by S. Young
The words were barely out of her mouth when the restroom door blew open and the witch and warlock strode inside. Energy crackled around them.
“There’s nothing natural in here for them to use,” Rose said, fisting her hands at her side.
“It need not be in here. If they use magic as a weapon, they draw that power from the nearest tree or animal outside.”
“There’s no use teaching her our ways, warlock,” the witch said, throwing her red hair over her shoulder with an arrogant smirk as the restroom door banged shut behind her and her companion. “She won’t be around long enough to use the information.”
Good. They still didn’t know what he was.
“What did you say?” Rose stepped toward the witch.
Fionn felt a stirring of pride inside him at her courage and forced himself to stand back to see what she could do. It wasn’t easy for him.
The warlock stepped forward. “No time for conversation. Rose O’Connor, you’ve been tried and sentenced to death by the high court of the O’Connor Coven of Dublin. I, Ethan Mulhern, Dark Witch Hunter of the O’Connor Coven, will serve as your executioner. Do you have any last words before I carry your sentence through?”
Fionn almost rolled his eyes. You always got one who had to act to the letter of tradition.
Rose looked back at Fionn and gestured with her thumb at the warlock. “Is this guy for real?”
Amusement tickled his lips.
Rose grinned at him and he felt her lovely smile as a physical thing. “I guess I do have something to say, then.” She turned to the hunters. “Want to help me practice?”
The chuckle escaped Fionn just as the tingling of magic intensified in the air.
“Uisce, uisce!” the redhead chanted. In answer, water blasted out of the tap of the nearest sink, flew at Rose, and encircled her head like a bubble.
“Anthea!” Ethan snapped at his companion.
She held up her hands, magic surging from them as she held the water in place over Rose, trying to suffocate her. “We don’t have time for tradition. Do it.”
Fionn’s instincts were to kill the witch but if Rose was to survive, she needed to learn to fight back. It took every ounce of self-restraint not to intervene.
At first Rose clawed at the water, her fingers slipping through the liquid and making no purchase. The water couldn’t kill her but it could distract her long enough—
He tasted the metallic tang of iron in the air and saw Ethan unleash a pure iron blade from a small scabbard. It glinted silvery gray in the light.
“Rose!” Fionn yelled, warning her. “The water can’t kill you but that blade can!”
Immediately she stilled, panic receding as he watched her realize that human frailties were no longer hers. For twenty-four years, she’d been conditioned to understand that she could drown.
But fae couldn’t drown. Their bodies healed from oxygen deprivation. That didn’t mean it wasn’t damn uncomfortable.
The blade whipped through the air toward her, and the bubble of water burst at the same time she held up a hand against the dagger.
Blood rushed in Fionn’s ears.
A millisecond before it would have pierced Rose’s palm, the dagger changed direction and sliced through the air and into the warlock’s throat. He made a gurgling, choking noise as he fell to his knees, his hands hovering over the blade.
“Ethan!” Anthea cried, face reddening with grief and fury. Her dark eyes blazed at Rose.
Rose was transfixed by the sight of the dying warlock and unaware of Anthea’s gathering vengeance sparking at her fingertips.
Fuck.
Fionn was a blur of movement across the room as he grabbed the witch’s head between his hands and snapped her neck.
It took less than two seconds to kill her. She slumped lifelessly to the floor just as Ethan fell to his back, his eyes fluttering closed. Silence descended over the restroom.
Fionn stepped over the witch toward Rose, whose attention had moved to the female.
“What did you do?” her voice was hoarse.
“Broke her neck.”
She managed a nod before she dove into the nearest stall and heaved over the toilet bowl.
He waited for impatience and disdain to flicker through him.
It didn’t.
Instead, he fought the urge to go to Rose and press a comforting hand on her shoulder.
The first kill was the worst. He’d made his when he was thirteen, but he’d been born into a violent time. It was different for Rose, who belonged to a society that did all it could to preserve life. Sometime in the future, her mind would let go of the idea it was human, and thus her body would stop reacting as such. Throwing up would be a thing of the past.
For now, as she emptied the contents of her stomach, Fionn lowered to his haunches beside the dead witch and warlock. He laid a hand on each of their legs. Despite their deaths, their skin cells still carried oxygen, still lived. Unlike the warlocks he’d killed in the woods, whose bodies would be taken care of by the O’Connor Coven before the public could find them, these two would have to be disposed of.
Anything dead was devoid of energy, a mere husk. A husk could be broken down to dust.
It could take up to twenty-four hours for the human body to decompose.
They didn’t have twenty-four hours.
“What are you doing?” Rose asked, her voice hoarse.
He glanced over his shoulder at her. She stood by the stall door, pale but alert.
“We can’t leave them here.”
“What will we do?”
Fionn turned back to the bodies. “Filleadh ar an talamh.” He stood and watched as the bodies crumbled to dust.
Rose huffed. “What …”
“A spell.” He turned to her.
“Is that all it takes?” she whispered. “A few words?”
“We need not use words as commands for magic, but witches and warlocks do. For years, I’ve covered my tracks as fae by pretending to be a warlock. Using words to cast spells has become something of a habit.” He studied her carefully. “Are you all right?”
Anger, defensiveness, guilt all blazed from her as she bristled at the question. “His blind condemnation got him killed.”
“True. But that wasn’t my question.”
“I just killed a guy so no, I’m not all right. But I will be. Won’t I?”
Fionn studied her carefully. “How do you feel about your powers now?”
She lifted her hands to stare at them with a mix of horror and awe. “They saved me.” Her fierceness echoed through him. “I saved me.”
Something like pride filled him. “Right answer. You’ll be all right, Rose Kelly.” He would never refer to her as Rose O’Connor again. The bastards didn’t deserve her.
“I killed him, Fionn.” She lowered her hands, devastation promptly obliterating the awe.
A feeling akin to sympathy flickered through him, taking him by surprise. He cleared his throat of the emotion and replied coldly, “It was self-defense. Say it.”
She swallowed. Hard. “It … it was self-defense.”
“Again. Louder.”
“It was self-defense.” Rose glared at him.
“Good. It won’t make it easier. Killing someone is never easy, Rose, and the first time you’re able to walk away from it without feeling that death mark your soul means you’re losing your soul.” He nodded at her.
“Do you feel each death mark your soul? Even after all these centuries?”
Pain he kept locked down tight shuddered from within the emotional cage he’d created to contain it. “Every single one,” he promised.
And Rose’s death would be the last and deepest mark upon his soul. Aine’s would come after Rose’s, and Fionn knew that the Faerie Queen’s murder would not make a mark upon him.
The day Aine died would be the day Fionn lost his soul.
Thus, the day Aine died would be the day Fionn followed her and Rose into the dark a
byss of death.
13
There was blood on Rose’s hands. No one could see it, not even her, but she could feel it. There was a tightness in her breast. The feeling reminded her of the time she’d been pulled out of class in sixth grade and sent to wait at the principal’s office for her mom. Dread had filled her gut as she waited, her instincts telling her something awful had happened.
It had.
Her best friend, Sadie, the girl she’d grown up next to, had been diagnosed with cancer. She’d been in the hospital for months.
Rose’s mom had come to tell her that Sadie had died.
The news brought not only grief but this horrible physical and emotional sensation—the knowledge that nothing would ever be the same again.
Nothing will ever be the same again.
Rose stared blindly out the train window as it rolled out of Milan’s central station. Heaviness weighed on her eyelids but how could she sleep?
Logically she knew she’d acted to defend herself. And she knew that to survive what was happening to her, she’d need to move on from the warlock’s death. But she kept seeing the pain and horror in Ethan Mulhern’s face as he choked on his own iron dagger.
A dagger meant for your heart, Rose reminded herself.
“Sleep, Rose,” Fionn said from across the small table between them. Bran had gotten them first-class tickets again. “Everything will seem easier to handle after a little sleep.”
Hoping sleep would offer an escape, Rose nodded as she stared longingly at the young woman who slumbered across the aisle. Envy filled her.
Sleep.
Sleep would help.
She closed her eyes. A couple’s murmured conversation, the whoosh of the train moving, the click of the wheels turning on the track, the hum of the engine, lulled Rose to sleep. She fell into unconsciousness with a surprising swiftness considering her current inner turmoil.
Light flooded into the gargantuan hall from the impressive arched windows that lined either wall. There was a cathedral-like quality to the room.
Rose blinked against the light, her vision focusing as she took in her surroundings.
School desks sat in rows, students at them bent over papers, scribbling furiously. Several older people strolled up and down and in between the desks. A huge clock hung suspended from the ceiling at the north end of the hall.
It’s ticktock was distracting.
“Para de hacer tic tac,” a voice hissed.
Rose glanced down and realized she was standing over the desk of a young woman whose face was scrunched up with frustration. She looked vaguely familiar as she glared at the ticking clock.
So consumed with the girl’s mounting panic, it took Rose a minute to realize she had no fucking idea where she was. Her own anxiety began to mount.
“Where am I?” she whispered.
The clock fell from the ceiling and smashed into pieces.
“El tiempo ha terminado!” a female proctor shouted from the other end of the hall. “Entregue sus papeles, por favor!”
“No, no he terminado, no he terminado,” the familiar girl murmured frantically as she stood, blank paper crumpled in her hand.
What the hell was going on? And why was everyone speaking Spanish? Rose glanced around, trying to piece this weirdness together. Hadn’t she just been on the train to Barcelona with Fionn?
The stressed girl hurried toward the front of the room, and that’s when Rose realized the girl had a glow of light around her that no one else did. It was like a full-body halo. Instincts told her to follow the girl. Perhaps she knew why Rose was here … wherever here was.
However, as she took a step to follow the girl who was talking to the proctor, the room shifted.
It grew smaller, and Rose braced herself against the swift, strange change as it shrunk around her. Her heart pounded with fear; sweat coated her skin. What the hell was going on?
Attention fixed on the girl, Rose watched as the woman she was talking to disappeared and in her place was a handsome young man with dark hair and stubbled cheeks.
Rose spun around, taking in the dorm room they now stood in.
What the ever-loving fuck?
“Vas a estar bien,” the young man said, patting the girl’s shoulder.
“He’s right.” Another young woman appeared in the room, as if from thin air. She sat up from a sprawl. Her blond hair fell over her shoulders as she swung long, slender legs off a bed. “You’ll be fine.”
Rose frowned. The new addition was American.
The girl with the glow scowled, and Rose instinctually knew she hated the American. “I won’t get into the program now,” the girl said in accented English. “You don’t understand. You have no ambición.”
The American seemed affronted as she stood from the bed and put her arm around the young man. “Are you going to let her speak to me like that?”
“No,” he replied emotionlessly. “You should leave, Alejandra.”
Hurt pierced Rose as the girl, Alejandra, stepped away from him and immediately collided into a guy who had appeared out of nowhere too.
What. The. Fuck.
Rose swayed as the room changed again and Alejandra turned to face the man. His features were slightly blurred. The room they were in was pitch-black, except for the three of them. The boy and his American had disappeared.
“¿Qué haces aquí?” Alejandra asked the man with the blurry face.
“Me necesitas,” his deep voice rumbled into the dark.
“No.”
“Sí.” His hand slipped under Alejandra’s dress and she moaned, swaying into him.
Arousal instantly flooded Rose. What the— “Okay, get me out of here.”
Her discomfort grew as the sounds of sex filled the room, her pulse escalating as her body reacted to the desire pulsating between the two strangers. It was unsettling to say the very least. “Uh, someone get me out of here!” she yelled into the dark.
Then she heard a gasp and spun back toward the couple.
She froze when her eyes connected with Alejandra’s as she clung to her blurry-faced man. “¿Quién es usted?”
Rose shook her head at the accusatory question. “What? I don’t understand. Why am I here?”
“Who are you?” The blurry faced man vanished and Rose faced Alejandra alone in the dark. “Who are you?” she repeated in her accented English. “How did you get here?”
“I don’t know.”
Fear suffused Alejandra, and Rose felt that keenly too. “¿Cómo has llegado hasta aquí?” she demanded.
Rose shook her head, stumbling away from the girl.
“How did you get here? HOW DID YOU GET HERE!”
Rose jerked awake in her seat.
The low light from the train carriage stung her eyes as she tried to catch her breath. The sounds of the train moving through the dark reminded her where she was. On a train to Barcelona with Fionn. She’d fallen asleep.
What a weird dream.
She raised a hand to her forehead, finding it slick with sweat.
Where was Fionn? His seat was empty.
A gasp from across the aisle brought Rose’s sleep-fogged gaze toward its owner, and shocked gripped her.
The girl who’d been asleep across the aisle from her was staring at her in abject disbelief.
The girl from her dream.
Alejandra.
Except when Rose saw the confusion and alarm on the girl’s face, she realized it hadn’t been her own dream.
She’d been inside this girl’s head. Inside her dream.
How was that possible?
The girl scrambled to her feet, pulling a backpack down from the luggage rack. But the backpack wasn’t closed and all the contents fell onto the aisle. Rose rushed from her seat to help.
“No, por favor, it’s okay.” She tried to brush Rose’s hands away, fright clouding her expression.
Her fear left a bitter taste in Rose’s mouth. She’d never been feared before.
She grabbed deodorant, perfume, and a bag of mints and handed them to the girl who snatched them out of Rose’s hands.
With a sigh, Rose stood to leave her to it when a leather booklet caught her attention. A need to know the truth caused Rose to reach for the burgundy book. She flipped open the passport and a shiver skated down her spine.
The girl’s name was Alejandra Amada Cruz.
Rose had infiltrated this girl’s dreams. Trembling a little, she held the passport out to Alejandra who yanked it out of Rose’s hands. She stared at Rose as if she were a monster before she hurried down the carriage and out of sight.
“Yeah, I’d run from me too,” Rose whispered as she stumbled back to her seat, wondering if she’d ever stop being floored by what she was and what she could do.
Fionn. She wished he was here to explain. Where was he? His stuff was in the luggage rack above them so he was still on the train.
She didn’t sense danger, so she assumed he was just stretching his legs.
When he got back, she’d ask him about the dream walking. Was it something he could do too? He hadn’t mentioned it.
Fionn would explain and maybe even teach her how to control it. She didn’t want to wander in and out of people’s sex dreams for the rest of her goddamn life!
But wait …
Her new companion, although forthcoming with some information, was still a mystery. Anyone else might think she was crazy considering Fionn had spent the last twenty-four hours telling her about his past. However, what he’d done was state a lot of facts, explain his agenda … yet she knew nothing more of his life or his feelings. Not really.
Maybe Rose could walk into Fionn’s dreams? Learn something about him. After all, she was trusting him implicitly. It would be nice to know her trust wasn’t misplaced.
You dream-walk the guy, you’re hardly trusting him implicitly, she argued with herself.
Truthfully, though, Rose was in no position to trust anyone implicitly. Not even Fionn Mór.
It was decided. She’d keep the dream walking to herself. At least for a little while.
Fionn found a carriage that had only a few people in it. He sat near the back, conjured the headphones, and expanded their use so no one would hear his conversation with Bran, including a sleeping Rose if she awoke and came looking for him.