by D. N. Hoxa
The truth was terrifyingly simple: yes, I would.
“You’re going to have to fill me in. I know next to nothing about the fairy realm.” And about the bad guy. And about the good guys. I’d never felt less prepared in my life. Even waking up without a plan in the morning was pretty terrifying for me, and a plan was the last thing on my mind now.
But I was choosing to trust Julian. Everything else would have to come second.
“I will.” He looked down at his feet. “I wanted to…” His voiced trailed off.
“What?”
“The leaders are almost here,” Bender called.
“Bone leaders?” Why would they come to my office in the middle of the night when the ECU was about to come in, guns blazing?
“I called them. The ECU will not hesitate to shoot me dead and forget about the reward. If the leaders are here, they won’t have a choice but to pay us,” Bender said, a sad smile on his face.
He looked at me from the office like he wanted to tell me something, too, but he didn’t. He clamped his mouth shut instead. What the hell was it with these two? I wished they’d just spill their guts so I wouldn’t have to wonder.
“They’re here,” Bender whispered after a few seconds.
Shivers washed down my back as Julian opened one of the cylinders and poured some grey powder on the palm of his hand. Then he looked at me, and finally, I could see the Julian I used to know in his eyes. The passion, the determination, the charm—all of it was there again. I had no idea whether to be scared or glad about it.
“Ready?” he asked.
How could I speak when I wasn’t? So I just nodded.
“Hurry up!” Bender called. He’d already drawn out his gun.
Julian began to chant fast and to throw the powder around his feet. My heart almost leaped right out of my chest. I bit my tongue when the urge to cry caught me off guard. A black hole appeared right in the doorway to my room. Behind it, Bender’s eyes grew wide. He could see it, too.
“Charge it,” Julian said.
When I closed my eyes, it felt like I flew right out of my body. My magic burned bright orange. Even it wasn’t sure if it wanted to be released from me, but I gave it no choice. Taking in a deep breath, I gathered two imaginary fistfuls of magical fire, and I threw them forward with my mind.
When my eyes opened again, I could no longer see Bender. The black hole threatening to swallow me took up the whole door.
Julian threw the cylinders on my couch and grabbed my hand. “Trust me,” he whispered.
With a nod, I gave him the go. Pulling me by the hand, he didn’t give me another second to think. The darkness enveloped us. In it, I lost both myself and Julian.
***
Getting through a portal had definitely not gotten any easier. My stomach turned like I’d been in a roller coaster, even after I landed on one knee on the other side. I thought I’d find myself in Julian’s room like last time. Instead, the first thing I saw was dirt.
Grabbing me by the arms, Julian pulled me to my feet. He searched my face, worry filling his eyes. For the first time since he came back to me, in those moments, I felt like I knew him. It was a damn good feeling, too.
“I’m all right,” I whispered because I didn’t trust my voice just yet. My stomach was still turning, but I couldn’t help but notice my surroundings through the corner of my eye.
I remembered looking out the window from Julian’s room the last and only time I was in the fairy realm. I remembered the blue sky and the four moons in it. I remembered a sparkly white wall in the distance, and the trees. The trees full of red leaves. I’d dreamt about that place many times back on Earth.
That’s why I was certain that the place I was in now wasn’t it.
The sky was grey, full of angry clouds that hid the four moons, if they were still there. The trees…there were no trees. Just dirt. And the wall I remembered was nowhere to be seen.
But to my right, there was a river. I called it that because I couldn’t think of another word for it then. Though it was just ten feet away from me, it still felt like looking at a dream. Half of it was water, so pure you could see everything below. The blue and red algae, the green leaves that floated with the current, and the strange silver fish.
The other half was frozen. A clear line divided the river, though its bed was one. The ice on the other side looked grey. Crystal flowers decorated its sides as if they’d really bloomed naturally and weren’t carved out of ice.
The sight of it was so surreal that I shook my head at myself.
“The Tears of Truth,” Julian whispered, answering my unspoken question. “It used to divide the Courts, turning to ice in the Winter Solstice, and water in the Summer. Now, it’s both.”
It was both the rainbow, full of hope, and desperation, cold and all consuming.
“What happened to it?”
“Galladar,” Julian said reluctantly. Shivers washed down my back. “We need to get going, Winter.”
“Go where?” There was nothing I could see, and I looked all around us carefully.
“To the resistance,” Julian whispered and grabbed my hand in his. “There’s a lot you need to know. You—” but he was cut off.
“Julius Kendar Rawmoon.”
The voice seemed to have come from the depths of the ground. My whole body vibrated at the sound of it. Julian froze completely, his hand turning as cold as ice, just when I thought that the voice had only been my imagination. I’d just looked around and nobody had been there.
But now, when I turned my head to look back, I saw.
The fairy was big, muscles bulging under his shirt sewn with golden strings. His pale blonde hair reached below his shoulders and his violet eyes were small and up-tilted, which gave you the impression that he was always smiling evilly. He was a beautiful man, and power oozed through his every pore. It didn’t help that he’d seemed to appear out of nowhere. I’d had no idea fairies could do that.
I looked at Julian, but his eyes were stuck on the fairy across from us, and the other six right behind him, forming half a circle. They had swords attached to their hips, but their clothes were sewn with silver instead of gold.
None of the others looked as impressive as the golden fairy. As powerful or as authoritative. That’s how I knew that it was him. I was standing right across from Galladar. The blood in my veins seemed to freeze as the reality of the situation slowly sunk in, and the fairies walked towards us with their chins raised.
We’d been caught. What did that mean? That we were going to die? Be imprisoned? Tortured?
“Such a sneaky little Prince,” Galladar said when he was five feet away from us. With his hands on his hips, he looked at Julian like he was a lesser creature. Anger began to battle my fear as a sense of protectiveness made me want to reach for my gun and empty all my bullets at this guy’s face.
“I knew something was wrong when your body wasn’t among the last men we killed,” Galladar continued. “But I’m curious because I couldn’t find you anywhere.” He raised a golden brow. “Where exactly were you? And who is this fairy?”
When his eyes met mine, it took all of my willpower not to step back. I raised my head to tell him that he didn’t intimidate him, but I fooled him only as much as I fooled myself.
“Does it matter where I was?” Julian said, his voice leaking venom. “It doesn’t. What matters is if you’re done destroying our home.”
Pushing his head back, Galladar laughed. “Destroying? I’m merely reconstructing it! Pulling out the bad weeds and making sure we claim back the respect we deserve among realms. It is you and your kind who have destroyed us for far too long.”
“Is that what helps you sleep at night? Because it’s bullshit. Even your men know it,” Julian hissed, a sick smile on his face. His eyes shone though there was no sun in the sky. He looked like a possessed version of the real Julian.
“I have no trouble sleeping, especially after I have your head,” Galladar said.
> I could have been mistaken, but the tips of his fingers began to sparkle. My beads buzzed and my hands itched to grab my gun and a knife. If this guy thought we were going down without a fight, he was dead wrong.
“Let’s just cut the shit and get to the point. What type of a guy are you? Do you let your servants fight for you, or do you get your hands dirty yourself?”
I definitely sounded braver than I felt. But I figured, he was the reason I was there in the first place. Might as well fight him now. Sooner was always better than later. It didn’t matter that I knew nothing about him. I didn’t need his fucking CV to kill him.
Yes, that’s what I told myself because pissing my pants just wasn’t an option.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before,” Galladar said, seemingly unimpressed by my speech. “Who are you?”
“I’m Winter Wayne, and no, you’ve never seen me before. But you’ll never see me again, either.”
“Winter,” Julian warned.
I ignored him. We were going to die, weren’t we? Might as well do it with some balls. I refused to cower back or beg anyone for my life. My choices had brought me to that point. My choices were going to send me wherever I was going to go next.
“You pesky little bug,” Galladar said with a smile. “You speak to make me kill you faster.”
“I speak to make you try.” My, my, do I sound tough.
“She’s no one,” Julian said suddenly. “No one you need to concern yourself with. You wanted me. You have me. That’s all you need.” And he took a step forward.
What the hell?
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“Please, just stop speaking. Run at the first chance you get,” he said.
I could have laughed. Really. “Are you fucking with me? You brought me here so I can run?”
Julian turned to me and grabbed me by the arms. “He wasn’t supposed to be here. We were supposed to have time.”
The look in his eyes was desperate. He shook me as if he needed me to understand, so badly. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. We were there, in the fairy realm, to fight the same guy who was in front of us. Why would he want me to run now?
“I sensed your power and learned it by memory,” Galladar called, his voice echoing in my head.
Julian closed his eyes. A single tear slid down his cheek. My mouth went completely dry. That tear fell in the center of my heart and shattered my entire body.
“I suppose I should thank you for giving me a way back into Earth. They deserve to pay as much as you for the way they’ve constructed history.”
Galladar’s voice grew stronger. He was walking towards us.
“I’m sorry,” Julian whispered, and he pushed me back with all his strength. “Run.”
It all happened so fast, I’m still not sure about the small details. One second, Julian was in front of me, and the next, he spun around, stretched his arms, and Galladar slid back through the dirt, the grin never leaving his face.
The six other fairies stood behind, their hands on the handles of their swords, and they watched. They watched Galladar and Julian fighting.
But it wasn’t fighting. Not really. Julian ran towards the fairy with all his strength but hit an invisible wall, right after he was thrown back by an invisible wave of energy. I didn’t know if he was in pain because I couldn’t see his face, but it couldn’t have been pleasant. And when he stretched his arms again, and threw his magic against Galladar, the fairy didn’t seem to even feel it. Instead, he continued to walk towards Julian.
It was enough. Getting my guns out, I fired before I could blink twice. Each gun had twelve bullets.
Ten seconds later, all of those bullets fell to the floor. They hit some invisible wall that seemed to block everything from reaching Galladar. There were no sparks—nothing. The bullets just lost their velocity and fell on the ground.
But that was okay. While he attacked Julian, who refused to fall down on his knees and tried to fight back as much as he could, I grabbed two of my knives and ran forward. I didn’t care if Julian wanted me to run. I’d rather die than leave him there like that. Sending my beads forward, I aimed for Galladar’s face, half expecting them to stop on that invisible wall he had going on.
They didn’t.
Titanium, meet fairy face.
Saying that Galladar was surprised was putting it mildly. The other fairies raised their swords, which were surprisingly long by the way, and made for me, but he stopped them with a wave of his hand. Julian looked back at me and squeezed his eyes shut, as if he couldn’t believe I was still there.
And Galladar looked at me. Really looked at me for the first time.
His mouth opened, but I wasn’t interested in hearing what he had to say. I powered my beads again, moving them with my fingers, until they drew blood on his left cheek. A storm grew in the fairy’s eyes. He took a single step back and raised one hand, and my beads….stopped moving.
I stretched my fingers, and my beads shot forward, but they were hitting something. They couldn’t get through. I tried pulling them back, and they did come to me, only not as they usually did. Not in perfect formation. It was almost like an invisible bubble had wrapped around them, and they were stuck in there together.
Shit. My beads. My only reliable weapons.
Chanting the first holding spell that came through my mind, I began to run towards him again. But Galladar raised his hand again and something hit me right on my forehead. It took all I had to land on my feet right back where I was.
Julian grabbed me by the arm and pulled me behind him, just as I threw a knife right at the fairy’s face. The curvy blade was a hair way from the tip of his nose when it stopped midair. It stopped, then fell to the ground as if it were light as a leaf.
I thought I was afraid before. Well, now I was terrified. My God, Julian hadn’t exaggerated a single thing.
“Take them,” Galladar spit. He was no longer smiling, but I couldn’t decided whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.
The other fairies strode towards us.
“No!” Julian shouted. “You have me. You don’t need her.”
But Galladar didn’t seem to have even heard him. “You fight them, you die,” he simply said.
I already had another set of knives in my hands, and I waited for the other fairies to approach while I tried to break the bubble my beads were in. Every time I sent them forward, though, they bounced right back into each other. I didn’t want to start worrying just yet, but damn it, it was hard.
Julian sighed loudly when the fairies were two feet away from us. “Drop them, Winter,” he said.
My jaw touched the ground. “Are you out of your mind?” I hissed.
“Drop them, please.” And to shock me even more, he raised his hands like a good little puppy, and one of the fairies tied some sort of a rope around his wrists.
Was he out of his mind?
I seriously considered the option until he turned around and met my eyes. His were begging me. Please, Winter. Drop the knives. Don’t fight.
I don’t think I’ve ever been more confused in my life. He’d brought me to the fairy realm to fight! Now, he wanted to let the fairies take us?
“Julian,” I said, but he shook his head. By that time, two fairies were already by my sides, just waiting for me to give them my arms so they could tie me up. My eyes filled with tears as I held Julian’s. This wasn’t fair. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t just give up.
But he already had. And it was my fault. He was giving up because he didn’t want them to hurt me. So then why the hell had he brought me there in the first place?
My knives hit the ground. The fairies lost patience when they realized I wasn’t going to offer them my arms voluntarily. So they took all my other knives and my guns, and they tied me up. When they pulled me forward, I’d forgotten all about Galladar. All I was able to think about was that Julian was going to die, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Eight
een
The fairies didn’t bother to put anything over our heads as they pushed us forward through the mud. I had no idea where we were or where we were going. All I knew was that my hands were tied behind my back with a rope that wrapped around my wrists tighter every time I tried to loosen it. Julian walked beside me, but I couldn’t even look at him. Wherever they were taking us, it was going to suck. It was going to be the end.
Add the fact that Galladar had claimed he now knew how to get to Earth, and I had enough on my shoulders to drown me if I stepped into the rainbow river to my left.
We walked to the side of it and its colors drew my eyes every few seconds, as if it wanted me to appreciate the beauty. Instead, I focused on everything I couldn’t see around. Land stretched wide in front of us, and we must have walked at least two hours before I began to notice something. My legs burned and I was so thirsty, I could have drunk the river dry, but I kept my mouth shut and tried to figure out how Galladar had managed to just pop up behind us before and why they hadn’t used the same way to get us where they wanted us.
The structure ahead looked small at first, but the closer we got, the more I realized how big it was. A sharp point at the top of it that looked like a giant needle trying to pierce the grey sky was made out of something white and full of glitter, exactly like the wall around Julian’s castle that I’d seen through his window the last time I’d been in the fairy realm.
Half an hour later and a lot more of those sharp tips came into view. I could hardly believe my eyes. It was some sort of a castle, only it had no structure. It seemed to have been carved in…whatever that white, glittery thing was. It had holes for windows and doors. The whole thing gave you the impression that it had dripped down from the sharpest, tallest point right in the middle of it.
There was nothing around it, except behind. Houses, half broken, all made of regular wood, stood not fifty feet behind the glittery castle. My heart picked up the beating as I tried to look and see someone. Anyone other than the six fairy guards behind us. But there was no one to see. The houses looked empty.