by Sara Thorn
"What are you doing?" Cassius asked.
I hushed him and kept trying to focus on Quinn. I felt kind of stupid. This was the kind of thing that magical wizards in storybooks did, but then again, there was a lot about my life right now that seemed like it belonged in a storybook. The harder I thought about Quinn, the more I was able to visualize him in my mind until finally, it felt like I was looking at him in front of me as clearly as if he were actually there.
"Mara," Cassius said quietly.
I tried to hush him again, but this time he touched my shoulder, and I opened my eyes. I followed his stare and saw what he was trying to show me. The gateway was open. I didn’t know if that was a coincidence or if somehow, I was actually able to reach Quinn and get him to help. It didn't matter as long as we were able to get out of here and back to Mystreuce. I got up and took Cassius’s hand as we walked through the gateway together.
When we found ourselves standing somewhere else, I had assumed it would be back home. But the sight around us didn't look like home at all. Not only weren't we in the castle, but we were nowhere that I had ever seen before. Instead of rolling hills or fae forests, we stood somewhere that looked like it was on a completely different planet. But strangely, it still felt like Mystreuce. Still, neither of us knew exactly where we had ended up.
"Where are we?" I asked as we stood next to each other on the red peak of a sooty cliff.
"Mystreuce," Cassius answered. "But, I couldn't begin to tell you exactly where on Mystreuce we are."
He looked just as surprised and uncertain about our surroundings as I felt. Everything seemed to be tainted with a shade of reddish light, and the ground beneath us rattled as if something were moving beneath our feet. If there were a comparison to be made to a place on Earth, the closest thing would have been a volcano.
"We need to try to find our way back home," Cassius said."
Chapter Eleven
Quinn was now returning closer to being back to his normal self, and the traces of shadow magic within him were lessened almost to the point of being entirely gone. But when Bree noticed his vacant stare as if he were listening to the silence and hearing something that wasn’t there, she became concerned that something was trying to reach into him again.
“What is it?” she said. “What do you hear?”
“It wasn’t a sound,” Quinn answered. “It was a feeling.”
“You heard a feeling?”
“No, I felt something—Mara, I think.”
Bree saw the faraway expression on Quinn’s face and then also began to sense that something was off. She went to pull Mara and Cassius back from Earth but found that she could not. Something was blocking her attempt, and Bree was unable to return them to Mystreuce. She saw Quinn raise his hand into the air and twist his fingers against his palm.
“Don’t do it,” she warned. “Don’t dabble in shadow magic again. If you so much as touch it, it will take hold of you all over. That curse of yours makes you unable to stop it. Just because you are healed now does not mean that you can’t end up right back dangling at the point of death.”
As soon as she saw that Quinn had stopped trying to work whatever magic he had started, she began to fret over the fact that Mara and Cassius were missing. Bree began to open gateway after gateway within Mystreuce to see if, by some chance, they had been able to get back on their own and just needed help completing the last leg of their journey. At one point, she had so many gateways open that Quinn was afraid to move too far in any direction for fear that he would accidentally stumble into one of the openings that packed the room. He had never seen any fae be able to hold open that many gateways at once.
“Who are you?” he asked her in astonishment.
“You know who I am,” she muttered as she continued to use her magic to search for Mara and Cassius.
“No, I mean, what are you?” he asked again. “Bree, there’s no way that a normal fae can do the things that you’re doing. When I made love to you, you took all of the pain and suffering away from me. That’s not a talent the fae possess. And now you are holding open so many gateways that it looks like a hall of mirrors from a funhouse in here. That is also not something that a fae can do. Are you really a fae?”
Bree stopped and stared at Quinn. When the question was asked so directly, there really wasn’t much of a way to get out of answering it without it being either a truth or a lie.
“No,” she said. “I am not fae.”
Quinn looked at her in shock. Although he had suspicions about Bree’s power and magical abilities, it was still shocking to hear her say it. She looked as much like a fae as any of them. The tips of her ears came to a delicately curved point, her skin had the sheen of fae magic, and her eyes were reminiscent of those that could shapeshift into some other creature. Although, when Quinn thought about it, he realized that he had never actually seen Bree shapeshift.
“What are you then?” he asked.
“I am a lesser deity,” she answered.
“Like a goddess?” Quinn had never seen a goddess before. He had heard stories of gods and goddesses when he was younger. But to his knowledge, no one had ever seen one, and he was doubtful whether or not they even existed. Now he was learning that not only was Bree not the stray fae he had believed her to be, but she was also perhaps a form of life that none of them had ever encountered.
“My father is one of the greater deities of Mystreuce,” she said. “I wasn’t supposed to come here; it is actually quite forbidden. But I wanted to try to help to heal the world. When my father finds out that I have come here and messed with the worldly affairs on Mystreuce, he will be furious, as will the other deities.
“Why do you continue to stay then?” he asked. “If you’ll be punished for being here and helping us, then why don’t you leave before the deities find out about what you have done?”
“I can’t leave now,” Bree answered. “I was going to try to leave before I came and found you in the forest on the night of the party. I had done my job of freeing the humans, and I was getting ready to go back to where I came from. But then I saw you, and I couldn’t.”
“Why not?” Quinn asked.
“Because I fell in love with you.” Bree’s eyes darted first at Quinn and then downward toward her feet. Love was a difficult thing to control, even for a deity. “I hadn’t meant for it to happen, but it did.”
She went back to frantically looking in and out of the gateways she had created, trying to find Mara and Cassius while also trying not to pay attention to her feelings at the moment.
“You love me?” Quinn asked in a whisper. He was more surprised at that revelation than he was at hearing that Bree was a deity instead of a fae. “Why?”
Bree looked at him gently and stopped her scattered flurrying around in order to walk over to him and touch her hand to his face. “I don’t understand why you think that no one could love you,” she said as she stared into his eyes, which were now once more back to their normal sparkling green. “Or perhaps it is because the one person you want to love you is in love with someone else.”
Quinn seemed to flinch at her words, but she held his jaw steadily with her soft fingers.
“It is a difficult thing to love someone who cannot love you back. But that does not make you unlovable. You are loved, Quinn, and not just by me. Your sister, Sen, loved you; your people will love you again once they see that you are no longer consumed by the shadow magic. Mara loves you, too, just not the way you need her to. For what it’s worth, you are loved by a deity, and that is no small thing.”
Bree leaned forward to kiss Quinn, and the touch of her lips to his made him reach toward her and gently wrap his hand behind the small of her neck. He may have felt broken and rejected, but there was a part of him that was starting anew. Perhaps he could find it in himself to love someone else, too. The space that Mara took up in his heart was still there, and it left an ache in his chest that he couldn’t yet seem to shake. But he was also truly developing
feelings for Bree. Not just the kind of feelings that prompted him to join with her physically in the forest, but the kind that he might be able to see himself falling in love.
But right now, he was worried about Mara’s safety, and that took precedence in his head before he could think about anything else. They had no idea where she was, but they could both feel that she was back on Mystreuce.
“I felt Mara reaching out to me,” he said. “I know that sounds strange, but I could feel her even when she wasn’t here on Mystreuce. I think I may have been the one to let them back into this world. I opened a gateway, but I’m not sure to where.”
“Okay,” Bree said as she waved her arm in a sweeping motion across the room to close all of the gateways that she had opened. “Tell me what you felt when you opened the gateway. What did you see around you in your head?”
Quinn thought and tried to remember the subtle nuances of what had flooded his mind when he tried to reach back out to Mara.
“It was hot and rocky, mountainous, and a very darkish-red,” he said as he imparted the random bits of visual information that he recalled. “There was a sound there, too, like that of rushing water, but quieter and slower.”
“I think I know where they are,” Bree said. She gathered a few things into a small satchel as Quinn put on his boots. “This is going to be quite a long trek,” she said. “If I’m right, then Mara and Cassius are at least several days walk from here and in a rather volatile part of Mystreuce.”
Quinn followed her out the door as the two of them began their journey, hoping that Mara and Cassius were both all right and headed back toward them as well.
Shortly into their voyage across the land, they both began to notice that things were not as they should have been. It was as if the world of Mystreuce was falling apart, except this time it was on a much larger scale than it had been with simply Quinn’s little section of the forest, which had since healed. There was something wrong with the land, and it was literally breaking apart.
The human villages just outside of the castle had been decimated by extreme weather that had flooded and toppled the structures and destroyed the gardens. As the humans tried to tend to the damage, one of them told Quinn and Bree that it was the fifth time in just several hours that severe storms had come up out of nothing and caused a catastrophe. He pointed to the horizon, and it looked as if another bout of reckless storms were heading that way again.
Quinn urged the humans to take shelter inside the castle, and then after the people were all safely inside the strong castle walls, he and Bree continued on.
The vampire caverns were faring no better. They were collapsing, almost as if the inside of the ground beneath them were crumbling. Corridors were caving in on themselves, and some of the entrances into the caverns—which were also the way out and onto the surface—were becoming unusable. Bree suggested that they choose one part of their underground city to fortify and one entrance to ensure remained free from debris so the access remained clear. The vamps agreed and went to work with making their preparations to stay safe within the collapsing city. A few of them asked where Cassius was, and she informed them that they were on their way to get him and bring him back. The vampires just needed to keep themselves safe and keep what remained of their city protected until they could return with Cassius to help.
When they reached the fae forest, they saw that not only was the area from before once again sickened but that the whole forest looked as though it were dying.
“What is happening?” one of the fae asked Quinn as he entered into the enclave with Bree beside him. “Have you done this with your shadow magic?”
“No, of course not,” he said. “Look at me, I am cured of that magic, and even if I weren’t, I still wouldn’t do such a thing to our forest.”
The fae were mostly silent except for the soft sound of tears being spilled as they saw their precious forest around them dying. They had tried to use their collective magic to restore the woods, but nothing was working, and there was nothing that they could do aside from huddle together inside the enclave as the forest around them withered and fell lifeless.
“We need to keep going,” Bree said to Quinn quietly. “We need to find Mara and Cassius.”
“Trust me,” he said. “I am consumed with finding Mara. But don’t you think we should do something to help these people before we leave?”
“Like what? There’s nothing we can do. Whatever is tearing Mystreuce apart isn’t something that you and I are going to be able to easily fix.”
“But you’re a deity,” he said.
“I’m a lesser deity. I don’t have the power to fix the entire world. Even the greater deities couldn’t do something of that magnitude all by themselves,” Bree said. “But I do think that what is happening here has something to do with you, Mara, and Cassius since all three of you are connected to the land in different and powerful ways. I’m not entirely sure what that binding tie is yet or what it’s supposed to do, but I feel like we really need to get the three of you reunited to stop what is happening here. Staying here is only going to prolong the amount of time the world has to continue damaging itself. We need to hurry and continue on.”
Quinn gave a solemn look back to the fae, who were watching to see if he and Bree were going to do anything to help. He knew Bree was right, though, and every minute they lingered was a moment lost.
Just as they were leaving the woods, Sylva and Norr appeared from behind the trees.
“Let us come with you,” Sylva pleaded. “Please.”
“Why in the world would you want to come with us?” Quinn asked. “We aren’t even entirely sure where we’re going.”
“And the place we are headed is not an easy one,” Bree added.
“We don’t care,” Norr said. He was the quieter of the two, so for him to speak up was surprising to both Bree and Quinn. “We just need to get out of here.”
“Why?”
“Well, for one thing, our families are so disapproving of our being together that they are rallying others to try to persecute our union,” Sylva said.
“But also,” Norr interrupted, “we want to help. We can see that our world is crashing down around us, and we’re worried about our future together. We just want to be able to live and love in peace, and the world is definitely not at peace right now. We heard you say you were going to find Mara and Cassius and bring them back to fix all of this. If that’s what needs to happen in order to restore our world, then we want to come along and help.”
The young couple stood in their path and anxiously awaited an answer.
Quinn turned to look at Bree. “It can’t hurt to have them along, can it?” he asked.
“I guess we’ll see,” she answered as the group started to press on.
Norr and Sylva followed behind them, and they walked out of the familiar hillside and into the unknown parts of Mystreuce.
Chapter Twelve
“This is treacherous,” I said as I grabbed Cassius’s arm and tried to navigate my footing down the side of the ash-covered mountain. I had already slid and fell twice, and we weren’t even halfway down yet.
“Mara, you need to be careful,” he said as he held tightly onto me. “The ground below isn’t like the forest or even the vampire caverns for that matter. It’s almost as if the land here is on fire.”
“Yeah,” I said. “This is pretty volcanic in nature. Did you know that Mystreuce had a volcanic geographical area?”
“I had no idea this place even existed,” Cassius answered. “I never traveled much farther out than the fae forests.”
“Well, if we ever get out of here, maybe we should make it a point to do some adventurous exploring so we can find out what else is in this world with us,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s definitely not a bad idea.”
When we finally reached the bottom of the mountain, I stepped precariously onto the ground below. The land was rock-hard and hot enough that I could feel the warmth radiating
into the bottom of my boots. There were more mountains beside and behind us, but the way ahead was mostly clear and flat. The ground descended downward in a steady slope that stretched out for miles, and the scenery was a smoldering shade of red ash that was so dark it was nearly black. But unlike the other dark areas we had seen, this whole place looked entirely alive. Its energy was pulsing, and just like lava, there seemed to be a current beneath the surface-layer shell that we were walking on, which moved beneath our feet. It didn’t feel as though there had been destruction here. In contrast, it felt as if this were a very powerful place with a sort of pent-up energy waiting to gush out.
“Can you feel it?” I asked Cassius as he walked slowly by my side.
We were both trying to take in the immensely powerful effect of our surroundings.
“The energy here?” he asked. “Yes. I can definitely feel it. I wish we knew how to tap into it.”
“I want to try, too,” I said. “I know we need to get back to the others and get home, but I want to see if we can harness the power here.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure, but remember the vines that came out of the earth while we were training?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You want me to try to attack you again?”
“No, I don’t think that will work now.”
“Or you’re just scared that I’ll beat you this time,” Cassius teased.
“No,” I laughed. “That’s not it at all. I just think that Mystreuce and I have a bit of a better understanding of each other now, and I don’t think it will try to harm you again. Unless you really piss me off.” That was my turn to joke around.
Cassius raised one eyebrow at me.
“Let’s try something else,” I suggested. “Something similar to the other night when we made the ground shake.”