by Eva Chase
The Darkest One. I reached for my king’s arm, but Arthur was suddenly across the battle from me. The clamor rose. The blur of bodies churned between us. I threw myself into it, but the dark fae lady loomed over him already. Gray mists curled around her tall, slender body. Her arms shot out so quickly he didn’t even have time to move. She dug her thumbs through his chainmail into his chest and wrenched him apart.
His body split open with a burst of shadow. His head lolled, bloodlessly pale. A scream of protest jarred in my throat. I raised my hand—
“Em.” Darton’s voice, like my king of old’s but not quite the same, broke through my sleep. He gripped my shoulder with a quick shake. My eyes popped open. A narrow, gray space came into focus around me.
The plane. We were in the same stuffy plane cabin we’d entered a few hours ago, stiffly padded seat beneath me, recycled air filling my lungs.
Darton was eyeing me closely. “We just landed. And you... seemed like you weren’t all that happy being asleep. You were jerking your head back and forth like you were fighting with something.”
A flicker of the nightmare rose in the back of my head. “Don’t worry about it,” I said, waving him off. “Just a bad dream. Have to expect a few of those, these days.” But my chest still felt tight.
It hadn’t been only a nightmare. The images had come from a vision. The vision I’d had of my king’s death, fifteen hundred years ago, five years before the Darkest One had nearly made it come true. It had been the first warning I’d gotten. I’d tried to heed it. And still, here we were.
The second we were allowed off the plane, Darton pulled out his phone. My dad had lent us a charging cable, and the battery had proven to be in working order. Darton skimmed through the news feeds as we made our way through the terminal in the state I’d called home for the last few months.
I patted my pocket to make sure the twigs I’d stashed for quick access were still there. I’d been able to present a couple of slips of paper as our ID cards when we’d gotten on the plane, but the illusion would have worn off shortly after we’d gotten into the air. It hadn’t been worth wasting my still-limited energy to maintain that magic if I didn’t have to. In my current state, casting the spell to make sure everyone ignored Darton’s sword, which we couldn’t exactly check, had been exhausting enough.
“The storms in Britain are still building,” Darton said. “They’ve totally shut down the London subway system. They’re evacuating a bunch of towns and cities along the coast.” He shook his head, his jaw tight. “The news articles are already reporting six deaths they attribute to the storm.”
“She could have done a lot worse already, if all she cared about was killing lots of people, and fast,” I said, keeping my voice low. This wasn’t the sort of conversation I wanted anyone overhearing.
“So what do you think she does want?”
“I have no idea. I’ve never been able to understand how dark fae minds work. From what we’re seeing, I’d say for now she’s just playing around. Collecting energy from people’s fear and pain. It’s been a long time since she’s been able to affect anything in the world. She’s stretching her muscles.”
Darton shoved his phone back in his pocket. “And what happens when she’s done stretching?”
I hesitated. “Probably she comes looking for us. So we’ve got to get ready.”
A jittery itch crawled up my arms under my skin. I rubbed them through the sleeves of my sweater. I’d dozed a little on the plane, but it wasn’t that long a flight. Apparently my body still hadn’t recovered from this morning’s jump across the ocean.
“We can grab a rental car to get home,” I said, pointing Darton toward the sign. The drive would only take an hour from here. Then I’d know Darton was at least somewhat protected before I got on with other business.
The guy at the rental car desk gave us a bit of an odd look, I guessed for our lack of luggage, but he led us to a car quickly enough. “I’ll drive,” Darton said after the guy had left us. He set Excalibur in the back seat. “You should rest as much as you can after everything we’ve just been through.”
I had the urge to argue. I should have been looking after him, not the other way around. But if I’d learned anything during our adventures around Britain, it was that Darton could protect himself a whole lot better when he held on to his confidence. And he could do that a whole lot better when I showed I trusted him to handle whatever our current situation threw at us. So I made myself simply say, “Thank you,” and settled into the passenger seat.
I really did need that rest, after all.
As Darton maneuvered the car out of the lot, I leaned my head against the cool glass of the window and closed my eyes. I was tired enough that my mind started to drift without any effort. But the little twitches running through my body kept jolting me back into consciousness. My fingers curled of their own accord, as if needing something to grasp.
I had those few wands in my purse, but that didn’t feel right. Was my body responding to some instinct I didn’t quite understand?
The muscles in my arms coiled tighter with each minute. I found myself gritting my teeth. Okay, this was definitely not restful. I tried to inhale and exhale slow and deep, but the tension didn’t ease.
Something was wrong. Something I couldn’t ignore.
I opened my eyes in time to see a sign for an upcoming rest area off the highway. I pointed to it. “Let’s pull off there. Something feels... off. I don’t want to go any farther until I figure out what.”
Darton took the next exit. “Do you need me to do anything?”
“Grab some food from the vending machines?” I suggested. “I’m just going to search around with my magic.”
He parked at the edge of the lot near the squat dun building that held bathrooms and a small seating area. I stayed in the car when he got out. Less likely to draw attention that way. I pulled one of the wands from my purse and sat with it resting on my palms in my lap. I didn’t want to draw much energy from it, but it’d be good to have it on hand.
Closing my eyes again, I let my awareness seep out into the world around us. My fae-enhanced senses swept over the rest area and across the highway and the landscape beyond.
The itch in my muscles had already started to subside. Maybe my instincts had been responding to something we’d been heading toward? I stretched my senses west, watching for any hint of dark power. The Darkest One might be playing around in Britain at the moment, but she had plenty of underlings on this side of the pond.
A shiver ran over my skin. A small but steady stream of glooms were heading our way from various directions. The scraps of dark fae vermin were still more concentrated that usual around our state thanks to the fae mercenary who’d sent them on a hunt after us just a few weeks ago. And now they were on a new hunt. A few had already nearly reached the rest area.
Glooms weren’t much to worry about on their own, but in large enough numbers they could do plenty of damage. I’d cast a protective shield around Darton before we’d left the country, but it must have worn off with all the magic we’d encountered since. And the soul of my king inside him was certainly a lot more woken up than it’d been before.
Not much I could do about that, but I could cast a new shielding spell on him. It’d be an awful irony if glooms got him before the Darkest One even showed her face on this side of the ocean.
I got out of the car and ambled over to a sapling near the edge of the paved walk. By the time I’d collected several twigs from it, Darton had rejoined me. “Do you need to work some more magic?” he asked.
“I want to redo that spell I put on you in the hotel room a while back.” A fresh jitter ran through my limbs. Yeah, stopping here definitely hadn’t solved the problem. “The glooms are reacting to your presence again. Come here. We don’t want someone calling the cops on a couple of weirdoes playing with blood.”
Darton grimaced, but he followed me into the single-stall handicapped bathroom. A dank, sour smell fil
led my nose. Muddy footsteps and a puddle of what I hopped was water marked the floor. Not exactly ideal spell-casting circumstances, but I couldn’t afford to be picky.
I scattered the twigs around us on the floor and murmured a quick incantation to sever a lock of Darton’s hair. He slung his hands in his pockets and inclined his head as I broke open the skin on my palm. Seeing me do blood work always made him squeamish.
Apparently it made me squeamish today too. My nerves were twitching even harder now. The glooms weren’t that close, were they? I tensed my arms to keep them still as I pressed the lock of hair against the cut. A murmur in my first language spilled over my lips. I drew the power from my life’s liquid and the green pulse of the twigs. Then I brought the tip of my wand to my hand, circled it against my palm, and waved it in another circle around Darton.
A tingle raced over my scalp as the magical barrier formed around him. At the same time, my hands started to shake. They wanted to move—to fling out? To reach for something? My tongue quavered too, attempting to reject the words of my casting. What the hell was going on?
I barreled on through my discomfort. “Like mist conceal, and never reveal.” The spell wouldn’t be enough to hide him from the Darkest One when she decided to look for him—it wouldn’t even discourage a particularly determined regular fae, as we’d discovered not long ago—but it’d divert the lesser creatures at least temporarily.
Darton closed his eyes when I pressed my bloody palm to his forehead. The threads of my magic pulled tighter around him. There. That would do for now, at least. I could do a more thorough job of the spell once I had more supplies on hand. Assuming we had the chance before the Darkest One and whatever she had planned came calling.
“Okay,” I said. “All done. Wash up.” I let him go to the sink first while I tucked away my wand. The twigs had disintegrated into a circle of dust around the stall. I smeared it with my foot. No need to advertise that magic had happened here.
That strange, itchy energy kept wriggling through my bones. Whatever my body was worried about, casting this spell hadn’t reassured it. I frowned as I switched places with Darton at the sink. My hand flinched away from the soap dispenser for a second before I got it under control. Hog’s balls, this was annoying.
Well, I’d done what I could. I dragged in a breath, willing myself to relax, and turned around. Darton moved to open the door. And my body suddenly sprang into motion without consulting my mind at all.
My arms snapped through the air toward Darton’s back, my hands jerking up so my palms pointed toward the area behind his heart. Power pulsed from my soul and onto my tongue. “Seize and—”
I had to bite my tongue to cut off the spell before I finished it. A chill flooded me. Darton glanced back at me the second before I wrenched my hands down. He looked at them and then my face.
“Are you okay? Was there something else you needed to do?”
I swallowed hard. Yes, the urge echoing through my limbs said in answer to that second question. Yes, yes, yes.
Oh, light have mercy. I’d forgotten. Before we’d gone to strike down the Darkest One’s allies in the hope of keeping her contained, I’d struck a deal with the light fae enclave that used to be home to my father—and me, fifteen centuries ago. In exchange for their help summoning a lightning storm, I’d sworn an oath to the elders.
If the Darkest One walks free, I will sever Arthur’s soul before she can.
“It’s nothing,” I said quickly. I crossed my arms over my chest, jamming my hands under my elbows. “Let’s get out of here.”
The Darkest One was walking free all right. And the oath bound me whether I was thinking about it or not. I hadn’t given an exact timeline, but clearly the threat was already great enough for the power of that binding to try to force me to act.
If I didn’t figure out how to control the oath, I would kill Darton before the any of the dark fae did.
Chapter Three
We reached our house in the middle of its lonely concrete yard in the late afternoon. The shadows of the trees along the country road were already stretching long, but the boxy structure we currently called home cast no shadows at all, thanks to the flood lights that had automatically turned on with the fading sunlight.
“Looks like everything’s still in working order,” I said with forced cheerfulness. “I guess nobody saw any need to mess with our house while we weren’t in it.”
Despite the reassurance of the lights, I kept one of my wands in my hand on the way past the door. Motioning for Darton to stay close, I walked through each of the rooms.
The furniture we’d bought less than a month ago stood exactly where we’d left it. The faint smell of oil and garlic from the last meal I’d cooked here lingered in the kitchen. No signs of any dark fae presence or anything else worrying appeared. Other than the continued jumping of my nerves whenever Darton moved closer to me.
Sodding hell. I should never have made that oath. Of course, if I hadn’t, then we might have had both the Darkest One and her most loyal lieutenant still to deal with... Argh.
The safer I made Darton, the less I’d feel the impulse. If the Darkest One couldn’t kill him, then I didn’t need to. No one could argue with that strategy. But if I was going to make this house any safer than it already was, I needed more supplies. I’d already emptied this place in our dash out of the country a few days ago.
I came to a stop in the living room after my search of the house was done. “All right. I need to go out to my storage locker to bring back some more magical materials.” And maybe some of my journals too—had I ever written about dealing with oaths? I couldn’t remember anything like this coming up before, but then, my memories of all but my first life were awfully hazy.
“Sure,” Darton said. He headed to the front door.
I shook my head. “No, I want you to stay here. The house has way more protections than the car. The sun trap stopped a full dark fae before. And I’ll only be gone a few hours.”
Darton frowned. “I trust you more than I trust a building. Half the stuff here only works because of your magic.”
“Well, you’ve got your nifty magic sword to defend yourself now too.” I nodded to Excalibur, which he’d been carrying from room to room with us.
His frown deepened. “Do you really think we’ll be in that much danger here? We just got back. How quickly can the Darkest One follow us?”
I bit my lip. “Not instantly. She doesn’t have any connections here to make the leap by magic. But she’s not the only thing we have to watch out for.”
“If any dark fae things attack, I’m sure I’ll be safer if with you.”
I’m not, I thought but didn’t let myself say. I looked down at my hands. The hands that had moved to stop Darton’s heart less than an hour ago.
That was what my feelings came down to, wasn’t it? I was more afraid of the oath that was riding me than of the dark rabble or any other of the dark kind. What if the impulse to kill Darton hit me more strongly next time? What if I couldn’t control it?
The spell that had bound my and my king’s lives together, kept us reincarnating after each successive death, had been broken in the Darkest One’s escape. If he died, by anyone’s hand, there was no returning.
Darton was watching me, his expression puzzled and determined. “You’ll be safer too,” he added. “The dark fae are afraid of Excalibur. We took them down so much easier when we could work with both your magic and the sword.”
“It might not be enough,” I started, but that line of argument wasn’t going to be enough either. He was right. We were both safer from dark powers with our own powers combined. And to explain why that wasn’t enough, I’d have to tell him about the oath. How much would he trust me then?
I trusted myself, didn’t I? I’d caught myself in the bathroom before I’d hurt him. And now I understood what was happening inside my body, so I could stay more aware of it. The only reason the oath had worked on me as far as it had was that I ha
dn’t known what I had to defend against. It couldn’t take me by surprise like that again.
“All right,” I said, as breezily as I could manage. “Have it your way. But prepare for extreme boredom.”
The bland beige building of the storage facility made a gloomy picture in the deepening evening. We stepped out of the rental car—I’d insisted on doing the driving this time, to keep my hands busy—and I led the way up to the main doors.
A gloom glided toward us along the edge of the building. The thicker patch of darkness amid the shadows was moving fast enough to catch even Darton’s eye. His head jerked around a second before I waved my wand at it. “Darkness begone.”
The dark vermin shuddered out of existence. If only I could tackle the actual fae and their queen that easily.
I tapped in the code, and the door unlocked with a beep. The inner hall always smelled strangely like stale bread. I hurried past the rows of garage-style doors to the one I’d moved my stash to after a vision had brought me to this part of the country looking for my king. My keys might be lost somewhere back in Britain, but it only took a tiny twig and a few murmured words to open the padlock.
I pushed the door halfway up and ducked under. Darton followed. His eyebrows rose as I shoved the door back down to give us privacy.
“Wow. You really do like to stay well-prepared, don’t you?”
“I’ve had a lot of time to collect supplies and not too much need of them until recently,” I said. “I’ll try to make this quick.”
I grabbed a couple of the duffel bags I kept there for purposes like this and started stuffing them full of pre-enchanted wands, bags of dried herbs and flowers, various types of salt, incense and candles, various semi-precious stones that might come in handy, and a knife to replace the light fae dagger we’d also lost somewhere in our battle with Rhedyn. Like that one, its handle was made of magic-sealed living wood. But it didn’t come close to the craftsmanship the full fae were capable of when they bothered.