by Cora Avery
“Yes. They say you told Ouda you would protect them, all of us. Ouda has chosen you. So I must help you. That is what she would want. If you wish to travel across the gulf, Anqa can fly us. We could reach the northern islands in two days.”
Damion caught Magda’s eye. She could tell just what he was thinking. If she wanted the Enneahedron, then the time they had to retrieve it was short.
“All right,” she said with a heavy sigh. “Call the roc.”
THE COCOON BED had been lowered from the tree so it hung only a few inches above the mossy earth. She lay with the hatch open and one leg draped over the side, sneaker skimming the ground. Soon, thanks to the gentle swaying, she was asleep.
She woke when the rocking stopped. Jolting upright, she groaned when she saw Kaelan frowning down at her.
“What?” she asked, falling back again.
“We have to talk,” he said.
She stared up at the woven branches of the cocoon, sleep still thick on her skin and heavy in her eyes. She’d been dreaming about Endreas again—hearing his voice, trying to find him, failing.
“Or you could just go on pretending that I don’t exist,” she said.
“You can’t allow Honey to go with you,” he said.
She propped up on her elbows. “It’s not my decision. She has free will. She can do as she likes.”
Kaelan ducked into the cocoon with her, pushing her legs aside, as only a Prince could do. And even then she wasn’t sure why she allowed it. She sat up, scooting deep into the cocoon, leaning against the bumpy interior.
“She is not herself. You know that,” he said.
“I know that she has less of her soul than she used to, but what remains is still her.”
“You said it yourself, this journey is dangerous. She’s just a nymph.”
Magda crossed her legs and leaned forward. “This isn’t about her. It’s about you. You’re afraid.”
He opened his mouth as if about to protest, but she cut him off.
“If Honey goes with us, then you’ll feel as though you must join us as well. And you don’t want to do that. And I understand. But I promised I wouldn’t try to claim you, didn’t I? And what happened before . . . It was just an accident. We can control our instincts. We just have to be conscious of them.”
He looked away, his hands knotting together.
“I have every intention of keeping my promise,” she said. “But we are what we are. It’s not just me, Kaelan. Any Rae you meet, you’ll find yourself desiring her. That’s just the way it is.”
“I didn’t desire Lavana.”
“It’s difficult to desire someone when they’re not with you all of the time.”
He looked up at her. “And that is why I can’t go with you.”
“If that’s your decision, I can’t force you. And I won’t try. But don’t think it’s going to end with me. There are plenty of Raes in this world. Another will find you.”
“This is not the way it is with the small folk,” he grumbled, shoulders slumping. “They are allowed to choose their mates.” The heavy swath of his hair fell over his brow. “I had no idea how difficult it would be to resist.”
She smirked. “Well, if it makes you feel better, it’s hard for me too. But it’s not impossible, Kaelan. And to be honest . . . I need you. If I have any real hope of challenging Lavana, if I have to meet her in battle . . . without a Prince to heal me . . . she will win.”
“What about the Prince she stole from you? Has he no loyalty?”
“No, he doesn’t. We were drawn to each other, because that’s the way of it. But Lavana will claim him as soon as she’s able, and I’m sure he’ll be glad to accept her. Partly because he doesn’t understand what it means. And partly because . . . I think he’ll be happier with her. She’ll give him everything he wants. She has the family behind her, the power, the wealth. She’ll spoil him. He likes to be spoiled. His parents sheltered him too much. He’s like a child. Give him sweets and he’ll follow you.”
“And you’re just going to let him?”
“I’m not sure why you think I have any power to stop him. Or Honey. Or any power at all. Did you get this notion before or after I was tortured and thrown into an iron cell? Or was it when I almost died on a warrior’s blade and you had to save me, again?”
“You survived the torture and escaped that cell, and you are still alive.”
“Thanks to you.”
His gaze fell away from her. “I’m afraid if I go with you . . .”
“I know what you’re afraid of,” she said. “And you’re right to be. But I can’t claim you without your consent, Kaelan. No one can.”
“And what about when you Shine?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I’ll tie you up with gorgon rope and hang you from a tree.”
He smiled, a little. But it vanished quickly. “What will happen?”
“When I Shine?”
He nodded.
She let out a heavy breath. “You’ll forget you want to resist our attraction. You’ll forget you don’t wish to be claimed. But I promise I’ll do whatever I can to avoid that situation with you. You have my word.”
His gaze flicked up to her and then away again, which seemed the only way he was willing to look at her since that charged moment between them at the bottom of Ouda’s tree.
“Honey is determined to help you. To join you.”
“I don’t know when I’ll Shine next,” she said. “It hasn’t happened regularly since I left this world . . .”
“Do you miss it?” he asked.
“The Shine?”
“No. The human world. Sometimes . . . you seem very sad.”
“You mean that you feel my sadness,” she said.
He glanced at her again, quickly.
“It’s all right to admit it, Kaelan. It might actually make this all much easier. Just accept that you can feel what I feel and that you desire me, because you’re a Prince. You don’t have to be angry about it. It’s not the end of your life. We can help each other. You love Honey, I understand that. And I—”
Her words caught in her throat. Had she been about to say that she loved Endreas? No, but maybe she had been about to say that she had Endreas. That some part of her already belonged to him. Either way . . .
“If you help me become Radiant, I’ll be able to claim another Prince. There are always a few . . . protected by their families, hidden, as you were, until their families find the best match. As Radiant, I’ll be the most coveted Rae in the Lands. I’ll help you hide yourself, with Honey, if that’s what you want. But I need you to help me first.”
“You’ve certainly changed your mind. I didn’t think you wanted to be Radiant.”
“I don’t,” she said, “and yet, I do. You were right. I miss the human world, full of poison as it was. I was truly free there. I made my own destiny. I was poor and weak and exiled, but I answered to no one. And no one looked to me for answers. I just ate pizza and sat on the beach. I woke up and did what I wanted. No fighting, no blood, no constant fear that I would . . .”
He looked at her fully, finally. “Die?”
“Fail.”
A distant bird shriek spiraled down from the sky, sharp and piercing.
Kaelan’s face closed off again. “The roc is here.”
Kaelan led her to an outcrop where the trees had failed to take root in the rocky soil. It overlooked an endless canopy of gold and green leaves below.
Perched near the ledge was the tawny and red-tipped feathered beast of a bird with piercing yellow-ringed eyes and a beak big enough to swallow all of them at once. Damion hung back by the tree line, his swords drawn. His color had paled to something like ash.
Standing before the bird, Honey sang softly to it. The roc lowered its head, big as a bull elephant’s, and nuzzled Honey. The nymph stumbled back a bit, laughing.
“I’m not doing this,” Damion growled at Magda. “We can’t really mean to—”
Magda, who had
been doing her damnedest to ignore her own fears, swallowed them back and moved closer.
The black and gold ring of the roc’s eye zeroed in on her. She froze, heart hammering.
“Anqa, these are my friends,” Honey said to the bird, still running her hands down its neck. The feathers there looked as long as the nymph’s arms. “I would like to ask you to take us all to the Petra Islands, the northern cluster across the gulf. Will you, please?”
Anqa cocked her head, her eye tracking from Magda to Kaelan to Damion.
She opened up her ungodly large beak and let out a call that brought fear-sweat out on Magda’s chest and left her ears ringing.
Honey clapped her hands and jumped up and down, grinning. “She said she will.”
A wave of dizziness overcame Magda as she gazed up at the bird and then beyond it, where the land gave way. Her chest squeezed around her lungs, cutting off the air. Her pulse skittered and fluttered.
What had she been thinking? She’d never flown—not once. Not even when the fairies would give the Pixie children rides through the garden. The children would squeal with delight, chubby Pixie feet knocking petals from the flowers.
“Magda?” Kaelan’s voice was right next to her.
She flinched, not realizing he’d drawn so close.
“We must leave soon,” Honey called. “Anqa and her mate are in the midst of nesting. She cannot allow more than a couple of days away.”
“That beast is mating?” Damion sneered.
The roc lowered its head, eye fixed on the warrior, and let out a low clucking in the back of its throat—not a friendly sound.
Honey patted Anqa’s neck again. “It’s all right. He is nothing more than a Pixie. You don’t need to worry about what he says.” She smiled brightly at Damion. “Although, if you insult her again, she might eat you.”
Damion growled and charged up to Magda, crowding her, sucking up her oxygen. She took a step back from both him and Kaelan.
“We cannot do this,” he said. “I won’t.”
Her breath was too short and shallow to respond.
Kaelan’s hand skimmed her bare arm lightly. A cool energy passed through her, calming. She managed to pull a deep breath that slowed the dizzy swirl in her head.
“Then you can stay here,” she said to Damion. “But if we don’t find the Enneahedron, we may as well quit now.”
“You don’t know—”
“It’s our best chance,” she said. “Do you think I want to”—her throat clenched, but she pushed through—“fly on that to the Realms of the Throne?”
Kaelan’s fingers touched her shoulder gently, shaving away the lingering panic. “You don’t want to go,” he said. “So maybe . . . you shouldn’t.”
She shrugged his hand off and turned on him. “I have to go. And I can’t stop Honey from joining—”
“You can if it’s only the two of us,” he said. “I’ll take you.” His voice lowered to a whisper. “I know you don’t want to fly.”
“I thought you weren’t going to help me,” she said.
“If you don’t need Honey’s roc, then she won’t have any excuse to join you.”
“You could take both of us?” Damion asked, leaning over Magda’s shoulder.
Kaelan’s face darkened. “No. And I couldn’t come back for you either, not over such a great distance, not for a day at least.”
Damion scowled. “Well, then, we take the bird.”
“I can’t leave Damion behind,” she said, as much as she hated to.
Traveling with Kaelan through the Shadow Realms was far preferable to flying on the back of that giant Pixie-eater. But once on the Elf King’s islands, she would be taking an even greater risk traveling without Damion. She’d already almost died twice in the two weeks since she’d returned.
“I can come back for him,” Kaelan said. “We can find a safe place and wait until I’m recovered enough to travel again.”
“Then I’d have to wait another day, alone, for you to return with Damion?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I don’t like it,” Damion growled.
“Would you rather fly on that?” she asked, nodding to the bird.
“Why are you offering to do this, Prince?” Damion said. “Suddenly you want to help us?”
“I don’t want Honey involved in this any more than she has to be,” he said softly.
“Then we’ll leave at dusk,” Magda said, her pulse slowing.
“Wait . . .” Damion interjected. “I should go first. You stay here, rest another day.”
Honey bounded over, grinning. “When shall we leave?”
Magda smiled thinly at Damion. “I’m going first.”
VOICES WHISPERED through the shadows around her—hundreds, thousands. The words were indistinguishable, bleeding into each other, rising and falling like waves. All around, nothing but darkness.
And then they arrived on the island.
Kaelan sagged. She held onto his arm, easing him down into the tall, rustling grasses.
She knelt before him. “Are you all right?”
His head hung between his knees. “Yes. I’m just . . . I haven’t done this very often.” He fell back, forcing the stiff grasses to bend and break under him.
She gave a quick look around, rising to peer above the grasses. Rolling hills sprawled in all directions. No light or smoke, or any other signs of life.
“Okay,” she said. “Rest here. I’m going to take a look around.”
His eyes opened, but he didn’t lift his head. “Alone?”
She touched Hero’s head, where he nestled against her neck. “I’m never alone.”
“He’s a rat.”
“A highly intelligent rat.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s true,” she said. “Enough talking. If there’s anyone else around, we don’t want to draw their attention.”
“Anyone like us?” a new voice quipped.
She snapped her knives out and spun to greet whoever had spoken. But there was no one. The night was calm, nothing moved.
The grasses murmured and protested as Kaelan pushed up to his feet.
She was just about to ask Kaelan if he’d heard what she’d heard when another voice, this one gruff and low, said, “Twitchy, isn’t she?”
The first voice, higher and nasal, said, “A criminal, no doubt.”
A third gravel-filled voice asked, “Those knives certainly look stolen to me.”
“Who are you?” she demanded. “Where are you?”
“Down! They’re down!”
But Hero’s warning came too late. He leapt from her shoulder. The ground undulated as if filling up with water from below or . . . collapsing.
She grabbed Kaelan’s tunic to throw him clear, but not fast enough. Under them, the land gave way.
They plunged.
The fall lasted less than a second, a couple of blinks, but the impact knocked the wind out of her. She choked on loose dirt. Grasses had fallen on top of her too, slicing and clawing at her with their sharp edges.
In the next moment, she was trampled upon by crushing feet, as though she were caught in a rhinoceros stampede. They pinned her, preventing her from moving and breathing, while they tied and trussed her up like a lamb set for Python’s chopping block. Grasses and dirt still lay over her face, preventing her from seeing anything. Fortunately, she had just enough time to thrust her fingers into her shadow’s vault and release her knives. An oily tasting rag was stuffed into her mouth. She was flipped over onto her stomach and slammed down again. Tears stung her eyes as her hands were roughly bound.
“You didn’t get the knives?” the nasal voice cried.
“Why didn’t you get them?” the gravelly voice demanded.
“I was tying up this one.” A hard thumping sound was followed by a muffled cry.
Magda lifted her head as much as she could, considering a boot was planted between her shoulder blades.
Kaelan was on his s
ide, bound and gagged too, limp. Though they weren’t touching and true telepathy wasn’t possible between a Rae and a Prince until after they claimed each other, she could see his thoughts quite clearly in his reddened and watery eyes.
Now what?
A hand like an anvil barreled into her head, smashing it against the rough dirt tunnel they’d been dropped into.
The lowest voice said, “Don’t matter. She’ll hand them over . . . eventually.”
The hand came away, and she was flipped over again quickly, like she was no heavier than a wooden spoon. Fairies, the size of her pinky finger, darted around, casting their ghostly luminescence through the tunnel. Three squat men with long beards and faces like wet paper sacks glowered down at her.
“Elves have to learn,” the one with the lowest voice said. His beard was the rusty hue of dried blood. “This land belongs to the dwarfs.”
Though no taller than three feet, the gruff one lifted her up and threw her over his broad shoulder with apparent ease. He had a hard, yet damp scent, like the bug-covered underside of a stone.
He may have been inordinately strong, but due to his height, her forehead struck the floor every time he shifted her weight or took a step down, which seemed to be often. They moved from the tunnel where she and Kaelan had been captured to another and another, each seeming to take them farther down.
Bringing up the rear was the one with the nasal voice. He had piercing blue eyes and his pocked nose looked like a dried up sponge glued into his fuzzy black moustache. As she attempted to keep her head clear of the ground, she glimpsed Sponge-Nose building a stone wall over the tunnel behind them. His thick hands moved in a blurred flurry. Seconds later, the entrance was filled. After giving it a pat, he caught up with them easily.
As often as she avoided smacking her head, she failed. Soon, she hung as limp as a sack of sand, gazing dully at her blood. Red drips first trailed onto dirt floors and then rough stone pavers, then onto smoother ones, and at last puddled upon dark, polished marble.
At the same time, the bobbing pale glows of fairies increased. Eventually, this was joined by the wavering flamelight of torches, which then transformed into the glinting sheen and rainbow flashes of fire burning behind cut crystal.