The Mortal Falls

by Anna Durand

  "You are only safe as long as you remain within the wards. They are magical spells that prevent anyone else from entering my home." He threw his hands up, eyes going wild and sparking with electric blue and searing white. The colors of fear. He shook his head and his dark hair quivered around his face. "I cannot protect you out there."

  "You said you'd never abandon me."

  He jerked his head up, eyes intent on me. "I will return for you."

  I moved closer but did not touch him. His fear unnerved me, and a compelling urge to soothe him flowed through me, softening my voice. "Nevan, think about it. What happens if Skeiron kills you this time? I'll be stuck here with no way out."

  Though he didn't react, I glimpsed something indefinable in his eyes that told me he'd recognized the truth of our situation and knew I was right.

  I reached for him, but he spun away from me, clutching his head in his hands as he stalked back and forth across the room, his pace increasing with each circuit. He thrashed his head, muttering things I couldn't make out. He might've been speaking another language, or just mumbling nonsense. When his pace turned frenetic, I thrust out a hand to halt him.

  My fingers curled around his bicep, I stroked my thumb over his skin. "There's a risk either way. If I go with you, at least I'll know what happens to you — and vice versa."

  He turned his face up to me, the anguish there tearing at my heart.

  I threaded my fingers between his. "I want to be with you, whatever happens."

  A moment — maybe two or three or ten — in which neither of us spoke or moved. We regarded each other, fingers and gazes entwined, unwilling to sever the connection yet unable to bridge the gap between us. Just when I feared he'd zip away, leaving me here alone, he folded me into his arms and said, "I wish to be with you as well. Whatever comes."

  "Good. Because I'm way too stubborn to let you have your way."

  "I suppose I must accept that." He swaddled me tighter in his arms. "You cannot ignore the truth any longer. You are the Janusite."

  "That's ridiculous." Plastered to him, I suddenly became aware of our nudity. Of my nudity. I scrambled out of his embrace and said, "I can't fight Skeiron in the buff. Where are my clothes?"

  He waved toward a cushy chair. My clothes were stacked on the seat, neat and clean.

  As I hurried toward my clothing, Nevan remained glued in place. I yanked my clothes on with violent movements, my hands shaking faintly — whether from fear of the battle to come or fear of considering the possibility I was the Janusite, I couldn't say. By the time I had my boots laced, I remembered my derringer and began frantically combing the room for it, going to so far as to drop to my knees and peer under the bed. When I came up empty, I clambered to my feet and muttered. "Shit."

  Nevan flew to me — whoosh, he was there. "What is it?"

  "I lost my gun."

  He held out one hand and my gun poofed into his palm, tucked inside its holster.

  I plucked the holster from his hand, slipping it inside my waist band and clipping it onto my jeans.

  "You feel safer with it," he said.

  "Sure. I like my gun." I rose onto tiptoes to peck his cheek. "But I don't really feel safe unless I'm with you."

  He studied me as if I'd babbled in gibberish.

  I smoothed my shirt, but the outline of my holster still showed. "Time to fight Skeiron, eh? Guess we better get moving. Don't suppose you have a plan this time."

  "In a manner of speaking." He cranked one corner of his mouth into a expression of dismay. "I rid the world of Skeiron whatever the cost, and if necessary, I will bargain with him to save you."

  "Bargain? No. I forbid you to do it."

  "Alas, I don't always do as I'm told." He ran a finger down my jawline, to tap my chin. "I will give up my freedom, my life, my soul, for one reason alone. For you."

  "I don't want you to. You're already enslaved, who knows what Skeiron would demand for this. And if I'm the Janusite, he won't bargain at all."

  "Perhaps. But I will try — for you." He edged closer, until I had to bend my head back to meet his gaze, and said, "Not for the Janusite. For you. Lindsey Astrid Porter."

  I screwed up my mouth. "How do you know my middle name?"

  "Your mother told me."

  "Never say it again. It's goofy."

  "But it's charming. Do you know its meaning?" When I shrugged, he told me, "It means beloved goddess."

  "If you say so."

  "You are a goddess," he said, "in every way. And you are beloved, by your family and friends."

  His eyes grew… misty? Dear lord.

  "And by me as well," he added.

  Nevan's confession set my stomach to fluttering, hardly a useful state to be in considering the upcoming battle. "Getting back to Skeiron, we need some kind of plan."

  Nevan let out a frustrated grumble. "What would you have me do? I have no chance of acquiring an endued weapon before we encounter Skeiron."

  "I'm not exactly unarmed." I patted the holster inside my jeans. "I know you'd rather I hide under the bed, but I was helpful last time you went to war with Skeiron."

  "Helpful? You came close to dying and indebted yourself to a leprechaun."

  "Well," I said, "have you got a better idea?"

  "I have no ideas."

  He sounded so desolate, I longed to pull him into my arms and kiss away his anguish. "How about if I give you permission to whisk me away anytime you deem it necessary, provided I'm in serious danger?"

  "That would be acceptable, though not preferable."

  "In that case, you have my permission — exactly as I outlined it." I considered my options for a moment, then said, "I've got an idea."

  One of his brows arched. "I imagine I won't approve."

  "Probably not." I slanted toward him, angling my head back to meet his gaze. "But look at it his way. You've got no other options, so you might as well try my crazy idea."

  "Which is?"

  "Gather my allies."

  His lip curled as his head popped backward. "Mortals? Against the king of the sylphs?"

  "Hey!" I nudged his shin with my boot. "This mortal saved your ass. Don't get snooty about it."

  "Snooty?"

  "Yeah, it means uppity." I lifted my shirt hem to reveal my holstered derringer. "I have a gun and my parents are well armed. The sheriff owes me a big one. Hell, we might even get some heavy artillery, if I play the guilt card heavy enough."

  "Four mortals will not be enough — "

  "And there's Tris." At Nevan's disbelieving look, I explained, "I'm positive he will help. The kid's not all that bad."

  Nevan sniffed, with a haughty bob of his head. "I stand corrected. Four mortals, an irritating fae, and me. Salvation, at last."

  "Better odds than last time, at least."

  He scratched his head. His face twisted into a mixture of agony and severe annoyance. Finally, he threw his head back and groaned. "All right. We try your plan."

  "Good." I extended my hand to him. "Let's go."

  "One moment."

  I started to balk, but his look of intense concentration stopped me. He stared into nothing, eyes distant, body taut and erect.

  Metal plates materialized around his limbs.

  I choked on a gasp. He'd conjured a freaking suit of armor.

  The metal shone bright silver, with feathery veins of bronze and gold shot through it. A matching helmet appeared on his head, with the face plate flipped up, and leather boots affixed with plates forged from the same metal encased his feet and ankles. His sword, the one I'd used on Skeiron, took shape in his hand.

  I slid my tongue over my lower lips as I scanned him from head to toe. "If you want to have sex again before we go, I'm game."

  His smile was sensual and very, very intimate. "Later."

 
When he held his hand out to me, I took it. He zipped us out of his home.

  My feet touched down on solid earth, in the woods, at the base of a low hill. "Barely even felt it this time."

  "Perhaps you are adjusting."

  I squinted into the darkness. "Where are we?"

  "Outside my home." He hugged me tight. His armor fit so well it was like a much harder version of his skin. "We should have appeared at the portal."

  His confused tone rippled dread through me.

  "Why didn't we?" I asked.

  "I've no idea." He canted his head, as if listening. "I felt energy fire through me. Only once before have I experienced anything like… "

  "What is it?" I whispered, though I wasn't sure why.

  "We must go."

  He vanished.

  I staggered a step, off balance from the loss of his support. Even more than his body, though, the loss of him echoed through a hollow space in my soul. He'd abandoned me.

  No. He would not desert me.

  I felt energy fire through me, he'd said.

  A surge of air blasted over me, setting off an electric thrill of anticipation. "Nevan!"

  I whirled around — and came face to face with Skeiron.

  The king of the sylphs regarded me with a warped smile and eyes bright with cold blues and greens. "I'm afraid Nevan cannot return to you. Unless I command it."

  I spun away.

  He catapulted his body toward me. His arms cinched tight around my torso, strapping my arms to my sides. "Nevan, come here."

  Nevan materialized in front of us, his armor gone.

  Posture stiff, face blank, eyes dull and still as a stagnant pond, he directed his gaze at his king.

  Awaiting orders. Bound to heed his master's whims.

  I struggled in Skeiron's grasp, but he only tightened his arms around me.

  "You see," he said, "Nevan belongs to me. He serves my will, not yours — and not his own."

  Skeiron shoved me toward Nevan. "Hold her."

  Nevan shackled me in his brawny arms, and for the first time, being pinioned to his body shot an arctic chill through me.

  The sylph king waved a hand. "Strangle her."

  Nevan clamped a single hand around my throat and squeezed until I sputtered, choking on every attempt to inhale. Stars burst in my vision, but blackness swept in from the edges to consume my vision bit by bit. I clawed at Nevan's hand, kicked at his shins. He lifted me off the ground, cranking his hand tighter and tighter. I couldn't breathe, couldn't gurgle, couldn't shake his grip no matter how hard I thrashed. A final, desperate ploy exploded like a bomb in my mind.

  Stop, Nevan, you're killing me.

  When Skeiron dropped a ceiling on me, I'd called to Nevan with my thoughts and he rushed to my side. Now, the solitary response was a weak flicker of red in his eyes and a slight downward tick of his mouth.

  My lungs were on fire. My vision telescoped down until all I could see was Nevan's eyes.

  "Enough," Skeiron said, his tone bored. "I need her alive."

  Releasing my throat, Nevan restrained me with his arms again, holding my feet off the ground. I hacked until my chest throbbed, knowing I could not escape.

  "Show her to me," the king said, and damn, did he have the authoritative, kingly arrogance thing down pat.

  Nevan flipped me around, barring one arm over my hips and the other across my chest, buckling my arms down. I had no leeway to struggle, except with my feet. When I thrashed them, he locked one powerful leg around both of mine, constraining me while balanced on one foot. If he were mortal, I could've knocked him off balance, but his preternatural agility kept him steady even when I struggled in his grasp.

  Skeiron sauntered to us, his freaky eyes on me. "Are you the Janusite?"

  "Does it look like I am?"

  One side of his mouth slanted upward as he slid a finger down my jaw. "Mortals are so predictable. Fighting the inevitable, believing they can win."

  "What about you? Searching for a lowly human female to escort you across the boundary, because you're too impotent to do it yourself."

  "Watch your tongue, mortal."

  "My name is Lindsey Astrid Porter."

  Skeiron kept his gaze nailed to mine but no longer spoke to me. "Nevan, have you witnessed any evidence she is the Janusite?"

  Nevan's muscles went rigid around me, his fingers crooking into my flesh. In a dead voice, he replied, "Yes."

  "Tell me."

  One of his fingers jerked, pressing into my hip. "She — transported me across the boundary."

  My stomach plummeted through the ground, but then I heard the faintest wisp of tension in his voice and hope sparked to life inside me. Though he'd ratted on me, he hadn't mentioned I wasn't touching him when we crossed the boundary. Important or not, the fact would've interested Skeiron for sure. Maybe Nevan was fighting his bargain after all.

  "What else?" the king asked, his voice hushed but thick with a seething fury.

  Nevan's foot fell away from my legs, no longer binding them. "She opened a portal without assistance."

  "Is that all the evidence you've seen which identifies her as the Janusite?"

  "Yes."

  The spark of hope blossomed into a full-blown flame. He hadn't said a thing about the strange energy he sensed in me, or about me calling Tris to help resurrect him. He was still in there, rebelling against his king's hold on him.

  It wasn't enough.

  "Take her to the dungeon," Skeiron said.

  Nevan rocketed us away.

  25

  A horde of footfalls thumped from somewhere in the distance, growing nearer with every thud-thud of synchronized feet. I stared at the doorway of my cell, a gaping maw in the smooth walls hewn from pale bedrock. Were they coming for me?

  Goose bumps prickled my arms and I swept my hands up and down them to banish the chill. A few minutes earlier, after Skeiron and Nevan left me alone here, I'd tried to walk out the doorway — only to smack into an invisible barrier. My head still hurt from the impact and the strangely electrical jolt it zapped through me.

  I was a prisoner. Nevan had brought me to my cell.

  You must never trust me, he'd told me this morning. On this side of the falls had been the qualification. I'd scoffed at the idea because, though he'd confided the details of his bargain with Skeiron and warned me about magical debts, part of me still couldn't accept the reality of it all. Mortals broke their promises every day. No one died from it.

  But I might die today. And Nevan might be forced to kill me.

  I paced the length of the oval room, maybe a dozen feet across, my body crackling with nervous energy as the thudding footsteps outside receded. Relax, I commanded myself. As if that ever worked. Minutes ticked by in my head, each second pounding like a hammer striking an anvil. I checked my watch each time I reached the doorway, before I spun on my heels and started the circuit over again. Ten minutes bled into twenty, then thirty.

  I tried shouting for Nevan. No response.

  Forty-three minutes into my incarceration, my feet aching from repetitive impacts with the hard stone floor, I gave up and slumped against the wall.

  Had I lost Nevan for good? He belonged to Skeiron, or so the king said. But Nevan had defied his king at every turn since the moment we met — until today. I longed to believe his bargain with Skeiron had weakened somehow, granting him a measure of freedom, but then I flashed back to his vacant face when he shackled me in his arms and abducted me to this hellhole — all because the king commanded it.

  Christ, I didn't understand this magic malarkey anywhere near good enough. I was lost in this world.

  Weariness engulfed me and I sank down the wall to the floor. Knees bent to my chest, I let my head droop.

  Thunderous footfalls reverberated in the corridor, growing louder
and sharper, advancing on my cell.

  Pushing up onto my feet, I pressed my back to the wall and sneaked a hand under my shirt to rest it on my derringer's grip. Skeiron either hadn't known what a gun was or dismissed it as no threat, since he'd given it no more than a cursory glance. I'd considered firing a shot at the force field in the doorway, but decided I'd accomplish nothing except deafening myself for several minutes. If the soldiers, or whatever they were, approaching now stopped in for a little chat, maybe I could blast holes in their foreheads and at least incapacitate them long enough to escape.

  I had two rounds in my gun, having lost my ammo boxes somewhere along the way. Based on the racket out there, I was dealing with more than two sylph soldiers. I inched closer to the doorway to peek outside.

  Two by two, the soldiers tromped past my cell door, clad in obsidian armor gilded with metallic ruby streaks. Matching helmets with face shields disguised their faces, and not one of them deigned to glance at me. Maybe Skeiron had tricked all of them into bargains, making them automatons bound to his will.

  Nevan had looked like that. Robotic. Dead. I knew what he was, but he'd never seemed inhuman — until today.

  Soldiers filed past.

  I counted fourteen, every one as tall as Nevan, some taller, and every one of them built like a pro wrestler on steroids.

  For once, I was quite happy to be ignored.

  As the last pair goose-stepped past, an image flared in my mind — Nevan in his armor. It had glistened with bright colors, with life and light, not the obsidian darkness of Skeiron's army.

  I trudged to the center of my cell, turning in a circle, studying the smooth alabaster of the ceiling.

  Why hadn't Nevan come when I hollered? He owed me a life debt. That superseded all other magic, according to him, which should've meant he could penetrate any protection ward Skeiron erected around this underground bunker. Yet Nevan ignored me.

  He wouldn't. If I called, and if he could come, he'd be here in a flash.

  If he could.

  I struggled to recall everything he'd told me about life debts. Only another life debt could erase it, and the debt-holder had nearly unlimited power over the debtor. A virtual slave, he'd said, which sounded sexy as hell at the time. He'd cautioned me to never admit to such an obligation or I'd be at the whim of the debt-holder forever, unless they owed me an equal debt in return. Nevan had sealed his life debt to me with his beautiful words of gratitude and he hadn't saved me life since then. No equal debt.