A Faerie's Curse (Creepy Hollow #6)

by Rachel Morgan

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-ONE

  VIOLET

  I kneel beside my dying husband as the world falls apart around me. Violent wind, shuddering thunder, sea spray flying over the edge of the island, and a great rip in the sky—but I have eyes for none of it. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” They’re the only words I can whisper, over and over again. My blood-covered hands move to either side of Ryn’s face, pouring out as much magic as I can. I should never have left him. I should never have gone after that despicable murderer Zed. Fight for everything you still have and not for what you’ve lost. That’s what Nate—Chase—said earlier. And he would know, wouldn’t he? He watched his parents die. He let the desire for revenge consume him. Just as I was about to let it consume me. Even now, recognizing just how destructive a path it is, part of me still yearns for it. Part of me longs to turn off the pain and feel only the hate and the anger—especially now, faced with the horrifying possibility that I’m about to lose the only other person I love as much as I loved her.

  Victoria.

  Thinking her name brings fresh tears to my eyes. I bow my head and rest it against Ryn’s chest once more. This is what I should have been doing these past few days: crying with my beloved. Letting our tears fall together. Not leaving him alone in his pain while I attempted to fulfill my own mission of revenge. “You won’t die,” I whisper to Ryn. “You have plenty of magic, and you’re strong. You can survive this. I know she’s—she’s gone, and we’ll never get her back, and my heart keeps breaking over and over, but please … please don’t leave me. You promised you’d never leave me.” As my tears soak his shirt, I imagine that I can feel the slow beat of his heart through his chest.

  “I … know,” he replies.

  I pull back with a jolt. I look into the brilliant blue eyes I love so much, at his face smeared with blood and twisted with pain, and I can’t speak past the tears that stream down my cheeks. I lean over him, burying my face against his neck, and hug him as tightly as I dare. My body shudders as sobs rip through me. I don’t understand how I can be heartbroken and happy at the same time, but I’m overwhelmed by both.

  A tiny soft figure wriggles between my shoulder and my neck and settles below my chin. Filigree. My dear, sweet Filigree. I have no idea how he ended up here, but his presence is as much a comfort to me as it’s always been.

  Ryn strokes my hair and mumbles, “I don’t think I’m … gonna be … sitting up for a while.”

  I pull gently away from him—just as the tumult of the storm dies down and silence descends upon us. I look up and find the whirlwind over. Angelica and the two witches lie motionless on the ground with Chase standing over them. The shield that separated us from the rest of the battle—the faeries, prisoners, gargoyles, and even a dragon—is gone. Chase turns to face the silent crowd of guardians.

  They surge forward and attack.

  “No,” I gasp, too shocked to move. He fights back, but the guardians number in the hundreds, and they restrain him in under a minute. As they force him onto his knees, my eyes are drawn to the ever-growing hole in the sky and the field in the world beyond. The lower edge of the hole has reached the grass on the other side of the trident monument. Slowly, inch by inch, the grass on our side and the grass in the field seem to be … merging. Sparking, turning to ash, and disappearing. As if our two worlds are colliding and … destroying one another. “Oh no,” I murmur. “I’m guessing that that is not what Angelica was hoping for.”

  “What?” Ryn asks. “What’s happening.”

  “There’s a giant rip in the sky. I can see the human realm on the other side. But … both worlds are slowly being consumed by each other. We’re going to have nothing left if we don’t stop it. And Chase …” I turn my attention back to him. He’s struggling uselessly against the guardians, but then, as if digging deep within himself and calling upon his reserves of power, he flings his attackers back into the crowd. Instantly, another shield shimmers into view, translucent silver, like the one the witches had up earlier. But if it’s a witch shield, that must mean …

  Just as I think it, one of the witches climbs to her feet. Chase swings toward her and throws her down again, but her blast of magic hits him directly in the face. He drops to the ground and doesn’t get up.

  Afraid to leave Ryn, but desperate to help Chase, I climb to my feet. As the witch scrambles up and crawls toward Chase, I look around for Calla. She must have disappeared into the trees, though, because I don’t see her anywhere. “What’s happening?” Ryn asks again, groaning as he tries to sit up.

  “Hey, don’t you dare move.” I push him back down, and by the time I look up again, the witch’s hands are hovering above Chase’s body, moving in odd circular motions. Her lips twitch, but I’m too far away to hear her words. “Hey!” I yell, hoping to distract her. She ignores me, and a second later, bright green flames ignite upon Chase’s chest. They race across his body without pause.

  I cry out and race toward him. Without bothering to look up, the witch retaliates, her magic flashing out and punching me. I stumble backward, doubling over and gasping for breath. I drop onto my knees, coughing and sucking in air that doesn’t seem to be there while Ryn calls out to me, asking if I’m okay.

  By the time I can breathe again, Chase’s body is consumed by an inferno. An enchanted fire so scorchingly hot I can feel the heat from where I’m kneeling, a considerable distance away. A grating howl rises on the air, followed by another and another. A chilling cacophony of gargoyle misery. Ryn shouts again, demanding to know what’s going on, but I can’t speak. The horror of it—Chase’s burning body—sickens me to my core. I look around again for Calla, but she’s still nowhere to be seen. Fear entangles itself with the nausea in my stomach. Where is she? What’s happened to her?

  My gaze snaps back to the blazing green flames and the witch standing nearby. She sways. Then, as if she’s finally spent the last of her energy, she collapses back onto the ground beside the other two unconscious women. As the shield vanishes, I run toward the fire. I get as close as I can without searing my skin, but I’m far, far too late to help Chase. These flames burn hotter and faster than any I’ve seen, and his clothes, his flesh—I look away as my stomach turns. There’s barely anything left of him.

  Movement catches my attention at the edge of my vision. The guardians behind me, I assume, moving closer to examine the fallen Lord Draven now that the shield is gone. But no. As I turn slightly, I see someone else. The witch—the one who fell to the ground barely a minute ago, swings her axe back and—

  A snarling gargoyle slams into her, throwing her flat onto the ground. It rears back and roars. Then its form seems to ripple. It shifts and changes and grows into scales, clawed feet, wings, a forked tongue, and talons the size of my forearms. Dragon-formed Filigree roars again. His head swings down and his jaw clamps around the witch—around the entire woman. He shakes her broken body back and forth with dizzying speed before tossing her into the crowd.

  Shocked and trembling—I’ve never seen Filigree shift into a form so enormous—I stumble away from the fire. Filigree breathes a stream of flames toward the sky before beginning to shrink. I turn and run back to Ryn’s side. “Oh, thank goodness,” he gasps as I drop to my knees beside him. He’s on his side now, as if he was trying to move, to sit up. “I thought … I thought you were …”

  “I’m fine. But Chase …” I shake my head and wrap my shaking fingers around Ryn’s hands. “He’s … did you see? I couldn’t …” Tears sting my eyes again as Filigree scampers toward us in squirrel form. “I couldn’t do anything. The fire was too quick. I was too late, and I don’t know where Calla is, and that tear in the sky …”

  I look up at the gaping wound between the worlds and the guardians gathered below it. They’ve moved between us and the enchanted fire now, and I can barely make out the flickering tops of the flames consuming Chase’s body. High above us, the heavy clouds of Chase’s storm have scattered and vanished, reveal
ing a star-studded sky and a full, silver-yellow orb.

  Someone steps forward and climbs onto the monument. I recognize him as Head Councilor Bouchard when he turns to face everyone. “Two days ago,” he calls out, his voice magically magnified, “it was revealed to us that Lord Draven has not been dead for the past ten years, as we were led to believe. Our world went into a flurry of panic, imagining a second Destruction. But tonight—” he shakes his fist in the air “—Draven has been vanquished forever. He will never again threaten our way of life.” Applause and cries of victory rise from the crowd.

  I press my eyelids closed and shake my head, sickened to hear them rejoicing for this horrifying death. “They’re celebrating the wrong thing,” I whisper.

  “There is, however, another threat that needs to be addressed.” Councilor Bouchard pauses, looking out at the crowd, waiting for complete silence. “I wasn’t planning to do this for another several weeks, but I couldn’t waste this opportunity when it presented itself. This moment in which almost every guardian in our world would be assembled in one place.” He raises his hand and holds something high in the air. Something spherical and glowing. He lets go. In the silence, I hear the splintering smash of glass. A ripple of magic rushes through the air like a breeze gently lifting my hair. And then—my body begins to glow. The glow spreads across Ryn, wrapping us both in faint light.

  “What the hell is this?” he murmurs.

  “I don’t know.” My gaze flies up again as apprehension pounds through my veins. In the crowd of guardians, I pick out glowing forms here and there.

  Councilor Bouchard raises his voice and speaks again. “Griffin Gifted,” he booms, “you have been revealed.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-TWO

  VIOLET

  In the shocked silence that follows Councilor Bouchard’s revelation, I meet Ryn’s gaze. Every thought racing through my mind is reflected in his eyes. As if we haven’t been through enough in the past week, our world has once again shifted suddenly and irreversibly. The secret each of us has kept our entire lives is now evident for everyone to see.

  Griffin Gifted. Feared. Not trusted. Not permitted to work for any Guild.

  Councilor Bouchard scans the murmuring crowd, his eyes settling on every glowing form, memorizing the men and women who’ve broken the law by failing to register themselves and working illegally as guardians. His eyes narrow as they focus on me. I know he recognizes me from the dealings we’ve had in the past. My support of the reptiscilla petitions. My request to remain a guardian in service of the Guild while working at the Reptiscillan Protectors Institute. “They called you ‘Guild traitor,’ did they not?” he shouts to me. “Seems they were right. You’ve been lying all along. You and all the other Gifted hiding among us.” He looks out at the glowing fae with disdain as the murmurs rise and the crowd shifts and moves apart, leaving rings of space around the ‘traitors’ who’ve managed to keep their abilities secret until this moment. “We’ll soon get you all on that list where you—”

  “Hey!” I yell, jumping to my feet, unable to endure for one more second just how wrong this all is. Celebrating death, revealing innocent Gifted, and all the while our world is slowly sizzling into nothingness right behind our foolish Head Councilor. “Have you seen what’s happening behind you? Have you seen the tear growing larger and the two worlds slowly eating each other up? Stop turning us against each other and DO SOMETHING!”

  Shouts of agreement and cries of concern tell me I’m not the only one worried about the growing hole. Councilor Bouchard stares at me for a moment, stunned, before swinging around and finally paying attention to the most important reason everyone assembled here tonight: to prevent a tear in the veil. A task we have utterly failed at. Councilor Bouchard must have known the hole was there; he couldn’t possibly have missed it as he pulled himself onto the statue to do his big Griffin Gifted revelation. But perhaps he didn’t notice it was growing bigger. Perhaps he didn’t realize until now that this island and everyone on it will soon be consumed.

  The edges of the gap slowly eat away at the sky as the hole grows large, moves closer. On the other side, in the human world, the field is almost gone. In the road just beyond, a car stands abandoned with doors flung open. Another car comes to a halt behind it, reverses, turns, and speeds away. On our side, the grass just beyond the monument sizzles and vanishes.

  Councilor Bouchard leaps off the statue and backs away along with the rest of the crowd. Shouts rise up, questions of what to do or where to run. Some guardians raise their hands toward the tear, clearly trying to stop it with magic, but it inches ever closer.

  Think, think, think, I tell myself, but I have no answer for this. Nothing I’ve ever learned, read or heard has prepared me for a tear in the very fabric of our world. I bend over Ryn to check his wound as my mind continues racing. The skin’s starting to knit together, but I’m sure there’s still plenty of damage underneath.

  “We can’t stop it,” Ryn says. “We have to get away. Find out how to stop it and come back. Where’s—” He struggles to sit, but I push him down before he hurts himself further. “Where’s Calla?”

  “I don’t know.” I look wildly around, as if she might suddenly materialize.

  “She must be here … somewhere. She wouldn’t have …” He pauses to take in a few heavy breaths. “She wouldn’t have left Chase.”

  “I know, but I don’t see her. Filigree, help me lift Ryn,” I add as I stand. We have to get down to the boats somehow. The one that brought me here wouldn’t rise into the bottom of the island the way the boats normally do when they get here, perhaps because the canal that receives the boats was already full. My magic propelled me up, but it’s going to be a lot more challenging getting back down with Ryn.

  “We can’t leave without Calla,” Ryn says, groaning as Filigree, bear-shaped now, lifts him from the ground. “I only came here to make sure she—aah, sharp claws, Fili—to make sure she didn’t get herself killed going after those witches.”

  “The only place she could have gone is further into the trees. Filigree can carry you, and I’ll start looking—” Louder shouts from the guardians make me turn back as Filigree lowers Ryn’s feet to the ground so he’ll stop complaining. At least half the guardians are running now, clearly having given up on trying to seal the tear. As for the tear itself … “Oh crap. It’s reached the monument.” Which means it isn’t far from reaching the edge of the grove of trees. And if Calla’s in there … Fear throbs at my temples as the base of the statue collides with what remains of the grassy field. I need to move, to find her, but I’m frozen in place, both wanting and not wanting to see a monument that’s stood for centuries, the powerful guarding force of the mer kingdom, crumble as it meets the edge of the veil.

  It doesn’t.

  I suck in a breath and hold it. Waiting, counting, hoping. Still, the veil’s edge moves no further. Looking out to either side, it doesn’t seem to be stretching any wider. “It’s stopped,” I whisper. “Is that … possible? All we needed to do was place a powerful enough obstacle in its way?”

  “You say that as if it’s a simple solution,” Ryn says, his arm around Filigree’s neck as Filigree holds him upright. “How many objects containing several centuries’ worth of magic do you see lying around?”

  “I suppose it makes sense,” I say, answering myself. “The monument is powerful enough to create an opening in the veil, so it should be powerful enough to … close it? Do you think we can—”

  “Stop them! Don’t let them get away!” My gaze swings away from the trident statue and toward Councilor Bouchard. Following his line of sight, I see two glowing figures racing away past the side of the prison. “Don’t let any of those lying traitors get away!”

  Madness follows as guardians tackle the Gifted faeries in their midst. Some detach themselves from the crowd and run toward us.

  “Dammit,” I mutter, backing away as Filigree lifts Ryn. There’s nothing behind us but trees and the e
dge of the island, but if we have to jump into the water far below, that’s what we’ll do. I don’t want to be interrogated or have my guardian markings deactivated. I don’t want to be tagged so the Guild knows my exact whereabouts for the rest of my life, and Ryn feels the same way. “Filigree, we have to—”

  A whooping cry sounds from the sky, and a gargoyle and its rider come swooping down. A young man falls off the gargoyle’s back as it lands clumsily. I don’t know who he is, this tall faerie with green in his hair, but he stations himself between us and the guardians racing to catch us. With snarling growls, another three gargoyles land beside him and face our pursuers.

  Someone touches my arm. With a yelp, I jump away, a knife flashing into existence in my hand. “Hey, careful!” a woman says breathlessly. “I’m here to help! You probably don’t remember me, but I’m Chase’s friend.” She tugs my arm—with a gloved hand—and suddenly I recognize her.

  “Scarlett?” I say.

  “Yes! Come on.”

  I hesitate. After all, she tried to kill me once, and she used to work for the Unseelie Prince Marzell. But if Chase managed to change his ways, maybe Scarlett did too. Besides, Ryn and I don’t exactly have many options right now.

  “Go with her,” Ryn says, struggling to look past Filigree at the guardians and gargoyles. “Now!”

  We race into the grove as fast as Filigree’s bear legs can move. Zigzagging between trees, dodging beneath branches, sparing a glance or two over my shoulder. It isn’t long before we reach the other side. On the grass, right near the edge of the island, a group of fae are gathered in a huddle. As we come to a halt, they look around at us, concern written on each of their faces. Someone moves aside, and I see who’s kneeling at the center of their circle.