The Faerie Plague (Dark World: The Faerie Games Book 5)

by Michelle Madow

  Sorcha glanced up at the sky, and turned to me. “You have more than just lightning magic,” she said. “I’ve seen you control the wind, too. You have storm magic. You can end this.”

  “I couldn’t even create a portal back to Avalon,” I said. “How am I supposed to stop a storm that’s blocking the entire realm?”

  “It’s worth a try,” Sage said. “Hop on one of those pegasi, create another hole in the top of the dome, and see what you can do.”

  “It’s not worth a try,” Aeliana cut in. “The Empress is right that Selena can end the storm. But she can’t do it like that.”

  “Then how can I do it?”

  “A demon and a witch have taken up residence in the western part of the realm,” she said. “But you already know this.”

  “We knew about the demon,” Torrence said. “Not the witch.”

  “Well, now you know.”

  “They must have worked together to create the plague,” Torrence continued, her eyes brightening like a lightbulb had gone off in her head. “I should have realized it sooner. Because whatever magic created this plague is far too powerful for a demon to have managed alone. Of course they’d need the help of a witch. A powerful witch, at that.”

  “A Foster witch.” Sage’s eyes shifted into their wolfish yellow, then back to brown again.

  “Their names aren’t clear to me,” Aeliana said. “But the clearest thing I see is this—to stop the storm, you need to kill the demon.”

  I glanced up at the angry, raging sky, and then refocused on Aeliana. “You mean a demon is causing this storm?”

  “Yes.”

  “But the amount of magic they’d need to create and maintain the storm… it’s not possible. Not even greater demons have that kind of power.”

  “This one does,” Aeliana said simply.

  I nodded and turned to Sorcha. “If I kill this demon, will you let me, Torrence, Reed, Sage, Thomas, Julian, and his mother and sister go to Avalon?” I asked.

  “If you kill this demon, then your friends will be able to follow through on the deal we made regarding the holy weapons and releasing your father from the prison dome at the Crossroads,” she said. “If you don’t kill this demon, then we’re all trapped here, and the Otherworld will perish because of it.”

  I looked to Julian for help.

  “She’s right,” he said. “We promised to get her those weapons. We can’t do that if your friends can’t leave the Otherworld. And they can’t leave until we turn this demon to ash.”

  Thunder boomed so loudly that it rattled my bones, and fear crashed through me.

  Because I’d never seen a demon, let alone fought one.

  But I’d been training for this for my entire life. Maybe not me in particular—since my parents had never intended for me to leave Avalon—but learning how to fight demons was part of the curriculum at the academy.

  I could do this. Especially with my soulmate and my friends by my side.

  “All right,” I said, and the crystals on the wand glowed, as if the wand agreed with my decision. “I’ll kill this demon.”

  “And I’ll take the witch,” Sage all but growled. “Especially if it’s the witch I think it is.”

  “Absolutely not,” Aeliana said. “You must keep the witch alive.”

  Sage’s top lip curled upward. “Why?”

  “Because you’ll regret it if you don’t. You also might regret it if you do, but you’ll most certainly regret it if you don’t.”

  Sage didn’t say okay.

  She also didn’t fight back. Which, for her, meant she was saying okay.

  “So, it’s decided, then,” Sorcha said, back to her normal, composed self. “You’ll leave for the Western Wildlands on the morrow. In the meantime, I’ll walk you back to the guest wing so you can retire early and get a good night’s sleep. It sounds like you’re going to need it.”

  12

  SELENA

  I DID NOT, in any way, get a good night’s sleep. We were locked back inside the rooms we’d been staying in before, which meant Julian and I were separated—again.

  At least Sorcha let me keep the wand in my room. Probably because she knew I’d never use it, since I wouldn’t put Julian’s mom and sister at risk.

  She woke me before dawn and brought me back to Bryan and Finn’s house to have another go at curing Kyla.

  It didn’t work.

  Apparently, I could relieve the symptoms and push back the infection’s progress, but I couldn’t cure it.

  “Hopefully killing the demon will destroy the plague,” she said on the carriage ride back to her house.

  “Hopefully,” I agreed.

  We rode the rest of the way in silence.

  At mid-morning, Sorcha gathered the group of us in the central courtyard. The temple at the end was collapsed inward, the roof blown apart from when I’d tried to create the portal back to Avalon.

  Three pegasi waited for us. They were ready with saddles designed so two people could ride together, and satchels of supplies hung from the sides.

  “Six spots.” Aiden frowned. “Seven of us.”

  “As a full fae, you can’t wield a holy weapon to defend yourself against the infected,” Julian said simply. “You’ll hold us back.”

  “So this was your doing?”

  “It’s for your own safety,” he said. “And to make sure we have the best chance of succeeding on our mission.”

  “You’re dead weight, fae-boy.” Reed smirked. “Go back home to frolic and dine on fruit and honey wine, or whatever your kind does for fun.”

  Aiden created orange balls of magic in his hands and threw them at Reed.

  Reed’s eyes flashed black, and he shot dark smoke at Aiden’s magic, consuming it like a black hole.

  Aiden watched, shocked, as Reed’s magic ate his up.

  Torrence rolled her eyes and glared at Reed. “Was that necessary?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He brushed his hands off, and tendrils of black magic drifted up out of them like smoke. “He attacked me. I defended myself.”

  “You instigated him into doing it.”

  “Enough,” Sorcha said, firmly but calmly. “Aiden, you’ll remain a guest in my home. The rest of you, it’s time to get going.”

  I glanced up at the sky. The Red Storm raged as strongly as it had yesterday. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like when we left the dome and were fully exposed to its wrath.

  “Traveling through the storm will be rough,” Sage said. “But we can handle it.”

  “You’ve been out in it?”

  “No.” She shrugged. “But we have to be able to handle it. So that’s what we’re going to do.”

  Torrence looked to the pegasi, and then to Reed. “Why don’t we join forces to create a defensive barrier around the pegasi?” she asked. “Like we did with the yacht. It’ll protect us from the elements.”

  “Good idea,” he said.

  They jumped onto the closest pegasus, situated themselves on the saddle, faced each other, and joined hands. Their magic swirled around them in a magnificent, sparkly helix of yellow and purple.

  The two of them hopped from pegasus to pegasus, casting the spell around each of the winged horses. They zeroed in on each other, like they weren’t just connecting their magic, but their minds, too. They looked at each other like they were the only two people in the world.

  It was the same way Julian looked at me.

  From the amused way Sage watched them, she saw the connection between them, too.

  After completing the spell around the final pegasus, they hopped off the saddle and walked back over to us. Torrence’s face was flushed, and they both refused to look at each other.

  She didn’t look at me, either.

  They were totally into each other. And she definitely knew that I knew.

  But we needed to get going if we wanted to reach the Eastern Mountain Range before sunset. So I walked confidently toward the central pegasus and hopped onto the f
ront saddle.

  Julian sat behind me, Thomas and Sage claimed the pegasus on the left, and Reed and Torrence took the pegasus on the right.

  “Time to see if this worked,” I said, and then I pressed my heels into the sides of the pegasus, and we were off.

  13

  SELENA

  THE BARRIER SPELLS around the pegasi protected us from the Red Storm, just like the dome around the city. The cracks of thunder were louder, since we were closer to the clouds, but the rain didn’t touch us. And the barriers absorbed any lightning strikes that hit them.

  Just like before, the number of zombies grew larger as we traveled farther west. They grunted as they ambled around aimlessly, and we flew as high as possible so we wouldn’t be assaulted by the smell of rot and decay.

  The thunder cracking overhead and the wind howling around the barrier domes made talking impossible. All we could do was observe the land below.

  So much had changed in less than a week.

  The grass was yellowed and brittle. The tree leaves were brown. The flowers were dull, shriveled, and curled inward.

  The Otherworld was dying.

  Despite having every reason to hate this realm, seeing it like this broke my heart.

  The pegasi pushed themselves to fly against the storm. We barely made it to the peak of the Eastern Mountains by the end of sunset, and by then, we were all more than ready to break for the night.

  As expected, the peaks of the mountains were clear from zombies. They might have figured out how to get across the mountain range, but they couldn’t climb that high. They needed to stick to the roads. Even then, only the strongest ones could get across the steepest parts. That was why there weren’t full-blown hordes of them east of the mountain, like Julian and I had seen on the other side.

  We found a suitable location near a stream of fresh water, removed the packs from the pegasi, and set up camp. I used my fae magic to create a strong protective dome, and my lightning easily started a fire. Owls hooted in the distance, and squirrels scurried up and around the trees.

  Other than the storm raging overhead, the camp was surprisingly cozy.

  Julian studied our surroundings. “There are enough small animals here to hunt that we don’t need to eat our preserved rations yet,” he said.

  “I was thinking the same,” said Thomas.

  Julian nodded at him respectfully, and continued, “Three of us should stay back and guard the camp. Selena and I will go hunt, plus either Sage or Thomas. You choose.”

  Torrence’s expression hardened. “Why one of them?” she asked.

  “Their vampire and wolf senses make them natural hunters,” he said.

  “We won’t have to go far,” I added. “It won’t take long.”

  She glared at me—the same way she had when I’d offered to help with the locating spell. “You’re not the only ones who can kill,” she said, and she spun to face the forest, raised her hands, and shot a stream of black magic out of her palms.

  I watched, shocked, as she walked to the edge of the dome. Her magic expanded around multiple treetops in a plume of black smoke.

  Objects fell out of the branches and thudded to the ground.

  Birds and squirrels. Dozens of them. All dead.

  It was far more than we could eat, and we already had enough smoked meat that we didn’t have any space to take more with us. She was killing those poor animals for no reason.

  “TORRENCE!” I yelled. “STOP!”

  She held onto her magic and pushed it farther out into the trees. More small animals fell to the ground. In the distance, a flock of birds cried out and scattered up toward the red sky.

  Reed rushed toward Torrence and wrapped his arms around her from behind. “You need to save your magic for bigger things,” he said, so softly that I could barely hear him. “You need to stop. Please. Stop.”

  She breathed heavily, leaned back into him, and let go of her magic. The black smoke dissipated into nothing, revealing the horrifying extent of the damage she’d caused.

  The brown leaves had dissolved, and their dust scattered in the wind. All that remained of the skeletal trees were gnarled and twisted canopies of branches. A tree cracked at the trunk and crashed down on the ones nearby, creating a domino effect of fallen trees until reaching the end of Torrence’s deadly ring of magic.

  “Torrence,” I said her name slowly and carefully. “What did you do?”

  She pushed herself out of Reed’s arms and spun around, refusing to meet any of our eyes. “We needed food,” she said. “So I got us food.”

  “But witch magic can’t kill.”

  “Maybe not.” She shrugged. “But my magic can.”

  She picked up an empty sack that had been holding our camping gear, marched out of the dome and into the dead forest, and started collecting the fallen animals. The five of us watched in stunned silence.

  She shouldn’t have magic like that.

  But I knew my best friend well enough to know that she needed time to cool off. Trying to force answers out of her would just make the situation worse.

  “Go with her,” I said to Julian, since I trusted him the most. “Make sure she’s safe.”

  He nodded and headed into the forest.

  I made sure he was near her, and then I turned to Reed. “How did she do that?” I asked, putting magic around my words so she couldn’t overhear. The barrier dome I’d created protected us from the elements, but it wasn’t soundproof. We needed to be aware of the sounds around us so we could defend ourselves if necessary.

  Reed’s eyes flashed yellow, and he released matching colored magic from his hands to create a small sound barrier dome around me, him, Sage, and Thomas. It was a light magic barrier, so anyone outside of it wouldn’t be able to hear us, but we’d be able to hear them.

  “She’ll be back soon, so we need to be quick,” he said. “Remember the story of how we used my magic to kill that cyclops together?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded and waited for him to continue.

  “She kept using it after I let go of her. Ever since then, she’s been using mage magic on her own.”

  “No—it was before that,” Sage chimed in.

  “When?” I asked.

  “When we were fighting Scylla. She created the barrier spell and expanded it outward to make one of the heads explode, like she told you. But I was right there, fighting the head next to her. She didn’t say a spell. She just… created the barrier on instinct.”

  “Mage magic,” I said.

  “I asked her about it, and that’s what she said it was.”

  Reed’s eyes raged nearly as intensely as the storm overhead. “She never told me.”

  “Can you blame her?” Sage asked. “You’ve been an ass to her every time she gets near you.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Yes, you have.”

  “You have,” I agreed.

  Thomas stepped closer to Sage. He agreed, too.

  Reed didn’t try to fight back.

  “It happened after the two of you made the barrier spell around the yacht together,” Sage continued. “She said it was a remnant of tethering your magic. Is that true?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “I’ve never done dark magic with a witch before. No mage has, as far as I know.”

  “So it could be too much for a witch to handle,” I said. “Even one as strong as Torrence.”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged.

  I stared at him, waiting for him to say something more. Anything that might help us understand what was happening to her.

  He didn’t.

  “Aren’t you worried about this at all?” Electricity buzzed through me, lighting up my scars. “Your magic is changing her. You need to stop.”

  “Even if it means she has less magic to use to defend herself?”

  I paused, since I hadn’t thought of it that way.

  “Guys?” Thomas said before I could reply. “They’re back.”

  I spun around,
and sure enough, there was Torrence. Her eyes were glassy, like she’d been crying.

  Next to her, Julian held the lumpy sack. The dead animals inside weighted it down to the ground.

  “I know you’re talking about me,” she said. “You can drop the sound barrier.”

  Reed’s eyes flashed yellow, and the transparent dome around us shimmered out of existence.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Torrence got to it first.

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” she said in a rush. “I don’t know what came over me. All those animals… they didn’t deserve to die.”

  “No,” I agreed. “They didn’t.”

  She glanced back at the devastation behind her, and then she refocused on me. Guilt was splattered across her face. “Once we’re back home, I’m going to ask the three mages for help,” she said. “Until then, I won’t do it again.”

  I wanted to make her swear it in a blood oath.

  But Reed’s words echoed in my mind.

  What if she needs the dark mage magic to defend herself?

  If she made a blood oath not to use it until we spoke with the three mages, breaking the oath would kill her.

  I couldn’t ask that of her.

  “Good,” I said instead.

  And then, like nothing had happened, we all gathered around the fire and worked together to prepare dinner.

  Once the food was ready, we sat down to eat.

  “So,” Julian said. “Selena and I have a lot to fill you in on. Things we couldn’t speak about in the citadel.”

  “Like what?” Sage sat forward on her log, intrigued.

  He nodded for me to take it from there, and I jumped right in.

  “We weren’t honest with the Empress about how we got the Holy Wand,” I started. “Well, we were, up until the part about the Fomorians. Because they weren’t the ones hiding the wand. They were just a roadblock on our way to the place that really had the wand. An ancient, half-blood refuge called the Sanctuary.”

  14

  SELENA

  THE OTHERS AGREED that free half-bloods would make an excellent addition to Avalon’s army. They also agreed that I was right to tell the citizens of the Sanctuary to remain there in safety until I returned with a plan, and to wait to free the rest of the half-bloods in the Otherworld. We needed to focus on one battle at a time. Right now, that meant finding and killing this demon.