by May Dawson
Duncan was back on his feet and moving purposefully toward the Shadow Man. Dark magic crackled around his hands. “Go!”
“Duncan!” I shouted, pushing back at Raile. I wasn’t going to leave Duncan behind.
Raile’s arm was like a vice around my waist, no matter how I struggled. I braced my feet, pressing my elbow against his chest, preparing to throw him. He shifted subtly, drawing me into his side as if he could forecast my movement, and I shifted to find a new way to throw him.
He muttered a word as he pressed me against the railing. The boat was rocking up and down on those stormy white-capped waves. Beneath us, a hole opened up in the sea, a ripple like the one he’d raised on the deck.
I had to get away from him, had to help Duncan and make sure Tiron and Azrael were safe, wherever they had gone.
I bit him, my teeth sinking into his throat, tearing at his skin as if I were a wild animal. He let out a grunt of pain, but his arm only tightened around my waist.
Faer blasted magic toward us, and I felt its hot ripple pass over us harmlessly.
The two of us fell together over the side and plummeted into the sea.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Duncan
The Shadow Man’s sword slammed down into the deck, splintering wood; the ship seemed to roll to one side with the force of his blow, and I grabbed for a nearby rope as I started to slide.
Then the ship was rightside up again, and it was just Faer and the Shadow Man and the unconscious sailors slumped on the damp deck, out in the midst of the vast sea. But Alisa was gone and safe…safe-ish…and so were Tiron and Azrael. Az would heal Tiron as soon as they were free. That was what mattered.
The shore was lost to the dark horizon, but I ran for the edge of the ship anyway, determined to vault the railing and dive into the ocean.
“Oh no you don’t.” Faer called behind me.
There was a sudden burst of heat at my back, and I slammed into the floorboards. Before I could scramble to my feet, magic pressed down on me, a weight on my back so intense that I couldn’t draw air into my lungs. I tried to form magic to fight back, but the weight that was suffocating me seemed to block my magic too; every attempt fell apart into nothing but wisps.
“You failed with the girl,” Faer snarled at the Shadow Man.
“For now,” the Shadow Man said, his voice an ominous rasp; then he was gone.
“For now,” Faer muttered, his voice growing closer.
My fingernails scraped against the deck as I tried desperately to draw a breath. The world was fading black around the edges.
“Well. It’s just you and me now.” Faer crouched beside me, and he made a lazy movement with his fingers. I found myself suddenly on my back, and I drew in a desperate, ragged breath. The sound shocked me. The force of his magic still pressed against me, a maddening presence that suffocated my magic.
Faer was powerful. The courts had whispered about where Herrick had gained his power, about deals struck with northern lands and what they’d want from him in return. And Faer somehow seemed to have inherited all of it.
“Maybe we can be friends,” he suggested. “I know Alisa’s whoring ways are irresistible, but now that she’s gone, perhaps you’ll be able to see just how worthless she really is.”
“You sound just like her father,” I tried to say, but the words came out choked.
He tilted his head to one side, studying me. “Wouldn’t that be a shock for Alisa and Azrael? If you were my new best friend by the time they returned?”
There were stories about enchantments that took over Fae and destroyed their wills. I didn’t want to hear the desperate wheeze of my voice one more time, so I stayed silent, and he laughed.
“You’re glowering at me now, but we’ll see how you feel later,” he promised. “You were so quick to sacrifice yourself for her. She doesn’t deserve a friend like you, Duncan. But I do.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Alisa
I closed my eyes, expecting to slam into waves that would try to drag me under and drown me.
Instead, I landed on something soft. I hit it with enough force to shock the air from my lungs, and there was a loud creak that echoed through the air. Then I was falling again, but only for a second before I slammed to a halt.
The world was a blur, and it took me a second to blink and catch my breath and realize where I was.
I’d landed on a bed.
It was a broken bed, bedposts leaning haphazardly in toward me now. I caught a general impression around me of elaborately carved red wood furniture and bookcases and a fireplace in the distance.
Raile groaned beside me, rubbing his hand over his face. “Well, that will definitely require some finessing with Faer.”
He seemed irritated with me.
I rolled off the bed and scrambled to my feet, ignoring how everything ached. “What the hell did you do? Take me back—I have to help Duncan.”
He smiled as if in disbelief, then added his second hand to rub his face, hiding his expression from me. “You are ridiculous, Alisa. I’m not sure even I can save you from your deathwish.”
“The only one I want dead is you.”
“Oh, are you wasting your wishes on me and not the Shadow Man, then? Why don’t you take a moment to come up with your plan to kill him, then, and I’ll take you back once you figure it out.” He finally dropped his hands, suddenly rolling up to a sitting position, and propped one elbow on his knee as he studied me. “I’ll wait.”
And wait he did, as my jaw stiffened in irritation and I turned and paced across the room.
The minute of silence hung, then he said, “Nothing yet?”
“You’re a miserable ass.”
“And you are a clueless princess. Cute, though. I do like how you worry over your friends.”
“If Faer kills Duncan—” I began.
“He won’t,” he cut me off. “Faer has used Duncan and Zora and the rest of the autumn court for years to keep Azrael in line. Now he knows he can use Duncan to manipulate you, too. Faer is evil, not foolish. He’ll guard Duncan as hatefully as you do lovingly.”
His tone had turned mocking, but I still felt a jolt of hope at his words.
He smiled at whatever showed on my face. “As I said. You are adorable.”
His tone was still mocking, and yet something about that smile seemed genuine.
“You are a mystery, Raile,” I said, some of my anger abating. I didn’t understand anything the male said or di..
“That’s a marked improvement from forty-five seconds ago when I was a miserable ass.”
“Where are we?” I demanded. “What did you do?”
The memory of how easily Raile had raised his hands and ripped the universe apart would stay with me.
“Most importantly,” I asked, replaying the memory of Azrael and Tiron disappearing, “Where did that portal go to? The one you sent Az through?”
“Dirtside,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll find their way home. And unlike you, they don’t have to worry about the Shadow Man dogging their steps.”
“You opened the portal to protect me from the Shadow Man?”
He shrugged lazily. “Or maybe that was the excuse I needed to steal you away from the others and have you to myself.”
“The others?” I echoed, remembering how he’d claimed I’d wanted to marry all of them. Then I gave my head a shake; I wasn’t following Raile down his brain’s twisted pathways. “Where are we?”
“You’re not going to comment on how impressive that was, are you?” he asked, flaring his hands out to either side and waggling his fingers. “That’s okay. I can tell how you really feel.”
“You’re about to tell how my fist really feels.”
He smiled. “You know, Alisa, if you didn’t trust me—deep down—you’d be nicer to me. That’s the fascinating nature of the bond between us. You can claim you hate me, and yet… you know you’re safe enough to make all those nasty quips—”<
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I was about to interrupt him to demand our location, again, but he continued, “…even though you’re trapped with me beneath the undersea.”
“The undersea?” I demanded, fighting a sudden urge to hold my breath, even though I’d been breathing normally for the past several minutes.
I turned to take in my surroundings; thick purple curtains were drawn across what might be windows to one side of us, and there was a fire blazing merrily in the fireplace across from the bed. A lamp was lit on the table before the fire. To either side of the fireplace were floor to ceiling bookshelves, filled with books. On a lady’s dressing table to one side of the wardrobe, there was another lantern and a crystal vase full of flowers.
There was a solid wooden door, and I wondered where it led.
“Really?” I demanded crisply. I turned to pluck one of the stems from the vase, and as I turned to face Raile, I inhaled the sweet, sugary-floral scent that only summer roses carried. “You’re playing some fresh trick on me, Raile. You grow summer roses in the sea court now?”
“Only the best for my beloved queen,” he mocked me. “My mermaids pluck them for you and carry them below.”
As an afterthought, he murmured to himself, “Have to find something for the mermaids to do. They’re quite feckless and deadly, left to their own devices.”
I eyed him, then let the flower fall to the floor as I crossed to the windows.
Behind me, I heard Raile sigh as I gathered the curtains in my hands. My own breath seemed to freeze in my chest, wondering what I’d find when I threw them open.
But I did anyway.
Outside the window lay a lavish world.
I turned to find Raile, who’d stooped and picked the flower from the floor. He stuck it idly behind his ear as he said, “I don’t lie to you, Alisa. You are in our palace in the undersea.”
Our. The word echoed in my mind, and I decided to ignore it for now. “Why does it look like this? It looks as if you styled it all to look almost like…my room at home.”
“Mm. Well, I didn’t style it,” he said. “I don’t spend much time on decorating, given that I’m trying to prevent war on a few fronts. Keeps me busy.”
He joined me at the window, although he carefully did not touch me. He nodded to the world outside, telling me about the coral castles that surrounded us, naming the types of fish that swam by.
He stopped and let out a breath. “I know you don’t want to be here. I didn’t see another way to save you from the Shadow Man. Or save Tiron from Faer.”
“So that I wouldn’t hate you forever,” I said, repeating his words to Faer. Although I wasn’t sure the truth was as simple.
“You might have hated me forever, or for the thirty seconds that you would have lasted against the Shadow Man,” he said. “Take your pick.”
“I’ve done all right against him before,” I said.
“Mm, you looked as if that was a fair fight,” he agreed. “I’ve seen bigger knives at supper.”
“It’s not the size of the knife,” I promised him.
“Mm, sometimes some size is a good thing.”
“Are you really trying to talk to me about your dick right after you’ve kidnapped me?”
That disbelieving smile wrote itself across his face again. “I… kidnapped you? That’s the interpretation you’re going with? You can’t just say, thank you for saving my life, Raile, can you?”
“You didn’t need to take me into the undersea. You know I didn’t want to come here.”
“You are so ungrateful, they should make bitchery into a sport just so we can give you a medal.”
“So I can go back?” I demanded.
“You can go back,” he assured me. Then he added, “When you know how to fight the Shadow Man. I’m not in the habit of backing lost causes.”
“I’m not your cause.”
“Mm-hm.”
“I want to know all about our history,” I said. “Spill, Raile. Tell me what I did to you.”
“Besides the hobgoblin business? I imagine you heard that story.” He smiled thinly. “Everyone else has. You made me quite the laughing stock of the four kingdoms, and beyond, that day.”
His words opened a strange pit in my stomach, and it took me a second to realize that was guilt. The guilt quickly tipped over into irritation, and I reminded us both, “You tried to marry me against my will.”
“Is that what happened?” He tilted his head to one side, studying me. “It must be fascinating, having no memories, trying to piece together the past and make sense of friends and foes. Especially when you have so very many foes.”
“Yes,” I said drily, “it’s fascinating. That’s exactly how I would describe it. You understand me so well--we really must be soul mates, Raile.”
His brows arched at that, and the look on his face made me expect a dig as he began, “I can’t imagine many people beside you would be up to the challenge. Have you considered giving up and going back to that odd little world?”
I stared at him, wondering how he was setting up an insult.
“It’s not that—” All right, it was a pretty odd place. I broke off, then said, “I have, yes. I would. If Faer weren’t so evil.”
But even as I claimed I wanted to return to the mortal world, I wasn't sure if those words were true anymore. Those words were an echo of how I’d felt at first.
“There are a million wonderful things about dirtside that you can’t see,” I said finally. “But it doesn’t feel like home.”
I wasn’t sure why I’d just told him something true, something real. He was watching me, his eyes bright and curious in that cruelly handsome face.
“Good,” he said.
I scoffed at that. “Good? You know, the million things that were good there include having no family members intent on killing me…”
“I envisioned a couple of ways our time together in the undersea might go,” Raile said. “One option would be that we worked together on stopping the Shadow Man.”
“You want to make sure he doesn’t kill me and ruin your chances at revenge?”
“Yes,” he said simply, which made me roll my eyes.
“What else did you envision?”
“I thought you might try to kill me,” he said, and sighed as if he were disappointed.
He really might be. Raile was…something.
“I still might,” I said, to cheer him up. “Once I’ve milked you for all the information I can about the Shadow Man.”
His lips quirked on one side. “That sounds about right.”
“I don’t understand you at all.”
“I know.” He tilted his head to one side, studying me. “I’ve always enjoyed fighting with you, Alisa. And I think one day, I’m going to enjoy making up with you.”
I huffed a laugh at that, but he was already walking toward that thick wooden door. I couldn’t help eyeing the way his shirt clung to his broad shoulders and was fitted to the muscular taper of his back and waist. I bit my lip as I headed after him.
“Will I be able to breathe when you open the door?” I asked lightly.
“My palace is all yours, Alisa,” he said, his tone as sarcastic as ever.
I wasn’t sure what to expect as his long fingers gripped the doorknob, and it began to turn.
Chapter Thirty
Azrael
“God damn it, I’d forgotten how much your magic hurts.”
Tiron sat up, his hand pressed to his throat. His voice was a rasp, but even though he was complaining, the whining made me smile.
He was alive. Safe. That was all that mattered.
And the next second, he gave me one of those sunny smiles. “Thanks for the save.”
“It’s a good thing you’re bird-boned. I never would have even tried to catch Duncan. He’d be on his own.”
“His landing would probably wreck the deck worse than the Shadow Man’s sword,” he agreed, then frowned. “Where are we? And where is Alisa?”
“Earth
, somewhere,” I said. “And I don’t know about Alisa.”
I didn’t know anything about Alisa, including whether she’d escaped the Shadow Man or not.
“But Raile was helping us, for some reason,” I added. “Maybe she’s fine.”
“And she is Alisa,” he added.
“You seem to admire her almost as much as she admires herself.” I rose to my feet and offered him a hand up.
He gripped my wrist and let me tow him easily to his feet. We stood in a forest, the setting sun filtering distantly through the trees. In the distance, there was a steady constant thrum of traffic; we must be near a highway.
“Let’s hike on out of here and find our way to a portal,” I said, then added, “One that Faer doesn’t know about.”
We were likely to have a welcome party coming after us.
Tiron rubbed his throat absently with one hand as we headed through the forest, making our way toward that ungodly racket of cars. Sometimes I wondered if the things that scarred him left deeper wounds; Duncan and I were both scarred inside and out, but Tiron seemed to carry himself so easily through the world, as if nothing left a mark for him.
No wonder he and Alisa had a special bond; he was so open and innocent in a way that I could never imagine being again. Alisa deserved to have him too—someone who was as sunny as she was.
Alisa’s bright personality hid all the darkness she’d experienced, though, as if she’d shielded herself from it carefully. Or perhaps she only shielded the rest of us. I was sure that darkness was locked up inside, even though it didn’t show in her smiles and glib remarks and charm. Maybe Tiron was the same way, and I didn’t really know him.
Or maybe he was as simple as he seemed, and I’d had a long day and was getting overly dramatic. That was certainly possible.
“Do you know a portal near here?” he asked.
“Tiron, I don’t even know where we are,” I reminded him.
Yes, maybe I should lean toward simple. Amazing knight and a true friend, though.