...” He takes a breath, like he’s trying to make a decision. “We’ve even got contact with rebel groups in other kingdoms. If we call upon them, they will be at your side in a matter of days, if not sooner.”

  I stare at him, not sure if I can believe him. This sounds too good to be true. Way too good to be true. “What’s the catch?”

  Topaz shakes his hea
d. “No catch. We simply don’t want the fae to rule all the kingdoms.”

  I feel emboldened by something in his words, it’s like there’s a dare in them. “And what if I’d be the one to rule all the kingdoms? You must know the prophecy, you must know what happens next. What happens if we win.”

  He nods, slowly. “I know. We know. We also know that you’d not be the only one to rule us.” His eyes on me are steady, challenging me, pushing me to ask more.

  “How?” This time it’s Finn speaking, as he steps closer to me, almost between us, his body tense, his hand on his hip, where I know he’s got one of his knives. He doesn’t trust him, or his offer, that much is clear.

  Topaz lets out a sound as he looks my way, and then to his grandma. “Because of a combined effort from a couple of us ‘rebels’, test our limits.”

  I stare at him, and then back at Aideen, before staring at the guy again. “The stolen prophecy documents!” Of course!

  He smirks, grinning boyishly as he pulls up a shoulder. “I won’t confirm or deny that, in case it gets me in trouble.”

  I glance Aideen’s way, who looks as surprised as I feel, then she shakes her head.

  “I had no idea about this. This is the first time I’m hearing it too.” She glares at her brother. “You could have gotten into a lot of trouble. Fucking hell, you could have gotten us into a lot of trouble!” She seems to get more angry as realisation of what he just admitted to sets in.

  His face falls, his shoulders squaring, his eyes cold. “Trouble was coming anyway. We just wanted to be ahead of the fae army. They were already on their way by then. We knew they were coming and what they’d be looking for.” He glances at the door, and I realise that I can’t hear any of the others in the house. It’s deadly quiet, like we’re the only people in the world right now.

  “The magic isn’t just on the house, you spelled the house and this room separately?” Finn takes a step closer to Topaz, who pulls out his dagger in a flash, magic swirling around it, fire magic.