by J. A. Curtis
But the oncoming car swung around the next bend and kept driving.
“Did you stop them? What’s happening?” Mina demanded. It was probably killing her to have to rely on my infrequent descriptions. I held back a chuckle, knowing that would only infuriate her.
“He’s stopped. Keep flying.” I pointed to make sure she knew the direction.
Below, the passenger-side door was thrust open, and I saw the glint of a crown and the disheveled curls on Chels’s head as she dropped from the car, her face a mask of terror. She tried to grab the grass on the ditch’s side, and her heels sank into the mud. She flinched, then reaching down, drew off her shoes before clawing her way up and out of the ditch.
Dramian kicked the driver’s-side door open. He stood, his body wedged between the door and the car. His eyes narrowed at my golem still curled up, then he took in Chels’s fleeing form and leapt out of the ditch, sprinting after her.
More cars were coming. I couldn’t chase him, not yet. I forced my golem back onto my arm and glared at Dramian racing away. He’d discarded his suit coat and tie, his white shirt standing out like a beacon in the night. He was closing the distance between him and Chels.
“That’s it. I don’t care. I’m dropping beneath the clouds.” Mina’s sharp voice came from beside me.
“Fine,” I said. We were almost there. “Come down gradually, but be prepared to drop fast.”
We descended through the mists of clouds.
Chels ran for a gap between two trees. Dramian released his dragon. The creature soared above, fire shooting from its jaws. The grass in front of Chels burst into flames.
Chels screamed. She ground to a halt, turning, searching for an escape, but the dragon had formed a U-shape of flames around the faerie queen with Dramian and his dragon blocking the only escape. The creature landed next to Dramian as he advanced on a trapped and trembling Chels.
“Dramian,” Mina muttered next to me, her tone exasperated, like he should know better.
I didn’t grant him such leniency. The Dramian I knew hit back harder than you hit him. The search for Chels had led to Iris’s death so, queen or no, she’d be the focus of his desire for retribution.
“Why are you doing this?” Chels shouted at Dramian, tears leaking from horrified eyes. “What have I d-done to you?”
A mirthless laugh emanated from Dramian. “You should know, Your Majesty, life is just one big power play. It seems your reign has come to an end.”
He flipped onto the dragon’s back. The dragon’s long wings stretched toward the sky, launching the creature into the air. It shot toward Chels, claws outstretched.
My golem rose between her and the oncoming dragon. Dramian must have expected this because the dragon veered to the side while pouring a bout of fire over my stone golem.
The skin of my body warmed, and a searing pain shot through my side where the fire was hottest. Dragon fire would destroy most other creatures, but the golem’s hard rock gave me a level of protection most other faeries didn’t have. Still, the longer the fire scorched my faerie guardian, the less that protection held, the more my pain increased, and the closer I came to falling.
But I couldn’t move my golem either. If it moved, the deluge of fire would hit Chels.
“I’m dropping us.” Mina’s voice was urgent.
The claws of the griffin opened, and my body fell. The pain had become so intense, I didn’t even try to break my fall. I slammed into the hard ground, unsure at this point, if the impact would add any more pain.
Mina staggered to her feet. Her faerie guardian transformed mid-air, body lengthening into a long green dragon with long curling horns and a plated, ridged back. The green dragon shot forward. Dramian saw the oncoming attack and leapt from his faerie guardian’s back moments before the green dragon rammed into the side of the red dragon. The two dragons hit the earth hard, dirt and grass flying everywhere.
Dramian fell to his knees. Mina’s faerie guardian was on top, but for some reason she didn’t press the attack. The head of the red dragon lifted and shot fire into the face of the green dragon.
Mina gasped, covering her face and sinking to the ground. Like my stone golem, the scales on her dragon would protect her for a little while, but her lesser trained faerie guardian would succumb eventually to the fire, perhaps even faster than my golem.
Despite my body still aching, I forced my golem to take several pounding steps toward Dramian. The boy’s eyes widened, and he leapt to his feet, but in this rare instance, he was too slow.
My golem snatched him up in a stone fist. And squeezed.
Dramian’s dragon stopped shooting fire, and nobody moved or spoke. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire in the field and Chels’s soft, terrified sobs.
“So this is what it has come to, has it brother?” Dramian said, his voice strained.
“Call your dragon back, or I’ll crush you,” I said.
His eyes moved to his dragon, but the frown on his face confirmed my own analysis. I could crush him long before he could make Mina fall. He couldn’t use her as a bargaining chip.
“Okay, Arius, you win.” His face pale, the dragon melted back onto his arm.
This was my chance. For all the years of hatred and pain, for the times he’d sliced up my body, for the destruction of the manor, for taking Dairlin, Tily, and others I cared for from me. I could finally put an end to this rivalry.
By ending him for good.
“Arius.” Mina pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. “If you kill him, you’d only be playing into what Nuada made you to be. What she groomed you to be.”
She was right.
This ending, this outcome, wasn’t a choice or by chance. It was inevitable. From the day Nuada and Margus set us up as bitter enemies, they had expected it, even wanted it to end this way. Either me ending Dramian, or him ending me. It made no difference to them who went down in the end—as long as we fought. As long as one of us died. Then the hatred between our two groups would be sealed forever—in blood.
“Get Chels to the car,” I said.
She hesitated, her eyes moving between me and my golem. “What are you—” But she cut herself off and nodded.
Her faerie guardian returned to her arm. She drew close to me and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Remember, he’s your brother,” she whispered. Then straightened and ran into the U-shaped fire to retrieve Chels.
Brother.
She always said that word like it was supposed to mean something. And I guess, to her, it did. I had tried for it to mean something to me once, too. I’d learned the hard way that the faeries of the Haven were more my family than this boy would ever be.
This was not a family reconciliation.
This was the moment, perhaps the first moment, when I could choose to not be Nuada’s pawn.
Mina’s griffin sailed above the flames back toward the car, Mina clutched in one claw and a dazed and uncertain Chels in the other.
I rose from the ground and walked over to where my golem clutched Dramian. “I will let you go only if you promise to leave here immediately. Go straight back to your camp, no detours or side trips.”
Faerie promises were tricky. Since faeries couldn’t lie, the faerie, had to openly and honestly make the promise and have some level of intention to follow through. They just couldn’t plan on breaking said promise before making it, otherwise it would count as a lie.
I also had to be careful how I worded the promise.
“That’s it? No swearing never to attack the faeries of the Haven again?”
“You and I both know long-term promises mean nothing.”
The longer the promise, the more likely a faerie could break it by changing their mind.
Dramian raised his eyes to the sky. “I am a slave to Margus as long as the other faeries need me. But I promise to leave here immediately and go straight back to my camp, no detours or side trips.” He focused on me. “And for what it’s worth, I promise when I am fr
ee of Margus, to never instigate an attack against the faeries of the Haven.”
I didn’t know what the second promise was worth, but he had promised to leave, and for now, that was good enough. My golem set him down.
As soon as his feet hit the earth, true to his word, Dramian started sprinting away. “Sorry, brother!”
A shout brought me around. Dramian’s red dragon was nearly on top of Mina and Chels.
No.
I pulled my faerie guardian back on my arm and released it toward Mina and Chels. But it was too late. The dragon dipped down and snatched Chels up between its claws and swerved into the sky, my golem arriving just in time to shake the earth with a useless roar of rage.
I sprinted toward Mina, relieved that at least the dragon hadn’t blasted them both into oblivion. How? Already? But he promised...
He’d promised he’d return immediately, not his faerie guardian. And with his arms covered, I hadn’t been able to keep track of when he released his dragon. This was why I hated faerie promises. I hadn’t thought of every way around the promise. It was so much easier to give faeries orders and expect them to obey.
Mina banged on my golem’s foot. I sank farther into my golem to hear what she was saying. “Arius—get the car out of the ditch now. You and Chels have to get out of here.”
My golem rumbled in confusion. Chels? Chels had just been snatched into the sky.
“I’m losing concentration,” she continued. “I order you to get the car out of the ditch and get Chels to safety.”
Grass snagged at my ankles as I ran up to her, grinding to a halt. “What are you talking about? Chels is—”
“In the car. Take her to the Haven. Keep her safe.”
I reached for her hand, but her whole form blurred and melted into nothing, leaving my fist clutching air, and me staring into empty space.
“Mina?” Fear and helplessness gripped me. Her faerie guardian, that had to be her faerie guardian. I lunged into the ditch, throwing open the doors of the tipped car until I found the figure huddled in the back. My heart sank. The tear-stained, sobbing girl clutching her knees to her chest wasn’t the person I wanted to find.
“Where’s Mina?” I demanded.
Chels raised her eyes to the sky. “H-he took her.”
How? Why? I held onto the side of the car to steady myself, fighting to control my rising panic as reality sank in.
Somehow, Dramian had Mina.
19
Dramian
Mina
“Things will get confusing at times, but remember who you are.”—Nana
HOLDING A TRANSFORMATION was hard.
Before Dramian snatched me into the sky, I’d hidden Chels in the back of the car, then changed my faerie guardian into a replica of myself. Then I pulled out the emerald ring strung on a chain around my neck and tried to access the ability to change my appearance. Jazrael had known how to use the stone, so it was that skill I tried to access. I needed it now more than ever.
And for the first time, I called on and used my ability at will.
My mind opened, and I could not only see Jazrael using the stone, but how she used it. Using the stone was less about controlling its power and more about feeling it. The magic pulsed through the green gemstone, and then I let it enter me, and I suggested the form I wanted to take.
And so I took the form of the queen of the faeries. But holding it was nothing like when my faerie guardian shape shifted. With my faerie guardian, the focus came when making the change, but after that, I didn’t even have to think about maintaining the transformation. With the stone, I had to continually hold the form I wanted in my head. No wonder Nuada had only used it to transform her arm all those years. Smaller transformations must require less concentration.
I almost lost it when my faerie guardian spoke to Arius. In fact, I had to call her back so I wouldn’t lose the transformation all together.
But even with my faerie guardian back, I wouldn’t be able to hold the form of the queen much longer. Transforming into Chels had been easy when I was staring right at her, but already, I was forgetting the details of Chels’s appearance.
Right after I had been snatched, the dragon dived low so Dramian could jump onto his faerie guardian’s back before rising higher. We flew above the clouds, my shoeless feet dangling in air as I lay clasped in the dragon’s claws.
Strange how I’d just been in the same position with my griffin. But having complete control over the griffin’s movements was different. The dragon could release me or shred me at Dramian’s will, and I would be helpless to stop it.
“You’re awfully quiet, Your Majesty,” Dramian called down to me.
Chels was supposed to be crying, terrified. Right.
“Please don’t hurt me,” I said in as timid of a voice as I could muster. I was worried about what Dramian planned to do with me.
He leaned to the side to look at me and scowled. “Well, that changes everything.”
I glanced down. My dress was no longer the shimmery red satin Chels wore but the calm silvery color Kris had dressed me in. Speaking with Dramian had broken my concentration. I tried to picture Chels and access the magic in the stone again, but it was no use. It was like the magic in the stone had switched off.
We dropped through the clouds, heading for the ground. What should I do? Would Dramian attack? Should I release my faerie guardian?
No. Like Dramian caught in the fist of Arius’s golem, I was at Dramian’s mercy. Provoking him wasn’t a good idea.
The dragon landed on three legs among the tall trees and laid me down in the long grass, rolling me onto my back.
Its large, scaled head loomed over my prone body. Hot steam blasted from its nostrils. I lay unmoving. If Dramian ended me now, I couldn’t stop him.
Dry leaves crunched under Dramian’s feet as he dismounted. He came up next to his dragon, laying a hand on the side of its massive snout. “Are you a faerie guardian?”
I shook my head. “I’m not a faerie guardian. I’m the real Mina.”
“Then how did you appear as the queen?”
I pulled the gemstone around my neck from under my dress. “Nuada used this stone. It’s what allowed her to hide her faerie guardian all those years, but it does more than that. I used it to make me look like the queen.”
His eyebrow raised. “So now you can change into anything, too? I’m not sure that’s fair.”
“I think it only works for human-like transformations.” Granted, it had once turned little Dairlin into a raving beast, but that felt almost like a corruption of its use. Like Dairlin’s negative emotions had caused her to access the power in the stone the wrong way.
Dramian held out a hand. Relieved he didn’t attack me for my deceit, I took it, and he hauled me to my feet. I moved out of the direct line of fire while he stared out into the trees.
“Arius will be on the freeway by now. There’ll be no catching him,” he muttered to himself. “But the switchbacks of the mountains will slow him down. If I fly in a straight line...” He moved away from me, his hand skimming along the dragon’s scales. “I might intercept him before—”
I released my faerie guardian. A huge horned dragon with green scales faced off against Dramian’s sleek red one.
Dramian started. “Really Mina? Put your dragon away before you get hurt.”
“I went easy on you before, Dramian, but I can’t let you take the queen to Margus.”
Dramian laughed, but his eyes flashed dangerously. He stepped toward me. “You went easy on me? Come now, I could take you down in an instant if I really wanted to.”
“Then why don’t you?” I challenged. “Because it’s my fault all of this happened. I’m the one who disrupted everything. Nuada and Margus wouldn’t have made their move if not for me. I came back when the domovye told me not to. I... I got Iris killed. Chels didn’t do those things. It was me. I ruined everything.”
He drew near, shrinking the space between us. “And is that what
you want, Mina? For me to take you down? Exact my revenge on you here and now?”
“I want to help you.”
His eyes ignited with anger and passion and such intensity. He was close now. So close I felt the heat of it pouring off him. “Why? Why would you want to help someone like me? Because you feel guilty? Because you think you owe me?”
“Because I care about you.”
Dramian stared at me, his mouth open, like for once he didn’t know what to say. He stepped even closer.
Then he kissed me.
And my world split apart.
I was walking into the forest behind the manor, excitement and anticipation burning in my chest when a dark figure gathered me in his arms and I kissed him, desire and pleasure coursing through my body...
I stood outside an enormous castle, confusion and pain filling my heart as I watched him walk away, and panic struck because I couldn’t lose him...
The queen rushed up to me, still in her night robes, clutching the king’s hand. Envy and longing sliced through me so strong I could hardly breathe. I had made an oath that would never allow me to experience that level of intimacy. Not with the one I desperately wanted...
I was in the manor writing a note to Dramian, explaining the queen’s plan, my heart shattering with each word scrawled from my pen. It was over. The next time we saw each other, we wouldn’t look at each other the same way. We wouldn’t remember anything about these feelings—
I was kissing him, gripping his shirt, pulling him closer, pouring all the pain and longing and desire into this one moment. This one moment to just feel him with me before it all slipped away.
Dramian eased back. “Well, I didn’t expect—” he chuckled. “Tell me, did I beat Arius to it?”
Arius? What did Arius have to do with anything?