Greta and the Lost Army (Mylena Chronicles Book 3)

by Chloe Jacobs

  That’s not fair. The berserk, power-hungry demon wasn’t really an accurate representation of the place, Dad. Mylena’s not really that bad.

  “She’s a strong human.”

  Strong enough to be your perfect match. And it was true. He needed her. She would always call him out when he was wrong, tease him when he needed teasing, challenge him to make Mylena a better world, and never let him forget about his own dreams…never let him go Lost again.

  “But she’s still only human, and she’s still so young. She’s got her whole life ahead of her, and here she could do anything she wants. This is where she belongs.” No, Mom, you’re wrong. Mylena needs me. They might not want to admit it yet, but I can do so much good there.

  “I love her.” Her stubborn, proud goblin.

  “If you love her, you’ll consider what’s best for her. If she goes back to that place, we’ll never see her again. She’ll be without her family, without any friends. What if she gets sick and you don’t have the medicine to make her well? What if she’s hurt again and there isn’t a hospital to treat her?” Her parents were pouring on the guilt.

  Isaac, say something.

  She pressed against the darkness, struggling to reach them, but the more she tried to open her eyes and let them know she was listening, the more she felt it all slipping away from her again.

  Isaac. Tell them we’ll have each other.

  “I would sacrifice anything for her.” His voice had lowered, become hoarse and choked.

  “Then give her a chance at a real life.” Real life. What’s real? Goblin kings? Magick and faeries? Going on dates in her dreams?

  “Tell her that I…” The fog in her head thickened. It closed in and squeezed until she couldn’t hear anymore. He wouldn’t just give up. He wouldn’t leave.

  “Isaac, where are you?”

  She raced through the house, opening the doors to every room and peering into the darkness, searching high and low. In the hallway, the carpet disappeared beneath weathered wooden planks, and the plaster walls were replaced by stone and mortar. A torch glowed from a sconce on the wall.

  Her bedroom was split down the middle. On one side were the dresser and rocking chair that had always been there, and the cot she’d slept in for years in Luke’s cottage was tucked against the other wall.

  It felt like a funhouse, the kind with curved mirrors, crooked stairs, and uneven passages. Her steps echoed as she ran. The place was deserted, but she knew Isaac was here somewhere. He had to be.

  She barreled down the stairs, slipping on the last step, which was coated in ice. The living room was still trashed, the broken furniture still spread across the floor, and Agramon’s sneering face looked up at her from his disembodied head. But a thin layer of snow covered it all. She shuddered and kept going.

  After everything they’d been through, they finally had the chance to be a real couple…so why did she feel as if time was slipping away? The urgency of impending loss glued her throat closed, as if it was all for nothing, as if winning the battle against Agramon had only been the first trial, and she was losing the last and most important one.

  She skidded to a stop in the kitchen where a trio of scraggy pines grew out of the tile floor, their tops crowding up against the popcorn ceiling. “Isaac, where are you?” Through the window, two moons glowed from an inky black sky, and she followed them outside into the yard. “Isaac? Isaac!” she called.

  A fluffy snowflake landed on her eyelash. She gave her face up to the sky and let the snow kiss her cheeks. She felt him, the way she always felt him in her dreams. “You’re here. I know you’re here. Please, why can’t I see you?”

  Ghostly arms closed around her, a solid pressure bracketing her from behind.

  She sighed and leaned back. “What’s wrong? Why won’t you show yourself?”

  A whisper kiss where the curve of her neck met her shoulder. You brought hope and freedom to an entire world, and no one is more worthy of being Queen of Mylena.

  “Isaac, what are you doing?” She quaked and clapped her hands over her ears, but his words echoed in her mind.

  I release you from our bond. You will always be my queen, the one who showed me how to make my dreams come true, but you deserve to be completely free.

  “Stop it. What are you doing? Why does this feel like good-bye?”

  His warmth fell away. She spun around, but there was no one there. The snow continued to fall like crystal tears. “Don’t!” she cried. “Don’t you dare leave!”

  I wish you a long, safe, and happy life.

  Clenching her fists, she tensed every muscle and focused on an image of him. “I don’t know how it’s possible, but if this is my dream, then I’m in control…and that means you’re not going anywhere until you explain yourself.”

  The falling snow coalesced into a shimmery figure in front of her. His shadowy face was without expression. She reached out to touch, but her hand passed right through. “How are you in my dream? We’re in the human world,” she reminded him.

  He was trying to pull away, but she gritted her teeth and concentrated harder, forcing him to become more solid. “You are in the human world…but I have already returned to Mylena,” he finally admitted.

  She gasped. “How is that possible? Who opened a portal for you?”

  “My bargain with the Lamia was for a portal which would remain open for two human days. I had hoped we would be able to defeat Agramon, and then return.”

  “Why would the witch agree to that?”

  He paused. “We made a trade. Once the portal closes, I must give up my ability to enter my people’s dreams to the witch.”

  So that meant the portal was still open right at this moment? Is that how he was able to enter her dream even when she was in the human world without any magick? “But then why didn’t you tell me we had a way back? Why have you left without me?”

  His shape crystallized, and he was right there. No longer a shadow, but Isaac.

  He lifted his hand to her cheek and lingered as if it would be his last chance to touch her. She bit her lip to keep from yelling at him. “You have always been pulled in many directions. But for the first time since I saw you in Maidra’s Tavern when you agreed to stay and talk to me even after you learned who I was, you have the opportunity to choose your own path without feeling any obligation to Mylena, to the human boys…or to me.”

  “Being with you was never an obligation.” Her lip curled. “Frustrating and maddening at times, but I’ve gotten used to your arrogant ways. I never asked to be released from our bond.”

  He smiled but dropped his hand. He was already getting wispy and shimmery again. “My obligation to Mylena is eternal, but I have no right to use our link—which has come to mean more to me than my own life—to chain you and sentence you to a lifetime of responsibility and hardship. You deserve better.”

  She frowned. Not too long ago, the weight of all the responsibilities she’d started to accumulate since meeting Isaac had suffocated her with fear, but then she’d realized that they weren’t responsibilities so much as they were ties. Ties of friendship, of love. And those ties were what made life precious, when before she’d simply been existing.

  “What about a lifetime of love? A lifetime of purpose, and the chance to make a difference? Don’t I deserve to choose that?” she asked.

  She looked around at the snow covering every inch of her parents’ yard, the ice coating the chains of the swing set, and even the mountains looming from the other side of the fence. There were no mountains in the human world like that.

  Even when she dreamed of home, Mylena pervaded…because it was home to her now.

  She turned back to Isaac just as a flurry of snowflakes created a wall of white between them. When it settled…he was gone again.

  If you would still choose Mylena and a life as my queen, then come to me before the portal closes.

  She awoke in bed, and her heart leaped.

  “Isaac?” Her voice came out as
a whisper, and a hand touched her shoulder. Something felt wrong. The room smelled wrong, like canned air and chemical cleaning supplies, and every few seconds something beeped.

  She struggled to rise, but the hand on her shoulder held her still. “Shh, sweetheart. You’re safe.”

  “Mom?” She snapped her eyes open and lifted her hand to grip the chrome rail along the side of the bed. There was a needle in her arm attached to a thin hose. She was in a hospital.

  Her mother sat beside her, looking limp and tired, like she’d been there for a while.

  “What happened? How did I get here?”

  She frowned and smoothed her fingers through the fine hair at Greta’s forehead. Her head was wrapped in thick gauze. She catalogued her aches and pains but couldn’t feel much. The magic of human medicine.

  “You collapsed after killing that…” Her voice lowered to a whisper in confidence. “That thing.”

  Greta winced. “What happened to the…ah…body?”

  Her frown deepened. “The remains shriveled up to dust and bones, and your father and Isaac took care of it. Nobody will ever know the real reason I suddenly decided to redecorate the front room.”

  She collapsed back into her pillow with a massive sigh of relief. I did it. Agramon was dead. She wasn’t even that surprised to hear there was nothing left of him but bones.

  Why did she feel so unsettled then, as if she was missing something?

  Isaac!

  “Mom, where’s—”

  The door opened, and her father came into the room. He looked relieved to see that she was awake. “Hey, you,” he said with a brave smile. “How are you feeling? We were worried sick.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, sitting up.

  He sat beside her on the edge of the bed. “We didn’t get a chance to thank you yet.”

  “Thank me? For what?”

  “For saving your brother. For growing up to be the bravest and strongest daughter that we could ever ask for.” His voice sounded throaty like he was holding back tears, and that made her tear up, too.

  “Don’t thank me,” she murmured. “If you knew all the times I almost crawled in a hole and bawled because I just wanted to come home, you’d be embarrassed.”

  He took her hand and squeezed. “But instead you became a fierce protector, and we’re proud of you.”

  “If only you could put all that in next year’s Christmas letter to the family, huh?” Her lips twisted.

  He smiled back at her. “No matter where you decide to go from here, you’ll always be our little girl, and your mom and I will always be proud of you…even if we can’t be with you to cheer you on.”

  “Does that mean that you…” She looked back and forth between them.

  “We know where Isaac has gone,” her mother said. “And we know there’s still time for you to go with him.”

  Her heart leaped. “How much time?”

  Her father glanced at his watch. “Just long enough for us to drive you, if that’s really what you want.”

  A fuzzy sliver of memory surfaced. “Maybe it was the drugs, but didn’t you stand here in this room and tell Isaac that he should let me go? That I didn’t belong with him?”

  Her mother looked as if she was about to cry. “We want you to be happy,” she whispered. “And when Isaac agreed to leave you here with us and let you make the choice for yourself, we realized that we had to do the same. No matter how many years pass, you’ll always be my little girl. But you’re also a woman. A strong woman who’s earned the right to make her own choices for her future.”

  Greta’s chest ached. “Thank you,” she croaked as tears tracked down her face. “It means a lot to hear you say that.”

  Her mother wiped the wetness from the ball of her cheek with a finger and smiled. “Whatever you decide, you’ll always live in our hearts.”

  “This is the place where the portal opened the last time,” Greta said, biting her lip as she shone her flashlight across the area. “It should be right here. Are we too late?” She looked up at the sky, but the stars were covered with clouds.

  Her mother squeezed her arm, as if in apology. Her dad rested a hand on her shoulder. “You can still make a place for yourself here in this world, just as bravely as you did there.”

  As much as they had agreed to support her decision, they hadn’t given up pleading their case. Her mother didn’t want her to be without modern conveniences and access to medical care. Her dad had said that with her skills she could go to the police academy or even the military and have a fulfilling career. She hated to tell him that she doubted she’d make a good soldier. She knew for a fact that she wasn’t great at following other people’s orders.

  What they hadn’t been able to promise was that she’d ever find someone who would love her like Isaac loved her.

  “What time is it?” she asked, hitching her backpack up over her shoulder.

  She wasn’t planning to return to Mylena empty-handed. There hadn’t been time to grab much after she was released from the hospital, but she’d stuffed a bag with photos of her family, a few books she thought Isaac would like, and some other things to make the eternal winter bearable.

  Her father looked down at his watch and frowned.

  Her heart plummeted. There was no sign of a portal here. She spun around, frantic until her eyes lit upon a shimmer of light a little deeper into the woods.

  “There!” It wasn’t quite where it had been the last time, so she’d almost missed it.

  Her parents followed her as she raced to it. They gasped, as if they still hadn’t really thought it would be real.

  “Wait, something’s wrong,” she said, squinting to see through the soap bubble waves of magick to what lay beyond it. “This isn’t Mylena.”

  “How do you know that?” her mother asked.

  “Well…it’s sunny there, and…and the snow is gone.”

  The portal was big enough for a person to step through, for her to step through. But she hesitated. What if the Lamia was playing games, and she ended up in yet another alien world, all by herself?

  “Greta!” It came through the rift like sound passing through water, little more than a jumble that she felt rather than heard.

  Isaac!

  Her mother quickly pulled her close and hugged her tightly. “You’re going to be the best queen anybody ever saw,” she said, and kissed Greta’s forehead.

  Her father hugged her, too. “Knock ’em dead, my girl.”

  “I love you, guys,” she murmured, her gaze snapping back to the portal. Was it getting smaller? “Thank you for believing in me,” she said quickly, edging closer to the rupture of space. “Tell Drew I said good-bye, and that I’ll miss him like crazy. I’ll miss you all.”

  This was it. It was really happening. She waved good-bye one last time.

  And then she stepped through.

  Epilogue

  Her wedding day was going to be clear and beautiful.

  The suns were just coming up over the horizon, making the green canopy of the Goblin Forest shine with health. When she’d returned four months ago, the recovery had already been well under way. The snow had melted quickly, and the ash and charcoal had helped to birth an entirely new world. The Great Mother had outdone herself.

  She’d gotten up super early today, because she was just too nervous to sleep. She supposed all brides felt the same, but not all of them were also becoming queen of Mylena as part of their wedding ceremony.

  Besides, she’d had something important to do this morning.

  The sound of footsteps about a hundred feet behind her made her smile. “You’re getting better,” she called out.

  Ethan tromped out from the thick greenery with a grin. “I almost had you. You didn’t even notice me follow you out of the castle this time.”

  She’d noticed, but that was because she made it a point to notice where her people were. It was still second nature to protect them, even though they had convinced themselves that the future�
�soon to be current—queen of Mylena was the one who needed protecting.

  Ethan had become her Captain of the Queen’s Guard, and he was well suited to the position, even though he was still learning. They were learning together in fact. She was learning how to be a good teacher, and he was learning how to successfully protect a human girl who didn’t think she needed protection.

  Wyatt and Siona had taken over the job of hunting the Lost. It still made her sad that she wouldn’t be able to continue to save them. The good part was that after she took Agramon through the portal, the curse had broken. No Myleans would go Lost from that point forward, but the Lost who had remained couldn’t be saved, and it was her fault.

  The Lamia had taken Isaac’s ability. A magick portal for a magick power. He said they were lucky the witch hadn’t realized that he would have given her whatever she’d asked for, because he might even have given up Mylena…or his life.

  The guilt weighed heavily on her. She might have given up her family and all that that entailed, but she felt as if she’d gained so much more when she stepped through that portal…but it was at the expense of the Lost.

  Isaac refused to let her dwell on it. He insisted the guilt was his to bear and his alone. But on a day like today when everything should be perfect and they should all be able to look to the future with hope and joy, she needed to acknowledge the sacrifices they’d both made. As much as they’d won the war, they’d failed Mylena in some ways, too.

  “Well, come on,” she said to Ethan and turned back around. She didn’t bother telling him not to follow her anymore. Ordering him home never did any good. And he’d turned out to be a good friend, so she didn’t mind him hanging around.

  “Where are you going, Greta?” And at least he didn’t call her “danem.” “Shouldn’t you already be getting ready for the ceremony?”

  She grimaced. “It doesn’t take an entire day to get ready for a wedding,” she said. Although even here in Mylena, where primping and fussing wasn’t really a thing, it probably would take a whole day…yet another reason why she’d been awake and out of the castle before the horde of castle maids—led by Siona—had descended.