A League of Exiles

by Bella Forrest

  “I can’t turn here!” Blaze grunted, then rammed his sword through a daemon’s throat. “The meranium boxes are too close together. There’s not enough room!”

  I glanced around and saw that we weren’t too far from one of the pillars leading back up to Kerentrith. The brain-scratching shriek of death claws drawing near sent shivers down my spine. Not long after that, the growls of pit wolves followed, along with the thundering of more daemon boots on the ground.

  Just as Hansa cut off the head of the last of Cayn’s daemon guards, I pointed at the pillar. “Over there!” I shouted, then threw Cayn a brief glance. He’d been knocked out, but he was starting to move again. Soon enough, he’d come to.

  Harper led the way back to the main street, but came to a screeching halt when three dozen more daemons came in from both sides, assisted by several pit wolves. This was far from over.

  Harper

  This second wave of daemons wasn’t going to be the last, either. That meant we had to strike hard and fast, and not give them the opportunity to corner us in any way. Somehow, knowing where the swamp witch was being kept had given me some much-needed clarity.

  My instincts were sharp, and my brain was functioning at incredible speed, as I mentally drafted the exit strategy.

  “The pillar is five prison blocks away,” I said. “Blaze, Caia, fire it up, guys, we need to move fast!”

  I didn’t wait for a reply. Instead, I jumped right in, pushing a strong barrier into the row of daemons that were hoping to capture us alive. The pit wolves snarled as they were let off their leashes.

  “Crack the collars,” I shouted. “They’re Adlets. They won’t fight us if we free them!”

  Vesta stayed back, protecting Laughlan as the Druid employed minor defensive spells with some of the herbs and crystals that the fae was carrying. Caspian and Pheng-Pheng stayed close—the young Manticore chose to handle the pit wolves, and handle them she did, while the rest of my team slashed left and right through the horde.

  Caia and Blaze split up, then came around from the sides, spraying fire at the daemons. The inferno swallowed some of them whole, while Hansa and Jax covered their heads and faces and dove in, beheading the fiends still standing.

  The screams of death claws were getting louder. It was only a matter of a minute, maybe two, before they could reach us.

  We needed to move before that happened.

  A daemon came at me, and I managed to dodge his furious blows. He was trying to maim me, but I held my own, until another cut me from behind. Burning pain spread through my side, and I cried out, prompting Caspian to quickly kill off one of his opponents and dart over to my side. I felt the Ekar jump inside my backpack, only to settle on the left side, away from where the blade had left a cut through the material. Ramin was okay, if just a little startled.

  Pheng-Pheng managed to break the charmed collar off one of the pit wolves, while Fiona and Hansa fought two others. The freed pit wolf shook its head, visibly confused, until Pheng-Pheng pointed at his brothers in suffering. “Break the collars, mutt! And you’ll be free!”

  That seemed to hit the pit wolf hard. It growled and did exactly that, sinking its massive fangs into another pit wolf’s collar. Fiona managed to free the third, while Caspian got rid of my attackers. It gave me the window of opportunity I needed to whistle and get the pit wolves’ attention.

  As soon as they turned their sights on me, I employed my mind control. “Kill all the daemons you can get your claws on, then get out and go back to your packs!” I shouted.

  Their eyes glimmered gold for a brief moment, just before they turned on their daemon captors. The wolves were our best chance to get out of here, and they tore into the remaining daemons. Hansa and the others followed me as I led the way down the street.

  We ran as fast as we could, headed straight for the pillar.

  “Time to go invisible,” I said, then fumbled through my satchel for my shimmering paste.

  By the time we all ingested our spell ration, the pillar was just a block away. I could hear the pit wolves shredding daemons behind us. The ones we’d dealt with were already dead, and the wolves were now taking on the new arrivals.

  A brief glance over my shoulder told me everything I needed to know—all daemon eyes were on us, and it was about to get incredibly messy. With all the prisoners stuck in meranium boxes, and very little room for Blaze to go full dragon, we had our work cut out for us.

  Nevertheless, we kept running, as more daemons spilled onto the main street from the sides, while the pit wolves worked their way up through the swelling crowd. Whenever the guards released more collared pit wolves, the beasts simply tackled them to the ground and tore the charmed bands off, releasing more of their tormented kind.

  I had to admit, that added an extra kick in my heels.

  “You’re not getting away this time!” Cayn’s voice bellowed from behind.

  “Then you’ve gone blind, because that’s exactly what we’re doing!” Jax shot back. Two seconds later, the invisibility paste kicked in, and we vanished. Some of the daemons had red lenses, and they could still see us, but that wouldn’t matter much once we got back up to the Imen city, with its many walls, nooks, and crannies.

  Just then, Blaze and Caia stopped for a couple of seconds to shoot out a thick curtain of fire at the incoming and increasing mass of daemons. They screamed and writhed as the flames ate them alive, while Cayn was forced to pull back, cursing under his breath.

  The column was about a third of a mile in diameter, with stairs spiraling all the way up to what looked like an access hatch into Kerentrith. “Almost there,” I shouted, and we kept going.

  We were so close, I could almost feel the surface air brushing against my cheeks. I wiped the sweat off my brows, thankful to be already healing. We reached the column, then made our way up the carved stairs. I went up first, followed closely by Caspian and Pheng-Pheng. Hansa and Jax were in the middle, with Fiona between them. Vesta helped Laughlan up the stairs, while Blaze and Caia closed the line with plenty of fire against the daemons pursuing us.

  I could hear pit wolves roaring below—some were killed, but others continued trashing the daemon crowd gathering at the base of the column before they fled to freedom. The daemons were focused on getting to us, and I had the feeling that capturing pit wolves was literally the last of their concerns.

  Good. One free pit wolf is an extra ally in the days to come.

  As expected, six death claws reached us, circling around the column. They were as gruesome and as frightening as I remembered them, with their huge black wings and leathery skin. There were also several daemons coming down the stairs from Kerentrith, but, with my speed and eagerness to get the heck out of Draconis, they didn’t really stand a chance.

  I bulldozed through them, slashing my swords and kicking them off the stairs. They fell over and met their deaths once they hit the ground below. We were halfway up at this point, and it was us or them. A fall wouldn’t have killed us, but it would’ve definitely disabled us. With freedom just minutes away, it just wasn’t an option.

  The death claws started snapping their jaws at us, coming in like angry wasps. But they had no target precision, since they couldn’t see us. They could only smell us, and that was their only indicative of our position at any time. I pushed one away with a barrier. Pheng-Pheng dodged another’s claws, then pricked its neck with her poisoned spike. It was enough to send the creature plummeting into the broiling daemon crowd below.

  Caia kept shooting fireballs at the daemons chasing us up the stairs, and Jax muttered a spell under his breath, tapping into the swamp witch arsenal that Patrik had left us with. It had taken considerable effort for the Mara to pull it off while running up a seemingly endless flight of stairs. He threw five small leather pouches over his shoulder.

  “Watch out!” he shouted at Caia, who ducked.

  Each pouch exploded into a puff of purple dust when it hit the daemons, who inhaled the powdered concoction and i
nstantly collapsed. Some tumbled down the stairs, and others fell to their deaths. The gathering piles of unconscious daemons made it difficult for the ones farther back to advance, but they persevered.

  We’d managed to put some distance between us and them, but we had the death claws to worry about, at this point. Three were still flying, with more coming in from the distant edge of the city. I pushed out another barrier, but my energy levels were starting to run low after everything I’d put into the fight.

  “They can’t see us,” I said to the others. “They’re trying to follow air ripples and signs of movement.”

  The access hatch was a clear fifty-yard sprint up the stairs away. Blaze used his fire breath to further confuse the three remaining death claws, prompting them to circle around the pillar again as they tried to figure out where we were.

  Daemons shouted from below, roaring with anger and the eagerness to put us in meranium boxes.

  Unfortunately for them, I had the last laugh. I pushed my way up through the escape hatch. One by one, we all made it into the cool darkness of one of the tunnels leading into Kerentrith.

  It was far from over, though.

  Caia

  I was the last to go through the hatch, right after I threw more flaming balls at the daemons below. I then pushed the hatch door closed and sealed it with my fire. It would take considerable effort for them to break through.

  “This gives us a couple of minutes, at least,” I said, following my team through the ascending tunnel. It was narrow, cool, and dark, providing me with much-needed freshness after hours spent simmering in Draconis.

  “There’s the cloaking spell.” Vesta pointed at a shimmering wall ahead. “We can go through, but we won’t be able to get back in without daemon blood.”

  “That’s cool. There will be plenty of them looking for us on the surface,” Jax breathed.

  “The upside is that we now have a cloaking spell of our own, thanks to Laughlan,” Hansa added.

  Harper was the first to disappear through the wall, and the rest of us followed. There were two guards stationed outside, but, by the time I made it through, they were already dead—courtesy of Pheng-Pheng, who pulled her sword out of the second daemon and kept running by my side.

  Vesta moved ahead, leaving Laughlan with Blaze. “I’ll take us back to the library. We can put the cloaking spell up there, and have a space to ourselves,” she said. “The daemons won’t think to look for us there, at this point.”

  “Yeah, they’ll expect us to get the hell out of dodge, not go back,” Harper replied.

  “Do we have what we need for the cloaking spell?” Hansa asked, pulling one of the scrolls out and handing it over to Vesta.

  “Yeah, minus a couple of herbs, but I can get those from anywhere here,” Vesta said, briefly glancing at the list. “The city is riddled with plants.”

  We ran through the abandoned city of Kerentrith, invisible under the moonlight, until we reached the palace once more. We darted up the stairs and found the library, gathering in the farthest corner, close to the secret tunnel we’d used to get into Draconis in the first place.

  Harper scanned the area with her True Sight, while the rest of us took a moment to catch our breaths. We’d made it.

  “Yeah, daemons are coming out from all over the city, but I don’t see them coming around here just yet,” Harper murmured, then leaned into Caspian, who put an arm around her shoulders and held her tight.

  I sat next to Laughlan on a small wooden bench, looking at Blaze through my red lens. He looked exhausted, but still very much on edge. This wasn’t over. Not yet. Dammit, not by a longshot.

  “I’ll be right back. I know where to get the rest of the plants we need for the cloaking spell,” Vesta whispered. “You guys decide the perimeter while I’m out. We need a clear path to the tunnel, but we also need to be out of the way, in case daemons start patrolling this area.”

  I could hear daemons barking orders in the distance, beyond the palace walls. They were frantic, scrambling to get us before we left Kerentrith. Nevertheless, Cayn had already surprised us once. Nothing stopped me from thinking he might do it again.

  “What if they know we’re still here, and with no intention to leave?” I asked, looking at Jax and Hansa.

  “Right now, it’s fifty-fifty for all of us,” Jax replied. “We need a plan before we get out, and, most importantly, we need the rest of the Druid delegation.”

  “Hence the cloaking spell. It’s like a gift from the Daughters,” Hansa muttered, checking the entire library area with a soft frown. “I say we stick to this corner. It’s secluded and out of the way, with the tunnel just over there.” She pointed at the hidden door in the corner.

  Vesta returned with a handful of leaves and green stems, smirking with satisfaction. “They’re going nuts out there, but they’re headed for the edges of the city. My guess is they think we’re trying to run as far away as we can,” she said.

  “They might still track us here,” I said, voicing a thought I’d been carrying with me since Cayn had first shown himself in Laughlan’s cell.

  “I doubt it,” Vesta replied, handing the herbs over to Jax and Hansa, who were already getting all the ingredients together in a pile on the floor. “I used some bellaris to throw the pit wolves off our scent. It grows heavily around here, so I squeezed as many leaves and blossoms as I could, while moving around to get those herbs. Once touched, the bellaris lets out a faint smell. We can barely catch it, but for those with sensitive noses, like the pit wolves, it’s extremely powerful and confusing. We’ll be okay. Nobody will track us here.”

  “Smart fae.” Fiona chuckled.

  Jax used one of my lighters to set the entire mixture on fire. It burned fast and hot, leaving behind a mound of dark blue ashes—and still wasn’t the strangest thing I’d seen all day. He then scooped the ashes into his hands and traced a line around the perimeter, which covered an area of roughly fifty square feet. It was enough for all of us to sit and sleep comfortably, flanked also by the tall wooden bookshelves.

  “It needs blood from all of us,” Hansa said, then took out a small knife and punctured her thumb, dripping silvery blood into the remaining pile of dark blue ashes on the floor.

  We all repeated the move, dropping our own blood on top. Jax was the last, following up with the chant from the spell—the power of the word needed to seal the space and activate the swamp witch magic. The air glimmered blue around us, as the faux white marble wall rose up to the ceiling.

  “Now, let’s see if it works,” I said, then walked over to the wall and touched it. It felt hard and cold, and very much real.

  I nicked my thumb again and pressed it against the white marble. The entire surface rippled, and I walked through it. From the outside, it looked as though the library ended there, fifty feet before the original corners on the west side of the hall.

  Perfect. At least we have a safe space.

  Fiona

  Caia came back inside, and we all breathed yet another collective sigh of relief. We sat down in a circle, and Caia and Blaze prepared a small fire using a couple of broken chairs and an armful of books.

  “I don’t feel right burning all this literature,” Caia muttered, but lit the pile. The amber flames engulfed the books, the pieces of wood crackling as the fire burned bright and warm.

  “Don’t worry.” Vesta sighed. “Provided we succeed with everything, the Imen will have plenty of stories to tell after this.”

  “And if we don’t, it won’t matter,” I replied with a soft chuckle. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m doing my best to stay positive here, but Lumi is back in Azure Heights. And by tomorrow, the Exiled Maras will know that we know.”

  “They won’t move her, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Laughlan said, scooting closer to the fire and gazing around with genuine fascination. “You know, I haven’t been out of that box in thousands of years. I’d almost forgotten what a library looked like. I even caught a glimpse of the nigh
t sky on our way in here. My heart nearly stopped. So beautiful.”

  “Laughlan, focus,” Harper said, then let the Ekar out of her backpack and fed it a handful of seeds from one of her belt satchels. “Why do you say they won’t move her?”

  “Oh, sorry. It’s been a while since I’ve been this social.” Laughlan chuckled. “They’re not going to risk moving Lumi elsewhere. That will mean getting her out of Azure Heights, and the Exiled Maras have spent centuries fortifying that place.”

  “Do you know where they’re keeping her, exactly?” I asked.

  “No. But we can find out, don’t worry,” Laughlan replied.

  “At least we know she’s somewhere.” Harper sighed.

  “Yeah, though I was hoping it wouldn’t be that wretched hellhole,” I grumbled, my stomach tied up in painful knots.

  I’d just escaped from that place, and the Mara Lords were definitely itching for revenge. I could only imagine how Vincent was pacing his palace, cooking up ways to avenge the mind-numbing beating I’d given him.

  “We need a solid plan,” Harper said. “We know they’re keeping Lumi in Azure Heights. We know where they’re keeping Zane, Idris, and Rayna. Velnias also gave us the location of the other three remaining members of the delegation. And we’re due to meet the rest of the gang at Ragnar Peak in, what, five days?”

  “By morning, it will be four,” Jax replied with a nod.

  “I’d call this progress,” Hansa chimed in.

  “You’ve done more than we ever could in the thousands of years we’ve been here.” Laughlan scoffed, his bitter smile reminding him of his misery. My heart broke for him. I tried to imagine what it must’ve been like to try to maintain some form of sanity while locked in a meranium box for so many years. “Worst-case scenario is we’ll all go back into a meranium box. Best case is I’ll finally get off this damn planet. I miss the deep, tranquil woods of Persea.”