by S A McClure
Arrows appeared at her feet. Brilliant feathers were tied to their tails. They reminded her of the feathers she’d seen in books describing the firebird.
For luck.
Her movements were slow and methodical as she notched one of the arrows and aimed it straight at one of the little holes in the wall. The brilliantly colored orange and red feather caressed her hand as she drew in a deep breath. She released the arrow with her breath, her shoulders dropping as the tension left her body. The arrow shot through the sky and thumped into the hole with a loud crunching noise.
More cracks formed on the wall, rippling out from where the arrow had lodged itself in the hole. She smirked, her confidence rising as she notched another arrow and took aim at another one of the holes in the wall.
She repeated the maneuver multiple times. She lost track of the number. The work was numbing. Her shoulders ached each time she pulled back on the bowstring. Still, her arms never quivered.
She’d found the crimson-eyed witch. Now all that was left was discovering her identity and escaping back to the real world in enough time to save her sister.
The wall turned into a spiderweb of cracks. More holes appeared as chunks of stone plummeted to the ground in a burst of dust and rubble. Each arrow she released flew true. She had never been great at target shooting—or really any kind of shooting, for that matter. But, she didn’t seem able to miss. The firebird’s feathers fluttered behind the arrows as they zipped through the space between her and the wall.
Grandmother had always said the firebird brought both luck and heartache to any who found it. Iris had always believed that the mythical bird was nothing more than that: a myth. None had seen the bird since the Wars of Darkness over three hundred years before had ended. Still, rumors of its fortune were embedded in the tales mothers told their children as they drifted off to sleep.
The story of the firebird had always been Iris’s favorite. At least now she could say the creature had brought her luck.
Her fingers grasped the last arrow in her quiver. It was larger than the others had been. Intricate ruins had been etched into the wood with silver. It gleamed in the brilliant glow of the sister moons.
Iris hadn’t even realized that the sun had set while she’d been shooting her arrows towards the sky. Her lips pulled into a small smile as the sun was clouded out by smoke and dust.
Closing her eyes, she imagined herself standing before the wall. A low hum filled her ears and, when she opened her eyes, cracked stone filled her vision. She punched through the last of the wall with her bare hands. What little remained of her nails broke as she dug her way through the rubble.
Beyond the remains of the broken wall stood a small, remote tower. It looked as if it had seen better days. Its roof was pitted with massive holes. She could hear women wailing coming from beyond the tower. And children.
The shrieks of the children as they begged not be hurt anymore pulled at her heart. She couldn’t let the witch hurt them. Not anymore. Not ever.
She screamed as she rushed forward and slammed her body into the tower. Just like the wall, a myriad of cracks formed on its surface. She backed up and rammed into the tower again. More fractures spread up the stone, branching out like a massive river system. She imagined her breath shoving over the bits of rubble and debris. She could see it. The destruction. The demise.
It crumbled before her.
The cries from beyond abruptly halted as the dust swirled around her. It clogged her nose, her mouth—suffocating her. She coughed and the world around her shuttered at the sound.
As the smoke cleared, a streak of golden and pink light spilled into the forest from high above. The sun had finally risen. And with it, the prone figure of an old, dilapidated woman crouched before her.
The air glittered with the sun streaming through floating particles of dust. To Iris, it seemed like a scene from a fae tale. It the aftermath of the tower’s fall, she felt almost peaceful. A smile spread across her face as she approached the cowering woman.
Even from the distance between them, she knew who the woman was. Her crimson eyes gleamed as she wiped away the tears spilling down her cheeks with the back of her hand.
“I am not a scourge. I am not an abomination. I am not any of the terrible things you believe me to be,” Iris said down to her. She placed her hands on her hips as she towered over the witch, daring her to disagree.
“Reality is in the mind of the beholder,” the witch muttered as she lifted her chin towards Iris. Her crimson eyes gleamed in the golden morning light. There was a fire in them that matched Iris’s. She was surprised by the amount of compassion they held, but not by the anger.
“You’re wrong,” she whispered.
The witch shrugged. She coughed with the movement, her entire body rattling as she sucked in a breath.
“Tell me who you are,” Iris demanded.
“I am one of but many who will seek to destroy you.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything,” she responded, exasperation flooding her. She gripped the witch’s chin in her hand, forcing the woman to stare into her eyes. “You need to tell me who you are. Please,” she begged, her voice taking on the shaky, high-pitched tone it always did when she was upset. “You have to tell me who you are. It’s the only way I can save her.”
The witch began laughing. Iris gripped her more firmly.
“Why are you laughing?” she demanded.
The witch ripped her face out of Iris’s grasp, her crimson eyes gleeful.
“Tell me why you’re laughing,” Iris said.
The witch’s voice floated over Iris like a gentle caress. The insidious implication did not match the gentle, fluttering way she responded. Iris clutched her arms around herself, the words sinking in one by one.
“You’re too late.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Iris
You’re too late.
Iris didn’t understand how three little words could impact her as much as these did. It couldn’t be true. She would have known. She would have felt it. She and Emma had shared everything growing up. She would have known if her sister had slipped into the void.
Wouldn’t she?
She didn’t know how long she stared at the witch cackling before her. Time was so different in the dreamworld. What might have been months here was only a few hours in the living world.
Yet, there were consequences to what happened in this world.
“Did you honestly think that Myrella Dimata would do anything to save your sister?”
Iris peered at the witch and for the first time believed she saw her true form.
She was younger than she had been before. Her hair was long and ebony colored. It seemed to shimmer slightly beneath the sunlight. Her skin was smooth and creamy with just a hint of freckles covering her nose and cheeks. Her glowing, crimson eyes had turned a dark green. There was something familiar about the title of her head and the curve of her jaw.
She shook her head. She knew the witch was trying to bait her, toying with her the way a cat does a mouse. It made her stomach roil. She was tired. Tired of being the pawn moved about by other’s leisure. Tired of not being strong enough to save anyone. Tired of feeling like a failure.
She let her anger and exhaustion swell within her. She didn’t try to force it down, cover it over with pretty little things and excuses.
She stared directly into the witch’s emerald eyes, her jaw clenching.
“You will tell me your name, or I swear to the Creators I will snap your neck right here, in this clearing.”
The witch blinked at her, then her lips curled into a smile.
She leaned in close to the witch’s ear. Her hair tickled Iris’s lips as she whispered, “This isn’t a game to me. I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of anything right now except for the idea of losing Emma.”
“Liar,” the witch hissed, her breath caressing Iris’s neck like a lover.
She pulled back, her cheeks flushing. A
ngry tears pooled in her eyes. She’d come all this way, only to fail.
She punched the witch straight in the nose. Her knuckles cracked under the impact and a spike of pain shot through her hand, up her wrist and into her elbow. Wincing, she clutched her hand to her chest.
Breathing hard she managed to get out, “Just tell me who you are.”
Blood streamed from the witch’s nose and a dark purple bruise was already spreading across her cheek and beneath her left eye. When she smiled up at Iris, her teeth were coated in red.
“Temper, temper,” she clucked.
Iris didn’t know what came over her. It was more than anger, more than the desire to save her sister. She shoved the witch back, her hand flaring with pain. There was a satisfying crunch as the witch’s head slammed into a rock. She released a small whimper.
Iris ignored it all.
She straddled the witch and pinned her arms beneath her legs. She squeezed her thighs together until the witch wriggled in pain. This was her dreamworld. There was no reason that she couldn’t control it.
She imagined vines growing from the ground and wrapping around the witch’s body. She could see them, their thorns digging into the witch’s flesh. The image was so vivid that she didn’t know if the vines covering her body were real or just part of the dream.
It didn’t matter. Their hold on the witch was enough.
“I can’t make you tell me who you are. I know that. And honestly, if I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t want to tell me either. But there’s something you need to understand about me. My sister means everything to me. Everything, you got that? And, I’m not going to let some feud you have with Grandmother destroy the thing I hold most dear.”
The witch spat at her. It was really more of a large glob of mucus mixed with blood, but Iris got the message. The witch wasn’t willing to play. Fine then, she would find other ways of figuring out who the witch was.
She imagined the vines tightening on their captive. They complied with little more than a gentle nudge. The witch shuddered in pain as more thorns dug into her skin. But, to Iris’s surprise, she didn’t beg for it to stop.
She leaned down over her, searching her body for the tattoo she knew would be on her somewhere. All the covens had them. It was their way of marking themselves, as identifying who they were to the rest of the group. Most of the time, they were on the witch’s wrist on the curve of her breast. The tattoo was neither of these places on her captive.
She clenched her fists, forcing herself to focus on the sharp pain of her nails digging into her palm.
“You are the absolute worst interrogator I think I’ve ever encountered.” The witch’s wry, crooning voice raked across Iris’s mind like claws.
She couldn’t come up with a response, so she just shrugged before yanking the witch’s dress up. The fabric ripped at the seams as she scanned her legs for any sign of the tattoo.
There was a dark birthmark shaped like a crescent moon that, for a brief moment, Iris had thought might have been it, but then she found a long hair growing out of its center and knew it wasn’t the mark.
She ordered the vines to roll the witch over so that she could examine her. And there, right behind the witch’s ear was a small, silver skull.
Iris dropped her hands to her sides the moment she saw the marking. She had seen that same design before. She thumped her hands on her sides as she tried to remember.
“You think that by telling your precious matron about my coven that she’ll protect you?” The witch laughed. “She won’t. Trust me, girl, I’ve known Myrella a much longer time than you have. No good will come from trusting her.”
“That might be true. But it doesn’t matter. I have what I need.”
She didn’t wait for the witch to respond. She just closed her eyes and let herself drift back into reality.
Chapter Thirty
Iris
Soft fur rubbed against Iris’s skin, warm and gentle. It was tentative at first, but as her eyes fluttered open, became more insistent. ‘Look at me,’ it seemed to say, ‘pay attention to me.’
Something wet and rough stroked her hand. She squirmed as drool dripped between her fingers.
“Where’s Emma?” Her voice was raspy, as if she hadn’t had anything to drink for days. Her dry lips cracks as she ran her tongue across them. That couldn’t be right. She’d only been in the dream world for a few hours at most. She was sure of it.
Her eyes flew open. She scanned the room. She was laying on the floor of Balkeen’s lair. Emma’s wolf nudged her with his cold, wet nose. Her heart raced in her chest. She could barely hear her own thoughts over the rapid thrumming. If the witch were correct and Grandmother hadn’t sent aid to Emma, then she really was too late.
The wolf with hazel eyes stared at her. He yawned, his maw stretching open wide enough to reveal the rows of pointy teeth within. He snapped it mouth shut again with a loud snap. Iris couldn’t help herself. She flinched as she watched his teeth interlock.
“Do you know where my sister is?” she asked. For some reason, she believed the wolf knew exactly what she was asking for.
He nudged her with his nose and pointed his snout in the direction of the door.
“You want me to go with you?”
Her mind toggled. She couldn’t seem to grasp onto any single thought other than the intense need to find Emma. The sides of her head pounded as she sat up. The room swam and she found herself cradling her head between both hands.
The wolf scratched at the door. She knew it couldn’t have been louder than a faint rhythmic tick, but to her, it sounded like he was ranking sharp metal against a board.
“I don’t think I can make it,” she muttered.
He walked back over to where she lay on the bed. He opened his mouth wide and, for a terrifying moment, she thought he was going to bite her. Instead, he sank his teeth into the hem of her dress and pulled her to her feet. His low growl was enough to propel her towards the door.
She twisted the knob and leaned into it until it opened. He rushed past her the moment the door was wide enough for him to slip by. She stumbled behind him, her legs unwilling to cooperate with her. She slammed into the walls of the corridor, making more noise than she ever had in her life.
She knocked one of the torches off the wall. Mr. Wolf whipped his head back to glare at her in the darkness.
“Sorry,” she mumbled.
He held her gaze for several seconds. The feeling that he was trying to communicate with her about something important didn’t leave her as they began descending a narrow staircase.
No torches were lit this far from the main part of the lair. The steps were slick with mildew and condensation. In her uncoordinated attempt to brace herself against the wall for a few moments of rest, her foot slipped, and she stumbled down several steps. Her ankle twisted as she landed on it. Sharp pain spread up her leg. She yelped, her eyes watering as she sucked in a breath through her nose and exhaled through her mouth.
Mr. Wolf trotted up to her. His eyes gleamed in the darkness as he approached. He reminded Iris of the sorcerers she’d read about, full of a fiery darkness that could reportedly be seen from across the valley of death.
Of course, she’d never met a sorcerer before. Grandmother had strictly forbidden it, saying that all the men within their ranks practiced even darker magic than the covens did.
Iris found this difficult to believe, but she’d accepted Grandmother’s command without a fight.
Mr.Wolf sniffed at her legs before licking her already swollen ankle. She flinched at his touch, but he didn’t seem to mind. He just leaned against her, as if to say, ‘I’ll support you.’ She let him. There was nothing else she could do.
“I hope you know where we’re going,” she whispered. “I just need to know she’s okay.”
The wolf whined in response.
“You’re just as worried about her as I am, aren’t you?”
His quickening pace was his only response.
/> By the time they emerged from the small, wooden door at what Iris could only assume was the base of the mountain, she was exhausted. Her swollen ankle was hot and painful to touch, no matter how gentle her fingers grazed her skin. She’d taken to limping, slowing their pace to a crawl. Every few minutes, they had to stop for her bite back the tears and convince herself to keep going.
The door opened out into a deep ravine. The walls were so steep that she knew there was no way they’d be able to climb them, even if she weren’t injured. The ground was solid ice coated in a thick layer of snow. She had to move slowly to keep herself from falling with each step.
Glittering snowflakes swirled all around them. It was beautiful. She opened her mouth, catching the miniscule drops on her tongue as they progressed through the woods. Emma would have loved this. Fresh snow was one of her greatest joys.
The thought sent a shiver down her spine. There was a chance, no matter how small it was, that her sister would never again experience fresh snow. Or the brilliance of a sunset over autumn leaves. Or the scent of budding roses in spring. Or any of things she loved.
She stopped in her tracks, her mind racing as the impact of those thoughts hit her. What if she was too late? It was possible. The witch had said as much. If Grandmother had saved her sister, there was no way in oblivion that Emma wouldn’t have waited for her to wake up. No matter how ill she was, she would have been there.
The deep, throaty call of a raven dragged her from her thoughts. It soared through the sky directly before them. Surprisingly, it appeared to be alone.
“Where did you come from?” she asked it.
The raven arched over them. A feather streaked with violet fluttered to the ground before her. Iris plucked it from the ground and held it to her chest. The bird swooped down and landed on her shoulder. It preened itself. She stroked one finger down its head and neck and it cooed in response.