by Chloe Jacobs
He let her help him out. “I thought that humans didn’t have any magick,” he said, examining her curiously. “How did you enter my dreams?”
She chuckled. At least he’d managed to say “human” without making it sound like a swear word. “It’s true. I have no magick.” Thank God. “Your salvation is a result of your king’s love for you. It’s through him that I was able to reach you.” The people of Mylena needed to know that Isaac had returned and needed to believe that he could save them.
“You are Danem Greta,” he said. His head tilted with curiosity. “I saw you at the banquet in the goblin castle before I went Lost.” Suddenly, his expression twisted with horror, and he dropped to his knees. “Apologies for my insolence, my queen,” he mumbled.
She groaned. “Don’t worry about it, and get off the cold ground. Tell me your name.”
He got up clumsily, as if part of him thought he really should just stay there. “I’m Ethan.”
“Well, Ethan, I’m not anyone’s queen yet, so just call me Greta, okay?”
“Uh…”
She sighed. “Come on. We have a lot of ground to cover before nightfall.”
They started walking. Greta warned Ethan about Dryden, and he didn’t look comfortable with the idea of traveling with the faerie who’d been tight with a gang of gnomes less than an hour ago. It was hard to explain why Dryden was safe now when he hadn’t been before—especially when she wasn’t so sure of that, herself—but she told him that not all of the faeries wanted to be in service to Agramon, and they had rescued him, just like she’d rescued Ethan from being Lost.
When they rejoined Siona and Dryden, Greta forced him up in front of them, and Ethan stayed just behind her. He was wary and didn’t want to take any chances of getting near the faerie warrior, not that she blamed him.
They ran across two more of Agramon’s search parties before the day was done. One of them they met head on, and the other—the bigger one with an ogre in the mix—they avoided by the skin of their teeth. Dryden obeyed her every order without an ounce of hesitation. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to switch sides when he figured it would benefit him, but for now he was another body for protection and another sword in case they ran into more trouble.
Ethan practically collapsed with exhaustion that evening. Coming back from the Lost must take a lot out of a person. He was snoring like a lawnmower before Greta had finished tying Dryden to the trunk of the tree. “This isn’t necessary, I promise you,” he protested, twisting against the bonds uncomfortably.
“Says you, but until I’m absolutely sure I can trust you, this is how it’s going to be.” She refused to apologize.
She turned to Siona. “You should sleep first. I don’t think you got enough rest last night, and you used up a lot of energy to save Dryden today,” she said. There was no cozy cabin available to seek shelter in tonight. They’d spread a couple of blankets down on a pile of needles beneath a tree as far off the path into the woods as they’d dared go and hoped it would keep them safe from Agramon’s soldiers.
Siona didn’t argue, and she, too, was asleep so fast Greta didn’t even have a chance to say good night.
Greta spent those first few hours sharpening her new sword as she looked up at the stars, memorizing the constellations. They were her stars now, after all, and she figured she ought to get more familiar with them. It was one thing to see them as a visitor; quite another to look up into the sky and call it home.
When Siona awoke and it was Greta’s turn to sleep, Siona’s gaze darted toward Dryden’s silent form. Quietly, she said, “Will you ask the goblin king to keep Wyatt safe?”
“I’m sure he’s going to be just fine, but yeah, sure I will.” They were both assuming that Greta would be able to dream with Isaac again tonight, but just as so much had happened to her since last night, the whole world could have changed for him during the daylight hours as well. What if he wasn’t waiting for her?
She closed her eyes and concentrated on regulating her breathing and calming her heartbeat. It wasn’t difficult. It had been a long day. Not only that, she was eager to see Isaac and tell him everything.
She breathed deeply in and out, smelling the pine, the snow, and the musty old blanket beneath her, and in her next breath she smelled earth, sunshine, and flowers in full bloom. A garden full of them.
She opened her eyes and gasped at the beauty of it. “Isaac, where are you?” she called. “What is this place?”
She looked up to find a glass ceiling overhead and started walking down an aisle filled with flowers and vegetable plants. She got to the end of the row and realized there were dozens more rows. They seemed to go on forever. She went up and down all of them. “Isaac?” she called.
She got to the end of the last row, and there he was, looking too good for words. “This is how I will bring Mylena back to life when the worst is over. Do you remember?”
She smiled. “You told me about your ideas for a greenhouse the first night we met.”
“Greenhouse.” The word played across his tongue like he was trying it out for size as he looked out over the endless plantings. Then he nodded. “A fitting term for such as this.”
“That’s what it’s called in the human world.”
“You no longer call it your world.” He looked down at her with such intensity.
Her cheeks flushed. “That’s because it isn’t. My place is in Mylena. You know that.”
He pulled her with him and stopped in front of a round little bush with wide leaves. It was the only one of its kind in the row. “What’s this?” she asked.
He only smiled. With a quirked eyebrow, she looked back at the bush. It had one bud, and as she watched, the bud slowly started to swell, and then it began to unfurl. With all the wonder and possibility of a dream, it blossomed into a beautiful white flower that looked a lot like a rose, but with typical Mylean flare. It took her breath away.
“It’s beautiful.” She’d never heard of roses in Mylena. In fact, she’d never really heard of any kind of flower growing in Mylena until the night of the banquet at the goblin castle.
“This will be known as the Queen’s Bloom.” He pinched the stem and plucked the flower from the bush, then held it to her. It smelled just as beautiful. “The plant carries only one flower at a time, but it is strong and beautiful, blooming even in the coldest climate, persevering in otherwise barren ground. I have never seen this in the waking world, but I know it exists, and when I find one, it shall be yours. It is the strongest, purest, and most beautiful thing I have to give to the strongest, bravest, most honorable woman I know.”
Tears stung her eyes as he gently tucked the flower into her hair, behind her ear.
“I don’t need fancy flowers or other gifts. I just need to see that look on your face,” she said, blinking up at him. “That one. The look that tells me I made the right decision.”
Was it, though? Although the decision was made and here she was back in Mylena, she still had doubts. If they defeated Agramon, Isaac would need a queen to help him bring the people together again, and their hatred of her would only keep them divided.
He crushed her to him, taking her mouth in a hot explosion of need that echoed in her blood and rocked her to her core.
When he lowered her to the ground and there magically appeared a cozy blanket beneath them, she chuckled. And when the daylight coming through the greenhouse ceiling turned to starlight in a clear velvet sky, she sighed. Her clothes fell away like wisps of nothing on the breeze. It was all very soft and sweet, and dreamlike…but the way he made her feel with every kiss and every touch…that was the same as it had been in the waking world.
Urgent. Vibrant. Messy. Real.
She tried to lose herself in the moment, but all she could think of was how much she had to lose.
Chapter Nineteen
They sat among the blooms of the greenhouse, holding hands. Time seemed like nothing here, but she knew what awaited her in the waking world, and
she would have to get up soon. Who knew what another day would bring, whether Agramon would find her today, or Dryden would betray them, or the gnomes would attack Isaac before she could reach him.
“I need to tell you a few things,” she started, a little shaky. She’d made some unilateral decisions without him around, and considering what had happened the last time she’d decided she could negotiate, alone, with the faerie prince and princess…
“Always the warrior.” He tipped her chin up and kissed her until she groaned with regret.
“You can’t keep doing that. We need to stay focused. Do you want the waking world to fall apart around us because we can’t stop acting like a couple of horny teenagers?”
He didn’t answer, but he raised those arrogant brows of his and leaned back against the glass wall.
“I wasn’t insinuating that you aren’t focused,” she said.
“What is it that you must tell me…besides the fact that you have rescued a goblin boy from being Lost?”
She gasped. “You already know? How?”
Those brows lifted again. “Our bond transcends dreaming,” he reminded her. “I felt when you touched that boy’s soul. You reached out to him through me, and I was there with you.”
“You were? Why didn’t you let me know?”
He shook his head. “I tried, but although I could feel the transition as if I was a part of each of you, I was simply the bridge. It took all of my strength to hold that connection in place long enough for you to do what you needed to do.”
“Do you think you could do it again?”
He paused. “It took a lot of energy to maintain that connection, energy that both of us can ill afford to waste in the days to come.”
“But now we know that we can save your people. Don’t we have to try? Shouldn’t we get to as many of them as we can?”
He frowned. “You want to save them from the moons, only to force them to die at war with the demon?”
She winced but held her ground. “I want to save them from the moons so that they can stand with their king and fight for their home, for their families, for a future.”
“And the one who once hunted the Lost would now become their savior,” he mused, tracing her cheek with his finger.
She let out a heavy breath of relief. “So you agree that we have to do something?”
He nodded, but there were deep lines of worry in his face. “There isn’t much time. Agramon’s forces are gathering. He knows where I am. I expected an attack already, but he holds back the gnome army and waits.”
She swallowed. “He’s waiting for me,” she said, chest tightening. “He hasn’t been able to find me yet, but he knows that I’ll make my way to you.”
“The demon has positioned himself so that you will have to go through him to reach me.”
She told Isaac about converting Dryden to their cause and severing his link with the faerie hive. “Not all of the faeries are with him of their own free will, but some of them may be. Still, if we can afford for Siona and me to take a bit of a detour back to the Glass Kingdom, during daylight hours she can release more of the faeries who will hopefully stand with us, and at night you and I will bring back the Lost and direct them to your position. Then we could close in on Agramon from both ends with strength. He wouldn’t expect it.”
“How will you enter the Glass Kingdom safely?”
“I’ll find a way,” she said with a crooked grin. “I always do, don’t I?”
Isaac’s expression didn’t lighten. He was worried. A lot could go wrong, and neither of them were army generals with any strategic battle experience. If they miscalculated, hundreds of lives could be lost. “No matter how many Myleans join us, we won’t have a chance against the demon’s magick,” he said.
“Mylena managed to contain him at one time. How was it done? Could we do it again?” she asked, hopeful.
He frowned. “The demon was contained only after hundreds of years of his tyranny, when even the Great Mother had turned against us and plunged the world into eternal ice,” he reminded her with a shake of his head. “And that was so many centuries ago. There isn’t a soul living with enough knowledge of our history to put the spell together again. The only thing every Mylean knows for certain is that the cost for his confinement was so high, we are still paying it.”
The people of Mylena had paid that debt in blood with every eclipse and every person who went Lost.
She clenched her fists. Even in the four years she’d spent as a hated human, she’d never felt so helpless as she did in this moment, with the fate of so many at stake. It was paralyzing to know that the decisions she made would be visited upon all of Mylena. How had Isaac ever managed it on his own?
“Do you think we should retreat instead? Take the ones we can save and find a safe place to hold out against him?”
Isaac put his hand over hers. “There is no retreat. There is no safe place,” he said flatly. “As you said, we must fight for our future. And there is no better encouragement for my people to rally with us than the shining example of your stubborn human determination.”
“You really believe that?”
“You make me believe in things I never thought I would,” he said with a soft kiss.
Like that we could actually win this? That Mylena could come to accept me? That they will ever see beyond my humanity?
“Isaac, I promise to be what you need me to be. If you want stubborn determination, so be it. If you need a ruthless warrior, I can do that, too. One by one, we’ll take back the Lost and build an army to face Agramon.”
He frowned. “I know what must be done, but the idea of sending anyone into battle in my name turns my blood cold.”
She understood how he felt, but it didn’t change the fact that he would do it anyway. He had to.
“This isn’t being done in your name. This is in the name of every Mylean. It’s just that you and I have to make them see that working together is the only way to make it happen.”
She took the flower from her hair and held it within the cupped palms of her hands. She wasn’t really sure what she was going to do with it until he looked into her eyes. She blew on the bloom and it turned to white sparkles that shimmered and danced in the pale sunlight, then settled on his arms and chest and face like dust. For a moment, he glittered like glass, but then it disappeared into his skin, becoming a part of him.
It felt almost like wishing on a star and blowing the seeds of a dandelion at the same time, and they could use all the luck and wishes they could get.
“You are everything Mylena needs,” she said. “If I’m strong and brave, it’s only because you give me something to be brave for.”
He leaned forward and pressed his mouth to hers. It tingled, like putting a battery to her lips. “We are what Mylena needs.”
What happened when all this was over and he didn’t need her to be strong anymore? Now she was useful, but he was going to need someone who could give his people more than just battle training and snarky human attitude. His love for her would be a liability. Could she step aside and let him choose another queen, someone better suited to the position?
Good thing she didn’t have to think about that now, since first they’d have to survive the coming war.
Before she left Isaac and their greenhouse filled with hopes and dreams, he told her he might be able to send her into his people’s dreams.
By the time she awoke in the early hours to a bleary-eyed Siona, a cautious-looking Ethan, and Dryden still tied up to his tree, she’d saved three more of the Lost—or at least, she hoped so. Every time she’d touched one of them, she talked them through until they were able to consciously recognize what they were and admit that they wanted a second chance. Then she would let them go with instructions to find the goblin king in the Brimstone Caves and join him, but they always returned to that wild beast state. That’s when she ran until Isaac threw her into another dream or, like this time, she woke up.
She groaned as
she sat up and stretched the kinks out. Not surprisingly, her sleep had been far from restful. She was going to pay the price today, which would put all four of her group at risk if they ran across any more of Agramon’s search parties.
Before they went to untie Dryden, she took Siona aside and filled her in on the strategy that she and Isaac had come up with. “Do you think you can do that?” she asked, referring to the plan to return to the Glass Kingdom and free any of the faeries who wanted to come with them. She knew it would be physically painful and draining for Siona, so she wouldn’t push it if the goblin hunter refused.
But that wasn’t Siona’s concern.
“It’s risky.” She bit her lip. “We only need to find one faerie who is loyal to the demon to warn him of what we’re up to, and Agramon could force all of them against us immediately. We’ll be too far away for the goblin king to send reinforcements.”
“We can’t call on Isaac no matter what course we take,” she said firmly. “He would drop everything to come for us, and Mylena can’t afford to lose him.”
Siona nodded. “Then how will we keep Agramon from noticing the loss of all those faerie abilities until after we have liberated the faeries?”
“We’ll need a distraction,” Greta agreed. “Something to keep his attention for at least a day. It might take that long to touch every faerie mind in the Glass Kingdom.”
At a noise behind them, Greta whirled around. Dryden grabbed her wrist before she could draw her sword, but she had a dagger in her other hand just like that and cut his arm. He hissed and let her go, his blood dripping into the snow.
Siona had her daggers out as well, and she held one to his throat. “How did you escape your bonds?”
He shrugged, eyes gleaming. “If you truly wanted to hold me, you should have spelled the ropes.”
Damn show-off. “If you think you can take us and tell Agramon what you’ve heard, you’re mistaken.”
He bent for a handful of snow to hold over his bleeding arm. “I meant what I said when I promised you my allegiance. Which is why I will show you how to enter the Glass Kingdom and free my people from Agramon’s hold, without the demon becoming aware of it.”