Rebel Faerie

by Rachel Morgan

  Then I swallow the last remaining elixir and shut my eyes as my power rushes through my body once more. “Every single human in this area will stop fighting, turn back toward the gap between this world and the non-magical world, walk through that gap, and—” I suck in a breath as dizziness rockets through me.

  “Em?” Dash catches me before I fall. Everything becomes disjointed.

  When the dizziness finally subsides and I find myself lying on the ground, I mumble, “Dammit.”

  “Your power’s depleted, isn’t it.”

  “Yes,” I say as I push myself up to sit beside him.

  “It’s okay. You got most of the command out. They’re all leaving.”

  “But that last part is important, Dash. The part about them not returning. Because if they have enough weapons, then maybe they can force their way back in before that enchantment spreads everywhere and they forget there’s another world here.”

  “The Guild didn’t seem to think that was likely.”

  “The Guild didn’t have a better option! They were probably planning to sacrifice more guardians in order to keep all the humans out until that enchantment spreads.”

  “Okay, so we wait here until your Griffin Ability replenishes.”

  “That’s too long,” I mutter, staring past him. “How many people could die in that time?”

  “I know, Em. I get it. But if there’s nothing we can do, then—”

  “Wait,” I say, my eyes returning to him as I grab his arm. “There is more elixir. The vials I left at the castle in the shadow world.” I swallow. “We can go and get those.”

  He groans. “Seriously?”

  “Yes. Calla still has part of the traveling candle we used to get out of the shadow world. It’s in her house at the oasis. We can fetch it, go to the shadow world, get the elixir, and come back here. It’ll be quick.”

  Dash hesitates before saying, “Yeah. Okay. I guess it’s not like Roarke’s going to be there if he’s in the middle of a battle in New York City.”

  A shiver ripples through me as we arrive inside the castle in the shadow world. Has it only been a week or so since Calla and I escaped? It feels like far too many things have happened—far too many things have gone wrong—since then. But everything looks the same here. The empty passageways are varying shades of gray, and tendrils of smoke-like blackness rise here and there. They shift lazily through the air as we hurry along the corridor to the room that was mine for the few days I lived here with Dani.

  Dani. Dead. Her head almost detached.

  I take a steadying breath and shove the images from my mind. “Have you been back here since the whole Velazar thing?” Dash asks.

  “Briefly. Roarke actually captured me after the Guild took you guys. But Calla got me out.”

  “Flip, thank goodness for Calla. That sounds like another story you’ll have to catch me up on when we’re done with all this.”

  “Yeah.” We turn a corner and continue along the corridor. “It was weird, though. For a few days after we escaped, I kept feeling this strange sort of … pull. As if part of me wanted to return to this world. It was only during the first day Calla and I were traveling alone together that I realized what was going on. She said something about ‘home,’ and my automatic first thought was the shadow world. And then I remembered that when Dani and I decided to stay here, I used my Griffin Ability to tell this world it was our home. Clearly my magic took me seriously when I said that. It kinda freaked me out, so I used my ability again and told myself the opposite. That seemed to do the trick.”

  “Good,” Dash says. “’Cause it’s disturbing to think of this world having some kind of pull on you.”

  “I know. Okay, this is the one,” I say, pushing a bedroom door open. I step inside—and the room is bare except for a bed frame and a wardrobe standing open and empty. “Shoot,” I mutter, my heart sinking. “He cleared out my stuff.”

  Beside me, Dash sighs heavily. “I guess it makes sense.”

  “I know, I just figured he wouldn’t be bothered with looking through all the rooms. I thought maybe he’d abandoned this castle—this whole world—since starting to take over the human world. But maybe …” I spin around and head back down the corridor. “Maybe he kept them,” I say to Dash as he catches up to me. “Maybe the vials are in his office.” We hurry back downstairs, turn along another few corridors, and enter the study Roarke was using as his center of operations when I was last here.

  “Good thing no one’s around to stop us,” Dash says, heading for a chest of drawers while I aim for the desk.

  “It makes sense. Roarke’s followers are all fighting for him at Central Park. There’s probably no one left in this—Oh! I found it! There’s one vial here.” I remove the tiny glass container from beside a collection of black candles in the top left drawer.

  “Are you sure it’s the right thing?” Dash asks, hurrying to my side.

  “It’s got my name on it, and it’s the same handwriting, so yes.” I push the vial into the front pocket of my pants—

  —and voices sound from outside the room.

  Dash grabs hold of me and pulls me down behind the desk. I press one hand over my mouth and another against my chest, where my heart thunders way too loudly. “Yes, all fighting has ceased and two of the gaps have been closed now,” Roarke says as his footsteps move into the room. “He informed me just moments ago. It’s a nuisance that the Guild’s figured out how to close off those areas, but I can always give the humans more locations. They can get through to our world in other places and continue their attacks.”

  “And you’re certain they don’t know who you are?” a second man asks. A man with a deeper voice. A man who sounds very much like …

  Unseelie King? Dash mouths.

  I nod. Then I point to his jacket and mouth, Candle.

  Wait, he responds, but he slowly reaches for the candle anyway.

  “No, I’m just another faerie to them,” Roarke says. “A faerie they can’t stand dealing with. But they’ll continue to pay me for the information they want.” He snickers. “They have no idea I’m the one they’ve been trying so hard to remove from Haverton Tower and the surrounding area.”

  “Your Majesty?” a third voice enquires. “The army’s finally made it into the Haverton Tower Hotel.”

  “Good,” the king says. “Let’s go and surprise them.”

  What the hell? Dash mouths.

  A door creaks as it swings open. I lower my head closer to the floor and peer beneath the lower front edge of the desk. It looks as though the door that was opened belongs to a wardrobe on the other side of the room. And within it I see swirling, sparkling magic. Electric blue in the center, with darker bits detaching from the edges and vanishing. A portal just like the one Roarke had in his bathroom back in the Unseelie palace.

  “Send the ink-shades through in ten minutes, Marvyn,” the king says. “Our army will have turned by then, and Roarke and I will be safely out of the way.” And with that, the Unseelie King and his son step into the portal’s swirling magic and disappear.

  The moment they’re gone, Dash rises to his feet. A glittering bow and arrow are in his hands a second later. Marvyn swings around—but the arrow is already flying at him. It strikes his chest, and he stumbles back against the wall before a second arrow pierces him. He slides down to the floor.

  I jump to my feet, my shaking fingers already retrieving the vial from my pocket. “We can’t let the ink-shades through. I’m closing the portal.” I take a sip of the elixir, swallow, and in my next breath I say, “That portal no longer exists.” It pulls my power from me immediately, and a moment later, the portal fizzles away into nothing. But we’ve only solved half the problem.

  “We have to warn everyone that the Unseelies are about to turn on them,” Dash says.

  “Yes. And I have to close that gap. We can do both.” From the desk drawer that’s still open, I grab another traveling candle. “You go to Haverton Tower and warn them. I�
��ll close the gap in the veil.”

  Twenty-Eight

  I race out of the faerie paths and into Chase’s friend’s apartment shouting, “Where’s Bandit? I need a dragon. I need to get to the top of Haverton Tower Hotel, and the faerie paths won’t take me there. I’ve already tried.”

  “What the heck?” Aurora asks, getting up from the couch where she’s been reading a magazine. “I thought you and Dash were—”

  “Done. Closed all the gaps. New emergency.” I turn on the spot, my eyes combing the room for Bandit. “Oh, wait, Imperia’s on the roof.” I come to a stop. “Will she let me ride her without you?”

  “What is going on?” Aurora demands.

  “We were in the shadow world. I heard your father and Roarke. They’re on the same side. The Unseelies are about to turn on everyone, and they wanted to let the ink-shades through, but I closed the portal, and I closed the third gap, and now I have power left over and I need to stop the Unseelies.”

  Aurora gapes at me as I finally take a breath.

  “I’m going now,” I say, spinning around and lifting my stylus to the wall. “I’m taking Imperia. She knows me. It’ll be fine.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Aurora says before I can write a doorway spell.

  “Aurora, you—”

  “You said my father’s there. My father. That he and Roarke are in on this together. The same Roarke who wanted to kill me.”

  “Rora—”

  “I want to be there!” she shouts. “I need to talk to him—to ask him—I don’t know. It’s just … now he’s ruining everything alongside Roarke, and I need to understand why, because I thought our life was pretty awesome the way it was.”

  I breathe out. “Violet and Ryn,” I say. “If they wake up, and—”

  “I wrote them a note. In case I had to leave. Which is exactly what’s happening right now,” she adds as she turns back to the coffee table and grabs her stylus. She hurries back to the wall and writes the spell for a doorway. Moments later, we’re running out of the paths and onto the roof toward Imperia, who seems to be napping in the late afternoon sun. It doesn’t take us long to scramble up her side. Within minutes, we’re clinging to the saddle on her back as she launches off the top of the building and into the sky.

  I wish I could enjoy the rush of being in the air again, but that’ll have to wait for another time. “You can’t miss it,” I say to Aurora. “It’s the tallest hotel.”

  She leans forward and shouts a few commands to direct Imperia. Soon we’re soaring toward the building that, from the air at least, appears to be the nerve center of the entire enchanted area. Plants protrude from every window, magic crackles around it like electricity, and the entire building appears to glow a faint green. I half expect someone to begin shooting magic at us as we swoop toward the roof, but I guess they’re all further down fighting the invading fae army.

  Imperia lands, and we waste no time sliding down onto the roof. The plants have made their way up here too. Creeping vines and thorny bushes and blood-red flowers. “Do you know where we’re going?” Aurora asks as we hurry between the plants toward the large glass room at the center of the roof. There’s a swimming pool inside, and dozens of loungers. No people, of course. I don’t hang out on the tops of hotels very often, but I’m assuming there’s a way to get down into the building from inside that glass room.

  “I think we’re going to the penthouse,” I say to Aurora. “But I could be wrong.”

  “And we can’t open a doorway from here into the building?”

  “I don’t think so. I saw faeries opening doorways down by the park, but it didn’t work when I tried to get up here through—Oh, flip!” I try to duck down as first Roarke and then his father walk around the side of a particularly tall thorn bush. But of course, all the plants surrounding me are short, so there’s nothing to hide behind. I stand straight and shout, “Stop what you’re—

  That sticky white substance. AGAIN! It flattens itself over my mouth and spreads all the way around my head. I try a spark of magic, but this stuff is too thick. Thicker than when Ada threw it at me. I tear at the upper edge to keep it away from my nose, trying to push away the fear that I’m about to be suffocated. Aurora’s hands fly to my face. Her magic burns brightly and heats my skin. I jerk away instinctively.

  “Well, this is a surprise,” King Savyon says, pulling Aurora’s attention away from me. “A little family reunion.”

  “And she brought Emerson,” Roarke adds. “How convenient.”

  Aurora lowers her hands. They clench into fists as she faces her father. “Are you hiding up here while your soldiers do your dirty work?”

  “Not hiding,” the king answers. He rests his hand on the hilt of a sword at his hip. “I’d call it waiting. The Unseelie soldiers who came in here fighting with the Guild and the Seelies have now switched sides. All Unseelies are now fighting together again. For us.” He gestures to Roarke and himself.

  “So the two of you are—what? Back on the same side again?”

  I’m happy for Aurora to keep her family talking while I try to get the magical gag off my face. With any luck, they’ll still be talking by the time I succeed and command Roarke and his father to stop all of this. I risk using a few more sparks, despite the fact that I’m afraid of burning my face, but they don’t do enough for me to tear through the white substance.

  “We’ve always been on the same side,” Roarke says to Aurora. Then, in what must surely be a coincidence, he assumes the same stance as his father: hand on sword hilt, one foot slightly forward. It would be comical if the situation weren’t so dire. “Father and I have been planning this for years. Waiting for the time when someone decided to tamper with the veil again. Waiting for the moment we could begin to take over two worlds. One for me; one for Father.”

  “What about wanting the shadow world to increase? And stealing Em’s power so you could use it to claim that world? I thought that’s what you wanted.”

  “Firstly,” Roarke says, “I wanted Emerson’s power for a lot of reasons. Claiming that world was only part of it. We would then expand the shadow world at the expense of the human world. We always planned to have someone powerful enough to stop it from consuming the faerie world, of course. That’s what Ada’s wall of glass was for, to protect our side of the veil. But then Emerson messed things up.” His hard gaze shifts to me, and I pause in my struggling, alert for any attack that might be about to come my way.

  “Perhaps you should strengthen that gag she’s struggling with,” the king suggests.

  “Perhaps,” Roarke answers. He raises his hand, makes a squeezing motion in the air, and I sense the white substance tightening around my face. “She’s fairly useless with ordinary magic, though. I doubt that gag’s going anywhere. But as I was saying, Emerson—” he returns his hand to the pommel of his sword “—you ruined things with the veil, but I’ve actually been meaning to thank you for it. You helped me see that the shadow world was never going to be a perfect world. It was never a world at all, in fact, and there was only so much I could do with magic to change that. But the human world … well, it’s a real world. It has an atmosphere, it has earth and vegetation and water. The only thing that’s wrong with it is that it’s full of humans. But I’m working on that problem.”

  “And you’re making a mess of both worlds in the process,” Aurora says bitterly.

  “Yes,” the king says. “The mess is part of the plan. We get fae and humans to fight each other. They do the hard work, drastically reducing the population on both sides of the veil. And when they’re done, each world will be far easier to rule than before.”

  “That’s … just …”

  “A wonderful plan?” the king asks.

  Behind the gag, I move on to a different tactic. I try with all my might to pull my lips far enough apart to murmur a command. But the stupid white stuff is pressed so firmly against them, it seems impossible.

  “Dear Aurora,” the king says, though there
’s nothing loving in his gaze, “now that you know our plan, would you like to join us on our side? We can give you anything you want, you know.”

  I shake my head furiously at her while trying uselessly to shout no. She doesn’t think he would actually share anything with her, does she? He’ll probably kill her as soon as she gets anywhere near him, and then they’ll tie me up until they figure out how to use me. I want to hurl my magic at him. I want to take every knife from inside my jacket and throw them at him. But I know he’ll attack right back, with far more strength and skill, and I need to get this damn gag off before that happens.

  “No,” Aurora says, to my relief. “I don’t want any part of your plans. I don’t want a ruined world. The only thing I want is this.” She tilts her chin up a little before continuing. “I want to know who I really am. I want to know who that witch was. The one who stole me, started raising me, and then left me at the Unseelie palace. I want to ask her about my real family.”

  “The witch?” The king chuckles. “You can’t ask her anything. She’s dead.”

  Silence follows before Aurora manages to say, “What? How?”

  “I killed her myself when her job was done.”

  “You—so—she never actually abandoned me there?”

  “No. We bought you from her. You were a vessel. You carried an immense amount of power that your mother and I paid her to gather for us. She dropped you off, we handed over her payment, and then we killed her. Discreetly, of course. We removed all the power we needed from you, slowly over the course of several weeks as the witch had advised. Someone was supposed to kill you once your purpose was fulfilled, but your mother intervened. She felt sorry for you. She’d come to love you, in fact. I thought it was absolutely preposterous to adopt you as our own. Who knew what kind of lineage you might have come from. But Amrath was quite insistent.” He sighs. “One has to choose one’s battles, and I decided this one wasn’t worth it. Amrath wanted you, so I let her have you.”