by Chloe Jacobs
Siona tossed a torch right at her. Greta fumbled. Her heart stopped beating and she caught her breath, but she bent and caught it. Thank the Great Mother for good reflexes. The inferno that would have engulfed them all if she hadn’t…
Siona shook her head. “That was too close, danem.”
She didn’t dare respond, turning to jab her torch at the wraith in the window.
Wyatt was headed to the other window, where two more wraiths were now climbing through. Dryden and his warriors manned the doorway. Wraiths hissed and cowered but didn’t seem interested in going anywhere. Suddenly, one of the faeries screamed. Greta twisted around in time to see Siona standing with Dryden over the fallen warrior as a throng of wraiths piled inside. The salt line had scattered, leaving the way open.
Both Leila and Byron were breaking more table legs. All the faeries had torches now, but there were too many wraiths. They surrounded Siona.
The only substantial part of the wraiths were those teeth, and Siona cried out as a set sank into her arm. Greta’s stomach heaved, and the magick heaved along with it. Another wraith latched itself onto Siona’s throat. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and her lips moved in a soundless cry.
Wyatt was closer to Siona than anyone else. “Watch the window!” he called to Byron and crossed the room in two long strides.
He waved his torch in front of the wraiths that had started feeding on Siona. It was obvious that he was trying not to hurt her, but the wraiths practically ignored him. The threat of fire wasn’t enough to scare them away now that the blood was flowing.
Without thinking, Greta started wiggling the imaginary cork she’d been using to keep the magick contained. Just a little, just enough to let a tendril slip out for her to test.
She drew back with a gasp, disgusted that it was now instinct to reach for it for any little reason.
It was addictive in the worst way, and she was horrified to realize she’d been scheming against herself, looking for reasons to use it. If it didn’t kill her this time, she would find a reason to use it again. And again. She would keep setting it free until it claimed her completely.
It swelled against her, pushing outward like a bloated stomach. Oh, no. She gritted her teeth. Her heart thundered with fear and loathing. How could she have been so stupid? So weak? So blind?
The cork wasn’t as effective as it used to be, or maybe it had never been under control to begin with and she’d only been deluding herself.
The urge to blast the wraiths with every flame her body could generate was blinding. The only thing holding her back was the knowledge that she’d lose control of it all. Wyatt would have to help Siona.
“Do it.” Siona told him, her voice a broken croak that Greta could barely hear.
Wyatt’s jaw clenched. He nodded. Greta bit her tongue to keep from screaming at him to be careful.
Siona’s fists tightened, but her knees wobbled. She was weakening. Wyatt jabbed the flaming torch through the wraiths, holding the end right up against her side. The sound of the wraiths screeching threatened to crack Greta’s eardrums.
The creatures finally let Siona go. Wyatt threw an arm around her before she fell to the floor, but it looked like she was unconscious. He beat the wraiths back with his torch as they threatened to converge again.
More of them crowded through the window. They were going to be overrun and there was nowhere to go but all the way down. She considered it, but even if they survived without broken bones, the blood wraiths were on the ground, too. In the dark, they could walk right into a pack of them and not even realize it until the first drop of blood fell.
“There are too many,” she called. The wraiths were even starting to tear at the walls to get in. They were on the roof, too, and she could only assume they crawled over every branch of the tree as well.
An ominous crack rent the night, and one of the outside walls was torn away. Countless pairs of glowing red eyes filled the dark space, clawed hands reaching inside as another spot in the corner of the room was opening up.
Greta frantically ran scenarios through her head and came up short every time. Except for one. One shot. If she was stupid enough to risk it—and risk everyone else, too.
The air crackled with more than just the flaming torches. The beast with its claws in her spirit cracked that great eye open.
Chapter Sixteen
Someone shook her.
Wyatt. He shook her so hard her head snapped back, making her realize she had no idea when he’d crossed the room, when he’d started shaking her, or how long he’d been calling her name in that high, frenzied voice.
The fine hairs on her arms stood on end as if she’d been zapped by electricity. Her skin was tight and ultrasensitive, and Wyatt’s hands were almost painful.
“Greta, dammit!” he yelled. She blinked and shook her head as the black cloud receded and she felt that waking eye in her mind close to a thin slit, watchful but restful.
“Greta!”
“What? What happened?” She gripped Wyatt’s arms to stop him shaking her. Her mouth fell open. The wraiths in the tree house were gone, but the entire place was ablaze.
He gripped her face with both hands and shouted her name again, still begging her to snap out of it. Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no. She’d lost control again.
She held onto his forearms, desperate for an anchor. “Okay. I’m okay,” she muttered, totally not okay. “What the—”
“What the hell was that?” he yelled. He shook his head and tugged her forward. “Never mind. We have to get out of here.”
Oh, God, he wasn’t wrong. She pulled back, but he let her go only after a long look into her eyes.
The blood wraiths screamed all around them, their inhuman wails echoing in the night and ringing in her ears. Dryden beat back the flames near an emergency trapdoor that had been uncovered in the center of the floor.
Siona was on the floor. She looked weak and cradled her arm close to her, but at least she’d regained consciousness. She stared at Greta with an intense look of focus.
Greta ran forward and fell to her knees in front of the hatch.
Blood wraiths immediately swarmed the door, but when they got to her they hissed and seemed to back away. Wyatt shoved his torch through the opening. Fire had already started to eat away at whatever happened to be supporting this structure, at the tree itself. She coughed, thick smoke searing her lungs.
The whole house shook. Wyatt threw himself over her. His body flinched and tightened as a shower of sparks and burning wood crashed down over them both from above.
When there was a break in the chaos, she pushed him aside and quickly brushed the glowing embers from his back, then tried to focus on finding clean air to breathe. “Everybody out,” she called, holding the trapdoor open and gesturing for Wyatt to go first with the torch. She wanted him to help Siona, who was still looking pale, maybe even close to the breaking point.
Wyatt grabbed Greta’s hand. “Not without you,” he yelled over the roaring fire.
“I should remain with you as well,” Siona said with a frown that put deep grooves in her forehead.
“You can barely move,” she yelled, shaking her head. All this was her fault, even if she couldn’t remember exactly how, exactly what, had happened. She had to make sure everyone got out. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Neither of them liked it, but she shoved them toward the opening, and there wasn’t time to argue. Wyatt helped Siona, carrying a torch at the same time, being solicitous of her injuries as only he could be. The surprise in Siona’s eyes as she looked between him and Greta was just as obvious. She wasn’t quite certain how to react. Was this the first time anyone had shown such outward concern for her well-being?
“Keep each other safe,” Greta ordered. Wyatt looked like he wanted to say something, but she couldn’t let him. If they were all going to get out of this thing alive tonight, she had to keep him strong and focused on something other than her.
One hand on the t
rapdoor, Greta was already ushering out Leila’s handmaid, Jessa, who’d been standing close by, her eyes wide and fearful. Next came one of the faerie warriors. He’d been injured and slowly lowered himself through the opening, leaving smears of blood across the wood grain. A wraith suddenly charged forward, drawn most likely by the scent of the faerie’s blood.
She automatically swiveled to face the threat. The wraith hissed and snapped, but surprisingly, it did not take another gliding, misty step toward her.
She grabbed a long piece of burning wood and swiped at the creature, but got the distinct impression that the fire wasn’t keeping the thing away now, not when the fire was everywhere.
No, it was scared to come closer. Scared of her.
On the edges of her attention, she heard the faerie tumbling through the branches. Had he been attacked by wraiths in the tree? The blood would almost certainly draw more of them to threaten her friends—assuming they weren’t surrounded down there already.
The prince and princess had to still be here somewhere. She searched the smoke for them, coughing like crazy, lungs burning. Her chest hurt and her eyes watered. She couldn’t see anything but a blurry, twisting inferno of red and black. Something grabbed her.
Hold onto me, said a voice in her head suddenly. She gasped and jerked back, but Byron gripped her wrist. He was right in front of her. His jaw clenched and his gaze bored into hers.
Hold. On. It was him. She glanced down at his hand on her arm and realized the connection was allowing the damn faerie to get inside her head.
If she’d ever thought that having a goblin king in her mind was disconcerting, this was a thousand times worse. As soon as he was there, she had the eerie feeling that every faerie in existence was listening in as well. There was a definite sense of being left out in the middle of an empty stage, knowing that the seats in the audience were full but being unable to see any of them.
She shook her head, and Byron’s touch eased. The feeling abated.
He dropped Greta’s wrist altogether to heft his sister into his side. Leila was bleeding from a gash to the head. Greta started to go to her, but another coughing fit stopped her cold. Byron nudged her in front of him and put a hand on her shoulder. Don’t shake me off or you will not be protected.
She nodded and realized that when he touched her she could breathe. She squinted and noticed Dryden by the hatch. He was surrounded as a few wraiths dared try to come back into the tree house. She started for him but he shook his head weakly. The wraiths were making a meal of him.
He pressed his lips together in a grimace. “Get them out,” he said.
Taking a deep breath of air that tasted surprisingly fresh, she jerked away from Byron. As soon as she let go, the heat and smoke suffocated her once more.
Dryden scowled. “Take the prince and the princess to safety,” he ordered sharply.
“This may come as a surprise to you,” she snapped, “but I don’t take orders from anyone, especially not a pathetic warrior like you.” It was a cruel thing to say, but she was hoping to motivate him into action. Byron was going to have to put his sister down for either of them to climb the ladder, and Leila wasn’t going to be able to do it on her own. They needed him.
She pushed forward, lifting her arm to shield her face from the heat, but there was really no escaping it. The flames licked across the floor under her boots, over her head. They singed her eyelashes and smoke filled her lungs, leaving no room for actual oxygen.
But every step she took toward Dryden was one less wraith attached to him. They hissed and shrank away from her. One even screamed when she swiped at it. She wondered who was more scared of the thing she’d become: them or her.
Dryden wobbled as the last wraith detached and skittered away. She reached out to hold him upright. He frowned down at her, searching her eyes, his flinty gaze filled with all the questions she had no answers to.
She gritted her teeth and shoved him toward Byron. “Time for everyone to go!”
She followed and pushed everyone toward the trapdoor, but it was hard to find amid the destructive chaos, and she realized that was because it had fallen shut again. Flames and smoke licked up through the floorboards. If she dared open it, would the blaze explode through?
They needed to find another way out.
She spun around and locked onto the window. It wasn’t going to be much safer, but at least she could see some night air through the smoke.
The window was the only shot they had left. She cleared the way of debris and wraiths as best she could. Byron stopped and whispered something into his sister’s ear. She blinked and opened her eyes.
Greta did her best to beat back the flames on one side of the window while Dryden did the same on the other side until Byron had helped Leila through and the two of them managed to make it onto the thick branches of a neighboring tree. It too was on fire but not yet burning completely.
“You will go next,” Dryden yelled.
She shook her head. “If I go, the wraiths will swarm you again before you have a chance to get out.”
“That was not a request.”
She grabbed his hand and had to bite off a gasp at the ice in his touch. He was like Lazarus…or he could be if given enough time to mature. She didn’t want to be around when that day came. In fact, she might actually be doing Mylena a favor if she left him here, now, just like he suggested.
She might have killed her fair share of the Lost, but she’d never killed anyone else unless there’d been no other choice. Dryden might have the potential to become a monster, but so did everyone else. So did she, apparently.
“Come on, we’ll go together.”
He moved with her to the window. The fire had already spread more, banishing the sliver of night that had been visible when the prince and princess escaped. Greta raised one arm to protect her face as she climbed onto the hot ledge. Dryden squeezed in beside her and they both jumped through the flames. She couldn’t see for shit, but when her chest hit something hard, she frantically scrabbled to hold on. Beside her, Dryden grunted.
She coughed and coughed, almost losing her grip on the branch and feeling consciousness waver dangerously. She locked her arms and took a deep breath. The smoke was still heavy, and the fire scorched her back, but she blinked.
“Greta!” A voice from below. Oh, thank God. Wyatt. That had to mean he was okay, right? That they’d been able to hold back the wraiths on the ground?
She and Dryden clambered down through the branches as if the devil was on their heels. Finally, she hung from the last limb of the tree, and the blaze crackled at her back. Her grip slipped and she was barely holding on. She was running on empty, no strength left.
Dryden let go, and she tried to follow his progress to see how far she’d have to drop. It felt like a long way.
“Go ahead,” Wyatt called. “I’ve got you.”
There was nowhere to go but down. She let go with a whispered prayer. Wyatt’s grip closed onto her hips and slowed her fall. Then he moved up to her waist and then under her arms, until her body was sliding down the length of his.
She couldn’t not feel every inch of him against her, and when her feet touched the ground he didn’t let go, only lifted her again and carried her away from the fire. She wondered if she could have stood on her own anyway.
Her cheeks burned, and it had nothing to do with the fire. He stopped and laid her down, holding her close. For a minute she lost herself in it. She hid her face in the curve of his shoulder, filling her lungs with the scent of sweat and smoke and, beneath it, the subtle hint of warm breezes and cool water that always reminded her of Wyatt, and of home.
But even though it should have felt comforting, she instinctively pulled back, and then she coughed, wincing against the chain reaction of painful scratchiness that went all the way down her throat to her lungs.
“Wait a minute,” she croaked. She reached for her sword and spun around frantically. “What happened to the—”
He s
queezed her upper arms. “The wraiths are gone. I assume they’ll be back once the fire burns itself out, but for now, at least that’s one less thing for us to deal with.”
That wasn’t as comforting as it might have been if the fire hadn’t still been such a major concern. She’d never seen anything like it. The tree was engulfed completely, raining debris and sparks, and the fire had already spread to all the trees directly adjacent to it. She couldn’t believe she’d been in the middle of that. Her skin was still tight and painful from burns she hadn’t even seen yet, and the scorched ends of her braids scratched the nape of her neck.
“What are we going to do?” A fire this size would spread quickly.
With one arm huddled close to her body, Siona put her other hand on Greta’s shoulder. “There’s nothing you can do,” she said quietly. “The fire is too strong. It must burn itself out.”
“It’ll destroy the goblin forest.” This was still Isaac’s land, and there were countless creatures—big and small—who called it home. Isaac himself was somewhere out there. “I can’t let that happen. I’m not leaving until it’s under control.”
“How do you plan to get it under control when you are the cause of the blaze?”
Byron was right. She had done this, which was why she had to make sure it was contained. Warily, she looked at Wyatt for support, but his expression was tight, worried. “We don’t have so much as a blanket to beat back the flames with, Greta.”
Leila straightened. She seemed to be recovering quickly from her bash on the head. “You’re weak. You can barely stand. If you stay here, you’ll die,” she said.
Greta looked at the fire, feeling desperate and useless. What good were these powers of hers if all they did was destroy?
Siona looked at Dryden. Greta followed her gaze. After a moment, his lips compressed, and he shook his head. Then Siona was looking at the princess. Leila frowned, but after a pregnant moment, she nodded. And finally, Dryden squared his shoulders and stepped forward.
That’s what had been bugging her about the faeries; they never spoke directly to one another, only to her and Wyatt, and sometimes Siona. At first, she’d thought they were just quiet, but now it was clear that conversations between them were happening, just on a level humans weren’t supposed to hear.