“Friend. Middle of the town. Closer to the capital.”
Avery wasn’t entirely sure she could be content with Adalyn’s friends at this point but obediently followed her outside. A few moments in the open air, Avery finally identified the smell. Kerosene. It was so much clearer now that it had the bitterness of smoke joining it. Avery gagged, head pivoting to find the source of the scent.
When they weaved around the next wall they could see it clearly. The houses were on fire. Rebels stood outside the blaze with harpoons raised.
“Don’t.” Adalyn’s hand hit Avery’s chest and kept her still.
The horror must have manifested on Avery’s face just as it played out in front of them. There was shrill screaming, people running out of the fire. A woman plunged into the dirt covered in soot. Her body contorted in clear agony, and the screaming was deafening. A rebel tore her to her feet and only then did Avery recognize the face. Evelyn.
“Move now,” Adalyn whispered, but the words were lost on Avery.
They were rattling her former makeup artist senseless. Her open lesions were already open bleeding profusely and the screeching got worse.
Adalyn tugged Avery. This time they both moved swiftly, feet driven by a new wave of adrenaline. Their tactic had been poor. Rebels lined both sides of the road and there was little cover. The closer they got to the center of the city, the clearer the destruction became. Dozens of houses had been burned to the ground. Nothing but ash and rubble remaining, it was hard to tell what they ever were.
“We’re staying out here?” Avery hissed. They tucked into a corner. Rebels patrolled this area too.
Adalyn couldn’t answer, obviously fearful of making noise, but her face showed some new doubt. Luckily they didn’t walk farther. Adalyn didn’t knock or wait for an answer. She pushed open an unlocked door and slipped inside.
Inside, a man waited but he said nothing. Adalyn slipped them into a back room without a word. Her idea of a hiding place was an empty and barren pantry. At one point it had been filled, but now only dust and dirt left hints of existence. The room was small and there was nothing to hide them as there’d been in the cellar. The lack of protection made Adalyn’s nerves stand on edge.
“Don’t give me that look. It’s clear that if we didn’t come out, they would have burned us out or killed that family.”
Avery reluctantly agreed. A host finally greeted them in an hour with few words and a long, twisted look Avery’s way. It even made Adalyn laugh. Not everyone was so sure about following Avery.
“Here,” Avery said after another hour ticked by. They’d sat down in separate corners and had mainly been lost in their own thoughts and fears. But Adalyn was looking paler and Avery grabbed her attention.
“What is this?” She looked skeptically at the food Avery held out, but snatched it out of her hands without any more hesitation. She swallowed it almost without chewing, just as hungry as Avery had guessed. Their energy had been running low and the water the new hosts provided truly did little to sate them.
“I still hate you, you know,” Adalyn said as a passing remark.
“I figured it’d take more than bread to win you over,” Avery spoke in a hushed tone, but it was still a nice change of subject. If she’d have to focus on the door any longer, she’d have broken into tears.
“No, I can never like you. It doesn’t matter what you do.” Adalyn sounded so nonchalant. At Avery’s stare, she did go on. “I’m obligated to hate you because you’re with my ex. It’s not particularly personal. But why try to fight it? That’d just make it more awkward, us trying to butter up to each other.”
“Um. Okay.” It sounded so simple. Maybe even true. She got along with Nate and Leela, but she had never been engaged to Nate either. And before she had Mason, she did feel resentment there too.
“And I hate myself for saying this but treat him better than I did. He needs someone in light of all this chaos when we throw these rebels out and life goes back to normal. But unlike you, I’m hitting the east coast for once. Putting this behind me.”
“But—” Avery tried to protest. Adalyn’s vision of the world was wrong for so many reasons.
“If you’re worried about the press hating you after all this, you’ll be painted as a hero. That’s the key, dumbie. I’ve been a royal’s fiancé longer than you have. And I’ve learned. Paint on yourself the image you want to the world to believe. You tell people that you are hero. That you are worthy. They’ll believe it.
“See, you’re waiting for them to form an opinion about you. Trying to suck up. That’s moronic at its best. If you’re nice to them, it indicates they have the power. And I mean that for everyone. You can’t give them any power when it comes to you. Hold your head up high. Only Mason is your Prince and you otherwise answer to no one. People won’t spread rumors about you if you can look them straight in the eye and deny it with a confidence. People only talk when they can talk.”
It took a moment for Avery to pick her jaw up off the floor. She believed Adalyn’s logic absolutely. But she didn’t quite believe that Adalyn was saying it. She took a long look at the blue eyes that relentlessly stared back.
“Thank you. It seems there’s a lot I still don’t know about you.”
Adalyn snorted.
“Hopefully human, you never will. But you must promise to take care of him for me. Take care of him so when I leave, I never have to be concerned with coming back.”
The world grew blurry. Avery didn’t even realize why until she noticed that her own eyes burned with wetness.
“Where are you going?” Avery asked. Adalyn only answered with her silence. But Avery could tell it was somewhere far away from harpie society. When she’d spent her whole life in it, why Adalyn had suddenly decided to leave it was a more than curious question. Avery didn’t have the strength or desire to ask it just yet. And Adalyn piped in to finish the conversation.
“That better be a yes.” It was still the most sincere Avery had ever seen the harpie and she was suddenly reminded of Samuel. Before he died, he’d begged Avery to make a similar promise. His wish never went fulfilled, his dying words lost before they could be spoken.
For the first time since it happened, Avery really wanted to tell Adalyn something. Make something up, but it seemed impossible to make the situation even better. Adalyn had lost her father and her fiancé. And yet she just wanted peace of mind to get out of there. Avery could truly see it for the first time. Why Mason had loved her.
“It is. A yes I mean...”
A scream tore through the building. Avery and Adalyn sprung to their feet. Adalyn’s knife was out and she readied for the door. The screaming continued. That’s when Avery heard it. She grabbed the knob and threw the door aside to the screeching protest of Adalyn. The kitchen was empty. The screaming had slipped in through the open windows. Avery headed for the exit blindly. Harpies blocked the door, backs to her, and she bulldozed through them.
After a few nights inside, the sunlight outside was blinding. It took a moment for her to see clearly that the center of attention was on a hut twenty some feet away. Rebels had created a crowd around a house and the occupants were being dragged out. The people who hit the dirt first were irrelevant. They were screaming, acting as body shields.
Avery’s intuition had been correct, but it was a horrifying notion. The rebels had found Mason first.
Twenty Three
The amount of stimuli left her head buzzing. There were only a few things of which Avery was completely aware. The sun beat down hard, and the white sand was scolding hot and blinding. The area had been swarmed with people whose tensions ran so high the adrenaline was palpable as a heaviness in the air. People screamed and cried out, but words were lost in a mass of incoherent buzz. Yet no one crossed the invisible line that made the circle around the scene. And Avery knew one last, single thing for sure. The rebels had pulled Mason from a house and raised weapons to end his life.
She didn’t think, she just r
an and met the first rebel ten feet away from the circle. The rebel sprung back, clearly fearful of the Willow magic, but his spear came out instead. She ducked the first blow and slid into the dirt. She managed to snatch his wrist and wrench it backwards, but the rebel was still stronger than her. He dropped the spear but broke free and readied his claws. That’s when it happened. The bystander harpies suddenly sprung into motion. Several dove on the rebel that had confronted Avery. Adalyn appeared on scene and led the massacre against the rest.
“Go!” Adalyn commanded Avery, but she didn’t need to. The second Avery was free of her obstacle, Avery ran for Mason. That’s when the center of the rebel army rapidly became her problem. They stood in front of Mason who’d freed himself but had created a line of sharp-ended weapons. But then the entire group was also being distracted by the sudden uprising she had led.
Desperately reaching for some sense of the Willow in her chest, she pulled on the sensation in her chest. Some spastic electric wave resulted and the rebels dove aside. She hit her knees just as a rebel hit her from behind. The world swirled but the blow from her head hadn’t been the reason. The magic came as uncontrolled and free-flowing as ever, but with the electric wave she forced upon the attacking rebels, went her breath and energy.
Blackness collected at the edges of her vision. The confusing world only got worse when it threatened to plunge into darkness. She’d be smacked again and hit the ground but no deadly spear had been plunged through her torso. People kept screaming. Feathers floated in the air and erratic shadows blocked out the sun. In the state of blurriness her mind had come to, she managed to find a wobbly way to her feet. The next rebel in her way went down with a blood curdling screech. She saw Mason and her hand went out to reach for him. The pain in her chest echoed throughout the rest of her skeleton. Her hand hovered oddly in the air. And then the world went black.
She awoke in phases, each time a little bit more aware of the world around her. She’d wished she had been comfortable when the last layer of sleep lifted from her, but the aching in her chest still remained in a dull tantrum. She had felt softness beneath her but didn’t recognize it as blankets until she truly shifted. Around her was golden grass and dark blue skies. She couldn’t pinpoint the area, but she knew she wasn’t home. Perfectly warm already, she moved to throw the blankets off of her.
“Stop that,” Mason ordered but his voice was in a whisper.
Remembering he was there for the first time, she jolted to sit up and spun to see him.
“Stop that,” he insisted at her oddly rough movements.
She brushed off the comment. The exhilaration that followed actually seeing him had flooded her veins and distracted her from discomfort. She sized him up immediately. His hair had grown out since she’d seen him last, splayed and messy, as the day she’d initially met him. One wing had been bandaged but no blood showed through so it didn’t seem too bad. His face had been dirty once and the resulting smears were his attempts to clean it. If any bruises hid there, they hid well.
“Are you okay?” she asked him secondly. He made a face.
“I should be asking you that.” His eyes dropped and she followed them. The Willow tattoo glowed a near blood red and reminded her how much it wanted to hurt. She let her eyes continue traveling, not wishing to truly stare, and scouted out where they were. It appeared to be a mountain range, classic of California, but with no signs of civilization, it was impossible to pinpoint where. She didn’t ask Mason where he’d gotten the blankets to drape her in but only knew that he stayed out of them and sat in the grass.
“Cheerful.”
“It’s the magic isn’t it?” he asked more pointedly than a question deserved. She knew where his mind went—to the doctor’s warnings.
“Yeah. Probably.” It was getting worse. She remembered what he’d said. It’d start with pain. The inability to walk is when your body begins diverting energy from your muscles. Confusion, vision loss, selective deafness. Your organs may begin shutting down. Your body will no longer be able to maintain itself and support the magic that has been growing within it. It was a death sentence that was coming true. She felt the pain. The inability to move as she wanted. She was near constant confusion and though her vision had returned, it had left her once.
Oddly she wasn’t scared. She didn’t want to die, but she didn’t feel like she would either. Nothing about fear quite felt real here. The world where danger resided seemed so far away. The only thing she really felt and thought about was her and Mason alone.
“I’m okay. For now.”
“No, it’s going to get worse. It’s going to get much worse,” he insisted.
“Mason!” She chided before he covered her with the blankets again. “I’m assuming we somehow escaped a warzone, are now fugitives, and we haven’t seen each other for a week. Why is that the only thing you can think about now?”
She didn’t quite mean to direct towards the fight he and she had been involved in the last time they were together, but it came out like that anyways. His green eyes softened and his chin dropped to hide an indiscernible expression.
“Avery…” His voice had become hoarse but dropped off before it could waver.
“Look. I didn’t come for you contingent on us staying together longer. And I know I’m not supposed to be running to rescue you. I think I didn’t make it worse this time. And you rescued me that many times more so…” She didn’t know where she was going with her words but she blurted them out anyway.
“Avery, stop talking.” His fingers went to her lips effectively silencing her. “I reacted too quickly. I shouldn’t have told you to leave. I’m just not good at this. I’m going to figure something else out.”
That was if he even got his kingdom back. That was a subject neither of them would broach as if it was an unspoken commandment.
Mason moved his fingers but let them shift from her lips to her chin and neck. They ended on the collar bone and lingered there. Avery leaned into the touch, the sensations of a person’s warmth a welcome change, and placed her cheek up against his chest. His heart beat steadily underneath his flimsy sweater.
“So now what?” she asked him.
“We’re safe here for now so you need to rest,” he emphasized the rest aspect, but she ignored him.
Edging forward, she had every intention for his arms to be around her and she ended up on his lap. His hand went to her waist and pulled her closer. His face nuzzled into her hair until she shifted backwards and stole a kiss. Mason met her lips without protest. There was no urgency, no fear, and no desperate passion involved. It was gentle and natural.
Avery moved again, this time pulling him along to lie back on the blankets. He followed only slowly. That’s when she gave him a Cheshire grin.
“I know you’re Prince and all, but I will tell you what to do,” she teased waiting for a reaction. He didn’t give her the typical one.
“You’re crazy.”
“You love me that way.”
“Yeah.”
No protest again this time. Avery’s heart sped up but she didn’t let her mind start grabbing at straws. She went with it when he kissed her again. This time his hands escaped to slide down her sides. She grabbed the bottom of his lace sweater and yanked the itchy fleece straight off. He planted kisses all over her but they were soft, too gentle. Avery grabbed his collar and yanked him back up to her lips. Mason reacted by slipping the torn shirt off and letting it crumple to the ground beside them. The sensation of his warm skin connecting with hers heated her body to the core. She gasped involuntary. Before he could slip away, she held onto him. Their lips connected again. Avery wouldn’t allow him to budge. She was tired of waiting. And she would never get another chance.
Mason obliged. No more knight on the white horse arguing the noble side of the debate. But then he was never quite the knight on the white horse either. Avery couldn’t attest to exactly how long they’d stayed wrapped together, but when they’d broken apart the sun had ac
tually set. She let out a long content breath.
It would have been a perfect moment to drift off to sleep, preserve the peaceful moment before it was destroyed. But the clock kept ticking and her time threatened to run out. Avery knew it the moment she shifted to grab the blankets and every muscle in her body protested. She leaned back immediately and let out a breath. Her mind went to the threatened symptoms. Did she feel confused? Could she just be too confused to even recognize being confused?
“Mason,” she said reluctantly. His name left her lips simply enough even if it took some effort to say. “What are you going to do? About your home? Your throne?”
Mason’s face changed from the relaxed expression to something more pained.
“I have to go back. My people, my followers, they need me.”
She knew he wouldn’t be running away—something she admired. Mason always bit the bullet when it counted. And she needed that stamina to hold up for what she’d have to ask him to do. But first, she repeated what the islanders had told her.
Windswept (The Airborne Saga) Page 19