“Brother,” I said, in my most powerful voice, “you will not harm him.”
Something shifted in Adric’s eyes then, as it dawned on him that the one, last ally he’d thought he had was actually a traitor like the rest of them. The idea that I was now a traitor to my own blood stung, but I was not going to betray everyone else just for the sake of my brother’s feelings.
I had crossed many lines in my eternal lifetime. This was one that I would not.
Adric’s breathing grew erratic. His magic uncontrolled. The lanterns themselves began sparking and spewing fire, setting little blazes in every corner and sending the courtiers screaming and scattering. From his hands, waves of magic pulsed and banded, radiating out of him until the bricks of the walls themselves began affected.
“And what will you do to stop me? I am your King—”
The walls were crumbling around us. The roof would be next. Panic gripped me. He’d lost complete and total control. Despite the fact that I hated him, that I would not let him destroy those I loved, a shudder of fear pulsed through me for him this time, too.
“Brother! Stop!”
But he would not stop, and my begging him to do so only made the situation infinitely worse. Cold, dark eyes narrowed at me, and all of that chaotic magic on which he’d lost his grip now turned solidly and pointedly in one direction - not in my direction, not even in Tormin’s direction. But in the direction of the court. In the direction of Carolyn.
In a split moment, I realized that Adric knew he’d lost me, and he was going to attempt to exact a heavy price for my betrayal.
That couldn’t be allowed. Focusing all of my magic—the dark and the light, the cold and the fiery—I did the only thing I could think to do in that moment. I lifted my hands, channeled that magic, and sent it flying through the wall of the castle that lead out to the courtyard.
There would be no repairing this. It was not time to flee.
I didn’t look back to see how my brother was dealing with this latest magical blow. Instead, I screamed for all the courtiers left behind, formulating an escape plan—or the bare bones of one—as I tossed magic behind me blindly, trying to put as many obstacles between Adric and the rest of the newly made refugees as I possibly could.
“Go! Everyone go! Flee to the forest.”
The Forest was our only hope. It wasn’t much of a hope—otherwise I would have tried to escape out there before. But it was our best chance, and if we were going to survive at all, then we were going to have to take it. To risk it.
In the noise and the chaos of our escape and the dodging of Adric’s blindly flung spells, I watched as Kyra broke free of her chains easily—Pixie magic was strong and powerful stuff—and retrieve Tormin from the rubble before running with him out into the forest. The rest of the court followed in suit. But it was through bits of falling ceiling and thrown brick that I finally saw the pair of eyes I’d been longing to see. The eyes I’d been wanting to protect.
She was still across the hall, ducking and dodging the falling scraps of ceiling and trying to navigate her way around the fires. In that moment, there was no Adric. There was no threat. It was just me and her. The two people who had to figure out how to save the world.
“Carolyn. Please. Come with me.”
Chapter Seven
Carolyn
“Carolyn. Please. Come with me.”
He didn’t need to ask me twice. With one last look at the rubble of the Castle Bloc, I took Anatole’s hand and let him lead me away.
Well, not so much led me away. Leading implies something nice and gentle, like two lovers moving through the moonlight as they search for a suitable spot to conduct their affair. This wasn’t so much that as it was the prince I loved furiously trying to escape the clutches of his evil brother, while corralling a ragtag group of humans and Velkin courtiers and blasting magic behind us in order to buy time.
We were all running away from the blazing Castle Bloc, all trying to make our way to…well, that’s where I was lost. I would follow Anatole anywhere, I knew that for sure. But if we were going to save the universe, shouldn’t we stay and fight? What happened to biding our time and fighting smart? What happened to Anatole’s plan?
My frayed nerves called hot tears to my eyes as frustration and worry boiled up in me, but I blinked them back. Heroes and leaders didn’t cry, not at a time like this, not when there was still so much work to be done and when so many people were counting on you.
The longer and the faster we ran, Anatole began throwing fewer and fewer spells over his shoulder, until he finally stopped completely, leaving us all submerged in the shadows of the forest. We pressed onward, following him deeper and deeper and deeper into the darkness.
Running towards what? I didn’t know. But I was going to find out.
“Anatole?” I asked, my lungs pulsing with the energy it took to speak and force my legs beneath me at the same time, “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know.” In the shards of moonlight that made their way through the canopy of trees overhead, I could see his eyes. Uncertain. I didn’t like the look of that. “I have no idea. We just can’t stay there with him. None of us can.”
Though Anatole and I had both been sure to keep our voices low, of course Kyra had managed to overhear us. Her face set and grim, she pressed her lips into a thin line and ran up beside us, almost as if she was about to deliver bad news instead of the good new she ended up giving out.
“I know a place that we could go,” she offered.
Behind us, one of the Velkin courtiers scoffed.
“A pixie! I’m not going—”
But Anatole wasn’t having any of their bigotry today. Not now. Not anymore. Throwing a cold, princely look over his shoulder, he nodded to Kyra, giving her control over the situation and allowing her to take the lead.
“Lead the way. We’ll follow. Gratefully.”
And with that, Kyra moved to the front of the pack, leading us away from the path where we’d been running and off into the thick, depths of the forest, where the branches reached out like clawing arms and the moonlight grew so remote and distant that I had to mostly rely on my hearing in order to follow the pixie running out in front of me.
“Kyra!” I called to her, still keeping my voice low just in case there was danger out there in the darkness.
“Carolyn.”
“Where are we going?”
There was a pause, long and desperate, one filled only with the crunching of twigs beneath our boots and the sound of a dangerous animal in the distance whose low, stuttering growls I did not recognize. Chills flooded the bare flesh of my shoulders as I tried not to think of what dangers could be lurking out there beyond my sight, and whether or not those dangers were better or worse than the ones we’d left behind at Castle Bloc.
“I am taking you to the one place in Velkin that the Elves don’t want to touch. Come on. And move quickly. We have to go in shadow or we’ll never make it.”
✽✽✽
I don’t know how long we ran or how many tears my dress ended up earning or how many times I fell only to be blindly picked up by a pair of Velkin hands and set back up on my feet so I could keep running. All I knew was that when, eventually, we reached a large clearing bathed in moonlight, I didn’t want to keep running.
With the pain and anxiety and adrenaline currently wracking my body, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to live anymore.
In another lifetime, if we’d come here under different circumstances, I might have thought the place beautiful. Wherever this was, wherever Kyra had taken us, it had an even more otherworldly quality than Velkin usually had. The moonlight from high above us paired with the exposed starlight filled the clearing with light, despite the fact that we had to be near the dead of night by now. By that light, I could see that the clearing surrounded by a circular wall of high trees wasn’t quite as empty as I’d first thought. In fact, it was filled with a strange pattern of rock formations. It didn’t look natural
ly occurring, and no matter how hard I tried to fathom those patterns into some kind of understandable message—I’d taken runes at the Velkin Royal Academy, after all, despite the fact that my time there had been brief—I didn’t find anything I could salvage.
What was this place?
I wanted to ask the question, but before I could manage it, Kyra spun to face the crowd of human and Velkin standing before her, waiting for her instruction.
“Okay. We’re here. Is everyone accounted for?”
A quick head count followed, with people declaring their names, places at court, and the humans in their company. When all was said and done, it seemed that we were all together and ready for the next step.
I glanced sidelong into the dark forest all around us. As grateful as I was for the idea of safety, a thrill of fear rushed through me as I considered what it would be like to make camp out here for the night. Please let her have some kind of trick up her sleeve…
And a trick, she did have. Kyra was one of those people—or pixies, as the case was—who always had some little bit of magic tucked away. Now, with her back turned to the rest of her refugee cadre, she began walking the pathway pattern laid out by the stones. Every so often, she would stop, stomp on one of the rocks, and then continue her path.
She walked it this way, repeating a rhythm over and over again, until finally, she stopped, took one deep breath, and the entire valley filled with light. Not just light, like the shafts coming down from the moon and the stars above us, but blinding, blistering, all-consuming light that overtook everything and blotted out the world around us entirely.
Instinctively, I reached out for Anatole’s hand. I didn’t know where we stood right about now, or what the future would hold for us, but I wanted his closeness. Thankfully, he didn’t bow or flinch away. He only slipped his hand into mine, lacing our fingers together as he gripped tight.
From deep within that blinding, almost certainly magical light, a deep, booming voice shook me to my core. It boomed like a fresh clap of thunder in the midst of a brutal rainstorm—terrifying in the way that it was both wildly dangerous and completely beyond my control.
“Who goes there?”
Kyra lifted her chin. “Father? It’s me. It’s Kyra. I’m here to…Well, some of my friends are in trouble and they don’t have anywhere else to turn.”
Father? Kyra’s father was the big voice in the light?
“So,” the deep, masculine voice continued after a moment of consideration. “You brought the humans and the elves, our greatest enemies, to our doorstep.”
“They need our help. I couldn’t just turn my back on them. It wouldn’t be right.”
Another pause. I held my breath. Kyra had returned to her father to ask for help; if he cast us out now, then we were as good as dead. Somehow, instinctively, I knew that.
“Your decisions disappoint me, daughter.” A wave of pain rippled through me at those words. We lost. They’re going to leave us out here to be killed by Adric. Or worse.
A moment passed, though, the voice from within the light spoke again. More measured this time. Controlled.
“But you have done our ancestors and yourself proud. I will allow these Velkin in, so long as you Oath for them.”
All around me, the Velkin gasped, their excited, shocked breath coming out in involuntary protests. I didn’t know what an Oath was or why it was so terrifying to all of them, but considering the fact that even Anatole stiffened at its invocation in this conversation, I figured it had to be pretty bad.
Everyone focused their attention on Kyra, whose small, shaking shoulders squared. If she was as frightened of the Oath as everyone else around here seemed to be, she wasn’t going to let it show.
“I offer my Oath on behalf of all I bring into the Pixie Forest, Father,” Kyra said. All this time, she’d never lost her lovely, perfect, high-pitched voice, but it got softer and more somber the longer she spoke. “I swear it.”
There was another silence. Almost an acceptance of what had just happened. And then, slowly but surely, the light dissolved around us. The glowing particles separated like bits of dust in a shaft of sunlight, and when they did, I discovered that we were no longer standing in a dark forest clearing, but at the high, stone gates of a village. A grand village built from iron and wood and illuminated by thousands upon thousands of torches lining the streets. We found ourselves at a kind of crossroads place or a town square, where the buildings and the houses were marked for their importance by intricate carvings and notations in a language I couldn’t even begin to understand. As a human, I was used to seeing fountains in town squares, but instead, this place contained a stone bowl of fire, that added to the illumination and cast everything in a red-golden glow.
We were also, as it turned out, alone. With the exception of a rustling curtain from a nearby house and a flash of purple eyes from behind it, there wasn’t even any evidence of anyone else’s presence. But somehow, I could feel that we weren’t alone.
I turned quickly to Anatole, and asked him the burning question at the forefront of my mind. As I did, I took in his expression, which was equal parts gratitude and grave.
“What’s that mean? What’s offering an Oath?”
Somehow, without seeing the word written down, I knew it was supposed to be capitalized. There was something about the way Kyra said it and the ripple effect that work had on the crowd that made me sure of its importance. All around us, people chattered and muttered amongst themselves, waiting for any information about this strange place where we’d just arrived. But Anatole just kept his eyes on me.
“Offering and Oath on our behalf means that if one of us goes against the Pixie tribe…if we break their laws , then Kyra will be killed.”
“What?”
It wasn’t like I was expecting to or planning on breaking the rules or anything, but killed? Her own family would kill her if even one Velkin among us stepped out of line? It was shocking. Even more shocking was the idea that Kyra would not only agree to such a thing, but agree to it so easily and so readily. Anatole nodded once, as if he could read my thoughts.
“Your friend has a big heart. She saved us all today.”
I thought back to my first day at the Velkin Royal Academy, when Kyra and I had first met. She’d been the first Velkin who’d ever spoken to me. She’d been the one to welcome me with open arms, to protect me and befriend me when it seemed like no one else would. I owed her everything, and here she was, still protecting me.
Leaving Anatole behind, I marched right over to her.
“Kyra, why did you—”
“We aren’t going to survive if we don’t have you two,” Kyra said, her eyes flashing between me and Anatole. “Besides. Like I said. It’s the right thing to do. And at times like these, it’s our obligation to do the right thing whenever we can. No matter the cost.”
She was right. After all, that’s why I’d come back to Velkin even when my heart was broken. That was why Anatole had turned his back on his brother. Because it was the right thing to do.
With a smile, Kyra looped her arm through mine, squeezed, and smiled as if she hadn’t just put her life on the line to save some people who’d, until a few weeks ago, refused to even sit with her at the dining table in the castle.
“Now, come on,” she said, her face pulling into one of those warm I can weather any storm smiles she often shot me during our time at the Royal Academy. “I want to show you my home.”
With the rest of the Velkin and the humans behind us, Kyra walked me around the square, allowing me to take in the true beauty and richness of the architecture. Instantly, I took a shine to the Pixie Forest and all o fits natural beauty. The way the stones from the mountain in the distance had been used to cobble the walkways and build the homes; the way the woods crept into the living areas, giving the entire place a feeling of having been dropped here almost by accident. There were some places built into the tall trees, too, places that I only managed to glimpse because of the la
nterns hanging from the towering branches.
For the first time since my initial banishment from Velkin, a strange feeling washed over me. Peace. With the cool night air on my exposed skin and the warmth of the empty village all around me, I felt like maybe things would be okay.
Considering how rotten everything in my life had made me feel, okay was a notable improvement. Positively delicious. Sure, it wasn’t anything as rapturous or overwhelming as joy or excitement, but a starving man wasn’t going to complain that a steak wasn’t cooked to his preferred temperature, so I had no reason to complain about feeling “just” okay.
Pulling Kyra closer in to my side, I whispered to her, “It’s absolutely beautiful here.”
She smiled, and I could tell she was grateful for even that small compliment. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it must have been for her, to put her community on display for the Velkin like this. The specifics were beyond me, but it was clear from the way that the Velkin treated her—not to mention her forbidden, will they or won’t they romance with Tormin—that this was not an easy thing for her.
“Oh, thank you. It is going to be a little bit difficult for you, since you don’t have wings—”
“You have wings?”
“Obviously,” Kyra tossed her head, then lowered her voice. I strained my neck trying to get a good look at her back, but the fullness of her body was covered by a long, once-grand cloak that had been torn up and stained by our journey here. It was impossible to confirm or deny the existence of her wings. “But in Velkin, they get very antsy when Pixies try to use them. We aren’t exactly loved there. Hence the secret village.”
With a sweeping gesture, she pointed to the hidden Pixie Forest all around us, and I was suddenly struck with an intense, burning sadness. How awful that the Velkin chose to hate the pixies instead of embracing them; it was a pity that they’d driven away such a wonderful people with their cruelty. In my survey of the village, I glanced back at Tormin, who’d mostly recovered from his encounter with Adric back at the palace. He leaned slightly on Anatole for support as he walked, but beyond that, his wounds had healed neatly and certainly more quickly than they would have healed on any human.
Magic Captive: A Supernatural Academy Romance (The Velkin Royal Academy Series Book 2) Page 6