“We have several strong magic users.”
The Chieftan tutted, still deadly serious. “Not more powerful than the pixies.” Our eyes locked. “If you swear to me, now, on the souls of those who came before us, to be a better king…then you shall have our swords and our axes and our magic.”
I waited for the cries of dissent and outrage from the Pixies, but none came. I blinked up at him, trying and most likely failing to keep the surprise out of my expression.
“Really?”
“Yes. Really.” He rose from his throne, and all of the pixies rose to follow his lead. They were ready for this battle already, it seemed. Born ready for a fight against the evil that had taken root in Velkin. “But we must go at first light. The best time to root out evil is now.”
Carolyn had done a much better job of composing her face, but when she spoke, her eyebrows knitted slightly in confusion, a dead giveaway that she was slightly lost on this point. “Why now? Is there some kind of special witching hour that I don’t know about?”
The Chieftan allowed his bearded and mustachioed lips to pull into a smile. A genuine one this time. “No, little human. It is because the longer you wait to rid yourself of evil, the longer it has time to do you harm.” He turned to the standing crowd awaiting his orders. “Pixies. Will you join me?”
A rousing chorus of ayes struck the walls all around me.
“Chieftan, I don’t know what to say—”
But the old man silenced me before I had time to finish the thought. With one swing of his great axe over his shoulders, he prepared himself for the war to come.
“There is nothing to say. There is only to do.”
✽✽✽
Our march from the Pixie Forest had to be done in the middle of the day. Marching a large army through the woods under the bright Velkin sun went against everything I’d ever been taught about military strategy, but it was an unavoidable necessity. I knew that, even out here in the woodlands, my brother’s servants would be lurking. Most of Adric’s spies and scouts were vampires or creatures of the night, those who would be destroyed if they so much as looked at the sun, which meant that traveling on foot by day was the only way that we were going to survive the trek.
It was hard going. The terrain was rough, the land unforgiving. And our spirits remained painfully low. Eventually, the Pixies picked up some of their contingent songs, but considering that most of their battle songs were about destroying the Velkin, the sentiments contained within didn’t exactly lift my spirits, though it seemed to lift theirs.
The only thing that kept my boots moving, one after the other, was the knowledge that Carolyn was at my side. My concerns for her fragile, human body going into battle were outweighed by the comfort I took in her even, brave presence. We could only save our worlds if we were together—that’s what the prophecies and the visions said— but more than that, I could only face this if I wasn’t alone.
The roads and paths from Pixie Forest to the capital of Velkin was unpaved and long, but familiar to me. And I was in the lead, guiding our small unit of troops through the weeping Nire trees when another sound—a sound louder than the weeping of the woods around us—broke through and struck my ears like a freshly sharpened bow.
“ANATOLE!”
In a flash of green and silver fabric, a wild creature leapt from behind the tree line. To the credit of everyone in our ragtag unit of universe-savers, they immediately fell into position behind me. Pixie wings began flapping wildly behind me; the sharp sound of blades coming out of their sheathes and arrows cocking at the ready filled the air. The creature—a female one who looked like she’d spent too long in the woods—stumbled to a stop when she realized who, exactly, she was facing.
“What do you want, witch?”
I held my sword aloft, staring at the creature at the far end of it. But the longer I looked, the longer I made my soldiers stand at battle ready attention, the more I realized that it was not a witch standing before me. It was Ariedne. The daughter of the banished head of my father’s guard. The one who helped Adric return to take over Velkin.
She was worse for wear, of course. So different than the last time I’d seen her that I didn’t recognize her at first. Ariedne believed that obtaining a mate was her most important goal in life, and often dressed and attired herself accordingly. I’d never seen her without perfectly bewitched hair or a gown that had been spun by the finest hands in all of Velkin.
Today, she didn’t look ready for any ball. Her eyes were wild and unfocused. Her hair was matted and destroyed after time, I assumed, in these woods. Her clothes had been torn and ripped. With her legs exposed by the ripped fabric, I could even see that somewhere along the way, she’d lost her boots and slippers.
“Anatole,” she croaked again, her voice worn from disuse. “Anatole, I am…” But then, she stopped when she saw the human woman in pixie armor behind me. Her eyes darkened with recognition, but not in the way I would have thought. Ariedne and Carolyn had not been on amicable terms during their time at the Royal Academy together; Ariende had been the aggressor in their interactions. But Ariedne’s eyes didn’t darken with hatred or disgust. They darkened with shame. “Carolyn. Carolyn Connors.”
I didn’t know how to feel about Ariedne’s sudden appearance in our midst. Suspicion was obviously my first instinct, but there were other things lurking there, too. Worry about her current state. Anger that someone who’d been so cruel to Carolyn—and had encouraged my own cruelty at the beginning—would suddenly address us both so freely.
Her father was in league with Adric. The leader of his great shadow army. For some time now, they’d been terrorizing the outskirts of Velkin, forcing everyone who hadn’t already succumbed to Adric’s rule to fully bend the knee and honor their new ruler. What, then, was Ariedne doing here, looking more like an abandoned woman of the forest than a proud daughter of the king’s most trusted and vicious warlord?
Instead of speaking any of these questions aloud, I turned to Carolyn, who stared with an impenetrable and unreadable expression.
“Yes. It’s me,” Carolyn said, her voice bitter and sharp. “The Princess of Nothing. I think that’s what you called me once.”
Ariedne’s long lashes flickered as she lowered her eyes.
“I am…I was…”
The words never came to her. Instead, she stood there before my army, her head bowed and her eyes low. Waiting for her judgment, I realized.
Glancing towards Carolyn, I waited for her to make that judgment. To decide what she was going to do with this helpless creature who’d caused her so much pain during her time at the Velkin Royal Academy.
If I had been in Carolyn’s shoes, I didn’t know what I would have done. As a human, it wasn’t like she could magic some punishment Ariedne’s way, but she had to know that anything she desired, I would give to her. Including justice for the crimes Ariedne had committed.
Instead, Carolyn unhooked the short, but warm cloak she’d been given by the pixies, crossed the distance between her and Ariedne, and wrapped that same cloak around her shoulders. The gesture was so simple, but almost as soon as it was done, silver tears started to fall down the elven woman’s cheeks. Carolyn touched her shaking shoulders gently, compassionately.
“Are you alright?” Carolyn asked.
It wasn’t a question Ariedne had an answer to. I shouldn’t have been surprised when she deftly changed the subject, her hiccups breaking up the words as they fell from her lips.
“Where—” She stuttered, “Where are you going?”
It was then that I realized I still hadn’t lowered my sword. My defenses and guards—both literal and emotional—were still armed and at the ready. After her own behavior and that of her father, I couldn’t bear to drop my suspicions for even a moment. She could be dangerous. This could be a trap, one that Carolyn’s big, human heart was walking us right into. I raised my eyebrow and spoke before Carolyn could manage it.
“Why do you want to know?
”
“Anatole,” Carolyn hissed. “Something is clearly wrong.”
But I wasn’t in the mood to completely acquiesce. Instead of reaching for the binders and holding her at sword point, though, I commanded the troops to stand at ease, lowered my weapon, and then turned back to her. “Speak.”
There was a long moment of silence then. Ariedne fiddled with the tailoring on the end of her new cloak as she huddled in deeper to the fabric. I tried to read her, to see if that small motion was a tell that she was lying or the nervous tick of someone who had been hurt, but I came up empty.
“I was wrong,” she finally said, after looking to Carolyn, of all people, for encouragement.
I blinked. Those were not words I’d ever heard Ariedne mutter before, not in our entire lives of endless parties and court events together.
“What?”
She twisted the fabric of the cloak around her fingers, focusing all of her energy on them as she tried to force words out from between chattering teeth. “My father, he’s—And Adric, he’s…I am so frightened. I didn’t realize what they…how they would…”
“It’s…” Carolyn glanced back at me, uncertain. What did you say to someone who had clearly seen so much, who had her every value and every belief thoroughly shattered by evil? The elven lady may not have been kind to Carolyn; for too long, she’d believed as they all had, that humans were the ultimate enemy. But she didn’t deserve whatever cruelties had surely been handed to her. Carefully, as if she was afraid this was all some trick, Carolyn reached out to gently run her hand along the elf’s arm. “It’s okay, Ariedne. We are going to Castle Bloc.”
“No!” Ariedne flinched and her eyes flashed with terror, the same unbridled, wild kind of terror we’d all been hiding for the last few days. It was a terror that couldn’t be faked, but could only be forced upon you when death is breathing down the back of your neck. “No, you can’t do that. You’ll be killed. I was exiled for only—”
But before she could even finish that thought, Carolyn cut her off.
“We have to defeat him. This is the only way.”
Something in her face must have done the convincing. Because after a long moment of surveying me, my armies, and Carolyn, Ariedne’s breathing finally slowed to a more manageable gasp, and she nodded once. Stoic. Serene. At peace with her choice.
“Then I have to join you.”
“Are you sure?” Carolyn asked.
“Yes. My father has been allowed to torment the people of Velkin for too long.” A shadow crossed her face. “And I have my own crimes to pay for.”
Carolyn and I shared a long look. Wordless, but a full conversation might as well have passed between us. Do you trust her? Yes. Then, that’s all I need to know.
Slipping my sword back into its place at my waist, I nodded for the caravan of soldiers to begin moving once more.
“Then there isn’t any time to waste.”
Chapter Eleven
Carolyn
This was not how I envisioned the end of the world. Coming from Earth, I always thought it would be a lot of fire and brimstone. Maybe people disappearing out of their clothes and ascending to Heaven, if the Christians were right. Maybe there would be great demons or an invasion of aliens or just a great flash of light that took us all out when we were least expecting it.
I didn’t expect the universes to end with an elf prince at my side, and my flanks guarded by a pixie, her on-again, off-again boyfriend, a chieftain, a small contingent of elven courtiers who used to hate my guts, and a mix of other, assorted fairy tale creatures and imagined beings.
I also didn’t expect the end of the world to be so, so quiet. Painfully quiet. The quiet that amplified every sound and made even the accidental crushing of a leaf sound like the beginnings of a great earthquake.
If I’d ever thought about how I would feel at the end of the world—which I hadn’t—what I would have come up with probably wouldn’t have been anything close to this. A mixture of doubt and fear and hope and uncertainty and absolute determination. Tears welled in my eyes as we, from the safety of high, dense grass, watched the permitter of Castle Bloc, but it wasn’t from the untouched destruction of the castle walls or from the sight of the banners of Adric hanging from the stone stumps where the north tower off of the great hall used to be.
It was from the pressure. From the reality of what we were about to do.
Upon our first look at the Castle Bloc, Anatole had begun formulating a plan and giving out battle orders. Battle orders that, once the conversation went silent, I realized didn’t include me. My stomach turned.
“Anatole. You know you’re not leaving me behind here,” I practically growled, but I could still see the indecision playing behind those piercing eyes of his.
“I know,” he replied.
Still, for a moment, as the last stragglers left to get into their positions, he didn’t give her any instructions or any indication about what she should be doing. When I reached my hand out and gently brushed his wrist, he finally turned his attention towards me.
“You and Kyra are going to go into the North Wing and retrieve the Magic Killer. We will cover you.”
I glanced back at Kyra, who had taken off her overdress, revealing breaches and a holster top beneath. I’d never seen her in something so rustic—never seen her in trouser before, either— but it was when she started unfastening a series of leather rigging around her breast that I realized what she was doing.
She was finally letting her wings free.
But then, just as quickly as I’d become enraptured by the sight of her, I was drawn back to Anatole, caught up by something he’d just said.
“We? Who’s we?”
“Everyone. I have a feeling you’re going to need all the coverage you can get.”
The Castle Bloc was quiet, silent, but everyone in our contingent felt on-edge, as if this was the calm before the storm. And, I supposed, it was.
When I turned back to Kyra, I had to blink a few times before I could find the words to speak. I’d always thought she was beautiful before, but here, under the sunlight, with her wings fully exposed and stretched out to their full, dizzying height and length, she was unspeakably beautiful.
And deadly-looking, too.
Holding out her arms to me, despite the fact that I was a full foot taller than her, she raised one slightly excited eyebrow, as if we were about to go for a fun flight around the gardens instead of straight into battle.
“You ready, kid?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess,” I said, allowing her to brace her arms against mine as if we were two halves of a swinging trapeze act. If my arms didn’t bust out of their socket by the end of this, then it would be a miracle.
“It’ll be a little bumpy. Come on!”
Then, before I could blink or even tell Anatole goodbye, we were off of the ground, flying high above the battlefield and straight for the half-destroyed Castle Bloc. No sooner were we gone than Anatole screamed out an echoing battle cry, one mimicked by the Chieftan of the Pixies, and all Hell broke loose beneath us. Though I still couldn’t see any of Adric’s soldiers, it was clear by all of the spells and ammunition being flung out towards the invasion that we weren’t exactly evenly matched.
I tried not to think about that. I tried to think about finding the sword, returning to Anatole, and ending this battle before anyone got hurt.
Down below me, I watched as Krya flew past explosions and spells straight towards the North Tower, where she circled and lowered until I could see the holes in the ceiling. Without a word or a measure of warning, she dropped me through the gaping hole in the roof of the tower.
I fell down, down, down. It felt like forever, but I had the suspicion that it was less far than I’d initially thought. When I collided with the stone flooring of the tower beneath me with a thud, the unstable stones shifted slightly beneath my weight, and I knew that there wasn’t much time before the whole thing collapsed.
No time to waste, then.
I scanned the room—destroyed by magic and what I’m sure were many, many of Adric’s temper tantrums—and found the sword tucked away in what looked like a bronze umbrella stand. Magical conductors and canes and sticks of all sized and descriptions tried to hide the Magic-Killer, but I would know that sword anywhere. Picking it up, I held it as tightly as my fingers would allow, and began running towards a safer part of the castle, letting my feet guide me and trying not to look out any of the windows or the blown holes in the stone at the battle raging on outside.
This was the problem with the plan as Anatole had given it to me. Now that I had the sword, I didn’t know what the Hell to do with it. I didn’t know where Anatole would be, or where to rendezvous. And considering that the halls of Castle Bloc—the halls that remained, anyway—were empty, there weren’t even any enemies to fight at the moment.
It was eery. Strange. I assumed that everyone must have been at the battlements, but there wasn’t even any sound. No screaming. No hollering. No cries of pain.
That was, until I heard Anatole’s voice, echoing through the halls.
“Carolyn? Carolyn, are you there?”
My heart zinged to life. He was alive, and he was close. I quickly descended the stairs towards the sound of his voice, searching every inch of my eyeliner for any hint of him.
“Anatole! Anatole? I’m coming!”
I moved in what I thought was the direction of his cries, but after a few minutes of fruitless searching, I called again.
“Where are you?”
“Just follow the sound of my voice.”
It was too late before I realized where following that instruction had led me. Away from the North Tower, and down into the Great Hall. The very place that had been the sight of destruction when a number of us fled that night.
No one was there. No one except for Adric, looking paler and more gaunt and more like a living shadow than I’d ever thought someone could be. He smiled that horrific grin at me.
“So, here she is. The little human who’s caused so much trouble.”
Magic Captive: A Supernatural Academy Romance (The Velkin Royal Academy Series Book 2) Page 9