by May Dawson
“Turic stole my jewelry.” He seemed very cheerful for a ghost. “He was always petty—and perhaps he realized what trick I was up to. But he had to have somewhere to hide the evidence. His power, after all, is held in check by the Delphin—and if they could prove that he murdered his king, then they would be able to strip him of his place as heir.”
I turned to Tyson. “We have to go back to the Delphin. Would she trust a ghost’s word as proof?”
“I don’t know,” Tyson looked troubled as he glanced at the king. “Would they? Why didn’t you tell them before?”
“I didn’t have the ability to appear to anyone except my own direct blood,” he said. “Not until you came here and used your magic and willed me into greater strength. Now I can tell my story.”
“What do you mean, I willed it?” Tyson demanded.
“You have so much power you’ve barely begun to explore,” he answered. “But I don’t know. You thought something, changed something.”
“I can’t make things happen with my thoughts,” Tyson said sharply. I looked at his face, which was taut.
“Of course you can. The magic of the spring court is yours. All of it.” Jorden said. “That’s your right as king.”
“Ty, what did you think about?” I asked, because I could tell from the tight way his jaw clenched that he needed to get out of his head. “We have to start making sense of this.”
He thought for a minute, then admitted, “I thought that I’d like to see my father again.” His voice dropped. “That I’d like for you to meet him.”
“That is so sweet,” I whispered.
“We just found out that I can do anything, by thinking about it, and instead of being horrified, you’re saying I’m sweet?”
“There’s no one else I’d rather had that kind of power,” I said. “If someone has to, it should be you.”
“I like her,” Jorden told Tyson. “You should definitely marry her.”
“For right now, we’ve got to get the shield,” Tyson said. “Then I have to go back to the Delphin with Jorden.”
“Which shield?” Jorden asked with a frown.
“We’re stealing the shield of Saint Cain,” Tyson said briefly, before explaining why as we walked further into the temple.
I kept expecting some kind of Indiana Jones style traps, but nothing happened. Instead, we strolled through the wreckage of the temple.
“You’re not stealing anything. It’s yours to take and to give freely,” Jorden told him.
The temple reminded me of a museum, with its marble walls and all kinds of artwork and relics preserved. We finally found the shield, hanging on a rose quartz wall. The shield was plain, wooden and brass, fractured so that it was one half with jagged edges. It looked so simple, so out of place in a room full of wonders.
“Here it is,” Tyson said. “The shield that this was all for.”
I held my breath as he lifted it down from the wall. He carried it under his arm and the two of us headed back through the rooms toward the front of the temple.
We were almost to the door with it when Jensen and Rafe rushed into the temple. Jensen turned and slammed his shoulder into the door as if he was barring someone out. Rafe searched for a way to lock the door, and then Jensen used magic to seal it.
“This looks like a good place for me to ghost out,” Jorden murmured politely, then disappeared.
Tyson winced, rubbing his ring finger with one hand. “I can feel it when he does that.”
“We’ve got company,” Rafe said. “Turic and his men just showed up. Along with what seems to be Dustworld’s entire Ravager population. Do you have the shield?”
Tyson’s lips parted.
Rafe’s gaze fell to the half of the shield which Tyson carried in his arms. He looked up at us with something I couldn’t read in his eyes—regret, maybe—and I felt a wave of dread even before he spoke.
“Mission’s over,” Rafe said. “Time to go home.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
“In the middle of a battle?” I demanded. “You just said that Turic showed up. We can’t leave them. Raura and Arlen and Lake and Fenig are all out there—”
“We can come back,” Rafe said calmly. “But we have to complete our mission. The shield is too important to risk losing it here and never getting it back to the academy.”
“You know as well as we do that Clearborn is not going to let us come running back here into someone else’s war!” I said.
Rafe’s eyes flashed in his face, and I could tell his calm was slipping. “Yes, and I wonder why. We all know there are damn good reasons for not fighting in someone else’s war!”
“It’s not someone else’s war anymore,” Tyson said. “When I became their king, it became my war too.”
Rafe swore, before running his hand through his dark hair, ruffling it in his exasperation. “We don’t know what’s happening with Chase and the rest of the team either. Have you forgotten about them?”
“They have Clearborn and all the shifters on their side!” Tyson said. “I’m worried about Blake and Skyla too, but are we really hiding while other people fight Turic on our behalf? Is this who we are now?”
“Rafe’s right,” Jensen said, his voice quiet and sure. The three of us all turned to face him. Jensen so rarely sounded serious instead of sarcastic. “We’ve got to get that shield back home. Then we come back and help.”
“We’re wasting time arguing when we could already be through that portal,” Rafe agreed.
“I’m not leaving them,” Tyson said. “I can get rid of Turic once and for all. Then the spring court will be safe, and I can find a way to pass the crown to someone else.”
“We all know damn well it’s not going to be that simple,” Rafe said.
“I can’t just abandon them. But you can go without me. ” Tyson sounded calm.
“I’m just going to leave you here with Turic trying to kill you,” Rafe said, his voice disbelieving. “Not knowing if you’ll live or die. Right. Try again, Tyson.”
Jensen shook his head. “Not happening.”
“You’re supposed to be the pragmatic one,” Tyson told Jensen.
“I am,” Jensen told him. “You just don’t want to see what pragmatic means right now.”
“Open the portal, Maddie,” Rafe ordered. “We’re all going through it. This isn’t a discussion. There is no argument.”
“I’m not going through that portal.” Tyson told Rafe.
“I’m not asking.” Rafe’s voice had taken on a cold, authoritative note that sent a shiver down my spine. “You’re not in charge here.”
“I’m not in charge here?” Tyson demanded. “I’m the king. Everything that happens in the spring court is my responsibility!”
“You have lost your goddamn mind,” Rafe told him.
“Look around!” Tyson gestured at the temple, which had bloomed to life around us, even as we fought. The walls were covered in ivy now and vines ran up the temple’s smooth marble columns. There were new buds everywhere and the smell of greenery, and as Tyson gestured, some of those buds burst open, and white and pink and red flowers burst out, filling the air with a sweet floral scent.
“I didn’t ask for this!” Tyson went on. “But I can’t walk away either. I can’t just abandon the spring court!”
“So you can just abandon us?” Rafe asked roughly. “What if Chase needs us?”
“Stop trying to manipulate me,” Tyson said.
“You’re disobeying a direct order,” Rafe said. “It’s time to go home. I promise, Ty, I will do everything I can to make sure we come back and help these people if they need us.”
There was a scream outside, close. I ran to the temple windows to see a Fae struck down on the stairs by a Ravager that loomed over it, roaring as it lashed with its tail.
There were Ravagers everywhere. The field was chaos.
I blasted the Ravager with magic, and it rolled down the steps and slumped there.
The Fae were
being routed by Turic and his monsters.
I made eye contact with Raura, who was out of arrows and fighting desperately with a sword in one hand and magic in the other, throwing up a shield every time a Ravager’s claws or snarling mouth snapped at her face. She made an impatient, what are you waiting for, motion with her arms spreading out that I could read all the way from here, before she whirled and went on fighting.
I turned back to Rafe and Tyson to see them snarling at each other as if they were wolves, even though they couldn’t transform. Being the alpha came naturally to Rafe, but Tyson refused to back down.
“We have got to get out there!” I said. “People are dying!”
“Open the portal, Maddie,” Rafe ordered.
“No,” I said.
Rafe looked at me, eyes blazing, and I went on, “The shield can wait until we stop them from being slaughtered. These are our friends. They sacrificed to protect us. We can help them and still complete our mission.”
“Maddie,” Rafe said, his voice laced with steel.
When I stared between him and Tyson, both of them watching me expectantly, something inside me cracked. I didn’t want to hurt either of them.
But I could never leave friends behind to die, and the Fae had become our friends.
I looked into Rafe’s eyes and said, “No.”
Just for a microsecond, hurt flashed across Rafe’s face as if I’d slapped him. He probably would have preferred that. Then his face was that cold mask once more as he looked away from me, his gaze fixed somewhere between Tyson and me as if he couldn’t stand to look at either of us.
In all our training and practice, I had been the only one who could open a portal.
“You’re both disobeying a direct order right now,” Rafe warned. “There will be consequences for that.”
“I’d rather face those consequences than let people die on my watch,” Tyson said.
“Easy to say now,” Rafe said. “But we don’t have a fucking team if we don’t have a leader.”
Jensen looked disappointed when I met his gaze, and that struck deep into my soul.
“Let’s go save the Fae,” Jensen said. “We’ll deal with this mess later.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Tyson
When I walked out of the temple, everything changed.
All the Ravagers abandoned their targets and attacked me. If I’d doubted Turic was controlling them somehow earlier, there was no doubt now as they abruptly broke off their attack and raced toward me. The ground shook as they advanced, and their long, powerful tails—capable of breaking a man’s neck with a blow—slammed into the ground as they tried to raise dust to obscure their prey’s view, but that was just an ingrained behavior from their own dusty world. That trick didn’t work in the soft, damp world of spring.
Somehow, I knew a lot more now than I had before I became the king.
I knew how to raise my magic as they thundered toward me. My friends saw me stand very still and they swore and spread out to protect me, obviously thinking my trance was some kind of weakness they had to protect me from.
But I was merely concentrating.
“You don’t belong here,” I said to the Ravagers.
And then my magic blasted around them. The trees and the ground and the vines all came to life, attacking the Ravagers.
The monsters never reached me.
They all died screaming their unearthly screams as they fell into the ground, and the earth itself swallowed them up.
“Holy shit,” Maddie said beside me, as I surfaced from the magic.
“I told you it was scary,” I said to her.
“Scary yes,” she said. “Awesome? Also yes.”
“Great,” Rafe said, his voice hard. “You saved the Fae. Can we go back now?”
“Turic won’t stop bringing monsters through those portals. We need to destroy his portals, and I think the Delphin and I can destroy his power. Then he can’t hurt anyone, anymore.”
“First we bring the shield back,” Rafe said.
“It’ll only take a day or two if you help us, Rafe.” I turned to him, appealing to him as a friend. “We can do this as a team. Make this world a better place. You saw him burn that village.”
Rafe’s jaw tensed. “You’re asking us to abandon our mission.”
“I became the king to get us that shield,” I said. “You can’t ask me not to follow through on the responsibility I took on. But you could go. I’ll stay here.”
“You became the king to save Raura and Arlen and Lake,” Rafe said.
“You would have ordered me to become the king, wouldn’t you?” I asked. “To finish our mission. No matter what I chose, we were always going to end up here, Rafe.”
Because the spring court was tied into my destiny, even when I didn’t even know it existed.
Rafe was silent, and I knew I’d cornered him. He’d known that becoming the king would have a cost, but he’d hoped that I could get us the keys to the temple, then betray the promise I made when I took the crown. Because he believed our mission was the highest calling.
“Just because you give me an order doesn’t take away my responsibility to these people,” I said.
“Tell yourself whatever you have to tell yourself, Ty,” Rafe said. “You just destroyed our team. Maybe you’ll stay here, maybe you don’t give a fuck. But our chances of staying together? Or being one family? You erased them.”
His voice was cold. “When we go back, I’ll have to give an honest report. I’m not going to lie to save you—or myself. When I admit to Clearborn that you all mutinied—that you had no faith in my leadership—you’ll all be students again. As well you should be. And I’ll go into one of the teams under someone else’s leadership. As well I should. Because I’m clearly not equipped to lead you yet.”
He walked away, ignoring anything else I tried to say. He only turned back when he heard me start to speak to Maddie.
“What?” he asked, his voice sharp.
“I said, you all could go back without me,” I said. “I have to stay until I’ve killed Turic. We can’t leave his reign of terror to continue—the tide of the war could change without me.”
He scoffed at that. “Yeah, the Fae world can’t survive without Tyson Atlas.”
He sounded cruel, but I was sure then he was just angry because he wasn’t sure the team, our family, could survive if I stayed.
“I’m trying to give you what you want,” I said. “You go back with the shield. Complete the mission.”
“I’m not going back without you,” he said. “Besides, I’d need to get Maddie to open the damn portal.”
There was hurt as well as frustration in his voice. It must have struck him hard when Maddie chose to go against his orders.
“Give us a second,” I told Maddie, and went to Rafe’s side. He gave me a suspicious look, but together, the two of us walked into the cheerful noise of the forest, where birds were singing.
“She will,” I said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back, Rafe. But she can open the portal, and I’ll be the last one through, and then I just…won’t go.”
Rafe stared at me a second, then laughed a disbelieving laugh. “Wow. You want to round this whole thing out by tricking the girl you love?”
“I’m just trying to figure out how to deal with all this!”
Rafe gave me a look that was cutting. “Well, figure out another way. Jesus. You can just talk to Maddie—have a little more faith in her than that. She’s earned that much from you.”
He turned his back on me when he stormed off, but I knew he never really would.
And even though he was righteously pissed at Maddie right now, he was still protecting and defending her.
It made it hurt even worse, knowing he’d see my refusal to follow his orders as a betrayal, one he might not forgive… even though he’d never stop seeing Maddie and me as his family.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Blake
&nbs
p; I woke up slowly, with a bad headache. I pushed up onto my elbows and glanced over at Skyla, who lay beside me. Her lips were parted, slack, and her eyes were closed.
“Skyla?” I asked desperately. It felt like I was hungover as I blinked bleary eyes; it hurt every time I moved. Frantically, I pressed my palm against her chest, searching for the rise and fall of her breath. She was breathing, but slowly, and I exhaled.
Then I looked around. When I started to move, chains around my wrist moved too, and there was a clanging sound.
I had to get us out of here. I stared for a second, stupidly, at the manacles around my wrist. For a second, I barely remembered the fight in my house, and then suddenly it all came rushing back.
This was all my fault.
I’d read a book once where a kid broke his own thumbs to get out of a pair of handcuffs. I stared at my hands, wondering if it would really work. He’d had to crack the last ligament where his thumb joined his hand, then get the cuffs off before the swelling set in. Nausea roiled in my stomach as I imagined the crack and the pain.
Skyla was still sleeping so deeply that her brown ponytail was splayed across her cheek, as if she was still sleeping in the same position they’d dumped her. I pushed the ponytail back off her face.
I should’ve done a better job looking out for her.
I gritted my teeth, counted to three, gripped my thumb—and wrenched it out of the socket.
Tears ran down my cheeks from the pain as I pulled my hand loose from the cuff.
It was even harder to do the second one.
“Skyla, you’ve got to wake up.” I couldn’t shake her awake, so I nudged her with my elbow. “Come on, please, wake up.”
I felt so alone with her asleep. But maybe it was better. She would’ve been afraid if she was awake.
I got up and walked around our cell. We were in a basement, and there were high, barred windows. Through them, I could glimpse grass and sunshine, and something tightened in my throat. Freedom was so close.