Morrigan had pulled me outside the castle before Sir Allen came out, insisting that we leave the property. But I’d convinced her to wait with me on top of the walls on the outer perimeter to watch for him. After going to all of the trouble of breaking my father out of jail, I wasn’t going to wait around and let him get recaptured that easily.
It felt like an eternity while we stood hunched in the shadow of the stone battlements. I saw the other Unseelie magikin slowly pulling back from the fight once they’d covered our escape, and the Seelie guards were reorganizing and taking advantage of their greater numbers, training, and defensive position in the castle now that they’d recovered from the initial surprise. If Sir Allen didn’t make it out within the next two minutes, there would be no one left to distract the guards, and he would run right into a second arrest.
Nervously, I picked up the end of one of my braids and chewed on it. Then I saw Morrigan staring at me. Afraid that she would scold me like my mother, I quickly dropped the hair and looked away. But she said nothing.
Then there was the crashing noise of breaking glass from one of the upper windows in the castle. I craned my head up and caught a glimpse of Sir Allen leaping out. I held my breath, waiting for him to fly—but he grew no wings, and all his magic did was slow his fall enough that he landed safely on the ground, three stories down. He took off running through the gardens, headed for the walls.
A group of guards saw him land at the same time and turned toward him, running just as fast. At that distance, they would catch him before he reached safety.
I turned and grabbed Morrigan’s arm. “Go help him, please! He won’t make it out on his own!”
Morrigan turned and nodded to the pair of karasu tengu hovering nearby. In tandem, they dove over the edge and zoomed toward the fight.
I leaned forward and gripped the edge of the wall to watch what happened next.
The crow demons made it to Sir Allen just before the guards caught up with him. One grabbed him by both arms and pulled him up into the air. The other swiped at the guards with the claws on his hind feet, causing them to stop in their tracks and scramble for their weapons.
The tengu struggled to carry a full-grown man in flight, but he only had to make it to the top of the wall. I reached out my hand to guide Sir Allen in. He was only a few yards away and closing in.
Then I heard a shout from the broken window he’d jumped from. “Stop him! He killed the Count!”
More guards turned away from the fight and ran toward us. Others began to fire arrows at us. I ducked as one whizzed overhead.
Then Allen got closer and grabbed my hand. I pulled him down to the top of the wall and turned to jump off the other way into the forest, but his appearance stopped me.
There was a dark stain spreading up his right sleeve, and his hand looked burned. I stared down in horror. “Are you hurt?”
He shook his head and rolled up the sleeve a little to show me that his arm was unhurt. “Not my blood.”
I recoiled in horror. “Did you really hurt the Count?”
Morrigan grabbed my other arm. “No time to argue about it now. We have to fly.” She beckoned for the other tengu to catch up to us.
Each of the crows grabbed one of Allen’s arms, and they lifted him into the air. Morrigan squeezed my arm. “Come on, let’s go!”
I wrenched away from her. “No one said anything about killing someone!”
Allen called back to me from the air, “He deserved to die! You don’t know what kind of terrible things he’s done!”
Morrigan reached for me again, but I stepped back out of her reach and jumped into the air. “I don’t care what he did, I’m not getting involved in murders and assassinations. Let me go!”
I turned and flew off as fast as I could, not bothering to figure out where I was going. I just knew that I had to get as far away from Allen and the castle as I could, before one group or another caught me.
Tears streamed from my eyes, blurring my vision, and I couldn’t hear anyone calling after me. I couldn’t believe how things had turned out. I had tried not to get my hopes up for my real dad, but I never could have imagined that it would turn out like this. This was the opposite of everything that I wanted, and I couldn’t get caught up with another criminal who would force me to be on the run.
I hated to admit it, but Rosa was right. I’d been associating with all of the wrong kinds of people. There was one person who had always been there for me, who had always tried to do the right thing, and who had given me good advice. I had to find him.
I could only hope that Samuel would still want me if he knew that I wasn’t his biological daughter.
22
Shadows of the Past
Rosmerta
I was standing in my kitchen with the early morning sun slanting through the windows. I had a protection charm in my hand, a bundle of herbs tied together with a red cord and a coin at the bottom, and for a moment I couldn’t remember what it was for. Then a tiny hand reached up and took it from me.
“Mommy, how does magic work?” Akasha asked, looking up at me with her big, curious eyes. She was all dressed for her first day of kindergarten, with her little purple backpack on her shoulders and her hair plaited into twin braids with pink bows on the ends. She turned the protection charm over and held it up to me.
Next to her, nine-year-old Rosamunde rolled her eyes. “It works ‘cause it’s magic, dummy,” she said, fidgeting with her own bag. “You need to hurry up already. My class starts earlier than yours. I don’t wanna be late on the first day of fourth grade because of my dumb little sister.”
“Don’t talk to your sister like she’s two,” I snapped automatically. I turned to the counter and found their lunch boxes: a sparkly purple flower print for Akasha that matched her backpack, and a dark blue and black one for Rosamunde, who insisted she was too old for girly bags. I sighed to see them both looking so grown up. The house would be quiet with both of them gone.
And then, because I knew that Akasha wouldn’t stop asking until she got a satisfying answer, I straightened up and took a deep breath. “There are different ideas about how magic works. Some people think that all magic comes from the Realm of Faerie, and it’s just a little bit of their world slipping into ours. Some people think it comes from natural forces that we just don’t understand yet. And some people think it’s like a mystical energy that’s deep inside all of us, maybe even the thing that keeps us alive.”
Akasha frowned as she considered the possibilities. “But your magic comes from a Fae?”
I smiled and patted her on the head. “Yes, dear. To become a witch, I had to make a deal with a Fae to get my powers, but I use natural objects in my spells. But other humans who do magic use sorcery, and that doesn’t come from Faerie.” I drew both my girls into a hug. “Someday, you’ll be witches, too.”
Rosamunde wriggled out of the hug and grinned. “Then we can fly!” She was always asking me for rides on the back of my broom.
Akasha hugged me back, wrapping her arms around my waist. “Will you show us how your magic works then? Is it one of those things that you have to do it before you understand it?”
“Something like that, kitten.” I kissed each of them on the forehead. Then I went to the side table and picked up my purse and keys. “Rosamunde is right, we need to go. Make sure that you have everything.”
Rosamunde rushed to the garage door ahead of her sister. “I call front seat!”
Then Akasha turned around and screamed. “Mommy!”
I sat up with a start. My back ached from lying on the hard ground, and when I reached up, I found twigs and leaves stuck in my hair. How had I fallen asleep in the middle of the forest? My heart was pounding, and the sound of that scream still echoed in my ears. Somewhere, my girls were in trouble, and they needed me.
Then I looked around and started to realize where I was. The forest looked different—the trees and plants were strange, and I couldn’t see where the gray light was
coming from. Gradually, my memory of the day returned to me: opening the Gate. Akasha getting kidnapped. Rosamunde refusing to help me.
Yet the echo of that scream spurred me on. I lurched to my feet and kept moving. My feet splashed into a stream. Remembering my thirst, I knelt down and drank deeply of the cold water. But then I took the dowsing rod, held it out before me, and thought of my girls. I would use magic to find them and save them.
“Don’t worry,” I whispered into the empty air. “Mommy’s coming.”
23
After the Attack
Rosamunde
I woke up to Heather shaking me. It took a moment for me to focus on what she was saying.
“Something’s gone wrong,” she said, and the words sank into my foggy brain.
I sat up with a start. “Is it my mother?” Then the movement brought on a wave of dizziness, and I put my hand to my head. “Whoa. It feels like I didn’t sleep at all.” I looked to the window and realized that it was already gray outside, and groaned.
Heather shook her head. “It’s not your mom, not that I know of. Ashleigh said you went down less than an hour ago. But the castle was attacked by magikin and the tear has spread to here, so everything’s gone weird.”
I rubbed my eyes and blinked around blearily. Now that she mentioned it, the angles in the room looked strange, and my weird vertigo wasn’t going away. Maybe it wasn’t just exhaustion. “Well, that was bound to happen sooner or later, right? The tear is just going to keep growing unless we can stop it.”
Heather sat down on the edge of the bed and put her hand on mine. “Not really. The castle was supposed to be protected and they thought the tear couldn’t touch it. You’re going to have to ask someone for more details, because I don’t really understand it—” She took a deep breath. “But that’s not the worst of it. Are you ready?”
“Hang on.” I climbed out of the bed and looked around. “Where’s my stuff?” I needed to put my cloak back on so the weird effects of the tear wouldn’t get to me so badly.
Heather pointed to a chair. “A servant brought them up for you.”
I picked up my coat, but the cloak wasn’t underneath it. I threw open my bag and saw all of my other stuff seemed to be inside, but still no cloak. That was odd. I looked back over my shoulder. “This isn’t all of it. I had this cape thing that I made, looked kind of brown and ratty will all of these dried flowers and stuff stuck in it.”
Heather shrugged. “I don’t know who handled it, but maybe it got put in the wrong room. We can figure it out later. But we’ve got bigger problems right now.”
I checked the pile one more time and the floor around the chair, just to be sure that I hadn’t missed it. There were no lights on in the room, just the faint glow coming in through the window with the curtains open—I wasn’t surprised that the power was gone, but I’d expected the Faerie Castle to have some kind of magical backup light source. “I really need to find that cloak, especially if we’re being attacked. How many are there, and where are they attacking?”
I’d never faced a real fight before and I wasn’t prepared at all, but I felt remarkably calm about the whole thing. Maybe I just didn’t have the energy to freak out. But I knew that I would do whatever I could to handle the situation and would probably freak out when it was all done. Right now I just needed someone to point me toward the problem.
Heather got up and crossed the room to grab my arm before I could head out the door. “Would you please just sit down? I’m trying to talk to you.”
I let her lead me back to the bed and perched on the edge. “Just tell me what happened.”
“The guards managed to chase off the attackers,” Heather said slowly, watching me for my reaction. “The danger is over. But it looks like it was just a distraction, because someone broke into the jail and let the prisoners loose. And then they assassinated Count Duncan.”
The Count was dead? “You’re joking,” I burst out. “You can’t just kill a faeriekin.”
Heather covered her face in her hands and her shoulders started to shake. Was she crying?
I put my arm around her and scooted closer. “Okay, I’m sorry, obviously you wouldn’t joke about something like that. Do you know what happened? Just tell me.”
“It was Allen,” she mumbled into her hands. “The knight who used to be in his personal guard, and turned out to be a traitor for the Unseelie. He watched over the Count for years. But someone let him out of the jail and he—he took an iron sword, and nobody knows where he got it, because they’re supposed to be illegal—and stabbed the count right through the heart. Iron is fatal to Fae, even ones who are part human.” She started crying harder. “And I can’t even see Glen right now!”
I wrapped my other arm around her, too, and pulled her closer so that she could cry on me. Heather clung to me, and I stroked her hair, soothing her like my friends had done for me so many times. “Shh, I know it’s scary.” I couldn’t believe it myself—the Count was getting older, but he was supposed to rule for many more years before he retired and turned the title over to his grandson. Glen had a lot of reasons to freak out right now. “I know you want to be there for him. Why won’t they let you see him?”
“He and his family are in some kind of meeting, and they’re under extra guard to make sure there isn’t another assassination attempt,” she said between sobs. She took a deep breath and went still. “Ashleigh is with them.”
My arms tightened around her. I could only imagine what she was feeling right now, to be left out when Ashleigh was included. Just one more thing complicated by their tangled relationships. Better not to push her if she didn’t want to talk about it, though. “Is there anything we can do?”
She pulled back and took out a handkerchief to wipe her face. “I don’t know. They said that I should wake you up and tell you the news, but now I think we just have to wait and see what they say.”
I stood up and pulled Heather to her feet with me. “If they’re going to wake us up in the middle of the night, then we’re going to need some coffee. Come on.”
After a bit of wandering around in the castle looking for people, a search complicated by the shifting dimensions of the hallways and the eerie glow of faerie lanterns (so there really was a backup lighting system, just not in my room), we managed to get a servant to take us to the same drawing room where I’d met with Ashleigh earlier in the night. Soon after, another servant arrived with a pot of hot coffee.
It was the same room, but when I checked every corner I couldn’t find my nettle cloak, and the servants I questioned didn’t know what I was talking about. I was starting to get really worried about its disappearance. Could it be some kind of malicious theft, related to everything else going on?
Kai came in, looking dazed and groggy.
I rushed over as soon as I saw him. “Did my cloak end up in your room with your stuff?”
He squinted at me. “Wha—that ugly thing? I have no idea where it went.”
I grumbled and turned to the guard who had been assigned to keep an eye on us, a stern-looking xana woman. “Does the castle have some kind of lost and found that I can check? I really need to find my cloak.”
The guard shook her head. “I’m under orders not to let you leave this room until we’ve confirmed that the castle grounds are secure. While our magical defenses are down, there’s still the risk of another attack.”
I sighed and flopped down into the nearest chair. “I should be out there helping, or going to find the guardian, or something.”
Kai poured a mug of coffee and handed it to me. “Just take it easy for now. You can’t do everything yourself. If there’s something we can do to help, I’m sure they’ll let us know.” He poured a second mug for Heather, and then one for himself.
I drained most of the mug in several big gulps, ignoring the burning of my mouth and throat, and held it out for more. “I just can’t believe what’s happening. It’s like this day just won’t end. I can’t take sitting around.
Either give me something to do, or let me go back to sleep.”
I tried to hold the cup still, but either my hand shook or Kai’s did, because when he tried to refill the mug, half of the coffee poured out onto the floor instead. I flinched away as the hot liquid hit my hand, spilling more.
“Oh, fudge.” I put the mug down on the table and sucked coffee off of my fingers.
Kai cursed and put down the coffee pot, then grabbed a handful of napkins and tried to mop up the mess off of the hardwood floor. “Sorry! Gravity just isn’t working out for me right now.”
“I know, right?” I said with a shaky laugh. “I tripped over my own feet at least three times on the way down here. I thought I was going to fall down the stairs and break my neck.”
Kai looked up at me with a frown. “It wasn’t affecting you that badly earlier. Is the tear getting worse?”
I hung my head. “No, my cloak was helping counteract the magic. I really need to find it again.”
The door swung open. I looked up and spotted Ashleigh coming in the door, and the guard stepped aside, bowing more deeply than usual. Two more guards followed the faeriekin into the room and took up posts. I glimpsed more outside the door before it swung closed.
Ashleigh looked just as haggard and tired as the rest of us, with puffy red eyes from crying, the opposite of her normal put-together appearance. I was shocked how much an hour or two could change her. She walked straight to Heather and hugged her tightly.
“Glen asked me to pass that along for him,” Ashleigh murmured in the other girl’s ear.
I glanced at Kai, who raised his eyebrows back at me and frowned sadly. So he’d heard it, too, and knew what that meant.
Ashleigh let go of Heather and stepped back to address all of us. “I’m so sorry to keep you guys locked up and waiting like this. We’re doing everything in our power just to keep everyone safe right now, and prevent another tragedy.”
Fae of Calaveras Trilogy Box Set Page 65
