The Jeep crawled through downtown, slush splattering up to the windows. Lamplights glowed in the haze like drifting jellyfish—the only objects visible more than twenty feet away. The morning cold pushed through the cracks in the rear window, prickling the hair on my nape. I slid on my gloves and nestled deep into my coat, tucking my nose behind the collar.
"Am I even on the road?" Breena asked, right before the Jeep lurched onto the sidewalk. She plopped back off the curb. "Guess I am now," she said with a laugh, and switched to four-wheel-drive. She noticed my unease in the rearview mirror. "Oh, relax. Once we make it to the ley line all your struggles are over."
If we make it to the ley line.
The interstate was as bad as downtown. A sprinkling of cars and semi-trucks trundled along at a snail's pace. Oncoming traffic followed a snowplow scraping white clouds to the shoulder. A FedEx Freight truck rolled past us, spraying the Jeep's plastic windows with slush, its headlights bouncing off the black ice in glaring streaks. I leaned my head back and stared at the roof. The fabric sagged in the middle and swayed. Breena had told us the ley line was about two hundred-and-fifty miles away. At this rate we'd be there in seventeen hours.
"This is some snowstorm," Breena said. "I can't remember the last time a darkling was so pissed." The windshield wipers squealed, smearing filthy arches across the glass as snow snakes slithered across the roadway. Breena snorted as if she remembered a dirty joke. "Delano must be extra hormonal."
I blinked. "Why do you say that?"
"You saw past his lies and refused your betrothal." She laughed. "He knows he'll never get laid again."
"Betrothal?" I shoved Orin's shoulder. "You never said anything about a betrothal."
"Because you're not betrothed," Orin said, defensively. "I told you darklings are demented and evil. They spin lies to justify stealing our children for their own disgusting wants. He believes you are owed to him, to do with as he will. All because you were born to one of the families darklings blame for their imprisonment."
Breena made a gagging sound. "Can you imagine coupling with that thing. All shadowy and cold."
I thought about Delano's lips brushing my throat and remembered only heat.
"You are fortunate the Realm found you first," Breena said. "You will love it there. No coldness or darkness, and you'll never want for anything."
"Yeah. Great," I grumbled.
"What's wrong?" she asked. "Was it something I said?"
"She's upset with the sniffer execution." Orin said this hushed, as if admitting he wet the bed every night.
Breena glanced over her shoulder at me. "Really?" She shrugged and faced the road. "Yeah. I guess if you're used to human customs it would seem severe."
I scowled out the side window, gnawing my cheek.
"But," Breena continued. "Such incidents are rare and always on Earth. The Realm has almost zero crime. Can Earth say the same?"
"No. But at least in the United States the citizens are free."
Breena's eyebrows lifted in the rearview mirror. "Free, huh? So everyone you know takes shortcuts through alleys in the middle of the night? Or leaves their valuables unlocked? Trust their children to strangers?"
"Of course not. That's dangerous."
"It is dangerous because humans have dangers. Fear restricts them. Unlike us. The Realm's punishments are severe but justified. I'd rather my child always be happy and safe, than read a stupid flier."
"Even if it's your child handing them out for something they believe in?"
Orin's head sunk beneath the headrest.
Breena's eyes narrowed. "That will never happen. My daughter is a good girl."
So was I. And what the hell has that brought me? A mother who hasn't met or spoken with me since I was eighteen, a loveless marriage I'm unable to escape, and the inability to belong anywhere.
"These harsh punishments protect humans, too," Breena continued. "The Realm must be strict on Earth or else sloppiness breeds. Imagine if someone revealed to humans they shared a planet with magical beings. What would happen?"
"Chaos," I said, after a moment.
"Exactly. Chaos." Breena tucked a hair-spike behind her ear. "Soon you'll understand the joys you've been missing. Although, as a healer, you won't deal with the Realm much after training." Her voice lowered into a sneer. "But it sounds as if you'll appreciate that."
Breena pulled off at the next exit and I felt a wave of relief. Maybe she had enough sense to return to the storage lodge to wait out this storm. I didn't want to have this conversation for the next seventeen hours. I didn't want to be out in the cold. I wanted to crawl beneath the blankets and sleep until I was dead.
Instead, Breena parked on the side of a rural backroad and stepped out of the Jeep. She unsnapped the roof and tugged the canvas back to where I sat. Snowflakes fell on the dash and melted in Orin's eyelashes. The wind spiraled inside, crackling the paper trash on the back floorboards. Gooseflesh crawled up my neck and tingled my scalp. I tugged my knitted cap toward my shoulders, the olive yarn creaking to the strain. "What are you doing?" I asked.
"Getting us to the ley line." Breena climbed behind the wheel and slammed the Jeep door shut. "Which do you prefer, Orin? Road or flakes?"
Orin licked a snowflake on his lip. "Road."
The Jeep fishtailed as Breena peeled out onto a backroad, thick with snow. I clenched the side of the roll-bar, fingernails digging into the foam. Orin unlatched his seatbelt and stood up, his hands gripping the top of the windshield, his body against the dashboard.
"Nobody out on these roads," Breena said. "Including cops."
"No traction, either," I said, then shrieked as we slid sideways. Orin's hip slapped the plastic passenger window. We almost clipped a fencepost before straightening. I squeezed my fists against my eyes as we slid into the other lane.
Please let me live through this! Please let me live through this! Please let me—
The tires steadied with a jolt, as if catching dry blacktop. I peeked up from my fists. Orin's arms were stretched over the windshield, his palms facing the road. The snow ahead of the Jeep fell and flattened as we approached, hardening like sheets of smooth, thick ice. But we never slid. The Jeep held straight and true.
Orin laughed. "Take that, darkslime!"
An aura of heat shimmered around Orin and Breena. The snowflakes melted into rain and diverted before the windshield like a curtain opening to pass. I shrugged off my overcoat and pushed the sweater's sleeves to my elbows. The snowflakes above us vanished in puffs of steam. Behind us, the road returned to slush with hardly a tire-track to mark our way.
"See?" Breena said. "Easy-peasy. Fast passage to the Realm from here on out."
"Are you both doing this?" I asked, shouting over wind and the roar of the soft top flapping. The Jeep was flying at 70MPH.
Orin nodded, peering over his shoulder at me. The gold in his eyes blazed, like tiny suns reflecting in tropical pools. His hair whirled in the wind like a sandstorm. "Help us," he said.
"I'd rather not endanger our lives with my shoddy magic," I replied.
"Then be our navigator. Tell us where the ley line is." Orin tapped his heart. "You'll feel it here. The musical feeling, except entering instead of leaving."
I closed my eyes to concentrate, but I didn't need to. The feeling came fast, as if waiting to be asked. I pointed ahead to the left. "There," I said. It sounded more like a question.
"Told you you're a natural." Orin winked at me, and I smiled.
A break in the fence-line approached fast. Breena cranked the wheel to the left. I shrieked; the Jeep almost clipped the fencepost as it skidded into a snow-filled pasture. The wooden beads clicked against the windshield and made me think of Hannah's cornrows in the RV, and all her pot smoking friends. I never thought I would feel safer driving with them, I thought. The Jeep's rear waggled, then straightened. My stomach flopped. "Is this a bad time to mention I get carsick?" I said, right before the snow flattened before Orin's hands like
a white sheet, shifting to fill the uneven pasture. We sped through the empty field without dips or jostling or bumps. A Lamborghini would have had no trouble zipping through farmlands with Breena and Orin behind the wheel.
Breena pumped her fist into the air. "Screw the darklings and their winter and their cold and their storms!" She and Orin laughed and bumped each other's forearms together—the faerie equivalent of a high-five, I assumed. A flock of Canada geese honked and flapped into the air as the Jeep sped toward them like a cue ball aiming for the break.
I slipped the sweater over my head and used the sleeve to wipe the sweat off my brow. The snowdrifts flattened to Orin's will. Steam wrote cursive in the air. What would humans do with such powers? I wondered. Would they all use it with integrity and empower their communities? Would they use it for the good of everyone? I doubted it. I thought about the sniffer and the criminal he had killed. The criminal who shouldn't have been a criminal. But maybe that was the point. Maybe that was what Breena had been trying to tell me, and why the Realm survived. If Earth was the lesser child of the Realm, then humans were the lesser children of the fae. Maybe faeries were as selfish and egocentric and cruel as the species I had spent a lifetime coexisting with. Maybe faeries needed harsh controls to prevent their own destruction.
Or maybe I was making excuses because I had nowhere else to go.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
We had crept back onto a freeway, and cold seeped in through the walls.
Sleet pelted the Jeep's windshield incessantly. Traffic crawled and slid, headlights glowing like lost spirits in the oppressive gray haze. Snow plows were out in vain, slush and ice filling their paths behind them. I had tried to sleep for the past hour to escape this winter caravan, but no luck. Breena dominated the conversation like a warlord, every word grinding. I would have enjoyed it if she babbled about her life and family, her work as a deliverer, places she had visited or heard of, ideas and dreams. But no. All she ranted about for hours and hours and hours was of rebel forces, their warfare, the Realm's advancements against their movement on Earth. She detailed rebel guerrilla tactics, faerie outposts they ransacked, murders, torture, thievings and rape, and how she personally knew the loss and pain of someone who knew someone who had heard from someone else. She had angered when I laughed because she had insisted the Realm had no crime. "The Realm doesn't," Breena had sniffed, while Orin hid his face behind his hand. "Faeries would have complete peace if not for these rebels and darklings. Besides, goodness can be achieved only through the blood of the wicked. Every fairytale tells you that."
I suspected Breena was trying to scare me for the jab I made earlier regarding her daughter. You will be at the mercy of these rebel savages once you are working alone on Earth, the undercurrent of her words seemed to whisper. But her threat felt more like an award. I'd gladly confront an infantry of rebels if it meant escaping this cold, rattling Jeep, and Breena's constant bitching.
Our exit dumped us onto an icy street paralleling the freeway, eventually leading to a barred service road. Orin hopped out of the Jeep and opened the gate for us to pass. Scrubby trees and tangled brush encroached on the snow laden road, blocking the surroundings. The land was uncared for, long forgotten and allowed to grow wild. Until we rounded the first corner, anyway. The roadway cleared before us, black and wet and glistening. The snow and sleet melted the moment it struck the pavement as we sped along for nearly three miles, curving through the gently rolling thicket.
"There's the ley line entrance," Breena said, as we crested the highest hill.
I leaned between her and Orin to peer out the windshield. I expected to find a monolith or a volcano or a million-year old crater, something tourists traveled to from across the world to photograph, something spiritualists gathered around to energize their souls, something anthropologists flocked toward to study the dead civilizations who had once worshiped the holy site. Instead, I peered down at an old barn in a twenty acre snowy field, surrounded in snarls of bare trees and brush. The paint had weathered away decades ago; the storm's gray light bled into the colorless boards. Its sagging roof seemed unfit to handle the piling snow and ice.
We zigged down the hill and zagged through the brush. The snowfall had lessened, but the wind remained strong, making the snowflakes appear to be falling up. Breena sped around the final curve and slammed on the brakes. The Jeep lurched forward; the seatbelt jarred my shoulder. Two brand new, black SUVs blocked the road in front of us. Seven faeries—six men and one woman—stood in front of them, arms crossed over their chests, eyes glaring. They were dressed in formfitting, high-button white suits, with red peeking out from beneath their collars and cuffs. Sleet evaporated around them in a dome of steam. The leader lifted his palm in a stop gesture. His chin was sharp and long, his mahogany hair lashing in the wind.
"Are those rebels?" I asked.
Orin shook his head. "No. Ley sentries."
Ley sentries? I wondered if they were similar to border sentries, but couldn't imagine Orin in those white uniforms. They were too sterile, too stiff, too cold.
The mahogany-haired sentry strutted toward the Jeep and peered through the driver's window, his eyes small and suspicious. His magic made my skin tingle. "I need you to shut off the engine and step outside the vehicle," he said through the plastic. Sacire was stitched in red across his heart.
Breena killed the Jeep's engine. The other sentries approached. "What's the problem?" she asked.
"This is a checkpoint for your safety," Sacire said. "Rebels murdered a family nearby, parents and two children. They attempted to use the family's stolen ley cards to gain access, most likely to attack the ley line itself."
"How terrible," Breena cried as she exited the Jeep. Orin hopped out, then pushed the seat forward so I could too. Wind tousled my hair and I had to squint to keep the sleet from stinging my eyes. Four of the sentries surrounded us, their bodies tense as if ready for battle.
"Please provide your ley cards and state your positions and purposes," one of the four said, facing Breena as she rounded the Jeep to join us. His face and scruffy hair reminded me of a badger. The back of his jacket was open, the lower hem and collar holding it together in thick white bands. His wings were similar to Orin's, but the lines thinner and more jagged.
"Breena Urith," Breena said. She handed a paper the size of an index card to the sentry. "Deliverer, returning to the Realm on schedule."
The badger-faced sentry studied her paperwork, then glared at us. Tura was stitched across his heart in red thread. "And you two?"
"Orin Grian. Border sentry. On a probationary retriever assignment for changeling recovery of Aluala Liath, human name Miriam Thatcher." Orin handed the sentry a paper card. "Here's my Realm card, but we don't have ley cards. We were supposed to land travel along central country, but diverted to the ley system for safety concerns."
Sacire pushed his way in front of Orin. "You don't have ley cards?"
"I called in last night from faerie station nineteen," Orin said, standing as tall and stiff as a soldier. "The clerk told me she'd issue an emergency travel-291B form once authorized."
"Once authorized," Sacire repeated harshly. "And how long has it been since you diverted, borderer?"
"Four or five days," Orin said, then quickly added: "But I couldn't get through earlier. I sent a spider, but never received confirmation. And rebels cut a road call box."
Tura lifted a thick eyebrow. "Rebels vandalized Realm infrastructure?"
Orin nodded enthusiastically.
"Frad, run a check for Orin Griath," Sacire said. "See if he was authorized for travel since this morning." A dark-haired faerie with eyes like espresso nodded, then bounced onto the air and flew off towards the barn.
Orin relayed detailed directions to the cut phone cord while we waited for Frad to return.
"She is your assignment, I take it," Sacire said, pointing at me with his thumb. Orin nodded. "Has she left your sight at all?"
Orin paused. "No."
<
br /> Sacire narrowed his puny eyes. "Why the hesitation? Are you unsure?"
"I'm sure," Orin said. "It's been a long journey. I needed to make certain before responding."
Sacire nodded, seeming almost proud of this answer. His glare shifted to me. "It is rare to meet a changeling. You are my first."
I didn't know what to say, so I forced a smile.
Frad returned with two paper cards in hand. "They're clear," he said, handing Sacire the information. "The Realm authorizes them to use the ley system." He turned to Orin. "They also said you have two days left. Then you're fired."
Orin paled.
Sacire studied the cards, then handed them to us. "Here. Keep these with you."
"Thank you." I slipped the card into my rear pocket and started back to the Jeep.
Tura grabbed my shoulder. "Stop. You are not done here."
"But I thought—"
"We need to perform a strip search."
My hair whipped across my face. "Sorry?"
"Strip search for your safety," Sacire said, having to holler above a gust of wind. "We need to check your wings."
"I don't have wings yet," I said, my coattails thrashing against my legs.
Sacire glowered. "And we need to check for weapons. Please take off your clothing."
I laughed. "You're joking, right?"
Orin gritted his teeth. "Miriam."
"We do not joke. It is for your safety," Tura said. "If you have nothing to hide, then you should have no issue."
"Just because I don't have anything to hide doesn't mean I should make myself vulnerable and at the mercy of strangers," I snapped.
"So you think you are better than everyone else, huh?" Tura snapped back.
Sacire squared his shoulders and leaned into my face. "We are ley sentries."
Orin jumped between us. "Please!" he pleaded. "Humans raised her, remember? She has been taught to be ashamed of nudity."
Sacire clenched his jaw. He gave a curt nod. "I understand. We will allow her to strip behind the Jeep."
"What?"
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