by Jada Fisher
Nope. I’m sitting on your bed right now, tanning in a ray of light.
“Since when could you…”
Astral project? Since right now, apparently.
“You two really are sisters,” Mal said with a roll of her eyes. “It’s like listening in stereo.”
I ignored that, however. “How did this even happen?”
She shrugged. I dunno. I heard the trumpets and then I tried to find you, but I could feel that you weren’t in the castle. So, I decided I should check on where you were and, poof— She made a dramatic popping gesture with her hands. —here I am.
“You don’t think the prince will hand us over?” Krisjian asked quietly, bringing me back to the seriousness of the matter. “I… I don’t have powers like you two. I’m not even useful.”
Your powers will probably come in time. But don’t worry, Bronn isn’t really the type for treachery. Trust me, I’m real good at reading people.
“Bronn is one of the most honest, noble people I know,” I said, my stomach twinging as I recalled how he had told me to stay behind. “You have nothing to worry about.”
Well, I don’t know about that. It’s just that we have nothing to worry about from him in particular.
Before I could answer, the subject of our conversation spoke.
“You must be even more mad with lust for power than I thought, if you think that we would ever hand over our own to you.”
“Your own?” Baelfyre shot back with a laugh. “They’re not shifters or fey that have been in your court for generations. They’re interlopers. Humans who managed to get the tiniest sliver of ancient, extinct blood in them that should have been long gone. They’re tools, and if you won’t use them properly, we are more than capable of doing so.”
I felt myself lose a little color at his frank and despicable words. He really didn’t see us as living, breathing beings. We were just a means to an end. And that end was killing a lot of people I cared very deeply about.
I opened my mouth, ready to let out a long stream of curses that would say exactly what I thought about the traitor, only for a vision to suddenly flash in front of my eyes, taking up my entire field of vision and thrusting me out of reality.
I was in a dark place, damp and dripping. I tried to reach out, but my hands were bound. Pretty much everything about me was bound, including a metal collar around my neck.
I heard soft, weak weeping beside me, and I tried to turn my head only for a blinding pain to lick up the side of my face. Lifting my hands as best I could, I felt a raised bit of skin that hurt almost as much as being impaled by crystal.
“What is this?” I whispered, my voice raw and ragged. How long had it been since I had water?
“They branded us.” I recognized Mal’s voice, but she sounded so broken. “Dragons always like to mark their property.”
“Property? I… I don’t understand.”
“What isn’t there to understand? We lost.”
I heard the jangling of chains beside me and I tried to shift. After a bit of wiggling, I saw a dirty and wretched-looking Mickey beside me.
“You’re not our Davie. You’re from before.”
I nodded, swallowing my weighted tongue. “I think I’m having a vision. But it’s different.”
“Yeah, our abilities are going to be doing that for the next long while. But you have to use them, okay, Davie? I know it’s scary, but you can’t fight them. He’s gonna—”
“Uh… What is that thing?”
Just as suddenly as it began, I was yanked out of my vision. Gasping hard, my stomach rolled violently, and it took me a moment to realize that Krisjian sounded very concerned.
“What’s what?” Mal asked.
Blinking rapidly, I craned my neck to see that he was pressed up against the window, looking out across the field entirely away from all the rest of the dragons.
I don’t see anything, Mickey added curiously, her form blinking out only to appear beside the car. Whatcha talking about?
But I could see it.
Oh boy, could I see it.
Apparently, my morning just wasn’t exciting enough, because the same billowing, shadowy specter was slowly floating toward us, a skeletal hand outstretched with a translucent, inky flesh around it that seemed more shadow than reality.
“Oh no,” I whispered, eyes going wide and my breath shorting out.
“You can see it too?” Krisjian asked, sounding a bit relieved. But relief was just about the last thing that I felt, and my heart picked up an even faster tempo than it had been going in my vision.
“We need to get out of here.” I said, my eyes fixated on the apparition as it moved steadily closer, picking up speed as the seconds ticked by.
“Hold up, what are you two seeing?” Mal objected, clearly trying to find what the two of us were so entranced by. “There’s nothing there.”
“But there is,” Krisjian continued, his tone growing more panicked. “And I don’t think she’s very nice. We… We need to go. Right now. Like Davie said.”
Oh, so it’s a she now? Davie, what’s going on?
I reached some internal limit and suddenly, I was lunging across the seat, slapping my hand against Mal’s knee to push her foot off the gas. “Just drive!”
“Alright, alright!”
We took off like a shot, Mal whipping the car into a U-turn that had us up on two wheels. I wasn’t complaining, however, as we raced right back toward the castle we had come from.
I sagged in relief as we left the specter in the dust. But almost as soon as the sound left my mouth, the air shifted and suddenly the billowing spirit was right in front of us.
I barely had time to scream before the car crumpled around it, everything exploding in flashes of color and pain. I was hot, I was coughing, and then something was slamming into my face with intense force.
Oh, the airbag. Yeah, those were a thing. It deflated quickly, leaving just powder and smoke in its wake.
I blinked blearily, once again feeling confused and more than a little dazed. A warm trickle on the side of my head told me that I was bleeding. What had I even hit myself on?
What the heck just happened? Just hold on! I’m coming, for real!
My vision wasn’t clear enough to see where she was, but I tried to check how my companions were. Before I could even reach for my seatbelt’s buckle, the window next to me exploded and two hands were yanking me out.
I screamed, or at least tried to, as I was hauled up and then thrown to the ground. Despite all I’d been through, it was still enough to shock me out of reacting, and I could only let out a groan as my entire world swirled.
Man, being dead was so much easier.
I was flipped onto my back, and suddenly, hands were on my throat. Adrenaline shot through me, and the flood of chemicals made my sight clear enough to make out that same specter right above me.
“Who are you?” I rasped, trying to scramble back.
But her hold on me was too strong, and I felt a cold, cloying feeling climb up my body. It was all too familiar, and panic rose to counter it.
I was dying.
She was killing me.
“Let her go!”
I saw Krisjian running toward us, a look of panic on his young face. I tried to warn him away, but I just didn’t have the energy. It seemed to take everything just to fight to bring a breath in through the spirit’s freezing grip.
“I said, let her go!”
Before the world winked out entirely, a gold-glowing hand punched through the spirit’s chest. The two of us stared at it in shock a moment, her eyes nothing but empty darkness, and I was sure mine were bloodshot red, and then she disappeared in a rush of smoke.
“I… I…” Krisjian sputtered, looking just about as shocked as I felt.
“How did you do that?” I gasped, barely managing to sit up.
“I don’t know.”
“Ah. Well, join the club.”
He looked like he wanted to ask more, m
aybe even ask a million or so things, but then we were rushed by servants and I could hear the call of Mickey’s voice not that far away.
Since the threat of danger was gone, I could feel all the pain my adrenaline had been holding back begin to rush in all at once. My eyelids fluttered and I couldn’t help but groan. Looked like I was going back to the medical room again. Great.
…I was going to have so much explaining to do.
3
Preparing for the Inevitable
I drank my glass of water dutifully, trying not to feel the five pairs of eyes that were resting on me so firmly.
“What were you thinking!?” Bronn started, only to be cut off by Mallory.
“Come on, I can’t eat one meal without you running off and almost dying? Again!”
And of course, Mickey came in right behind her. “What happened, Davie? I know you know. You and Krisjian both saw something.”
“Yeah, something that completely trashed the car I went through all the trouble of getting for you. I’m not paying for that, by the way.” Mal fixed me with one of her classic cool looks. “Ya gonna tell us what it was, or stay clammed up?”
“It was Death,” Krisjian said quietly.
All of them went quiet, giving me a moment of relief as the eyes went to Krisjian. He was sitting by the window, looking pale and sickly and maybe a little bit in shock. I felt a bit guilty that he was so scared. But how was I to know that he could see the figure that had inserted itself into my dreams?
“What do you mean it was Death?”
“I mean just that. I knew it the moment I…I touched her. It. Them. I don’t know which, actually. All I know was that I could feel exactly what it was because I’d felt it before.”
I swallowed hard. “You have?”
He nodded, eyes wide and haunted. “When I did the ceremony thing. It felt like I was pulling you from something that didn’t want to let go. Now I know exactly what—or who?—it was. That thing.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Mallory said, rubbing her temples. “You’re telling me that Davie literally has the Grim Reaper coming after her, and you, the orphan who we picked up from halfway across the world, are the only other person who can see it?”
“And can apparently drive it away,” Mickey added, already pacing. This stress wasn’t good for her. I just wanted her to rest for a bit. Her lupus had to be going crazy considering everything we had gone through.
“The literal ability to prevent death,” Mal whispered. “I know you guys are all pretty magical and whatever, but that seems overpowered.”
“I don’t think I can prevent death in general,” Krisjian said. “I think it’s just…maybe when I did the ceremony, I became a kind of…guardian, I guess, to Davie.”
I nodded. “Not guardian so much as summoner. If you wanted, you could take this body away and send me right back into the in-between place I was stuck in.”
“Wait, what?” Bronn asked sharply.
But I just shrugged. I trusted Krisjian pretty much whole-heartedly. There was a special sort of connection one shared with someone who resurrected them from the dead, and I knew he was a good kid.
A good kid that I had just dragged into the middle of a war.
Right.
“I’m technically a kind of golem. A creature made of earth and stone and given both flesh and life through supernatural means. My original body is still very much dead.”
“I— Wait— What?”
I looked to Mallory, who was staring at me with a downright horrified look. “What? This shouldn’t be news.”
“Well, it is new news. I never thought of the mechanics of how we were bringing you back beyond finding the boy and bringing him here. I mean… Are you… Are you not human then?”
“No, I’m human. I’m still me. I’ve still got my burn scars, and my lactose intolerance bundled with a severe love of cheese. I’m just, um… Imagine you were writing a document on your laptop, but you also backed it up onto your drive. One day, the original file is corrupted, so you just restore it using the backup method. That’s basically what I am. A full system restore.”
“Oh my gosh,” she breathed. “I need a drink.” She looked to Bronn. “Hey, where do you keep your alcohol around here? I’m feeling a strong bought of dwarven heritage coming on.”
“Actually, I think I could use something too. I’ll have the servants fetch us some ale.”
“Whatever, as long as it’s strong. I just found out that the spirit of death is after my best friend who’s kinda also a photocopy because she died once saving all our behinds.”
“Well, it sounds crazy when you put it that way,” I grumbled, feeling stress bubble up inside me. “Look, I didn’t know that a grim reaper was after me. I thought it was just a leftover nightmare, or a vision or something. But I’m not apologizing for what I did in that other dimension, and I’m certainly not apologizing for finding my way back.”
“Honey,” Mickey said, joining me on the bed and holding my hand. “No one is asking you to apologize.”
“Except for leaving the castle after I specifically asked you not to,” Bronn remarked calmly, coming back from the door where I guessed he had been telling one of the servants to fetch him something. “If you hadn’t left, you wouldn’t have been in danger at all.”
“How do you know that? You think castle walls are going to hold off a grim reaper?”
“No, but you would have been by Krisjian, and not in a car accident.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, feeling more than a little bit churlish. “You don’t get to tell me what to do just because you’re a prince.”
He stood there quietly a moment, but it wasn’t a peaceful type of silence. It was strange to see him so tense, so upset, and I didn’t know if it made me hurt for him or be uncomfortable. Maybe both?
Ugh. When did everything get so complicated? I wanted to reach out and touch him, to comfort him. To tell him that everything would be okay and I would be careful.
But another part of me wanted to tell him that I had literally torn apart the rules of reality to get back to him and the rest of my family, so if he thought that he could order me around because he had a crown on his head, he could shove that right up his—
“I asked you, Davie. It was a reasonable request. Forgive me for thinking that I might have earned just enough of your respect to trust me.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, jumping to my feet and only swaying slightly. “Don’t turn this around on me—”
“But this is all about you!” He wasn’t exactly shouting at me, but his voice was raised. “Baelfyre and the anti-humanist court will stop at nothing to get their hands on you. We could have moles or traitors in our ranks that would trade you in for gold, or freedom, or any number of things. I am trying to keep you safe. I failed before, and dammit, I’m not going to stand back and let you die again!”
I stood there, shocked and flustered and feeling guilty and irritated all at once. I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know whether I should apologize or tell him that I didn’t need him to save me, that I had made my choices and that was that.
Awkwardness quickly settled in, with the six of us locked in the moment, until finally Bronn turned on his foot and hurriedly walked out. I watched him go, still having no idea what to do.
“Well, aren’t you going to go after him?” Krisjian asked expectantly from the window.
I turned to look at him, giving him the best smile I could manage. It wasn’t a very good one, but hey, at least I tried.
“I… I’m really tired. I think I’d like to lay down now.”
“Right, of course. That makes sense. Everybody out,” Mickey said, instantly slipping into her mom mode. But once more, nobody moved, gazes flitting this way and that. “Alright. Out with it. What’s going on?”
“Well, I don’t know about these suckers,” Mal said lazily. “But after literally running into death itself, I kind of don’t want to be alone. Probably wouldn’t be too hard to
pull a cot in here, right? Safety in numbers and all that?”
“Yeah,” Mallory added quickly. “It’ll be like a sleepover. Who doesn’t love sleepovers?”
“What’s a sleepover?” Krisjian asked, his accent tripping over the word a bit.
Mickey let out a long sigh before nodding. “I’ll send word down to the kitchen for some snacks. If we’re doing this, we’re going to do it right.”
A simple sleepover one night turned into another sleepover the next night, and then the next, until finally five days had passed with our little group all staying together in my room. It wasn’t like we were cramped, there was plenty of space, and to be honest, the company was nice. It seemed having everyone around made my nightmares a little less dark. A little less biting into the nightmares at the back of my mind.
For what it was worth, that dark apparition didn’t appear at all, not even so much as a shiver down the back of my neck, so I certainly wasn’t complaining.
…but neither did Bronn.
After the first night, I just assumed he was busy dealing with the oncoming threat, or maybe talking down those who wanted to trade us in. Although why anyone would want to give up the one person who had restored their magical shields was beyond me.
But by the end of the fifth day, I had it figured out that he was avoiding me. And that… Well, that hurt.
I told myself that he was just busy being a prince and stuff, but on the sixth morning, I decided to just go and see for myself.
It took a bit of work to lose everyone in my little detail without arousing suspicion. It comprised of sending Mal and Krisjian out to find another escape method if we needed to suddenly hightail it, having Mallory check in on her parents for a bit, and urging Mickey to sleep in so she didn’t put herself into another flare. But when everyone was either gone or unconscious, I slipped into some regular clothes and headed downstairs.
Before, uh, everything that had happened, my only chance to find the prince would be to wander aimlessly and ask around. But ever since I came back, if I wanted to find someone who I was close to, I just had to close my eyes and I could kinda…feel where they were.