“Take a minute to soak it all in,” Lexi encourages us, his voice quiet as he moves into the immobile throng with purpose. He’s looking at the faces, cataloging which ones he knows and which he does not. He pauses near one that’s positioned away from the others, studying the face with a firmness to his jaw.
There’s a statue of a mother throwing herself in front of two petrified children. I don’t know why that one hits me hardest, but as stalwart and on-the-job as I was set out to be today, emotion wells in my throat and threatens to spill down my cheeks if I don’t get myself under control.
So I look away from the mother. I glance away from the children. I turn away from their pain because part of me is a coward who can’t look directly on life’s atrocities. I’m ashamed of myself, that I can’t even angle my body towards her agony.
Something firms up in my chest. Whatever reluctance I entertained about this plan, it’s gone now. That woman deserves to see her children. She’s earned the right with her mama bear heroics to have many memories with them, untainted by the terror of losing all that’s precious to her.
Fiora was right to send us here.
“So many,” Salem murmurs to himself. It’s then I spot the same softness in his eyes that I’m trying to wall myself off from. Salem is stronger than me in this moment because he looks at the mother and the children, sharing in their torment when I’m too afraid to examine life’s horrors up close.
I borrow a portion of Salem’s fortitude and finally face the woman and her children. Her mouth is twisted with fear and pain, which is to be expected, but there’s a noble lift to her chin that tells me she knew the stakes and made this choice anyway. She understood she would be sacrificed if she went out to rescue her children from the beast. She protected her family as best she could, and even though some might say she failed, a sense of triumph rises in me. There are good people in the world, even when it seems like there’s corruption everywhere you turn.
I need to apologize to her for turning away.
She will be the first person we try to cure.
Maybe I’m supposed to wait, but my feet move forward with purpose. Her slender fae figure is dressed in a knee-length gown, frozen mid-sway. She’s got her hair pinned in ringlets around her face, her lips pursed against her fear. Against the monster. Against fate. “I think you’ve been tortured long enough,” I tell her, studying the lines of her face before I reach over and hold her hand, which is outstretched to shield her children from the monster who left her long ago. She shields one boy and one girl, who can’t be more than three and five years old respectively.
I glance toward houses inside the walled-off area, and I wonder if one of them is hers, or if she happened to be out for a stroll at the wrong place and the wrong time, back before the iron gates were constructed. Giant cobwebs over the doorways are a testament that all things beautiful and strong will fade and be forgotten.
I need to learn this woman’s name. I need her not to be forgotten. Does she have more family? Friends who mourned her absence? Does the world feel a void now that she’s silent? When she could speak, what healing did she bring to her corner of the world?
What healing have I brought to my world? Fiora had to put the puzzle pieces together for me to even realize I could be an asset in this crisis. I’m ashamed it didn’t dawn on me that I could be useful, that even cast-outs like me have a purpose.
I’m not sure what I expect to happen, but Salem yells for me to stand back. “Be careful, Lily! Ye can’t just go touching them. We need a plan or something.”
I shrug, holding onto the stone because I don’t have it in me to abandon this woman. “I am the plan. I think they’ve waited long enough.”
Lexi trots back to us, watching the exchange warily. “You have to do the chant, Salem. The shifter chant Fiora taught you to draw out the poison.”
I wish I could do this without Salem, so he could be shielded from all of this, but it seems we were destined to be a team.
Salem begins the charm only a shifter can perform, which comes out in a series of syllables I’ve known forever, but can never remember on my own. Without a shifter to perform the charm to draw out the curse, my twisted magic is only good for creating poisons and death. Without my deranged magic, the shifter charm to draw out a curse or poison is useless, since it spreads the second it hits the air, unless I’m there to capture it and take it inside myself. My body understands what to do with all the bad things of the world. Destiny is forcing fae and shifter to work together, our sides marrying so we can liberate those on the brink of being forgotten. That nature or the universe or whoever will go to such lengths to get enemy sides to come together like this gives me hope that the four of us are on the right track.
What we want for the world might just be what the world desires for itself.
The entire charm takes a few minutes to deliver, and halfway through, Salem gets frustrated with himself and pulls out a sheet of parchment Fiora scribbled the entire thing down on, just in case. Gotta love her.
Lexi watches with such intensity, my palms begin to sweat. He knows this woman, perhaps, or is haunted by the fact that he doesn’t. With hundreds of thousands of fae in Faveda, he can’t be expected to know them all by name. Yet he studies each statue with a grief that looks personal, piercing sharply his most tender spots.
No more. The moment Salem cracks out the last syllable, I hold tight to the woman’s hand, willing her poison, curse or disease—whatever this is—to leak out of her and flood into me. It will be a lesser version of her malady, but I know it will hurt. It always does.
But I feel nothing. No sensation at all. “Are you sure you read it right?” I ask Salem.
Salem turns the paper over. “Aye. I mean, I’ve never done this before. I have no idea what I’m doing, since we aren’t exactly allowed to practice a charm this dangerous in school. But I did as Fiora instructed. What happens next?”
“I’m not sure. It usually just…” A trickling sensation tickles my palm, stilling my movements. “There it goes. It’s happening.”
At first, it’s a tinkling of a leak, the curse dripping into my skin at a leisurely pace. When I inhale, the floodgates open, and I’m inundated with more than I’m prepared for. It’s usually a steady stream of sensation, but this is like getting struck over and over. I hold on tight, trying to keep my calm through it. I’m sucking every bit of the curse from the woman, whose fingers grow warm in my grip. Her scream that started however long ago finally completes itself, belting from her lips as color washes over her from head to toe. The gray surface is replaced with life, the likes of which frighten me through my excitement.
Pink. Her pinned ringlets are light pink.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper as she breathes her first breath in far too long. I should’ve been here sooner. She’s been screaming for who knows how long, maybe years, but I never took the time to hear her until now.
“The Gorgonell! He’s going to…” The woman looks around, staring at me in confusion as she drops my hand. The second the contact is broken, my whole body feels the weight of the curse. It’s like sand is filling my limbs, stealing my energy and making each movement too much an effort.
My knees buckle and Salem drops his parchment, catching me before I collapse on the ground. He lowers me gently, and I don’t fault myself for letting his strong arms cradle me in the grass. “Easy, pup. What do ye need? How can I help?”
“My babies! No!” the woman shouts, her agony ripping my chest open at the rawness of her love for her family.
“We’ll free them. I know it’s all very frightening right now, but we won’t let them stay like that. Give it a few minutes, and we’ll bring your children back.” Lexi leaps into the role of consoling the woman who’s too frightened and turned around to be reasoned with right away.
Luckily, whether or not he knows who she is, she recognizes him. “Prince Alexavier! You must run! The Gorgonell will come for you!”
Lexi has his hands
full, but he turns her from the ghastly sight no mother should have to see. Then he sets about explaining all that’s happened to her, and how she’s come to be awakened.
“It’s not the eight hundredth year of the sun. It’s seven-hundred-ninety-nine!”
Lexi’s got his work cut out for him, but I’m too weighted to be of any use. My chest is heavy, and each breath is a struggle. Though, as the seconds tick by with Salem fretting and driving himself insane trying to speed my healing process along, it doesn’t take more than a minute for the pressure to begin to lift. I can breathe easier, and my heavy limbs are lighter once more.
“Fiora was right,” I tell Salem, who’s rubbing my arms with a manic look widening his eyes. “It was a curse, not a poison. I’m only taking a portion of the impact, and then it’s leaving me.” I lift my hand up and curl my fingers, testing how easily they bend. “Salem, we did it!”
Salem’s not convinced until I’m back on my feet again. He puts me through a round of light calisthenics more to calm himself down than anything else. When I move to touch the little statue boy atop his head, Salem stiffens. “What do ye think you’re doing?”
“Two-hundred-eleven to go. Come on. Start up the chant.”
Salem shakes his head. “I can’t watch ye almost faint again! We got lucky once, but what if it builds in ye? What if there’s some cumulative effect tha’s still coming? We’ve done enough for the day. Your hair turned black, ye know. Granted, it was only for a minute, but tha scared me!”
“No!” the woman screams as she drops to her knees, her desperation thickening my resolve that this boy must be healed next. “Please don’t leave my babies like this!”
Lexi has his hand on the woman’s pink ringlets, with her on her knees before him. “More, Salem. If we go at this quickly, we can liberate a third of them before the sun sets.”
“A third?!”
I blink up at my fierce protector. “I love that you love me. I love that you want me to stay safe. But this is about more than just me. I’m their princess, Salem. If I could help them but I choose not to because it’s a little inconvenient, then what good am I?”
Salem rips the parchment from his back pocket, glaring at Lexi and shooting me looks that communicate his very real worry for my well-being. “This is madness. But if ye need it, then this is what you’ll have, for however long I can stand it.”
Lexi helps the woman to her feet, his arm bracing her as she wobbles from too much emotion of learning that more than a year of her life has been erased. They watch without speaking. The only background noise to Salem’s chant is her occasional sob.
The boy finds his way to his mother’s arms.
Then the little girl, but I can’t stop there.
A farmer, brought to life.
A father, and then his child.
A seamstress.
A blacksmith.
I need to go faster. I need to help them all.
20
Fading Sunlight
Lilya
“This one next,” Lexi urges after corralling the liberated toward the gate. They stand on the other side, too afraid to be near the beast’s cave, which is still farther away than I could run to without getting winded. They wrap their fingers around the wide iron posts, watching and weeping as we move toward the statue Lexi selects. “I need to start taking groups of them to safety. There’s a village not too far from here. If I can walk them there and borrow a carriage or something, Trey here can help drive it back and forth.” He lightly claps the man’s stone shoulder. “I graduated with him. We had a few classes together and always got along well. He needs to be next.”
I nod and wait for the minute-and-a-half charm to spill from Salem’s lips. I don’t want to admit that my chest feels tighter than it should. I only hope Salem hasn’t noticed that my recovery time increases by half a minute after each healing.
When Trey comes to life, his wide nose and broad mouth finishing the cry he started years ago. Lexi waits until Trey’s blue eyes fall on his, and then grabs him up in a hug. “Trey, you’re safe. The Gorgonell won’t come near you ever again.”
Only that’s not true. We’re merely bringing people back to life. We are doing nothing to stop the actual source of the problem. These iron fences won’t hold the monster forever. But I let them have the lie because, like the others, Trey is turned around and grief-stricken over the lost time.
That, and my jaw has gone slack. Salem’s good at catching me before I fall, for which I’m grateful. But the fact of the matter is, my body is working overtime to expunge this curse from the land. My heart is racing, my breath comes in shallow pants, and everything about me feels too heavy for proper use.
Salem’s worried, which isn’t anything new, but instead of fretting and rubbing my muscles, he kneels down, gets in my face and studies the pain I won’t speak aloud. My lips remain shut but my eyes are screaming.
Salem’s mouth is pressed in a firm line of displeasure. “This is too many people too fast. We’re taking an extra minute or two between healings from now on. Ye won’t do anyone a lick of good if ye die.” He says it flippantly, but his throat chokes out the last word. “Ye don’t have to move this fast.”
“I don’t want to stop,” I argue the moment I can access my jaw. I belong here—maybe not in Faveda, but in this graveyard, this forgotten space. I was built for times like this. I’ve finally found my place among my people, and I don’t want to lose my hold on finally feeling connected to my kin. “They need me.”
“Tha’ll always be true. You’re new to being royal. The people will always need saving. The land will always experience some irreparable distress. Problems will always arise that demand your attention now. But one thing matters most, so bury it in your heart.” He thumbs my chin. “Ye cannot help anyone if you’re dead. Killing yourself for a cause only hurts the world. So take the breaks ye need and make sure ye have the strength to stand before ye force yourself to get up.”
Salem is wise, and I love him for it.
He glances at the nearest screaming stone figure. “These statues have been here a long time. If they have to wait another day or two, so be it.”
I want to thumb the sharp edge of his cheekbone, but my fingers are still weighted. “If I had to be parted from you for a day or two, I’m not sure I could stand it at this point.”
Salem looks shocked that I echo his attachment. He’s been the one hovering, making sure we’re not parted. But the truth is that I love it because it means he’s near. Perhaps I’m not supposed to feel the mate bond because I’m not a shifter, but it’s there all the same, tugging at my bones and course-correcting my heart so we don’t stray too far from each other. All my stormy chaos quiets when he’s near.
“Ye feel it too?”
I manage a nod, for which I’m proud of myself. Any movement at all is a victory as my limbs slowly begin coming back to themselves. “I don’t want us parted,” I rule. “And there are people in here that have been separated from their loved ones long enough. They shouldn’t have to wait another day or two.”
I had only Fiora most of my life. Now I feel connected to too many people. Married and mated. But this new tie on my heart is too much. This connection I feel to the fae is tugging at my spine, jerking me to act instead of wait.
“They’re afraid, Salem. I’m linked to them, so I can’t stop until every last one of them can choose their home. None of them chose this.”
I didn’t get to choose my home. They should have that power.
Salem doesn’t argue further with me, but after each healing, he makes sure I’ve had some water, that I can do a few pushups, and insists we wait until I’m not wobbling on my feet. The one time I did, he made me lie down in the middle of the field for twenty minutes. I could’ve healed four people. So I take it slower now, my bones aching as the sun hangs low in the sky.
“That’s enough for tonight,” Lexi calls across the way to us. “We need to head on home. The Gorgonell comes out at
night, you remember. Let’s get the rest of these fine fae to the village, where they can regroup indoors.”
We’re further in the thick of the statues now, farther from the gate than we meant to go. “Seventy-one,” I manage to work out from my supine position on the grass. Parts of me are numb, and the other parts hurt, but I manage what I hope is an unaffected expression. “Seventy-one healed, lots more to go.”
“A third of them healed,” Salem agreed. “Tha’s seventy-one more than anyone’s been able to help. Well done, pup.”
I love his body, but I can’t feel it. I can sort of move my limbs. Almost. But I have no sensation. My arm is pressed against his stomach as he holds my hand to his heart, but I can’t feel him. “Salem?” I whisper, listening to the weeping of the dozen or so people who are making their way toward the gate. “I can’t feel you.”
Salem hoists me higher and rubs his bristly cheek against mine. “Do ye feel tha?”
“I do.”
“I’ll never leave ye, Lily. Even if ye can’t feel me, I’m always here. Take your time. Just relax. We’ll be back at the palace soon enough.”
The air has been filled with crying and questions for so long that the sound of angry shouts breaks through the stone graveyard like the crack of a whip. “No! Let us out!”
It’s the only thing that could part Salem from my side, but he only makes it five steps before returning and lifting me up. “I know this hurts ye, pup, but I can’t leave ye out in the open like this. Let’s go.”
My teeth grind as my bones wobble in ways they’re not supposed to. Any movement is painful as sensation finally begins trickling back into my body.
“No!” Salem shouts, his boots pounding toward the fence. “Open the gate!”
I can only just barely see who Salem is yelling at. A few steps more and I can make out his stalwart expression. Everything in me tightens and threatens to run, if only I could access my legs.
Wicked Prince: Book Two in the Territorial Mates Series Page 14