by M. A. Grant
“Is that a white flag, Lyne?” He misreads it, leaning back to check my reaction, and I’m grateful and ruined and desperate to pull myself together.
“Yes, you utter bastard. You win. Congratulations.”
He flushes, his vicious grin softening into a shy smile. “Not the prize I wanted, but I’ll take it.”
How are you okay with this?
He makes a funny little sound in the back of his throat and when I look up and see how his eyes have gentled, I realize the words slipped out.
“I’m not okay,” he begins, only to stop. The ley line unexpectedly crests against my glamour, a blanket of heat warming my skin when he reaches out to me. The backs of his fingers brush down my arm, from shoulder to elbow, and I pray he doesn’t notice how my body reacts to the tentative touch.
“I’m not,” he repeats, staring down at that point of contact, “but that’s okay.”
His gaze darts back up, holds with mine, and he starts to say something else, but before he can there’s a commotion outside in the hallway. A scream. Long and high and stretched with the kind of fear that can’t be faked.
Tremendous crashes and more screams join the first. Running in the hall. Yelling. The music from farther in the house cuts out abruptly. Above us, the floor shakes as people run from the second story to the stairs, trying to escape an unknown assailant.
With the panicked noise, I almost miss the rustling and the strange shadow lifting onto the wall behind Smith. I grab his lapel and turn him, partially blocking his body with mine, as I throw a freezing hex at whatever’s trying to sneak its way into our rapidly emptying room.
The vine—whip-thin and decorated with a series of curved thorns, a common Seelie weapon—falls to the ground and shatters. I push at Smith, urging him away from the door, and run to check if there are more. A few creepers are working their way down the hallway, still shuddering and jerking as they grow and expand, slowly coming into a hideous sentience.
“Roark, the garden—”
Smith’s wide-eyed gaze meets mine, holds, and I know we’re both thinking of the guests out there. Of the Unseelie trapped out there. I point to the other door. “I’ll check. You, get out. There’s not much time. Go.”
Without a second look, I step out into the hallway, freezing and shattering vines as I head toward the garden and the Seelie responsible for this attack.
Chapter Eight
Phineas
Roark’s gone before I can yell at him to not be stupid. To run away from the danger, not toward it. But the moment I step into the hallway, I know I could never ask that of him. Not if I can’t ask it of myself.
The party atmosphere has devolved into chaos on every level. Food and drinks and glasses and cups are ground into the thick rugs and hardwood floors. High heels litter the floor as if the girls simply ran out of them as they escaped. Even now, panicked people jostle me while I stretch to my full height and search for anyone who needs help.
Some are so terrified they’ve simply frozen in place, hit and bounced about by others who stampede past them. I wade through the flood to reach them. They cling to my hands, my arms, while I turn them toward an exit and yell at them to get out.
Glass shatters in the distance, from the rooms near the garden, and I shoot a glance over my shoulder. The hall’s too crowded, too badly lit between the stardust and intermittent wall sconces, to see what’s going on down there. But the vines I saw Roark destroying on his way to the garden continue to writhe in the darkness, and every instinct warns me to run.
Faint moaning comes from the ground behind one of the couches. A delicate pixie lies there. One of her wings is crushed and hanging at a painful angle, and splintered glass litters the ground near her.
“Help,” she begs, stretching out her hand to me. Pale yellow blood drips from the cuts extending up into her forearm.
Another crash from behind us. Intermittent screams and sobs from the fleeing mass. The vines hit the walls as they flail from the rapid growth. When they slam back against the floor, their thorns scratch the hardwood with ominous intent.
I kneel beside the pixie and hope she can’t see past me at what’s coming for us. I rip off my tie and wrap it around her hand, apologizing under my breath at her whimpers of pain when I jar some of the glass shards. She’s light as air as I lift her in my arms and carry her toward the door.
An elf, tall and pale and elegant, rushes past us both, knocking into me so hard I nearly drop her. “Hey!” I yell. He spins back, so I lift the pixie a bit. “Get her out of here!”
His face contorts. “Fucking Unseelie,” he spits and abandons us.
I want to lash out at him, punish him for abandoning an injured girl because she isn’t part of his Court. But now isn’t the time. She needs me. Roark needs me.
“It’s fine,” I promise her when she starts to cry. “We’ll get out of here.”
A couple other girls rush out of the room just in front of us and I recognize the hair of the Seelie sprite who invited me days ago. “Eliza?”
She turns, eyes widening. “Finny? Why haven’t you run? Wasn’t Sebastian with you?”
“We got separated. Can you two get her out of here?”
Eliza’s friend turns back and the two of them manage to get the injured pixie supported between them. “Where are you going?” Eliza asks, voice high with fear, when she notices I’m not coming with them.
“Roark ran to the garden. Gotta make sure he’s okay. Get out and call for help, okay?”
I sprint down the hall without waiting for an answer. I do my best to stick to the places where swaths of frozen vines melt into goo on the floor, although sometimes one will lash out at me from the shadows or an odd room. At those moments, I can only rely on a poorly cast conjured blade to keep from getting impaled. It works for the most part. I get a few scratches, but no major injuries.
My pulse kicks up the closer I get to the garden. The dead vines here are larger, stronger, even more barbed than the ones I got past earlier. Over the crowd’s vanishing noise, a rustling, like snake scales slipping over dried grass. Cold sweat breaks out over my forehead and upper lip and my knees wobble.
Move faster.
Aileen cowers near the French doors leading out to the garden, doing what she can to guide frightened partiers to safety through this undiscovered point of egress. She hears me coming and turns, face blank, paler than ever. “We didn’t do this—”
I ignore her. She’s not important.
Over the rustling, a familiar voice, now pealing with authority, cuts through it all. “Fall back!”
I push past Aileen, ignore her cry for me to stop, and slip through the doors.
Vines everywhere. Twisting, turning, slithering vines that reach and grab and cut—
“Stay together.”
I home in on Roark’s voice, searching for him. There. Tall, confident, gesturing behind him as he keeps an eye on a writhing mass growing out from a central pillar in the back of the garden. A small handful of partygoers rushes to obey while other shady forms flee from the onslaught. It must be Roark’s Unseelie taking up place behind him. They’re the only ones who would trust him in this moment.
A hob—caught partway between the French door and the grass of the lawn—trips on her way up. I rush down and get her to her feet, but before we can get back to the door, a thorned stalk cuts off our escape. The tip of it, covered in fine spikes like a flail, lifts as we move, tracking us with an uncanny serpentine grace.
“Go,” I urge her, pushing her down the steps behind me. The vine doesn’t chase after us, but I keep it in my periphery as I watch to make sure the hob makes it. She doesn’t stop running until she joins her friends, who are clustered safely behind their prince.
Blue fire erupts from Roark’s left hand, casting his sharp-boned face into stark relief. His lips curl back from his teeth, his eyes narrow, his fury focused wholly on the spiked vines erupting from the earth and slicing their way toward him and his subjects.
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His lips barely move and a rapier I know from years’ worth of fights appears in his right hand. It’s sharp and fast, but these stalks need a machete or an axe or freaking Agent Orange. Agent Orange on fire.
Aileen stands in the doors, all pale beauty, watching Roark with some mixture of terror and awe.
“Close them,” I yell at her. She comes to, stares at me, and I point to the doors. “Close them! Get out!”
With a quick nod, she obeys. The doors slam shut, drawing the attention the vine had focused on me. I steal the momentary distraction to head toward Roark.
His fire spreads, circling his subjects, rising higher until it shields them. Tiny tendrils erupt near the group and sizzle into cinders as they try to reach past the flame. The temperature keeps dropping, the moisture freezing midair and catching the shifting light, tugging at my lungs when I try to breathe.
Roark flicks his hand and the fire there extinguishes. The first of the vines reaches him.
His blade flashes like quicksilver, severing the whipping end with the worst of the barbs, just like he did with the sanglin. Another vine snakes toward his ankles. He twists, slamming his hand toward the earth, and a brutal, jagged stalagmite of ice shoots up, severing the vine.
I’m halfway across the lawn before I realize that I’m running toward the fight weaponless.
He must catch my movement from the corner of his eye because he spins toward me. His face contorts. “Smith—” he bellows.
The thick green coil darts toward his exposed neck before I can yell a warning. The whip of the curved hooks slicing through the air echoes in my ears.
Panic. Fear. Fury. I fling my hand forward, willing the vine away from him. No fancy spells, no hexes. Just a desperate hope that I won’t see him killed in front of me.
It slams into an invisible wall and shivers back, golden sparks flying off over Roark’s head. He adjusts a moment too late, but it doesn’t matter. The vine crumples on itself like paper being eaten away by a slow lick of flame.
I reach his side and he turns back to me.
Amusement and wild delight in those pale eyes. My chest hurts from the brilliance of his smile.
The first true smile I’ve ever seen on Roark’s face, wide and shining and utterly confident. Every other smile he’s ever worn pales in comparison. And this one is for me.
He looks away from me toward the teeming wall hurtling toward us. He shakes out his left arm. An ice shield begins to form and he raises his arm, bracing for the hit.
Below us, the ley line buzzes, resonating up into my body.
“Come on,” Roark snarls toward the darkness, as if someone is back there behind the column of vines, urging them on. Aileen’s plea makes sense now. We didn’t do this. Except, that can’t be true. The Seelie have attacked Roark and his Court and broken the neutrality of Mathers. Despite that, Roark stands here like he could defeat this enemy with his will alone.
This is the Unseelie prince people pay homage to. And watching him steady himself behind that shield, even though he knows we may not win this fight, makes me wonder why I’ve never seen this side of him before. For all that we’ve fought together, I’ve never seen such desperate heroism in him.
I barely catch his murmured “Still okay, Smith?”
I swallow.
I don’t want to die here. Not at the Seelie sorority house. Not because of some stupid faerie civil war. But if it’s a choice between fighting or going out quietly, I know how I want this to end. And, maybe, if I can do this right, I keep Roark from dying, too.
I close my eyes. Imagine the ley line forming a wall between me and the oncoming tide of pointed, painful death.
The explosion of their contact against my imaginary shield jerks me back to this moment. The impact resonates through me, back to the ley line, where the earth swallows the shock and leaves me standing. Solid. Uninjured. It’s the vines that bruise themselves against that invisible barrier, bursting into flame where they touch.
Roark tilts his head back and laughs.
“Don’t you fucking drop it,” he commands me, assuming I know what the hell I’m doing, before he makes a motion toward the Unseelie in the fire circle. “Run,” he tells them. The flames vanish and they obey.
He tugs at the back of my jacket and his breath is warm against my neck. “They’re gone. Back, Smith. I’ve got you.”
“I don’t think... I can’t move the shield,” I warn.
“Better run fast, then. On three.”
Mentally, I count to three before I turn and sprint. The ley line shivers when the vines finally break through. Roark’s right beside me, flinging curses and hexes to clear our path as the plants try to trip us. We’re almost to the edge of the garden, almost to the gate in the fence and our liberty.
On my left, something shatters through one of the house’s windows, hurtling out of the darkness toward me. I stumble to avoid the longest thorn, the one that would have eviscerated me, but the second still slices across my chest. A familiar burning pain whitens the edges of my vision.
Roark makes an inarticulate sound of rage. His hand slashes and he shouts something that sounds ancient and furious.
The creeper explodes into shards of ice and ichor.
He’s so focused on me that he doesn’t notice the vine behind him. He grunts when it digs into his back, partially flinging him forward as it slices up his spine. He lands with a groan.
I drag him up off the ground. There’s so much blood. Roark’s gone pale and there’s nothing but rustling around us. He tightens his grip on his rapier and tries to push himself free of me but his face is so pained and something wraps around my ankle and—
Enough.
Roark
Smith unleashes. He goes up like a fucking pyre.
He’s not even speaking words. He just turns and vines fall at his feet, sliced with hexes. A swath of destruction surrounds him. Instinctual magick. Like watching my mother play with ice.
Except Smith’s playing with a ley line. Scorching, blazing, like he did in the field.
I’m drunk on it. Power rolls off him in waves, hitting me over and over again until I can’t tell where my glamour ends and his channeling begins.
My back drips blood. I squint against Smith’s terrible light.
It’s like standing in the sun for too long. Burning. Bleaching out, like bone.
The living column of thorns at the other end of the garden rallies and flings another salvo of vines toward us.
I help, or try to. I swing my sword, but Smith does it all. He pushes power at me in a searing rush. He’s yelling something, but his voice is lost to the roar of the flame and I can’t understand it.
A hot wind whips his hair around his face and his eyes glow.
Too much.
That’s why he wants me to leave.
This is it. A chance for freedom from Phineas Smith. Allow him a glorious death and attempt to move on with my miserable life. He knew this was coming. He’s been preparing himself for it.
He’s burning alive, and so am I.
He jerks when I grab his hand, and the electric shock of it slams through me, sizzling over my nerves. I fight the pain and try to shape the power, use it to help us instead of letting it burn him out.
If this is the end, he won’t die alone.
The pain stops, and all that’s left is intent: an impenetrable shield. Dragon scales of liquid fire. Layer after layer after layer. Over and over, as long as Smith keeps channeling the ley line. Until the very end.
The power vanishes without warning and it throws me off balance, into an awkward crouch. Beside me, Smith kneels, panting, staring blankly at the shimmering web in front of us.
The ley line hums inside his skin. The deep, rich power settles softly back into place, nestling into him and going dormant.
The world is silent. There are no vines left, no screaming. Nothing but a soft breeze and the faint hum of the ley line’s protection around us.
“Is it over
?” Smith asks. His voice rasps, like he’s speaking through smoke.
I stretch out my glamour, dizzy from the overload of power, warm for the first time in centuries. I can sense everything. Every living, breathing creature in the yard. The insects hovering in the tree branches, the grass digging its roots deeper into the dirt. At the end of the garden, there’s a faint impression of magick, but it disappears too quickly for me to recognize.
“Nothing there,” I answer. I don’t sound much better than him.
“Fuck.”
I nod. Smith doesn’t move, just kneels and breathes. The fading power magnifies his presence. He hasn’t looked at me, but it doesn’t matter. His pulse pounds in my head. Unexpected muscle twitches reverberate through his body; their aftershocks seem to echo all the way to his hand, which remains clasped around mine.
The wicked burn of the ley line has ebbed and a different warmth takes its place, fueled by his permitting this touch. Our inhalations overlap, steady, and synchronize. I have the slow, wondrous realization that my thumb can finally skate over his knuckles, tracing the scars there. That I can marvel how the edges of his calluses press into my skin and send my mind spiraling with questions of how his hand would feel skimming over my arm, my chest, my neck. As if we’re so connected he can tell the direction of my thoughts, he tightens his grip and tentatively brushes his thumb over my skin.
The distant wail of sirens heralds the impending arrival of campus security.
Against my will, I release my grip on him and rise. The warmth vanishes, leaving nothing but my flush and the phantom pressure of his touch, which is also gone far too soon. “We need to go,” I warn.
“Fuck.”
“Smith...”
He stares ahead, unmoving. The web we made slowly winks into darkness, fireworks dying out as they fall.
“Smith,” I try again.
Nothing. I don’t know what’s going through his mind, and it worries me. I kneel beside him, wanting to reach out and touch him. He came back for me, protected me instead of running away. Love burns sharper than his magick did.
