by Claire Luana
Or so I thought. A moment later, strong hands grabbed me from behind, and a black hood was thrown over my head.
5
I kicked out behind me, hoping to find purchase against my attacker. At the very least, I wanted to break a bone or cause some damage, but they were way too quick and much too skilled at what they were doing.
“Orin!” I shouted, hoping he would hear me and shout back, but all I heard was the rustle of the cloth over my ears and the thick voice of my abductor telling me to be quiet. Like hell, I was going to be quiet. We were in a city. Sure, it was midnight, but some people were around, and if they could hear me, there was a chance I’d be rescued.
I opened my mouth to scream, but before I let it out, a large hand clamped down over it. Moving my head quickly, I maneuvered my mouth and clamped my teeth around the perpetrator’s fingers, biting down as hard as I could.
“Shit!” I heard him cry out. “She’s a feisty one!”
A woman’s voice mumbled something back to him. The sack around my ears muffled the sound, distorting her words so I couldn’t make them out.
I was thrown into what felt like a car, but we were in Elfame, so it was probably some weird faerie mode of transport. The doors slammed shut, and as we set off along the bumpy road, silence enveloped us.
“Jacq. Are you okay?” It was Orin. He’d obviously been thrown into the same conveyance I had. As my wrists had been tied behind my back, it was impossible to reach out to him, so instead, I moved my foot forward until I felt his shin.
“I’m fine. Listen. I think I can get out of this. I took classes.”
“Hollywood has classes on how to escape kidnapping?”
“You bet your ass it does,” I said, maneuvering myself into an upright position.
“And humans think faeries are strange,” Orin huffed.
Ignoring him, I maneuvered myself into a position where I could work at the binds on my wrists. The rope they’d used was tied tightly but not expertly. These amateurs had never been Girl Scouts! I twisted my wrists, slowly loosening the knot. From there, it was a matter of time before I was able to loosen it enough to pull my hands free.
“I’m free!” I said as the car or whatever it was came to a halt. I pulled the sack from my head as the doors opened.
“And that, gentlemen, is why we failed to nab her at Hennington House.”
I knew that voice. It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the light, but when I did, I saw Cass grinning at me from outside the open doors of the vehicle.
At the sight of her, my heart seized and my throat constricted, my lungs twisting so tight I couldn’t breathe. “Cass?” I whispered, barely able to get the word out.
Beside me, Orin, with the hood still over his head, echoed my word in the form of a question. “Cass? Your sister, Cass?”
“The one and only. Come on. Let’s get you two out of there.” Cass held out her hand to me as two guys pulled Orin out and retrieved the hood from his head. It was her. Really her. Her blonde hair was cut short and curled around her chin in a bob, and her face was thinner, more serious than I remembered it—though she was still just as beautiful. She wore dark jeans and boots and a black tank that showed off her toned arms. So much about her was unfamiliar and new, but then she grinned at me with her crooked smile, and it was all Cass.
I couldn’t hold back the tears as I leapt into my sister’s embrace. I held onto her, fearful that if I let go, I’d never see her again. I was aware of movement around us, but I couldn’t see anything through the cascade of tears that flowed down over my cheeks.
“Damnit, Jacqueline, I promised myself I wouldn’t cry, and now you’ve got me going!”
“Duckface,” I said, referring to the childhood moniker I used to torment her when I was feeling like an especially evil little sister.
“Monkeybutt,” she retorted.
I laughed so hard, I snorted. It was like we’d never been apart.
“Peabrain.”
“As amusing as this all is, can someone let me know what’s going on?” I turned to see Orin gazing at the pair of us as though we were lunatics. For some reason, it made me laugh more.
“Sorry, Orin. I’m being rude.” Cass untangled herself from me and walked over to him, her hand outstretched.
It gave me time to look at exactly where we were. The roughly hewn walls gave me flashbacks of the mine in the first part of the Elemental Trial, but this was no mine. It was a bunker of sorts. Behind us trailed a sloping tunnel, which I assumed we’d driven down. The car we’d come in looked almost like a car made on Earth but without the polished finish. It was rusting and old and had no hint of its former color. Huh. I didn’t know they had cars in Faerwild. It must be magicked somehow.
“Come on, let’s get inside,” Cass said. She strode forward and twisted a large metal handle to open the iron door before us. She seemed to be running this operation, or at least in charge of the two others with her.
One was very obviously fae, with pointed ears peeking out from under his curling golden-blond hair. I knew exactly who he was. He was the faerie that I’d seen Cass with all those years ago. This male had been front and center in my nightmares for over two years, but now as he stood smiling at me, I found he wasn’t threatening at all. He was handsome with too long floppy hair and a disarming smile that ended in dimples. He reminded me a little of Tristam. Pushing that rat to the back of my mind, I turned my attention to the other guy. He was human, or at least, he appeared that way. Italian maybe, or Greek? He looked like a Wall Street trader in his grey suit and wingtip shoes. I didn’t recognize him at all.
We stepped through a rusted door into a space lit by flickering faerie lights. Two threadbare sofas sat in the middle of the room, flanking a coffee table covered in rings where coffee had spilled, and no one had mopped it up. Apart from that, there was a huge desk shoved against the far wall that was covered in paperwork and a pile of books strewn in a messy heap. The ICCF logo was blazoned on a flag covering a large portion of the wall behind the desk. How was the International Coalition for Cooperation with Faeries, the international government organization that controlled faerie/human relations, involved in this?
“I’m Louis,” the human said, moving forward to stretch out his hand. He’d caught me looking at him. “Sorry about the kidnapping. It was the safest way to do this. I really hope we didn’t scare you.”
“Scare Jacq?” scoffed Cass, turning and crossing her arms before her chest. “Haven’t you been watching the race? This woman fought dragons for fuck’s sake. Goblins! Hell, she even managed to get one past the Erl-King.”
Louis smiled at me, apologetically. “Of course, I’ve been watching the race. You’re quite the hero. Cass was a complete mess when you got trapped in the prison in Deephold. The Merfolk are brutal.”
“I wasn’t a mess,” called out Cass, flinging something soft at him. Looking down, I saw that it was the sack that had covered Orin’s head. “I knew Jacq would escape. She managed to get away from us at Hennington House, remember?”
My eyes widened. So it had been Cass who’d orchestrated my attempted kidnapping back before the Elemental Trial started? I’d fought my attacker off, thinking he or she was out to hurt me in some way or, at the very least, take me out of the race. If only she’d said something. Anything. If I’d have known it was her, I wouldn’t have fought. I’d have gone willingly wherever she wanted me to go. She was the reason I was in the race in the first place. I never needed the million dollar prize. It was all for Cass.
The faerie male stepped up beside Louis, and though I’d hated him for years, I found felt strangely comfortable in his presence. He hadn’t kidnapped Cass. I knew that now. She’d come here of her own free will. Years of resentment fell away as he offered up his hand to me. “And I’m Auberon,” he said, taking my hand in his.
“Dragon’s balls,” Orin cried out. “You’re Auberon Obanstone. I knew it!”
Auberon Obanstone? As in Vale and Tristam Obans
tone...as in the heir to the faerie throne?
“Wait, what?” I stammered, looking from Auberon to Orin who appeared even more confused than I was. “I thought you were dead?”
Cass came to my side. “We have so much to tell you. Come and sit down. Auberon, honey, can you conjure up some coffee for these two. I think they’re going to need it.”
Cass took my arm and guided me to one of two sofas that were the only soft furnishings in the whole room. It didn’t escape my notice that Cass had just asked the crown prince of Faerwild to make us coffee. And he was doing it too. Well, he was making it appear out of thin air which was nearly the same.
As he handed a cup to me, I struggled to get over the fact that this was Tristam’s brother. They did look similar—with the same dimples and the exact same shade of hair, but I couldn’t, for a second, imagine Tristam making the effort to get anyone coffee.
“Thank you,” I said shyly. Now that I knew who he was, coupled with the thoughts I’d had about him over the past few years, I found myself nervous and at a loss for words. Cass sat next to me with a cup of tea. I’d forgotten that she hated coffee. What else had I forgotten about her?
Auberon sat on her other side, and Orin and Louis took seats on the other sofa. It was all very cozy.
“It’s time you got the whole story,” Cass said. “Let’s start at the beginning...”
6
Cass took a sip of her tea and then began. “A long time ago, Earth and Faerwild were the same realm.”
“Before the magicians split it,” I nodded. “Right, we read about it in A Disunion of Worlds.”
Cass raised an eyebrow at me and exchanged a glance with Auberon that I think said, See, I told you she was smart and totally ahead of the curve. Or at least, that’s how I decided to interpret it. “You already know?”
“Well, sort of. We know about the Brotherhood and how they want to rejoin the realms. We suspect Patricia and the king are Brotherhood. What we don’t know is what the hell it has to do with the race. Or you. Or us.”
“Maybe I can chime in here and fill in some gaps,” Auberon said. “A few years ago, I started getting suspicious about some of my father’s business dealings. He was acting strange and secretive, smuggling humans over the Hedge for meetings that I knew weren’t approved by the ICCF. I started snooping. I learned about the existence of the Brotherhood—those were the humans he was covertly meeting with—Brotherhood magicians. I learned what they wanted to do. Merge the human and faerie realms once again, so magic could return to the Earth, and my father could rule over all of it.”
“Because Auberon isn’t a psychopath like his father, this alarmed him greatly,” Cass said. “As you could imagine.”
“But I was young and arrogant. I thought I could convince my father that what he was doing was wrong. I confronted him about it, and he locked me in my room. I think he was trying to figure out what to do with me. I was the crown prince of Faerwild, after all. But, I knew I needed to tell someone what he was planning. My father is the most powerful male in Faerwild, but there are powerful leaders on Earth, too. I decided to go over the Hedge to see if I could find the authorities and tell them what he was planning. I stole a few of the books that contained some of the history, a map of his plan, and snuck out of the palace.”
Auberon looked down like it was hard for him to keep talking. Cass patted his knee. I guess it would be hard, leaving everything you knew to betray your father and keep him from ruining the world.
Cass picked up the story. “Auberon came through a portal in central Montana. He walked for days, sticking to the forests and back roads, stealing food, trying to avoid humans. He was near exhaustion when he walked through our backyard, practically running into me.”
“Cass was a fierce little thing.” Auberon regarded her with an adoring look in his eye that twisted my heart. “She wrapped me in bonds of air, freezing me to the spot, and demanded to know what I was doing there. I was so shocked to find someone doing magic, and so beyond the point of exhaustion, I just started laughing.”
“And then crying,” Cass said, a grin on her face. “He was just laughing, with tears streaming down his face, and he asked if I had anything to eat. He said he’d like something to eat before I killed him.’ So, of course, I had to help him.”
“Where did you hide him?” I asked. I couldn’t believe all of this was going on and Cass hadn’t told me!
“Gen’s family had an old hunting cabin that they didn’t use very often. He stayed up there, and the coven and I fed him and let him rest. Once he was feeling better, he started telling us why he was there. He showed us the books, and the girls and I decided we would help get him to the ICCF.”
“There was an ICCF facility in Seattle, and we reached out to them by phone. Once they got over thinking we were prank callers, they agreed to meet us mid-way to take me into protective custody,” Auberon said. “At that point, Cass and I had already started to fall for each other and didn’t want to be apart. But, I convinced her to stay and finish school.”
Cass turned to me. “That night, when I told you I was going to be gone for a few days, I was just going to drive Auberon to meet the ICCF agents, and come home.”
“You could have told me,” I said softly.
“I should have, but I figured the fewer people who knew, the better. And no offense, but you’ve never been a great liar. I was afraid you’d spill the beans to mom and dad that I was keeping a faerie in Gen’s hunting cabin.”
Fair point. “So, what happened? Why didn’t you come home?”
“Plans changed,” Auberon said. “We were gathering our belongings when the ICCF called and told us that several faeries had crossed the same circle I had, including one of my father’s captains. The ICCF was tracking them, and they were headed straight towards us. Using magic, they had found out where I was and that I was staying with Cass.”
Louis spoke next. “I was Auberon and Cass’s ICCF contact. It was clear from our intel that the king knew of Auberon’s location and Cass’s involvement. For their safety, we moved them to a secure location, into our version of witness protection. The time we spent in Helena “investigating” your sister’s disappearance was actually to ensure your family’s safety, Jacq.”
I rubbed my face, trying to take it all in. Faerie conspiracies? International witness protection? It all sounded like the stuff of Bond movies.
“It’s nice of the ICCF to get involved,” Orin said carefully, “but why? Aren’t you just a bureaucratic organization that approves visas and stuff? How do you even have the capacity to do something like witness protection?”
“You two read through A Disunion of Worlds, right?” Louis asked. We nodded. “So you know that an international group of kings and magicians worked together to separate the worlds. That alliance has never gone away—it still exists to keep the human and fae worlds apart and to protect us from each other, if necessary. It has had many names and faces over the years—the ICCF is just the most recent.”
“Wait, hold up,” I said. “The ICCF is an ancient magical organization?”
Louis nodded.
This was getting stranger and stranger. I turned back to Cass. “You’re in witness protection. What I don’t get is why you couldn’t write to us. At least secretly! We thought you were dead!”
“And it killed me to have to go dark Jacq; trust me, it did. I wanted to reach out covertly a thousand times, to drop hints I was alive. But it was too dangerous. The ICCF couldn’t be sure that the king wasn’t watching you. He didn’t take Auberon’s disappearance lightly. I couldn’t put you guys in danger by reaching out.”
That made sense, I guessed. But it still fucking sucked. Everything we’d been through…all that grief and pain and anger…it all felt so pointless now. She had been fine. She had been safe. My throat started to tighten, and I could feel the tears coming. I couldn’t give in to them, not right now. We still didn’t understand what the heck was going on.
Orin,
blessedly, moved us to the next topic. “So, what does this have to do with the race? With us?”
“The original magicians who split the human and faerie realms set up a magical wall of sorts, between the worlds,” Auberon said. “The Hedge. It’s anchored into the fabric of reality at five points. These points are marked by powerful magical spells attached to the earth by physical monoliths. Both the physical and magical elements are necessary to keep the wall intact. If the physical and magical halves of each of the five anchors are compromised together, the wall will fail, and the two realms will be merged together once again.”
“So that’s what the king is trying to do?” I guessed. “And his Brotherhood buddies?”
Louis, Cass, and Auberon nodded together.
“The ICCF carefully monitors everything and everyone that passes over the Hedge,” Cass said. “To destroy all the anchors, the Brotherhood needed weapons and magicians to power them. We think the race was a ploy to distract everyone, to allow new faces and technology into Faerwild. It would be much easier to sneak in a MED and a magician to power it among all the camera equipment and studio staff than to do it on a quiet portal that the ICCF is watching carefully.”
“MED, as in, magical explosive device?” Orin asked.
Auberon nodded. “Besides, my father is an egomaniac. It would play into his ego to have his triumphant destruction of the Hedge broadcast for both worlds to see. At least, before all technology went dark for good.”
Suddenly, things started to become clear. The weird metal detector and magical screening we’d had to go through before we started each of the trials. The ICCF was searching for these devices.
“If you know the king and the Brotherhood are planning on blowing up the anchors, why don’t you just arrest him?” I asked.
“We have jurisdiction in Faerwild at the king’s discretion only,” Louis said. “He’s cooperating with us, but he doesn’t have to. It’d be like the U.S. trying to arrest the president of another country. Pretty hard to do. So our primary objective is to prevent the Brotherhood from destroying the Hedge. If we can publicly expose the king’s plan, turning public sentiment in Faerwild against him, Auberon would have a chance to regain the throne and then he’d have the power to punish him accordingly. That’s our ultimate objective.”