Hidden Ashes: Reigning Fae Book 1

by AC Washer

  She tilted her head to the side. “You poor little pawn. Do you really think that after the investiture there will be anything left of you?” She sighed. “I really am doing you a favor.”

  When she sprang. I dove out of the way. It was a reflex trained into me long before I could remember. I rolled onto the floor and under a desk.

  “Ms. Cochran!”

  Only the squeak of marker on whiteboard answered.

  Someone grabbed my shoe and started pulling. It couldn’t be Goldilocks because I could still see her grinning at me.

  I kicked my shoe off, scrambling out from under the desk to see a girl with raven hair and green, cat-like eyes. Great, Goldilocks had a stooge.

  Well, then. I took a semi-deep breath and ran toward the door, but the stooge rammed into my body, hooking her arm around my waist, dumping me onto the floor.

  My head banged onto the cold marble as I stared up, dazed.

  “Do it now,” Goldilocks said, her voice tight.

  Do it now. Do it now? Do what now?

  I saw a flash of metal arc through the air and I rolled away without thinking. The clang of metal glancing off marble rang through the air.

  Freak! They really were trying to kill me. How did this make sense? I’m a freakin’ heir to the throne and I’m surrounded by rebels that wanted me dead. Where was my stinkin’ entourage of big beefy bodyguards?

  My head jerked back as someone grabbed me by the hair.

  I twisted around, my scalp screaming at me, to see Goldilocks’ black patent leather boots.

  Well, this was a familiar position. Except Dad never had a knife in his hands. Crap.

  But there was that one time…

  He had me by the hair. All I could do was stare at his shiny black work shoes again.

  “Witch,” he whispered. It was better to take it. Better than resisting. I’d done that a couple of times. It always ended worse. But this time he had a broken beer bottle in his hands, too drunk to realize he still had something in his fist after he smashed it into the fridge.

  “Witch,” he said louder, yanking my head closer to the floor. “Thought I wouldn’t figure it out, huh? I know she isn’t mine.”

  Great. He’d gotten so drunk, he thought I was Mom again.

  I wished I wasn’t his kid. Not having him as my dad would do wonders for my self-esteem. As it was, I looked too much like him to be anything other than his.

  “You killed her!” he roared.

  I stared at the glass bottle, knowing what was coming next.

  I exhaled and breathed in again right before he swung his fist up.

  I brought my hands down in an X—the way Caleb and I had drilled so many times, catching his hand and twisted, bringing it up as I heard the broken bottle crash onto the floor. Dad wasn’t falling like we’d practiced, so I improvised and went to knee him in the groin. I got his thigh instead.

  Crap. Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die.

  He bellowed and swung his fist into my face.

  I blinked, disoriented, splayed out on two overturned blue chairs. I craned my neck to see Goldilocks wiping off a bit of blood from her mouth. My upper arm felt damp and on fire.

  The stooge came into view, her eyes wide. “Did she just…”

  Goldilocks stepped toward me, backhanding me. My head snapped back.

  Stooge grabbed her arm. “Eolin, if they were wrong—if she has power, maybe we should wait.”

  Goldilocks shrugged her off. “For what? She’d need a lot more than that to be worth the risk.” She shook her head. “We’re not taking any chances.”

  “But Edon said—”

  Goldilocks brought out her blade once more. “Time to die,” she said as my head still spun from her last hit. My swirling vision splintered her blade into a carousel of circling knives as she swung it down.

  The classroom door shattered, pieces of wood exploding across the room as something catapulted toward us.

  I watched in frozen fascination as Goldilocks lifted, her back arching as red spilled like ink across the front of her pale pink blouse. Her green eyes widened, mouth open in a surprised O.

  My jaw went slack from shock.

  Bridgette—bubbly, mildly irritating Bridgette—loomed behind Goldie. Strands of her white-blond hair clung to Goldie’s shirt as she gripped Goldie’s shoulder and jerked her blade out. Bridgette spun, leaving Goldie’s body to crumple to the floor.

  Stooge had her hands up, but there was no hope in her eyes. Bridgette shot through the room like a vengeful ninja, her sword slashing across Stooge’s throat, executing her swiftly.

  Before my mind could catch up to the fact that there were two dead bodies in my English class, Bridgette landed beside me like a cat, sinking low into a crouch as she bared her teeth at the front of the room. I slowly swiveled my head.

  Ms. Cochran continued to write on the white board.

  “Well, Daelle?” Bridgette’s voice was barely above a whisper.

  The writing paused. Ms. Cochran slowly turned and barely glanced at me.

  “Still alive, I see.” She turned back to the white board, continuing to write. “Pity.”

  Bridgette let out what could only be described as a hiss. “A very thin line you’re walking.”

  Ms. Cochran didn’t answer. She capped her marker and calmly stepped over bits of wood as she left through the gaping hole in the room.

  Bridgette snorted and looked back at me, scouring my body for injuries and focusing in on my upper arm.

  “You’re bleeding.” The way she said it was cold, detached. Like she’d said it a thousand times before, and it wasn’t a big deal.

  I nodded, refusing to look at my arm. I knew what would happen if I did, and I wasn’t going there right now. Especially not now. There were two dead bodies and I was not going to go all PTSD and miss out on what was gonna happen next.

  “I’ll wrap it for you.” She knelt in front of us and sliced a strip of black that I recognized as Goldie’s pants. I shuddered as she turned to wrap my arm so tightly that I began to wonder if she was applying a tourniquet.

  She looked into my eyes. “You in shock?”

  “Um.” I started to sit up a little, trying to get a handle on this very unreal situation.

  Until I looked down. Then I realized that this unreal situation would stay just that: impossibly and totally unreal.

  Where Goldie had been laid a different kind of corpse. One I recognized, since it’d been with Goldie since the day I met her, except it was now in color. Goldie’s hair had changed to straight white with a set of pointed ears just barely peeking out. Her blank eyes were still green, but her face was thinner, her body leaner. A pool of red spread out like halo around her, dyeing the ends of her hair crimson.

  I felt my face flush, the asphalt on my knees, the warm stickiness of blood as my hand trembled to find a pulse.

  Don’t die. Caleb, don’t die.

  Chapter 15

  I was dreaming again; I had to be, since Caleb and I were standing in the white space once more.

  “Caleb!” I ran over and hugged him, burying my head in his shoulder.

  “Hey, short stack,” he said.

  I kept hugging him, tightening my arms around him like a vice. I wasn’t about to let him go.

  “Hey, what’s going on now?”

  “Everything is going crazy. This is real. Like, this thing here with you is for real, I’m an elf, magic exists, and I’m in the middle of a rebellion that could kill me,” I said, his shoulder muffling my words.

  “Huh.”

  “Huh?” I stepped back from Caleb to look him in the eye. “I just told you legit my-sister-is-crazy stuff and you say huh? Where are the questions? Like, are you on drugs? Or what the heck are you talking about? Or, my personal favorite, it can’t be that bad? Which, by the way, it is.” I shot a look around my brother.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for the real Caleb.”

  He shook his head. “Well
, I already figured out we had a connection. The only surprise is you admitting it. And besides, I’ve been hearing heard a lot of crazy stuff lately, so this doesn’t seem that abnormal.”

  I punched him in the shoulder.

  “Ow. I didn’t mean from you.”

  “Then who? Your other sister that you can magically connect with? Because last time I checked, you’re still in a coma.”

  Caleb scratched the back of his neck instead. “Well, at least this confirms that guy was right about elves being real. I was thinking he was the crazy one, but he knew so much about you…”

  “Wait, what guy? And how do you know about the elf thing?”

  “It’s going to sound a little insane.”

  I snorted. “We just covered insane. I’m pretty sure that anything you’re about to add can’t touch what I’ve gone through these past few days.”

  “Okay, then.” Caleb looked down at his feet. That was a bad sign. “So, there’s this friend—well, ‘friend’ is a strong word. I just met him, but he seems decent enough. Anyway, he’s been talking to me for, well… Time is a little warped at the moment, but I figure it’s been a couple of days. Or maybe it’s only been one. It’s a kind of one-way thing, but I guess that’s how it works for people in my position.”

  I closed my eyes and begged the universe for patience. I loved my brother. I really did. But his need to be as precise as possible was getting a little frustrating. “Okay. You have a friendly person talking to you.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And what is this friendly person saying?” Extracting information from Caleb could be a nightmare sometimes.

  Caleb took a deep breath. “A bunch of stuff, actually. Most of it about you.”

  That piqued my curiosity.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “He pretty much said…” He glanced up at me, a shadow of disbelief taking shape on his face. “That you’re a changeling. That you’ve got magical powers, and you’re using them to keep me alive.”

  Okay, that was news to me—the whole powers thing, anyway.

  “Yes to the first part, but definitely no to the second. I have zero magic, which is part of the problem here. Although…” I remembered what Goldilocks had said about me being weak. “Even if I did have some, I have a feeling I’d need a bunch more to keep the rebels off my back.”

  “Yeah, about that.” Caleb scratched his neck. “Apparently it does take a ton of magic to do what you’re doing—especially from the distance you’re doing it at. It’s enough to keep your magic drained. At least, that’s what the guy said.”

  “Oh really? And who is this guy, anyway, because I’d really like to talk with him myself.”

  “He said he was your dad—your real dad.”

  “What? What’s his name? Where is he now?” I found myself searching the white space around us, even knowing that he couldn’t be lurking nearby.

  Caleb shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, what did he look like?”

  Caleb cocked a brow.

  “Oh, right. The whole coma thing.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, the whole coma thing.”

  “Sorry about that,” I said. He shrugged. “So, um, you met my dad.”

  “Yeah. Says he’s an elf, like you”

  I looked everywhere but at Caleb. “That would be correct.”

  Silence. I fidgeted, not quite knowing what to say. Sorry that your sister turned out to be a changeling elf didn’t seem to cut it.

  “You’ve got a whole new family now, huh?”

  Whoa, wait a minute. My gaze snapped back to his. “No. I do not have a whole new family. My real mom is dead, I haven’t met my real dad, and even if I did, the only person I care about is right here.” I stamped my foot for emphasis. “In this weird dream-not-dream…thing.”

  A ghost of a smile flitted over Caleb’s face. “Sorry, I just—”

  “You were just being stupid, I know.”

  He rolled his eyes but a grin tugged on his lips.

  “So what else did this… my dad say?”

  “Some stuff about an investiture.” Caleb hesitated. “Something about you needing all your power back to get through it okay.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not right. Maeve said the investiture would work fine with or without me having magic,” I said, even as the memory of Goldilocks talking about nothing being left of me after the investiture flashed in my mind. The beginnings of alarm crept into my chest, making my heart beat erratically.

  “Do you trust Maeve?” Caleb asked.

  I hesitated, swallowing down something that felt suspiciously like panic. I wanted to chalk up Goldilocks’ mini monologue to rebel fae smack talk, but now doubt wormed its way in. Why would Goldilocks bother lying to something she was about to kill? And it wasn’t like Mickey and Maeve had a good track record with being upfront about everything.

  “No,” I whispered, hating the fact that there was no one I trusted here—that everyone in this fae town wanted something from me. The only exception was the elf who’d just tried to kill me—and was now dead.

  Caleb nodded as if he suspected as much.

  “Well, I think this guy was telling the truth. It all makes sense to me, anyway.”

  “Exactly what, in all of this mess,” I said, swinging my arms out wide, “makes sense to you?”

  Mickey sat down and patted the white space next to him. I huffed but gave in, leaning into his side as he wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

  “Let’s go ahead and accept the premise that you’ve got a ton of magic you’re using to keep me alive,” Caleb said.

  “Well, that’s what your guy says,” I mumbled. “But, no.” I straightened up, scooching myself so I faced Caleb. “My magic would be bound anyway because of—”

  “The glamour?”

  “Yeah! Wait, he told you about that, too?”

  “He spent a long time talking with me, especially when you take into account that he’d need to wait for when I was closer to the surface. I don’t know how, but he always knew when I was able to listen.”

  “Okay,” I said, stretching the word out. “And exactly what did he have to say about all of that?”

  Caleb took a deep breath, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked around us. “I’ll try to keep it concise. Basically, changeling glamours bind magic differently than the regular glamours that the queen imposes on her subjects when she dies.”

  I nodded, already knowing about the protective magic aspect.

  “Basically,” he continued, “in a life-threatening situation, magical or non-magical, the binding on the magic is—”

  “Broken. Yes, I know,” I said.

  Caleb gave me a testy look. “Then let’s connect the dots, okay? Have you had any, oh, I don’t know, life-threatening situations come up in the past month?”

  “Don’t get snippy,” I said. “And yeah, I’m following. You think that when Dad did his thing—”

  “You almost died and your magic broke, saved you, and then you used it to save me, too.”

  “Huh. I guess that makes sense.”

  Caleb nodded. “Now, we don’t have a lot of time, so let’s move on to the investiture.”

  “He told—”

  “Yes. Let’s just accept the fact that he told me everything so we can get this conversation done faster, okay?”

  “Snippy,” I muttered.

  “Okay, then,” he said, taking that for consent. “The investiture isn’t what you think. You need to have your full power available to get through it and remain sane.”

  Goldilocks’ voice echoed in my mind. You really think that after the investiture there will be anything left of you?

  “Okay. So the investiture is no longer an option. Got it.”

  “Like they’d let you opt out.”

  I shrugged. “I wasn’t going to ask.”

  “You’re going to run?”

  I shrugged again. “Seems like a good idea. The fae w
ill stay trapped in glamours, I stay sane…win-win. And since I already have magic, it’s not like I need the investiture anymore. The only reason I was going to do it was to gain enough magic to heal you.”

  “Kella, you realize if you run, the fae won’t stop looking for you, right?” Caleb grabbed my arm, waiting until I looked into his eyes. “They’re going to find you. It’s just a matter of time. And when they do, they won’t worry about pretending to be on your side. Your best chance is to do the investiture now, on your terms.”

  “But you just said my power is what’s keeping you alive. If I do the investiture, then…”

  I trailed off, waiting for Caleb to fill in the gaps—to explain how this was all going to work out. But he only sat there, looking at me expectantly.

  Oh, heck no. “Well, if you’re trying to tell me I need to take my magic back, I can’t because I don’t know how. And even if I did, I wouldn’t because, again, it’s keeping you alive.”

  “It’s not keeping me alive. It’s keeping me trapped. I’m stuck between listening to my surroundings and getting lost in dreams. The only real human interaction I get is when you pull me into your subconscious, and that’s only happened three times. I’m not alive—not really.”

  “But this is only temporary. Once I get to the hospital—”

  He huffed out a breath. “Do you even know how to heal me?”

  “Well, I did it before,” I said testily. “I’ll figure it out again.”

  “That was an accident. Your magic had just broken and was guided into healing-mode because of your glamour’s residual protective magic. You were accidentally able to transfer that healing over to me. But now? Without being trained, you can’t do much more than keep that magic in me as a sort of magical life support.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Because an elf told me, that’s how.”

  “Fine. Then I’ll just do the stupid investiture. That way I’ll have all the knowledge and power I need to heal you.”

  “No, you won’t, because then you won’t be you then if you don’t take back your powers before you go through it.”