by Leia Stone
He frowned, plopping under the rock and sitting on the fake grass. We all guzzled from our water jugs, and I relished the cool liquid as it poured down my throat.
“All right, so the Winter Castle is rumored to be inhabited by a…well, it’s hard to explain,” Trissa said. “You’ll see what I mean when we get there, but we will have to be extremely careful.”
We nodded. I was just standing to prepare to continue our walk when a shadow passed overhead. My gaze flicked to the sky just in time to see three harpies dive-bombing our group.
“Harpies!” I yelled, and rolled out of the way as one of them landed right where I had been sitting. Her talons dug into the dirt where my butt had just been parked. Elle’s illusion disappeared, and chaos destroyed our water break.
Pulling a dagger from my thigh holster, I reached out and stabbed the wing of the harpy closest to me. The blade slammed into her, stopping only when it reached the hilt.
She shrieked and launched into the air, with me still hanging from her wing. I beat my own wings wildly, holding on for dear life as she climbed, making crazy, high-pitched noises and spitting at me.
I was wondering why the hell this psycho would spit on me when a burning sensation spread over the skin of my neck and chest, where her saliva had landed. Yanking my dagger from her wing, I dislodged myself and flew to the ground.
It burned. Badly. And we had no healer. Landing on my feet, I dropped to the sand and picked up handfuls of it, rubbing it on my chest and neck to wipe the acidic spittle off.
“They spit acid!” I screamed to the rest of our group. I was just pulling the lid off my water to douse my chest when that shadow passed overhead again.
Fuck.
Without much thought, I held up my hand and shot a beam of sunlight right into the harpy’s face. A cry left her throat, and the pain slamming into my brain brought me to my knees.
Holding one hand out, I called forth my powers and blasted her with another bolt of light so hot that it took her head clean off. Her body plummeted to the ground, hitting the sand with a thud, and I leaned back, panting.
It was quiet—too quiet.
I sat up and was relieved to see the other two harpies dead on the ground. But Liam, Elle, and his men were looking at Trissa. She’d gone to one knee, and her head hung low as she looked up at me with tear-filled eyes.
“How long have you known?” There was hurt in her voice, and emotion welled up inside of me.
The sunlight magic. She had seen it. She knew what it was.
I sat up and crawled over to her. “Don’t be mad. I wanted to tell you. I just…”
She chewed her bottom lip. “You didn’t trust me.”
“Not that.” I reached for her, and she recoiled.
“You are royalty.” She looked incredulously at me on my knees before her. “You shouldn’t touch me. There are rules.”
I rolled my eyes. “This is why I didn’t tell you. Don’t do that! Don’t treat me like some stuffy old royal.”
She sighed, then reached out to grasp my shoulders. “How? Did your mother know? Was she…”
“Only recently. I found her journal. She’s not…my biological mother. Queen Dahlia is.”
Understanding crossed Trissa’s face. “That makes sense.”
“Please don’t be mad. I wanted to tell you.”
She nodded. “Of course. I understand. But there is protocol that needs to be followed. We must hold a meeting with the Elders, tell them and then the village. You will take ownership of the—”
I put out a hand to halt her. “I’m not ready. I just want to wake the queen and have her do all of that. Let’s stay low and under Indra’s radar.”
She nodded again. “Okay…if that’s your wish.”
“It is.”
Trissa looked haunted, her mouth turned down and her eyes hollow. “Your mother knew and didn’t…”
I pulled her in for a hug. “She worried Indra would target you if you knew. I’ll let you read her journal when we get back.”
She squeezed me hard before releasing me, and nodded. Suddenly, she seemed to realize there were other people standing around us, watching uncomfortably. All emotion was wiped from her face—the fierce Trissa I knew and loved was back. “All right, we should move out.”
With that, we trekked on, stopping only in short bursts for water or snacking. The most horrifying part of our journey was all the bones. We passed hundreds and hundreds of skulls and bone fragments, remnants of our lost brothers and sisters. The reminder was enough to put a permanent pit in my stomach.
Eventually, the landscape changed from the barren desert to a frigid wasteland. As far as the eye could see was an endless sheet of ice. No green, no life. Everything was dead.
“Wow…not the magical wonderland I’d imagined.” Liam shrugged as the rest of us hugged ourselves, our teeth chattering. He was the only one who seemed okay with the current plunge in temperature.
Trissa chuckled. “It was beautiful, once. Freshly fallen snow, two-hundred-foot-tall trees with wintercones that smelled like Solstice. Quite amazing.”
Was being the operative word.
“Winter was the first land to fall.” Trissa lowered her head in shame. “I had a dear friend from winter. She never made it out…”
Damn. I would be beside myself if Elle was across Faerie when darkness started to kill off everything. A silence descended over our group, and for the first time, I thought Liam’s friends were getting to actually see what taking the crystals from this land had done.
We walked an hour through the winter landscape with chattering teeth and purple lips. I was pretty sure that if I’d had to fly out of there, I couldn’t. My wings felt frozen to my back. We’d brought sweaters, but those were for the chill nights of Spring, not a cold, hard winter.
“I can’t feel my fucking toes,” Elle growled.
“Just a bit…farther,” Trissa mumbled.
By then, I would have killed for a toasty fire or a sunny afternoon day. As if that thought brought attention to it, my palms started to warm, bringing a tingling pain as my fingers thawed.
Sunlight power.
Sun.
Warmth.
Duh—why hadn’t I tried this an hour ago? The cold had sucked out my brain cells.
“Gather round!” I told the others. Cam, who had his hands in his armpits, sulked over to huddle, as did the other Halflings I’d gotten to know—Jensen, Brick, and Donny. Brick, as one might imagine, was a gigantic man with horns and an outgoing personality. Jensen and Donny were silent and broody.
As soon as we’d closed ranks, I aimed my hands at the ground and pushed sunlight out of them. A warm glow lit up the space, and everyone sighed in relief as heat escaped my palms and melted the ice beneath our feet.
“Ahhh, you were holding out on us,” Cam said, rubbing his hands together.
I chuckled. “These powers are still new to me.”
We stayed in our warm little huddle for a good twenty minutes before I realized Liam was gone. Looking over my shoulder, I saw him standing at the edge of an ice cliff.
“Let’s get moving,” I told everyone, and ceased the warmth, turning away to go after Liam.
When I approached, he was looking down at something with a frown.
“What is it?” I asked, coming up behind him and peering into the ice-covered valley below.
Holy crystals.
Winter Castle. It was nothing like the paintings. Where it once had four large turrets, now only one stood. The others had been brought to the ground in heaps of stone and snow. But that wasn’t was held Liam’s gaze. Crawling over half the castle walls was a thick, black, oily substance. It moved and shimmered like it was alive, and just looking at it gave me a creepy feeling in my gut.
“What the winter hell is that?” I breathed.
If we had to go down in that stuff and seek the Sword of Night, then this wasn’t going to go as well as I hoped.
A somber mood came over our
group as we hiked down into the ruins of Winter Castle.
“I once attended a wedding here,” Trissa breathed, stepping carefully so that she didn’t touch the inky stuff. “They had snow sculptures and ice skating.”
I’d never seen Faerie before the Dark War, so this wasn’t as traumatic for me as it must have been for her.
“Don’t touch the goo,” Liam said.
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
Trissa nodded. “Remnants of the dark magic unleashed when Faerie fell.”
I shivered at that thought and was careful not to get near it. “Can you Seek the sword?” I asked Liam. Our Seeker power had limits. You had to have seen the object at one time or have a photo of it, at the very least.
Liam nodded. “I’m trying. I saw a drawing of it once. I was little.”
A skittering sound, like claws running across stone, drew my attention to the left. Trissa nocked an arrow, and everyone became super-intense and alert.
“Let’s be quick!” I called out.
Liam took for the skies. “I’m going to check over here. You check that end.” He pointed to one of the demolished turrets.
I kicked off the ground, flapping my thawed wings, with Elle right beside me. Liam’s wingless men waited for us with Trissa, as far as they could go without touching the black stuff below.
Now that I was airborne, I could see sheets of ice and dead trees for miles in each direction, before my gaze hit a dark and densely packed forest at the back of the castle.
We fluttered over to the pile of stone with the black magic crawling all over it and landed on the other side, which was free of the scary stuff.
“This place is creepy,” Elle whispered. The large tower was half-collapsed, but I could still slip inside the door and enter the basement floor of the castle.
“Totally creepy.” I eyed a chunk of black goop squirming near the edge of the room.
As we walked into the space, I had to cover my mouth to mask the damp smell.
“Light, please,” Elle said.
I’d forgotten that I was a fae lightbulb. Calling up my power, I let a faint glow emanate from my palms.
“Daughter of Light,” a faint voice hissed.
Elle and I both jumped and pulled our swords, spinning around to search for that voice.
“Did you hear that?” I cried, heart pounding in my chest.
“I heard it.” Elle’s gaze darted about the room, taking in the black goop and every corner and crevice. “This place is fucking haunted. Let’s bail.”
I shook my head. “We can’t bail. Liam needs the sword.”
“Princess,” the voice hissed again, and the black goop started to slither towards me.
Oh, hell fucking no. The black stuff was talking?
“Kill it!” Elle screeched.
I aimed a palm at the snaky mass and shot a beam of sunlight. A hissing sound rose through the space, and then the goop shrank away, slithering like a snake back into the corner.
Elle shook herself. “Gross.”
I felt like it was crawling on me even though it wasn’t, and I had to really work at not having a full-on freak-out.
“There’s a tunnel through here,” Elle whispered, and slipped between two large slabs of stone at the back of the chamber.
Crossing the room in quick strides, I caught up with her and tucked in behind her, holding my hand out as a light.
“Whoa,” I breathed.
We’d stepped into a beautiful hallway lined with rich mahogany trim and black satin wallpaper. The flooring was a sleek gray stone, covered in a thick layer of dust.
“Are we underground?” Elle asked, walking down the hallway, throwing knives at the ready.
I nodded. “Under ice, anyway. I think the castle is half-buried.”
There didn’t seem to be any black stuff in here, which was a miracle. Activating my Seeker power, I could feel Liam was close, and that brought me comfort. He’d found his way down here, too.
“Let’s check this room.” Elle reached out and opened a door.
We both stepped inside, and I grinned. “Jackpot.”
Books lined the room on large shelves, and the space was full of relics affixed to the walls. One of the relics looked like an old war helmet. Another was a crystal ball of some kind, sitting in a glass case. I didn’t see a sword, though.
“I’ll bet this place has a secret room,” Elle announced, and started pulling books down from the shelves. “They all did back then.”
“Secret room? That’s fantasy.” I rolled my eyes and glanced at one of the glass cases, which held some kind of dagger.
“She’s right.” Liam’s voice came from the doorway, and I nearly chucked my sword at him.
He stepped into the room, and I noticed he seemed different. He had a faraway look in his eyes, like he was lost in memory. Being here probably brought back a lot. His mother had lived here with his dad for at least a few months when his brother had died, if the stories were true. Obviously, he hadn’t been born yet, but they must have told him things.
“My father said there was a secret room in the castle where he hid his most treasured items.” Liam started to pull books down from the shelves as well.
Secret room.
Okay. If I were a castle builder, where would I put the button to a secret door? My eyes ran over the bookcases and along the floor, looking for a gap in the baseboard or anything to tell me something wasn’t as it should be.
When I got to the bookcase on the far wall in the corner, I noticed a slight gap between the one next to it. Walking over, I examined the books, which all seemed real, with pages stuffed between covers—none of those false books you see in movies. But the wall sconce to the left of the book had a tiny jewel imbedded in the bottom that looked…off. It was set in gold, but there was a gap around the setting, giving it the appearance of a button.
Reaching out, I pushed the stone, and a clicking sound followed by a creaking rushed out from the bookcase.
“Got it!” I yelled.
Liam grinned, running over with Elle, and slipped his hand into mine. We waited as it took forever for the bookcase to fully open. When it did, it was stuck about halfway, and we had to slip in behind it.
“More light, Lil!” Liam called out as he slipped in first. I was right behind him, holding my hand up like a lamp.
It smelled like an animal had died in there. I sheathed my sword and used my other hand to cover my nose and mouth. “Gross.”
Raising my lit hand, I let the light flow in a wide arc over the room and found Liam standing over a table. His head was bowed in reverence, his shoulders sagged. Elle and I scurried over to see what held his attention, and I gulped at the small child’s onesie that lay on the table next to a lock of hair.
“My eldest brother…their firstborn. My mother said that losing him drove my father mad. He was never the same after that.”
Liam reached out and stroked the blue wool. Emotion tightened my throat as sorrow built inside my chest. I couldn’t imagine the loss of a child.
I placed one hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “You should take it back,” I suggested. “For your mom.”
He nodded. “Good idea.”
“I’ll get it. You guys search the rest.” Elle reached out and carefully started to roll up the onesie with the hair, placing it into her backpack. Liam and I walked the rest of the room, and I quickly learned where the smell came from.
Rats.
Earth, Faerie—didn’t matter, those bastards were in every world.
I was just examining a display box that held some kind of necklace set with blue gems when Liam gasped. Turning my attention to him, I let my gaze fall on what could only be the Sword of Night.
It was nearly four feet tall, matte black, and encrusted with black gems at the hilt. One edge was serrated, and a cloud of energy danced around it. Lying next to it was a thick leather scabbard. Just being near it—even with it inside the case—turned my stomach into a pit of despai
r.
“Liam, this is dark,” I said with a shiver.
He nodded, eyeing the sword as he unclipped the lock to open the case. “So is my father. It’s time we fought fire with fire.”
That sounded like horrible advice, now that I was staring at this thing, but I knew we needed something big if we were going to get the last crystal back from his dad and live to tell the tale.
“Just tell me if you’re going dark.” I chewed at my lip. “We need a code word or something.”
Liam chuckled. “How about dark?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m serious. If you feel like it’s too much to handle or taking you over or something, tell me.”
He looked up at me with such adoration, it took me off guard. Reaching out, he caressed my cheek. “I’m not used to being looked after.”
Leaning over, he brought the warmth of his body to me and pressed his lips to mine. It was one of those sweet and unexpected kisses that made my stomach flutter.
“Okay, it smells like dead ass in here. Can we do this later?” Elle piped up from behind me, and we both pulled away, grinning.
“Be careful,” I told Liam, edging forward.
He took the sword in his hands and immediately winced.
“What’s wrong?” I reached out, and he recoiled, eyes darkening.
“Nothing. I’m fine,” he growled before slipping the sword into the scabbard at his hip.
“Let’s bounce.” Elle turned to leave, and I nodded. Now that we had the sword, there was no reason to stay.
The three of us made our way out of the room and into the hallway. Once Elle slipped through the stone opening and back into the demolished turret room, I had Liam go next, and I brought up the rear.
As soon as I stepped out into the room, I heard it again. “Daughter of Light,” the black goo hissed as it wound and slithered and started to gather in the corner of the room.
Liam’s eyes widened. “What the hell was that?”
Elle took one of her throwing knives and chucked it at the inky blob snake. It moved out of the way expertly, then hissed again, rearing up.
“Lily. Walk slowly over to me.” Liam’s voice was deadly calm, and I realized that they were on the other side of the room, with me five inches from the coiled demonic snake.
