by Leia Stone
Indra cut me off: “I know. But you’ll have to do. The entire fate of our world and race rests in your hands.”
Well … fuck. Thanks a lot, Mom.
I slept that night in Faerie. Time was beginning to blur together. Earth time and Faerie time were different. In the morning, I stood at the blue door, Elle at my side. She was full battle ready, wearing her chainmail top and leather corset. It looked kind of punk rock, but I knew it was lifesaving armor.
Trissa walked up to my left and I nodded. Finally, we were ready to go. I was antsy to get back to Earth and get that crystal from Liam. Especially now that I knew how important they were to our small village and all of Faerie.
When I saw that Trissa was not properly dressed, I frowned.
She sighed, not meeting my eyes. “The elders have ordered that I stay back and train a squadron of warriors for you.”
Oh.
I looked at Elle, who nodded, fiercely. She would be my only protector.
“I think it’s overdue,” Trissa added, “but … I’m nervous to leave you and Elle on your own.”
Elle scoffed. “You think that little of me?”
Trissa looked over at her protégé, compassion all over her face. “No, I care for you so much that I want to protect you both.”
Elle and I both moved in at the same time and wrapped Triss in a hug. “We got this. Don’t worry,” I told my mother’s loyal guard.
“Yeah, you know me. I’ll remove a man of his balls if he even looks at us wrong,” Elle said, and that caused us all to laugh.
When we pulled back, Trissa’s eyes were misty but were replaced quickly with her icy expression. “It could take weeks for you to find the next crystal. I should use that time training more warriors.” She seemed to be saying this to herself, as if she needed to convince herself that letting us go alone was a good idea.
I looked around at the village of happy Fae. “How will you make warriors of gardeners and bakers?” I wondered aloud. All of the Fae bred for war were dead. Except her.
She sighed. “We’re about to find out.”
With a final round of hugs, I turned to open the door. “Oh, I almost forgot.” Trissa pulled something from her satchel. The rolling pin, AKA motorcycle.
“You’ll need this. Have Mara give you lessons.” I took the rolling pin, slipping it into my bag.
Without another word, for fear of crying or getting too freaked out, I opened the blue door and walked inside.
I never knew what I was walking into with the blue door. Would it be the New York apartment where my mother died? A random library, or a part of Mara’s house?
I’d walked right into Mara’s office and she was waiting for us. The second we walked in, she looked up. Her eyes were red and puffy like she’d been crying.
“Ready to go hunting?” she asked in a peppy voice, wiping her eyes. As I closed the door, she craned her neck to peer outside and into Faerie. It dawned on me then that she must feel so alone and isolated here away from her home.
I nodded. “You okay?” I couldn’t ignore that fact that she looked like she had been crying.
Her face fell. “Your mother … was my best friend. I’d have liked to attend her celebration of life.”
Oh. Gods. That was sad. “I’m sorry,”
Mara waved me off and started to tinker with her table while Elle and I strapped in.
“Wait a minute,” I suddenly blurted out, remembering that no Fae or human could stay in one world too long. “How can you stay here and not get sick?”
Mara looked up from her table and a dark look crossed her face. “The elders permit me an hour every three days to sit by the Tree of Life.”
Gods, that was like solitary confinement or something.
“Same place as last time?” she asked, changing the subject.
I nodded as Elle leaned into me, lowering her voice to a whisper. “We’re going to do anything to get this crystal right? Anything?”
Her eyes said what her words did not. Would I kill Liam to get the crystal?
I gulped, nodding. “Anything.”
Faerie was more important than any feelings I had for my “possible soulmate,” who happened to be an evil, Dark Fae halfling.
“Seattle, here we come. Buckle up!” Mara yelled.
The spinning sensation pulled at my gut, but it was easier to handle this time. Less like being on a rollercoaster. When the room settled from its blurred state, I unclipped and stood, swaying on my feet a little. Mara led us through the house, past where Bash was asleep on his back, drool dripping down his face.
“So, did he just travel with us or … we left him behind somewhere?” I wondered aloud.
Mara opened the blinds on a window in her kitchen and I peered out into the misty forest of Seattle.
“My office is in the in-between. I picked you up from Faerie and Bashur was in my house, which I’d previously moved to Seattle last night, before making a stop at Venice Beach to see Jonah. Then I brought Bash back to Seattle before getting you. Make sense?”
Not really, but I nodded.
She walked through the laundry room and opened the door that led to the front porch. This house was backward from where you would think. The front door led to the backyard and the back door led to the front porch.
I was thoroughly confused.
“So, if you were to move your house while I was out on a mission and I open this door…” I needed to get some more info about this inter-world travel thing.
Mara nodded. “You would see the inside of a dusty old two-bedroom house.”
Elle said what I was thinking: “So cool.”
How powerful was Mara? Because that took some serious skill.
“But I would never leave my post unless it was an emergency. If that ever happens, just sit tight and I’ll be back to get you.”
That seemed like something we should have talked about on day one. I nodded and pulled the rolling pin from my bag. “Trissa said you could give me a lesson?”
Mara waved me off, her golden hand cuffs clanking together. “Oh, who has time for pesky lessons.”
Rubbing her hands together, a bright purple light built between her palms. My eyes widened. “A spell?”
Mara nodded. “I rode a motorcycle plenty of times before I got locked down in this place. I’ll just transfer the memories.”
I stepped back a pace, my wings stiffening. “Transfer memories?”
Elle and I shared a look.
Mara smirked, her lips curling. “It’s nothing scary. They will feel like your memories and your muscle memory will remember it as well. Trust me, it’s nothing compared to what Indra and Aubin can do. Those two could wipe your whole memory bank if you cross them.”
Wipe my whole life. I shivered. No one should have that kind of power. Memories that felt like mine but weren’t? That seemed scary as hell. But I knew we didn’t have much time to argue if I wanted to catch that crystal. “Okay.”
“Alright, then.” Mara reached out with the glowing purple hands and grasped the side of my face. A warm tingle worked its way into my head and a slight zapping noise popped in my ears, followed by a flare of purple light. She pulled her hands away.
“Done.”
I didn’t feel different, but maybe it would come to me on the bike.
“Alright, girls, Bash and I will wait here. It’s best you go in and out quick. If it’s missing, it may take you a few weeks to track the new location. We can go over that when you get back.” Mara waved us out the door.
It seemed time was always of the essence in this field of work. I looked at Elle, who nodded, and we stepped out into the rain. After waving Mara off, she shut the door and I activated the crystal on the rolling pin, which caused the motorcycle to transform and take shape.
“So, I have a theory about your … problem.” Elle looked back at the closed door.
My soulmate problem? I did not want to talk about that now, but Elle and I were both top of our class in studies
and if she had a working hypothesis I wanted to hear it.
“So, you know the elder library?” Elle asked.
I shivered. I wouldn’t forget that night I’d sat in there while they dumped this big new job on me.
Elle wrung her hands together. “Well, they called me in there to tell me everything and prepare me to be your guard. They showed me the crystals and all of that and then they had some emergency and they left me in the library unattended for like fifteen minutes.”
A grin tugged at my lips. “What did you read?”
The elder library was strictly off limits. If I hadn’t been grieving that night, I would have taken more notice of the titles there. As a book lover and knowledge seeker, I would love to be let loose in that thing.
Elle chewed her lip. “Well, it didn’t make sense at first, but now I wonder…”
I swung my leg over the bike and looked up at her. “Wonder what?”
“It was a book about halflings … which I think are what they called the Sons of Darkness in the very beginning…” You couldn’t keep anything from Elle. She was too smart.
I nodded. “Yes. Indra said that.” I needed to catch her up on everything she’d told me last night, but there never seemed to be enough time.
“It said that in the dark times, the Fae mated with the humans because they thought they were soulmates.”
I frowned. “Soulmates with a human?”
That was impossible.
Right?
Elle shrugged. “So then it’s not crazy to assume halflings could be our soulmates.”
A frown pulled at my lips. “So that’s your theory?” This was NOT helping. So far, I’d just heard that it was entirely possible that Liam was my soulmate.
Elle sighed. “I think he could be your soulmate, Lil, and that’s going to make what we are about to do all the more tough on you.”
Fuck.
I shook myself. “No. I’ll be fine. He doesn’t even know what soulmates are,” I told her.
She nodded, but indecision crossed her face. “Well, I’ll be there with you, to help you stay focused.”
What she meant by that was she would kill Liam if I couldn’t. That very thought had panic coursing through my veins and it scared me. Would I protect him from my own best friend?
No.
He was a Dark Fae. A thief. An active participant in trying to ruin my world. No, if Liam got in my way, I would end him. Soulmate or not.
We pulled up to the old farmhouse and I was surprised at how easy riding the motorcycle was. It was just … there in my mind. The grips, the way I leaned into the turn but not too much. I just knew what to do because I’d ridden before … but I hadn’t. I’d probably be more freaked out if I wasn’t so insanely freaked that Elle thought Liam could really, truly, be my Fae soulmate. I almost didn’t want to go back in there. I wanted him to be gone, or I wanted us to focus on finding the next crystal, so I didn’t need to ever see him again, or possibly kill him. But Indra’s words came back to my mind: they took all twelve crystals, leaving not even one. The genocide of our people and lands rested solely with the Sons of Darkness. The blood of a billion Fae was on Liam’s hands as far as I was concerned.
“Let’s get this over with.” I deconstructed the bike and placed the rolling pin into the messenger bag. The same messenger bag I would place the crystal in when I pried it from Liam’s cold dead fingers.
We were at the edge of the property, way out in a thicket of trees. Trissa had reiterated I would not be able to use the pricklewart juice for another day, lest I be poisoned, so we were going in old school style.
“I say we fly. High above the house,” Elle whispered.
“And risk some humans seeing a floating girl, no way,” I scolded her. Reaching into my magic bag, I pulled out two baseball caps and a pizza box.
Elle’s eyes widened. “All this stuff fit in there?”
I smirked. “Mara gave it an upgrade.”
Elle looked impressed. “I wanna be that powerful when I grow up.”
I snorted, forgetting for a moment our serious task. “Mara is said to be descended from some of the original Fae. We’ll never have power like that.” My mother let slip once that Mara once led the council of the Queen of Summer herself.
Elle fixed her cap and we folded our wings flat to our back. Elle pulled a deadly dragon blade and hid it in her hand, just underneath the pizza box. Anyone getting stabbed with that would burn alive from the inside out.
We stepped out from the trees and I opened my seeking ability to the crystal. It could be in the same room or they may have moved it into the garage or—
“It’s not here.” I don’t know why I was shocked. Both Triss and Mara said they would probably move it but…
“Lil … that smell.” Elle was a nursery fairy who’d decided to become a warrior. But some of her natural talents were enhanced smell and hearing, as well as some healing ability.
It took a second for the putrid coppery smell to hit my nostrils, and when it did, my stomach dropped.
Death.
We both broke into a run, bee-lining it across the yard and up to the front door, where that acrid scent hit the back of my throat. My chest tightened as a dull throb started to pulse in my stomach. The blue light, that which denotes our soul, our life force, started to seep from my chest and swirl before me.
Liam was dying.
Tears lined my eyes as I recognized his soul essence calling to mine in death. I don’t know how I knew it, but I knew. It was just a feeling that came with complete knowing. When I looked at Elle, her mouth was slack, eyes wide. I burst through the door, stumbling over a dead horned Fae, and pounded down the hall.
“Liam!” I shouted, my voice raw with grief. I’d barely started processing my mother’s death. I wasn’t sure I could take another … even if he was a stranger.
But he wasn’t. He was my soulmate.
Everything I felt in my body now obliterated my earlier promise to kill him in order to obtain a crystal. I could never harm a hair on his head; he and I were the same. Elle ran after me, her feet slamming down the hall until we both came to rest at the entryway to the crystal room, the place he had hidden me in a closet so that his friends didn’t find me…
Liam was sprawled out onto the floor, lying in the doorway, his wings smoking black, fresh blood pooled around his body. There was a blade in his abdomen, slammed up to the hilt. He held it loosely, trying to staunch the flow of crimson. Above his chest, the blue light of his soul danced in a swirl, trying to reach up and touch me.
I fell to my knees, tears rolling down my cheeks. “Hold on,” I told him, and slipped one arm under his neck and another under his legs.
Now that we were close enough to touch, he reached out and caressed my face with two bloody fingers. “You … look just like … her.”
My body went rigid. “Did you … kill my mother?”
The thought had never crossed my mind until now. He looked up into my eyes and I knew then that if he said yes, I would pull that knife from his stomach and let him bleed out, no matter what my soul thought about that. My mother would be avenged.
He shook his head. “My … father.” He’d barely gotten the words out before his head lolled backward and he passed out.
Relief crashed through me. Not only had my soulmate not killed my mom, I’d just learned who had. Too bad it was his dad. That fucker was going to die.
“Come on. I’m taking him to a healer.” I tried to lift him and fell forward. Jesus, he was like a sack of bricks!
“A healer!” Elle hissed. “In Faerie? Are you crazy?”
I looked up at my best friend, the blue soul light dancing between our chests as his last dying song. “Elle … please.”
“He’s evil,” she hissed.
I frowned. “Has he ever hurt you? Or me?”
She sighed. “No. But he … stole our crystal which gives us life.”
I nodded. “It gives him life too. Indra told me that the So
ns of Darkness are … the offspring of Fae and humans. A product of the dark times. Halflings. They need crystals to survive too.”
Elle gasped, looking down at Liam, wide-eyed.
“So that makes him a thief yes, but he’s not evil. How can he be? He’s my soulmate.”
She looked at the blue light swirling and arcing between us and then nodded.
With a lot of effort, we lifted him up and he winced in pain, seemingly regaining consciousness. “The crystal,” he mumbled.
“Where is it?” Elle whispered as we walked him out of the hallway and into the front yard, a trail of blood in our wake. Elle was trying to coat his wound in healing light, but it was doing nothing.
“My … father,” he managed, before he fainted, his weight getting even more heavy and cumbersome.
His father? Damn, he had some daddy issues, but it brought me some measure of comfort that the man I was going to kill for ending my mother’s life wasn’t someone he was close with. What kind of father would steal a crystal from his own son and try to kill him?
“I don’t think three of us will work on a bike. Can you cloak us from normies?” I gritted out to my bestie, straining under his dead weight.
She nodded. “But any Fae in the area…”
“We’ll have to take the chance.” Nursery Fae were especially good at illusions. They worked on small Fae children until they reached the age of seven, when they could see through them. I still remember her mother using an illusion to look like a giant bloated pumpkin with arms and legs, which made all of us giggle like crazy.
“Okay, we’re a helicopter,” she said, chewing her lip in concentration.
My wings snapped from my back and beat madly like a hummingbird’s. Elle’s did the same, and then we were flying. It would take about ten minutes to reach the safe house from here, where Mara would be waiting. I just hoped he had that long and that I could convince the ex-elder to let him pass into Faerie. I wanted to get to know the man I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with—the one my ancestors saw fit to pair me with.
I just couldn’t let him die.