by Kristie Cook
“Entirely too high,” she echoed softly, leaning back enough to look me in the eye. “This is not goodbye, though, Elliana Knight. The Faery realms are connected, including the one that goes to your world. If it’s meant to be, we will find each other again.”
She closed the space between us, our mouths meeting for one last kiss.
“Sadie, we have to go!” one of her elven friends called from the lip of the ridge. “I really don’t want to piss off your father if we miss the portal!”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and forced a smile. “Good—”
She pressed her finger to my lips, stopping me. “See you again, Elliana Knight.”
“See you, Sadie Algrec.”
Our hands remained linked as she pulled away, lifting and stretching my arm out until our fingers brushed each other’s palms, and eventually hers fell away as mine drifted to my side. She left without looking back, my gaze following the waves of white-blond hair until she disappeared from sight.
“We have to go, too, Elli,” Brielle said quietly from behind me.
My chest hurt so much, I struggled to breathe, but I forced myself to inhale as I retrieved my backpack from the ground at my feet and turned around to face my twin and Charleigh. The exhale came out heavily as they stared at me with pity in their eyes. Even Sasha, who sat in Brielle’s arms.
“Oh, for shit’s sake, I’ll be fine,” I said, marching forward.
“Of course, you will be,” Charleigh said. The sunlight coming through the treetops enflamed her long orange locks, making it look like sparks flew when she turned to fall into pace beside me. “You’re Elliana fucking Knight.”
I laughed. Leave it to Charleigh to achieve that when my heart thought it was dying. I didn’t know what I would have done in this world without her, especially in the beginning. Our parents had ensured she could stay hidden here with Brie and me as our sworn protector, arranging a deal for all three of us to attend a college for the supernatural. It had been quite the experience, and we’d made the most of our time here.
“Let’s go,” Brielle said, as Sasha leapt from the front pocket of her backpack and led the way through the woods toward another ridge where our own gate to home was hidden. She seemed as anxious to go home as I was. I hoped not for the same reasons.
“I can’t believe I’m having a harder time with this than you are,” I complained. “Did you even like Aithan?”
“Of course, I did,” Brielle replied. “I mean . . . those curls and those lips and that—”
“Ass,” Charleigh and I said along with her. Even I could admit Brielle’s boyfriend had a wondrous ass—an ass of the gods, as many of the girls claimed.
“But he’s the descendant of Aion, the god of time and space,” Brie continued. “After he graduates and meets his dad’s expectations, he can travel to any dimension, any time, at will. He’ll find me if he really wants to.” She said it so confidently, reminding me of Sadie’s assurance that we’d find each other again.
If it’s meant to be. That had been the caveat. And I didn’t know if it was meant to be with Sadie and me. In fact, I was pretty sure it wasn’t. Because what kind of god or creator or fate that decided such a thing would bind a beautiful soul like Sadie’s to mine?
“Are you sure about that?” Charleigh asked. “Aithan’s not exactly known as the ambitious type who strives to meet and exceed expectations.”
Brielle laughed. “True. But like I said, if he really wants to, he will.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
My twin shrugged, but I noticed the slight falter in her step. “I don’t know that he’s really the one anyway.”
She said it so quietly, I knew there was truth in her words. She didn’t rattle them off to cover any pain, present or future.
They’d practically been joined at the hip since the end of fall semester, but then again, Sadie and I had been, too, for a good portion of the spring semester and the last few weeks of summer. We hadn’t taken it very far physically, though. I’d never been so intimate with anyone emotionally, not even my twin or Dani, but we’d restrained ourselves physically, knowing this day would come. Thinking about it in hindsight, I realized how backward that was and regretted not knowing Sadie in every way I could. Then again, maybe it was better that I didn’t. Brielle had probably been smarter than me, enjoying the physical but keeping Aithan emotionally at arm’s length. She knew this day would come, too.
The side of the mountain teemed with color and life as we climbed for the summit under the July sun. Squirrels and other creatures, some possibly supernatural, scurried across the forest floor, and birds sang from the canopy of leaves and branches overhead that allowed yellow sunlight to dapple the ground around us. Our final hike in this world took us through a meadow of purple, pink, and blue wildflowers, then we weaved around green pines and the white trunks of aspen trees whose leaves were currently green but would turn golden yellow soon enough—a sight we would not see this year.
“I am so going to miss this place,” Charleigh said as we reached the edge of the tree line about two-thirds up the side of the mountain. “It’s just so . . .”
“Shiny?” I asked as I paused to turn and look down into the box canyon and the small town nestled within it. It wasn’t exactly shiny. Quaint, charming, rustic, sweet—those were perfect words, but not shiny. Still, even when the snowplow piles were covered in a brownish-gray crust or when it all melted and turned everything to mud, it was brilliant compared to home.
“I was going to say alive,” Charleigh said.
“Yeah, that, too.”
“Shiny also works. Clean, bright, beautiful . . .” She trailed off again, and I glanced sideways at her. I sucked my lips between my teeth when I noticed her eyes—a strange brown that often looked as orange as her hair—watering.
“Hey, we’re going to see our family!” Brielle reminded her, giving her a shoulder bump.
Charleigh’s mouth curled in a smile that stopped short of reaching her eyes. “The only reason you could get me out of here. I mean, come on, aren’t you two going to miss the clothes here? And the food?”
“Hell yes,” Brielle and I moaned at the same time.
It was a toss-up between the two for which I’d miss more. I loved the clothes here. And the makeup and hairstyles and the feeling of knowing I looked good just because I wanted to. The food, though—they had everything here.
“Chili cheese fries, chicken wings, cheeseburgers, and shakes,” Charleigh listed off, making my mouth water.
“Tacos,” I moaned, already missing them.
“And ice cream and lattes,” Brie added.
All three of us groaned together, and I gave Charleigh a grateful smile. She’d purposely avoided naming what or who I would miss the most. The light blond hair that felt like silk between my fingers … the full, firm lips that tasted like heaven … the heart and soul that just got mine like no other ever had, not even my twin … the electric blue eyes that captured me every time I caught sight of them. Probably because through them I could feel that heart, that soul …
Shit. I’m a mess already.
“Are we sure we want to do this?” Charleigh asked, breaking me out of the thoughts she’d been trying to distract me from. We all tilted our heads back to look up the sheer rock cliff that towered a hundred feet or so over us. The top was our destination.
“We have to. We can’t fly out here,” I said. At the thought of flying, my wings pushed against the magic that cloaked them, itching to break free.
“I mean do we really want to pick family over clothes and food, soft beds and fireplaces, pizza and parties? I’m sure they could survive just fine without us.”
Even though I knew she said it in jest, I blew out a heavy sigh. “I wish I could know that for sure. Then we’d definitely be delaying our return. I just can’t dismiss what I saw in the hall of mirrors. What I see every time I close my eyes since then. What I feel in my gut.”
“I’m just ho
ping Mom doesn’t kill us herself if we go back and everything is fine,” Brielle said.
I frowned. “I’d be seriously happy if she did, because that means my visions are just that, no truth to them.”
But we all knew nothing was fine. We’d been hiding in this world for nearly a year and a half while our parents and all of our loved ones had likely been fighting a war. What Mom did that night in the Edge . . . the norms would never forgive her. The other factions would seize the opportunity to undermine everything she’d accomplished in the last two decades so they could take control—and get to Brielle and me. I didn’t need disturbing visions to know things were nowhere near fine at home.
If they were right, though . . . If my intuition was correct and what I saw during that class assignment when I’d been trapped in a hall of mirrors was some kind of premonition . . . We might not even have a home world to go back to. Because those red eyes had belonged to smoky figures riding enormous horses, charging out of the gate Brielle and I had opened to that evil world, invading ours and devouring everything in their wake. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake the gut feeling that it was real.
We’d tried for months to reach someone at home. It wasn’t exactly easy to communicate across dimensions, though. The faerie stone chips embedded in Brielle’s and my chests were supposed to provide a magical connection to our mother, which could be boosted by a spell Charleigh had been given. We were only supposed to use it in case of emergency, and somebody would be sent to us. We waited for months with no response. Then when our parents were supposed to come for a visit over the summer break and never showed, I finally convinced Brielle and Charleigh that we needed to go home. Something was seriously wrong. I’d learned to trust my intuition, and it was screaming at me so loud that I was willing to give up everything I loved about this place. Everyone . . .
So here we were, approaching the same spot where we’d first entered this world. We hadn’t been back since—one of Mom’s directives to ensure we didn’t give the location away—and the memory of that day came flooding back. I’d been so angry and frustrated for being whisked away to this world, scared and worried about what we’d left, but as soon as we crossed through, both Brie and I fell to the ground, rolling around in the snow laughing. The curse on us had broken, and it had felt like a huge weight had lifted.
Our full powers did come surging forth, but we trained with an incredible mentor whom I’d miss almost as much as Sadie. She taught us how to use and control the ramped up energy flowing through our veins—but not the beast that still lived inside me, no longer chained by the curse. Rather, I kept her subdued, sleeping in a cage of my own making deep within, because I didn’t think she could be controlled. She was still dark, dangerous, and more formidable than ever. A part of me I’d keep locked up forever, but a part of me, nonetheless.
“Are we ready?” Charleigh asked, already starting on the spell to reveal the hidden gate that would take us home, Sasha dancing in front of her.
As the air itself seemed to part, the three of us moved toward it, but as one, we paused to look across the valley to the mountain on the far side. I could barely see a few glimpses of sunlight hitting the waterfalls. Behind those falls, under the mountain was where the campus was hidden. Where we’d spent the last year having the time of our lives. Where we’d begun to come into our true selves and our powers. Where a piece of our hearts remained.
Then hitching our bags higher on our backs, we left the mountains of the sunny, shiny world and came out on a cold beach of black sand in our very desolate, very dark Earth.
The black beach of Dorian’s gate in Iceland was thousands of miles away from the Loft, our childhood home and where we hoped to find our family, safe and sound. Charleigh was powerful, but she hadn’t been taught yet how to create portals, so we followed the path for flashing that Uncle Owen had given her. Transporting about a hundred miles at a time in the blink of an eye was so much faster than flying, even if Sasha let Charleigh ride her, which she’d never done before.
Sasha immediately took off, though, flying out of sight before we could stop her. She had her own way of watching over us, and she’d probably been more anxious to fly than even I was. After all, nobody in that other world could know she was anything other than a dog and Charleigh’s familiar.
As the sun began to rise, we finally appeared near the Loft, back to what had once been the Midwest of the United States of America. Back to home.
And my stomach sank at the sight.
“Where is everyone?” Charleigh asked as we crossed the empty clearing to the roll-up door built into the side of a hill. Wide enough for a truck to pass through, it was the only entrance into the Loft, an underground bunker that had been the Amadis HQ since it was our home. Because our mom was matriarch of the Amadis and leader of the Earth’s Angels, we were basically considered royalty. But the Loft was no palace.
And now it appeared to be abandoned and forgotten.
“We can’t even get in,” Brielle said, inspecting the enchanted symbols engraved in the doorframe. Touching them in the proper sequence signaled the protective wards to unlock the door, but the sigils had been mutilated, as though someone had dug at them with a blade.
An ominous feeling tugging at my gut, I turned away, toward the forest that bordered the land around the Loft. My brows pulled down as I studied it. The sensation was both alien and vaguely familiar at the same time.
“You’re right, Elli,” Brielle said from behind me. “Something’s definitely not right here.”
As though on their own accord, my feet had already started moving toward the forest, my hand lifting over my shoulder to retrieve the sword strapped to my back, hidden by a cloaking spell, as I tried to figure out what had changed about it. At first glance, it looked the same as I remembered, and I dropped my hand, leaving the weapon, but unable to shake the sensation that something was off.
“Why don’t we take a quick arial view?” I suggested. “See if anyone is somewhere close by.” Like someone watching us . . . “You go south and east. I’ll go north and west.”
Before she could reply, I dropped my backpack and snapped out my wings—my beautiful, glorious wings. When pulled vertical behind me, they arced higher than my head and the tips dusted the ground. Like our mom’s, our wings were black at the quills, gradating to a deep purple at the edges. I hadn’t been able to fly since we left campus for summer break, over a month ago.
No longer able to resist the anticipation, I launched into the sky, Charleigh yelling after me. “Be careful! And five minutes, no longer. Or I’ll come after you!”
Not that she could fly, but she had a few killer tricks up her magical sleeve that could take me down if she really wanted to.
Brielle and I crossed paths in the air as we each circled the area of the Loft, just to be sure our people hadn’t created another entrance while we’d been gone or that nothing else had changed. Then we flew off in opposite directions.
I flew only a dozen or so feet over the treetops of the forest. They didn’t appear much different than before, still a grayish brown, although the canopy was thicker with leaves. It’d taken many years after the war before flora and fauna above ground showed any signs of life and many more before they actually grew. And while they’d been normal to my generation born after black magic permeated our world, our parents’ generation had been surprised by new plants and animals that had grown or evolved as a result of it. Ones that were much more sinister than their predecessors, like the fuchsia colata tree.
A flash of memory crossed my mind—the three of us running through these very woods, chasing a demon, then getting caught up by a colata that ensnared and tried to eat us. The memory blinked out as fast as it came, leaving a metallic taste in my mouth and a sinking feeling in my gut, though I couldn’t say why. I’d wanted to be a demon assassin since I was a kid, planning to one day qualify for Mom’s elite squad, so chasing a demon wasn’t too surprising. Except I couldn’t remember whe
n those events actually occurred. If they ever had. Was it truly a memory or another vision, like the one in the hall of mirrors? Whatever it was, it seemed linked to something more. Something awful.
I shook my head, trying to erase both the vision and the feeling as I focused on the forest below. And I finally realized what was different about it. Some kind of black vine crawled along the floor and twined around the tree trunks and branches. I dropped down and alit on a broad branch to inspect the new growth that had taken over the entire forest. Reaching out a finger to touch a leaf, I gasped when a tentacle snaked up to touch me back. Almost like it was sentient, which it very well could have been. As my finger slid over the black vine that felt almost metallic in its hardness, I yelped and nearly popped my finger in my mouth to suck the blood that beaded along the cut. I stopped myself short, just in time. What a grave mistake that could have been. Who knew what kind of poison had been left? Good thing my body could heal itself almost instantly, all evidence of the slice already gone.
“Another flesh-eating plant, just what this place needs,” I muttered as I sprang back into the air.
Nothing else seemed to be different as I flew farther north. Nothing besides a strange whispering sound from below. The farther I flew, the louder it grew—and the clearer.
Elliana.
The fucking vine was whispering my name.
Then clarity came.
“Oh, shit.” My heart stuttered, and I pulled my wings forward to stop myself in midair. “No, no, no.”
Below me, the vine was thicker than ever, and energy black as night oozed up from it. A Darkness I was way too familiar with, so evil that it needed a capital D. A Darkness that found me wherever I went. That lived inside me like a monster constantly trying to claw its way to the surface. That sang a comforting, welcoming ballad to me, that made me feel like I belonged with it more than anything or anyone ever had. A Darkness I had to practice very hard to control before it overcame me and left me as Dark and empty as it was.