by Eva Chase
The green energy pulsing within the just broken branches thrummed against my side. I breathed in deep and grasped Darton’s shoulder by the crook of his neck, where my fingers could meet his bare skin. Waking up more memories hardly seemed like a reason for concern given everything else we were already facing, and I wanted as direct a connection as possible.
Darton readied himself without my needing to say anything. He raised his sword, his arms tensed, the muscles in his shoulder bunching under my grip.
“Three, two, one,” I murmured. “Now! Darkness begone, darkness fall! Light knock the sense from their darkened minds! Bind them to the ground they fall to.”
As I shouted the words in the old tongue, Darton swung the enchanted sword. The power I was drawing from the fresh branches washed through me, into him, and blazed from Excalibur’s blade. It seared across the landscape in every direction, whiting out my vision. Several of the fae hunters yelped or gasped.
I lowered my hand from Darton’s shoulder, blinking the haze from my eyes. The remains of the branches fell in a shower of dust by my feet.
The road ahead of us, the forest on one side, and the field on the other were all washed clean of shadows—other than those cast naturally. And those still wisping around the dark fae that had collapsed in the wake of my spell. Their bodies dotted the pavement, the shoulder, and the grassy dip of the ditch. A line of glowing light arced over each of their unconscious bodies.
I didn’t know how long my spell would hold them in place once they woke up and could put their own magic to work, but like I’d told Darton, it gave us time.
Jagger let out a rough chuckle. He strode through the group of his colleagues to greet us. “Looks like we showed up just in time.”
I glanced around at the cluster of fae hunters. “Why were you on the way to our house?” They looked like they’d come prepared for full-out war.
Jagger shrugged. “After having that talk with the kid from overseas the other night, I thought we should provide whatever protection we could. Add a human factor to your security systems.”
“Ah.” I rubbed my forehead. The feel of the gritty paste of ash and aconite still smeared there made my nerves cringe. “Well, I think the house is a loss now. We’re missing a pretty big chunk of our ceiling.”
“Maybe not quite in time, then.” Jagger grimaced. “I wish we’d made it here a little sooner.”
“Better than not at all,” I said. “We were practically goners.” I nodded to the weapon he was holding. “Have you come up with some new gadgetry? It looked like those electric guns worked well.”
“Oh, these?” He patted the rod by his side. “This idea I got thanks to your story about channeling lightning. You mentioned the shock had to be natural for it to affect the dark varmints. One of our more inventive members came up with a design that uses a slightly more sophisticated version of your fur and amber approach to create the current.”
Huh. My attempts to combine physics with my magic had gotten us pretty far already. Maybe there were more possibilities to delve into there.
Jagger took another step closer, squinting at me. “What have you got on your face, Emma? Did the fae do that?”
I moved to swipe at the caked powder with my sleeve, which turned out to be a fruitless attempt. One sleeve was mottled with blood from my palm and the dust of the branches I’d sapped the life energy from. The other was flecked with slivers of glass from my scramble out of the van. I lowered both arms.
“I was doing a spell that needed me to suppress my innate energy,” I said. “To give the impression I have a totally different nature.”
And it had worked. Both times, the dragon had let me approach it, even though it had fled during my first attempt. I’d managed to convince it that I was a dark fae, an ally instead of an enemy, simply by covering myself with the right materials...
“Where do we go now?” Darton asked. He was eyeing the slumped fae warily. “Obviously we can’t stay in the house anymore.”
“No,” I said. “But I think I have an idea about that, that should keep us under the radar for at least a little while. Long enough for us to come up with a longer-term plan. I think I’d better just grab a few things from the house before we abandon it completely.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Light and warm us, softly,” I said, pinching my fingers against a twig. It burst into a glowing ball that floated toward the ceiling of the pitch-black room we’d come into. A thin heat took the edge off the stony chill.
The light revealed the smooth granite floor, the granite walls with their slabs of doors shutting away the mausoleum’s silent inhabitants. The hairs on my hairs were already standing on end, but my nerves jittered with a deeper shudder. The fae energy inside me did not like this place at all. But that was exactly why we needed to be here.
Beside me, Darton made a face. “It’s definitely got a lot of atmosphere... Are you sure this is the best place for us to spend the night?”
He kept his hand tight around Excalibur’s hilt, but I set down my duffel of supplies. I’d left some of what I’d scavenged from our ruined house with the fae hunters, but I didn’t trust that we’d be safe here without some help.
“Death is the dark fae’s arena,” I said. “Stillness and silence and gradual decay. This whole cemetery stinks of it. With a little enhancement, it should mask our life energy from any dark fae looking to finish their attack. The same way my powder masked my light fae essence from your dragon.”
“It’s not my dragon,” Darton muttered. He sat down in the middle of the room, as far from any of the individual tombs as he could get. His shoulders had tensed. He rubbed his hand against his chest as if a muscle there pained him.
My own muscles were still jumping, but not entirely because of the way my senses cringed away from all this evidence of death. The oath’s itch had been creeping back through our entire journey here. Now it wriggled through my arms and nibbled at my fingers. I flexed them a few times, trying to work the impulse out of them. Then I grabbed my supplies to keep them busy in a preferable way.
The bitter smoky smell wafted from the bag of dead willow ash and aconite when I opened it. I dipped in my hand and sprinkled the powder along the edges of the room. If having this stuff smeared on my skin could convince a dragon filled with masses of dark fae energy that I was one of its kind up close, then surely it could confuse any fae looking for us from afar, especially with the entire cemetery’s energies clouding us too.
Any regular dark fae. The Darkest One knew my soul and my king’s too well. Once she arrived in this country, there’d be no hiding from her.
Darton set his sword down beside him. He rubbed that spot on his chest again.
“Are you all right?” I asked him.
“I’ve just been feeling a little... off, since the dark fae attacked us,” he said. “I don’t know how to describe it exactly. It feels as if there’s a knot in my chest, that’s... twisting around? Every now and then. The feeling is stronger when I’m holding Excalibur. The fae didn’t cast some other spell on me, did they? It’s not really painful or anything—just strange.”
He was keeping his voice calm, but his jaw clenched after he’d finished speaking. It might not be painful, but it was bothering him. Why wouldn’t it? After what we’d been through, any strange sensation could be the beginning of a new catastrophe.
I completed my circuit of the room and set down the bag of powder. “Let me have a look.” I sat down across from him and touched his chest where he had.
His body was as warm as ever against my palm. The glowing life energy pulsed through it—and a hint of something shadowy coiled around it at the edges of my awareness. A familiar motion.
“It’s the dragon,” I said. “Having all that dark magic thrown around nearby must have stirred it up.”
“So your spell before to weaken it didn’t work after all?” Darton said. He reached for his sword, as if he could fight the creature inside him with that.
<
br /> “I’m sure it did,” I said. “But that thing’s been fed on generations of dark fae energy, and I can only sap away so much at a time. Weaker doesn’t mean it’s not still plenty strong. But we can keep working on that. I should do the ritual again. This is the perfect spot for it. I brought the supplies so we could. When I’m done, it’ll probably have settled down again.”
Darton paused and then inclined his head. “Fine.” He glanced around the room, his eyebrows arching slightly. “At least this place should put a damper on any, ah, embarrassing and unnecessary reactions. Are you sure you’ve recovered enough from the last time? I mean, with the blood loss?”
My own cheeks flushed a little at the memory of how his body had responded to the ritual a few hours ago. “We had some rest in the car on the way here,” I said. “I finally got my juice and cookies and a whole lot more of a meal on top of it. I’ll be fine. You just get yourself ready.”
He pulled his shirt over his head and folded it into a makeshift pillow. I reached for the powder again. I’d washed up when we’d made a quick pit stop at a gas station, but a fresh coating would do the job best anyway. I rubbed it between my hands, over my forearms, and all across my face. Around my neck, down my chest. A careful swirl of it around my mouth.
Darton had lain back when I turned toward him. My gaze shot to a purple-black blotch that marred his skin across the left side of his rib cage. Right where my hip had collided with him when the van had tipped. I winced.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I battered you that badly.”
“Hmm?” Darton raised his head a few inches. He brushed his fingers over the bruise. “It’s okay. I’ve had a hell of a lot worse after a football game.”
“Maybe we should start having you wear that padding everywhere we go,” I said.
He managed a chuckle and a smile, even though I could see the tension in his eyes. He rested his head back on his folded shirt. “A bruise shouldn’t interfere with what you need to do, should it?”
I shook my head. “No problem. Just tell me if anything starts to hurt. More than it already does, I mean.”
I set the bowl by my side and picked up the knife. I wasn’t really sure I was in the best state for spilling out more blood. I hadn’t exactly been keeping track of how much I’d lost during the fight with the dark fae. But there was nothing more important than weakening the dragon.
Nothing else I had any hope might save us.
My palm stung as I sliced the cut open again. The pain was duller than it’d been before—I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. At least it still prickled over the urging of the oath.
I’m trying to fulfill the most important part of that promise, I thought at it. Making sure nothing in my king poses any threat to anyone.
The oath didn’t seem to care about my explanations. I aimed a silent expletive in Cormag’s direction and settled myself into the meditative state the ritual required. Slow, even breaths. Slow, even pulse. Drip, drip, drip of my blood into the bowl.
I bent over Darton as I had earlier that day. Inhale, dragging in those wisps of shadow clinging to his soul. Exhale, feel them flow through my veins to the bowl. Over and over, sinking deeper into the shimmer of his soul with each repetition. Sharper flickers whipped past my internal sight. The dragon’s tail, lashing just ahead of me. A flap of constrained wings. The dark energy quivered through the glow with a restlessness I could taste.
No doubt the creature sensed that its master was approaching. Its time of freedom was almost at hand. And even bottled up in that concentrated form, the power the beast contained made me wince. I’d drained a little of that energy last time, definitely, but nowhere near enough. How many more blood-lettings would it take?
How many did we have time for? How many could my body handle?
I wet my lips and breathed in again, careful of my lips over the bruise on Darton’s abdomen. Whatever it took, I could handle. If I drained myself dry while draining that beast, oh well. My life wouldn’t matter much if I didn’t.
The tender spot on the top of my head where I’d hit the van roof started to throb. My thoughts swam through my head. In and out. In and out. I could stay focused on that, even if my head was starting to feel as if it was going to float right off my body. A little more might make all the difference. I wasn’t stopping until I had to.
Shadows wavered behind my eyes. It took me a moment to realize they reflected the clouding of my own mind, not the dragon’s movements. My body had dipped farther, my lips brushing Darton’s sternum. For a second, I felt as if I would tip right over into him, down into his soul, into that cavern of light where the dragon lurked.
I jerked myself upright. The granite walls around me spun. I closed my eyes and opened them again, willing the world to settle.
A thin ache crept up my arm from my still bleeding palm. The bowl was full of my blood.
“Em?” Darton said, sounding concerned.
“I’m all right,” I said. I might have been more convincing to myself if my tongue hadn’t felt detached from the rest of me. I shut my mouth and swallowed hard. “Seal and stop,” I mumbled to my palm. More bleeding definitely wasn’t going to help.
Another wave of dizziness passed over me. I swayed and braced my hands against the floor. Breathe in, breathe out, like before. But this time for myself.
Darton pushed himself upright to grab the bag of supplies. He opened a bottle of apple juice and pushed it into my good hand. “Thanks,” I managed. I tipped it to my lips and let the tart liquid flood my mouth. One swallow, another. Refill my body. Bring it back down to earth.
I fumbled for the cloth and water I’d set aside and wiped the powder from my skin. The light fae energy inside me pressed back toward the surface with a feeling like a sigh of relief. It still twisted away from the feel of death around us, but that was a more distant discomfort.
Darton passed me a granola bar next. I wolfed it down despite the clenching of my stomach. I needed that energy too. Because I’d be doing this all over again in the morning if I had any say in it.
My body still felt slightly insubstantial, but I managed to stand up without shaking like a leaf. With careful hands, I got out the funnel and glass jar I’d brought. The blood I’d collected was run through with dark fae energy. That energy could serve us now. Using it felt like thumbing my nose at the Darkest One and all her efforts.
I poured half of the bowl’s contents into the jar and quickly sealed it. Then I walked the circuit of the room again, dribbling the rest of the blood alongside the line of ash powder. Even more darkness to cloak us in our hiding spot. The Darkest One could be here as soon as tomorrow night. We were going to need all the rest we could steal.
Darton watched me circle the room. “You took a lot,” he said.
“We don’t have a lot of time for spacing out attempts,” I said. “I’ve got to drain as much of the dragon’s energy as I can when I can. Look, I’m perfectly fine.” Other than the fact that my head was still throbbing and also filled with that floaty feeling. But hey, the oath’s urge had been completely drowned out by those combined sensations. I could look on the bright side. “How about you? That knot in your chest—is it still bothering you?”
He touched the spot over his sternum. “There’s a bit of pressure there still,” he said. “But that twisting feeling, like it’s moving, is gone. That’s a good thing, right?”
“I tired your dragon out,” I said with half a smile.
Darton opened his mouth, looking like he was going to protest my use of my again, but then his expression settled into a resigned smile of his own. I set down the bowl, and he held out his arm to me. “Come here?”
I wasn’t sure what he wanted, but I’d never been good at saying no to my king anyway. Besides, this standing up thing was definitely getting old. I sat, and he eased me down beside him so we were lying together on the hard floor. He tucked my head under his chin. I couldn’t resist snuggling closer to him, letting him w
rap me in his warmth. The musky, earthy smell of his bare skin filled my nose.
Darton made a pleased hum into my hair. He tugged me even closer to him with his arm around my back. Then his body tensed. “If this is too much... I just—” He swallowed audibly. “I’m not going to try anything. I just want to feel you.”
He didn’t have to explain any more than that. The same need was running through me. As if my old soul inside this young body wanted to reach right through both our skins to his. It couldn’t, not exactly, but I could get us a little bit closer.
Without letting myself second-guess my decision, I squirmed away from him just enough to peel off my sweater. Darton let out a hitch of breath as I lay back down. Our bodies aligned, bare skin to bare skin, nothing covering me from the waist up except my bra. I draped the sweater over us to hold in the warmth. But there was nothing chilly about the heat that seemed to burn everywhere my skin touched his. A flame of desire shot down through my belly.
I shut my eyes against it. I didn’t have to give in this time. I could simply enjoy the closeness without needing it to be something more. No, not more, just else. There wasn’t any such thing as more when my king was already giving me everything he could offer.
Darton’s hand brushed over my hair. His pulse, thudding against my ear, evened out. I rested my fingers on the soft curls of golden hair that ran down the middle of his chest and let my mind drift on the memories floating up.
The memories our close contact was waking in Darton would be even more potent, coming to him for the first time. His breath tickled my ear. “Do you know,” he said, his voice gone distant but still affectionate, “the first time I met you—the first you—I thought you were so earnest and calm. All politeness and bows and waiting to see what I’d ask of you.”
“You thought,” I said. “Are you suggesting that impression was wrong?”