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Author: Kalayna Price
I frowned at him. He made me feel confused. I didn’t like it.
A tingling at my ankle annoyed me. The enchanted dagger wanted to be drawn. I could feel its desire in the back of my head.
“Come quickly,” my mistress said, heading toward the great tree.
I blinked at her, feeling the command, knowing I had to obey it. But I could also feel the dagger. It wanted to be drawn. It would stop annoying me once it was drawn.
The hilt fit my hand, the tingle of magic crawling over my palm. The dagger knew what it wanted, and I let it guide my hand. With one smooth upward motion, the blade slid through the silver thread.
“No!” the court fae screamed, turning around.
The string sagged, severed. I gasped. My head cleared, adrenaline pumping through my senses again, washing away the fog of the spell. The dagger in my hand tingled.
It wanted to sink through flesh, to draw blood. I gripped it tighter, holding it back, not letting it use me.
“What is it?” Ashen asked, staring at the court fae.
“I broke her toy,” I said. “Falin?”
He was already at my side. I expected his gun to be out, drawn. It wasn’t. He’d had to check his iron at the door. His hand moved to my shoulder. Was he holding me back? He swayed. No, he’s holding himself up.
He’d drunk the spelled liquor.
“I suppose I’ve made an enemy,” the woman said.
“But you are not powerful yet, feykin. Come, Ashen. ”
They walked toward the tree. I trembled, the chill in my body threatening to tear me in two. No, Ashen couldn’t leave. He still had my heat.
I reached with my power, sending the endless cold out like a giant hand. Ashen was an animated body, but he was still dead. I could see that. And I had an affinity for the dead. When he’d attacked me, he’d hit me with force, like a jackhammer against my shields. I reached like a specter, my power seeping through the seams of his shields.
He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes wide. His shields tightened. My power was already there. Pouring into him. Diving into his being. Searching for my heat.
For the life force he’d stolen. Ashen yelped and began running. The woman reached the tree first. Then she vanished. A portal.
I couldn’t let Ashen reach that tree with my heat.
Desperate, I grabbed hold of his core with my power, and the dead body stopped, fell forward. Now instead of a man running for the tree, there was a running ghost.
It reached the tree and vanished, and my tongue curled in my mouth. I killed him? I swallowed. No, he was already dead. Or sort of dead. The now-empty body on the floor decomposed before my eyes, turned to dust. The fae at the surrounding tables were quiet. They watched me, their eyes cautious. Some scared.
I tumbled back a step and slammed my shields in place, pushing the grave away from me. My knees gave out, and my vision went black. I hit the floor, shaking.
Cold. I could die from this cold.
I curled in a ball on the wood floor and pulled my knees tight to my chest, but I felt as if my organs had been swapped for icicles, my muscles for frozen wood.
“You’re like ice,” Falin whispered, his hands sliding over my arms. “We have to get out of here. ” But he was too unsteady to help me up.
It took two tries, but I got my feet under me. I clung to Falin, and he clung back. We slowly made our way forward, me blind and shaking, him swaying and stumbling.
No one stopped us, but no one helped us.
“Do you hear music?” he asked, stopping.
I did. A lively fiddle. One I could dance to. Falin turned our course, stumbling toward the sound. What had I heard about a fiddle recently?
The endless dance.
“No. ” I tried to pull Falin back.
He laughed, a full-chested sound of pure joy. “Dance with me, Alexis,” he said. His hand around my waist slipped and slid along my arm as he ran forward.
I grabbed his hand. The fiddle music was all around me, and I could hear the dancers’ laughter. Then my grip on Falin’s hand slipped, and he was gone.
My head swiveled, and I searched the darkness before my eyes. The circle of dancers was just ahead. And somewhere inside it was Falin, spelled to be pliable and caught in the endless dance. He’d drunk the spell for me.
I wasn’t leaving without him.
I did the only thing I could do: I reached for power.
My grave-sight filled my vision, and the dancers snapped into focus. The beautiful and the monstrous danced, twirling and gliding, and in the center was the fiddler, playing on a rotting fiddle. They dance until the fiddle strings snap.
I had to reach that fiddler.
I surged forward, ignoring the music, intent on the fiddle. But the dancers were dancing. A thorn fae smiled at me, his barbed fingers closing around my hand, and he dragged me with him, twirling with me before passing me off to a woman with hair that flowed around her as if alive. Hands touched my body—hands that were too hot, searing my frigid skin. I screamed, but no one noticed. The fae passed me to a dwarf half my size, who tossed me in the air. A troll caught me and spun with me before passing me to the next dancer. I was shocked to see a fully human face, one I recognized.
“Tommy?”
“You joined the dance, Alex? Isn’t it amazing?”
Tommy passed me off to another dancer, and the faces all began to blur.
Wide faces, thin faces, beautiful, terrible, blue, green, stone, bark. I was dizzy and no longer sure where the fiddler was. My skin burned from too many too-hot touches. I had to find the fiddler.
Glimmering hands landed on mine, but these hands didn’t burn. I looked up at Falin’s smiling face. “Alexis,” he whispered, his arms sliding around my waist. He lifted me off my feet and spun in a tight circle. As he brought me back down he lowered me halfway, hugging my body to his. Then his mouth claimed mine.
His lips tasted of honey and laughter, and the first touch of warmth bloomed in my body, trailed from my lips to my core. Then he broke away, and new hands, hot hands, grabbed at me, tried to drag me to a new partner.
Pain burst over my skin as a fae with hair of living flames grabbed me. I jerked away, stumbling back as welts lifted on my arm. I tumbled sideways.
Then I was in the center of the circle. The dancers flowed around me, but this small pocket was clear. Room for the fiddler. I jumped to my feet.
The fiddler’s back was to me, but I could see the frail and brittle strings. I unsheathed my dagger and surged forward. I swiped the blade over the strings, and in my grave-sight, the strings crumbled.
The music died. The stunned fiddler looked down and studied his fiddle, and the dancers stopped. They laughed and clapped, and I ducked through the crowd, searching for Falin.
I found Tommy first. I grabbed his wrist. His skin burned against my palm, but I didn’t let go.
“Come on, you have to get out of here. ”
“I only just got here, Alex. ”
“Really? When?”
Tommy frowned at me. “Maybe twenty minutes ago. I was having lunch with the lieutenant governor’s chief of staff before I started dancing, and I danced to only one song. ”
“Right. ” I found Falin and grabbed him. Then, with shaking steps, I dragged both of them to the door.
“Sign out on the ledger,” the little fae said from her podium.
I ignored her, dropping Tommy’s arm to wrench open the door.
“Wait! You can’t leave at this time,” she yelled.
We did anyway, passing the confused-looking troll on our way out. Then we stumbled into twilight.
Chapter 22
Twilight? I frowned. It had been noon when I’d entered the bar.
Beside me, Tommy gasped, looking at the dark sky.
“Um, guess I was in there longer than I thought,”
he said.
“Yeah, we all were. ” How did I lose the entire afternoon in the bar? “We should go. ”
After all, we couldn’t loiter on the front stairs. I looked down. The steps were a treacherous obstacle in my grave-sight, the poured cement crumbled and the wooden rail rotted. The fact I was still trembling uncontrollably wasn’t going to help me get down them. Best to take it slow.
I still had one hand locked with Falin, but he wasn’t swaying anymore—the dancing appeared to have cleared his head a bit. I stepped down the first stair, and it crumbled under my feet. I grabbed for the rail. The rotted wood snapped as my weight hit it. Falin and Tommy grabbed my elbows and hauled me back up.
“Uh, Alex, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you just broke a stair and the rail,” Tommy said.
I blinked. “That’s not possible. ” I looked back at the toppled rail and crumbled step. When I used my gravesight, I interacted with multiple planes of existence, but they didn’t touch. I stared at the destruction. They do now.
I glanced at Tommy, and he winced, dropping my arm.
“Your eyes are doing the creepy glowing thing,” he said, taking a step back.
I frowned at his obvious distrust and turned away.
Weirder by the day—that’s me. I considered the stairs.
There was no way I was going to make it down the full flight if every step crumbled under my feet. I was safer blind. I looked up at Falin. “I won’t be able to see when I release my grave-sight. ”
He nodded, his hand moving from my elbow to my waist. I took a deep breath, preparing myself for the coming blindness, when Tommy cleared his throat.
“So, uh, since Alex obviously isn’t going to introduce us, I’m Tommy. ”
“We’ve met,” Falin said without looking up at Tommy.
He wrapped his other arm around my waist and dragged me closer. Then his hands moved to my bare arms, rubbing them. “You’re like a little ice princess. ” He leaned forward as if he was going to kiss me again, and I stepped back.
Tommy put a hand in his hair, scratching the back of his head. “Okay, I feel like a third wheel, so I’ll leave you to it. Nice seeing you,Alex. ” He took off down the stairs and turned up the sidewalk without a backward glance.
“Call Tamara; she’s worried about you,” I yelled after him.
Falin’s fingers traced a curl from behind my ear to my collarbone, and I shivered for a reason that had nothing to do with the cold. I turned toward him.
Grave Witch Page 39