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

by Michelle Madow

  Anger heated me down to my core. Anger at him for not telling me the moment he knew he was sick, anger at myself for not being able to cure him, anger that he’d gotten bitten in the first place, and anger at the plague for existing at all.

  But snapping at him wouldn’t do either of us any good. So I took a deep breath and got ahold of myself. “We need to tell Torrence and Reed,” I said.

  His expression hardened. “They don’t need to know.”

  “We’re working as a team, and one of our team members is compromised,” I said. “So yeah, they do need to know.”

  He paused and looked out at the storm. A few seconds passed, and then he turned his attention back to me. “We haven’t run into any trouble in the plains,” he said. “I’ll let them know before we cross into the Wildlands.”

  “You better,” I said. “If you don’t, I’ll do it for you.”

  “You don’t trust me,” he said simply.

  I wished I could say he was wrong. But I couldn’t. So I shook my head instead.

  He reached for me, but stopped. Because a shield of electricity hummed around my skin. It was protecting me from him.

  Sadness—and regret—shined in his eyes. “Will you ever be able to forgive me?” he asked.

  My heart melted, because I didn’t need to think twice about the answer.

  “It’ll take time. But eventually, yes,” I said. “Besides, I can’t exactly be mad at you when you have the plague. So ask me again after you’re cured.”

  “Deal. But if you won’t let me take over this shift, then I’m sharing it with you.”

  “Fine.” I sighed and sat in the dirt, unable to be angry at him anymore. It was exhausting.

  He sat down next to me, and I stilled, not wanting to budge. But eventually, I caved and rested my head on his shoulder.

  I could be as angry at him as I wanted after we found the cure.

  Until then, I was going to treasure every moment we had together as if it were our last.

  15

  SELENA

  BECAUSE OF THE growing intensity of the Red Storm, it took us a few more days to reach the Western Mountain Range—the mountains that separated the Western Wildlands from the rest of the Otherworld.

  According to Julian, back when queens ruled the Otherworld, they sent all exiled fae to the Western Wildlands. Then the Empire took hold of the Otherworld and deemed the exiled fae too much of a threat. So they hunted down all the exiled fae, threw them into a newly created prison realm—Ember—and have been sending them there since.

  The Western Wildlands were said to be ruins now.

  The Western Mountain Range was smaller than the Eastern Mountain Range, but the peaks were still high and steep enough that they were clear of zombies. There were far fewer trees, and the greenery was long dead. Any animal that hadn’t been able to escape the storm was rotted to the bones. So, with no option to hunt or gather, we depended solely on our remaining rations for dinner.

  The next day, we were supposed to cross into the Wildlands. Which meant that tonight, either Julian was telling Torrence and Reed about having the plague, or I’d do it for him.

  We ate around the campfire, listening as Sage and Thomas told us about their journey years ago that had brought them, Noah, and Raven—the Queen of Swords—to Avalon. They’d been telling it to us in bits for the past few nights. Even though we learned about their adventure in school, it was far more exciting to hear it straight from them.

  But I could barely focus on what they were saying. I was too distracted thinking about how I was going to break the news.

  Julian’s been keeping something from you.

  Julian’s been keeping something from all of us.

  Julian was bitten by a zombie while we were searching for the wand.

  Julian has the plague.

  Julian’s dying.

  “Selena.” Torrence snapped her fingers in front of my face to get my attention. “Where have you been all night?”

  “Here.” I shrugged, since it was true.

  “You might physically be here, but your mind’s not. And you’ve barely touched your food.”

  I glanced down at the hard bread and chewy strips of dried meat on my plate. I’d picked at them, but nothing more.

  “You need to eat,” Julian said from next to me. “To keep up your strength.”

  I wanted to pick up the roll and throw it at that ridiculously hard head of his. I would have, if we didn’t need every bit of food we had.

  I ripped the roll in half and settled for a glare instead.

  He simply nodded, took my hand, and looked around at the others. “There’s something you all need to know,” he said. “I was going to tell you after we all finished eating, but it seems like it needs to be now.”

  Torrence’s eyes widened, and she stared straight at me. “Are you pregnant?” she asked, and the piece of bread I was holding fell from my fingers back onto my plate.

  “What? No.” I stumbled over the words. “That’s not even possible.”

  “You mean you haven’t…” She looked at Julian, then back at me, more shocked than before.

  Sage stifled a chuckle.

  Thomas couldn’t meet my eyes.

  Reed kept eating.

  “No. I mean, we have.” I couldn’t believe we were talking about this in front of Sage and Thomas. “But the reason it isn’t possible is because the seeds from the pomegranate the gods gave us also act as birth control.”

  “Thank God.” Torrence breathed out in relief. “I can go back to relishing the fact that Reed’s the only virgin in the group.”

  Reed stopped chewing, and now I was the one who was shocked.

  I’d learned on our journey that Reed was betrothed to a princess on Mystica because of some political arrangement. But he’d struck me as the type of guy who’d want to have his fun before tying the knot.

  Judging from his silence, I’d been wrong.

  “Julian was about to tell us something,” Reed said stiffly, and all eyes turned back to my soulmate.

  “Right.” Julian fidgeted and cleared his throat. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to be out with it. When Selena and I ran into that horde of zombies while we were searching for the Holy Wand, one of them bit me. I’m infected with the plague.”

  Everyone stilled and silenced. Including Sage and Thomas, even though they already knew.

  Julian explained what had happened, ending with how I’d pushed back the plague’s progress a few days ago in the Plainlands.

  “I can kind of understand why you waited to tell us,” Torrence said once he was finished. “But not telling Selena?”

  “Stop,” I said, and she looked at me like I was nuts. “What’s done is done. We need to focus on working together to kill that demon, and then on finding a cure.”

  She pressed her lips together and nodded, although she gave Julian another dirty look. The type of look that said, If you lie to my best friend again, you’re in trouble.

  I loved her for it.

  “The witch,” Sage said suddenly, and we all looked to her. “The one with the demon—the one Aeliana told us not to kill. Maybe she has the cure.”

  “She might,” I said, since I’d wondered the same thing. “If she does, we’re getting it from her. We need to be as ready for this battle as possible. Which means that tonight, I’m going to use my magic to push back the progression the plague has made on Julian these past few days.”

  “Then you’ll be weakened when we cross into the Wildlands tomorrow,” Torrence said. “Absolutely not. We need you.” Her voice was strained at the last part, like it hurt her to say.

  “We’re not leaving tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll stay here an extra night to give me time to regain my strength. Then, once we’re all rested and ready, we’ll head out, find the demon, and take her down.”

  16

  SELENA

  THE NEXT DAY, Torrence did another locating spell to make sure the demon w
as still in the same spot.

  She was.

  The general consensus was that the demon was clueless we were coming for her. But I thought she was waiting for us. I had no evidence—it was just a feeling.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Reed said once the spell was complete.

  “Really?” Torrence chuckled and blew out the candles. “That’s a first.”

  His eyes flashed black, then quickly returned to their normal color. “You know, you’d be less likely to get tangled up in your own messes if you stopped talking all the time and listened to other people every so often,” he said.

  “I don’t get tangled up in my own messes.”

  “Says the girl who jumps into everything without thinking about the long-term consequences.”

  She glared at him in warning.

  “Whoa.” I reached for the Holy Wand—I’d rested it against a log while we were doing the locating spell—and also glared at Reed. “It’s not Torrence’s fault that I got stuck here.”

  “I never said it was.”

  “Not directly. But you implied it.”

  Torrence put her pendulum necklace back on, threw the maps and candles back into the sack, and stood up. “What’s done is done,” she said, which surprised me, since she’d never been one to back down from a fight. “No use getting worked up about it now.”

  “I wasn’t worked up,” he said. “I was just stating a fact.”

  Another silent staredown. Torrence’s anger radiated off her so much that I could feel it.

  After over a week of traveling together, I no longer secretly hoped that Reed and Torrence would get together. He was an arrogant, smug jerk. Torrence deserved way better. It was a good thing they hated each other, because once we got back to Avalon, they could happily go their separate ways.

  Thomas got up from where he was sitting next to Sage and marched over to us. “Enough,” he said, and he focused on Reed. “Torrence is right. What’s done is done. Now, care to share what you were thinking?”

  Reed gave Torrence another death glare, and then refocused on Thomas. “I was thinking that pendulums can be used for more than just locating someone on a map,” he said. “They can also be used for more precise tracking.”

  “That’s dark blood magic.” I glanced at Torrence—who looked more intrigued than she should have—and then back at Reed.

  “It is,” he said.

  “But the locating spell has been telling us where the demon is hiding out. We don’t need tracking magic.”

  The less Torrence was around dark magic, the better.

  “What if the demon runs when she sees us approaching?” he asked. “We won’t have time to get out a map and do a locating spell.”

  “She’s not going to run,” I said. “She’s a demon. She’ll want to fight.”

  “We can’t know that.”

  Sage stood up and joined us. “Most demons want to fight,” she said. “But not greater demons. They’re smarter than that. They know when to teleport out of a situation. Well, run, in this case, since teleporting is blocked in the Otherworld.”

  “So annoying,” Torrence said, and I nodded in agreement.

  “It is annoying,” Thomas agreed. “But Aeliana said we can kill this demon, and greater demons can only be killed by Nephilim. None of us are Nephilim. So this demon isn’t a greater demon.”

  “If she’s not a greater demon, then how does she have so much power?” I asked.

  “No idea,” he said. “It’s unprecedented. So I agree with Reed. We need to do anything that gives us an advantage. Even if it means using dark magic.”

  “Julian?” I turned to my soulmate. “What do you think?”

  “An advantage is an advantage,” he said. “As long as using the advantage doesn’t hurt anyone on our team, it’s worth it.”

  I paused, since that was the question, wasn’t it? What was the dark magic doing to Torrence?

  But I also knew that their point was a good one.

  “Fine,” I said. “But Reed will be the one who does the spell.”

  “Obviously,” he said. “I’m the most powerful one here.”

  “Are you so sure about that?” I sent my magic through the wand, and the top crystal glowed so brightly that it was like staring into a spotlight.

  They all held their hands in front of their eyes and turned away.

  Julian moved closer to me, his head turned away from the light. “Selena,” he said. “Don’t expend any more magic than necessary.”

  I sighed in annoyance. “I know.” I pulled back on the magic, and the light dimmed. “I was just making a point.”

  “Point made,” Reed said. “But you know what I meant. I’m the only one here with true mage magic.”

  I glanced at Torrence, since I wasn’t so sure about that. But that was a whole other can of worms that we needed to wait to open until we were back on Avalon. Plus, Reed was right. Mage magic was his territory.

  An image of Torrence killing all of those animals and trees in the forest flashed through my mind.

  Another day, I reminded myself. Worry about that another day.

  That was how I’d gotten through the Faerie Games—by tackling one big problem at a time. Right now, that problem was tracking this demon and her witch companion.

  “There’s only one issue with this plan,” Torrence said. “If we want the pendulum to track a demon, we need demon blood. Not just an object with an intense memory of demon blood, like how we use the knife to do locating spells. We need actual blood.”

  “Which we have.” Reed glanced at Julian. “At least, we have a trace of it.”

  Right. That was part of how we’d figured out that the demons had something to do with the plague. The trace of demon blood that Sage and Thomas had smelled in the zombie blood.

  The same blood that was oozing out of Julian’s wound.

  Julian remained as calm and stoic as ever. “What do you need me to do?” he asked.

  “Unwrap your bandage and let me dip the pendulum in the infected area,” Reed said. “I don’t need much. Just a drop will do it.”

  Julian sat down to remove the bandage, and Torrence handed her necklace to Reed.

  “Don’t get any blood on the diamonds,” she said before letting him take it. “And be careful with it. It was a present from my best friend.” She glanced at me, and I smiled.

  “I’ll do my best,” he said, and then he knelt down next to Julian, dipped the tip of the pendulum into the black ooze coming out of his wound, and cast the spell.

  17

  SELENA

  ON THE OTHER side of the Western Mountains, the storm raged like the eye wall of a hurricane. The wind flung the zombies into the sides of the mountains like rag dolls. Endless piles of them collected at the base, and they squirmed like dying worms. Their black blood stained the ground and the rocks, and the overwhelming smell of death and decay was inescapable, no matter how high we flew.

  Luckily, the wind must have dumped all of the zombies along the mountains, because once we flew over the thick of them, they quickly disappeared. So did their smell.

  But the wind intensified the farther west we flew. The roaring storm assaulted my eardrums. The rain pounded so densely on the boundary domes surrounding our pegasi that we could barely see in front of us. Debris kept smashing into the domes, too. And the clouds were so dark that if it hadn’t been for the red lightning brightening the sky, we wouldn’t have been able to see at all.

  We were only a mile past the mountains, and the pegasi were straining their wings so much that we were making zero forward progress.

  “We need to go on foot from here!” Julian screamed so I could hear him. “Land our pegasus. The others will follow.”

  I used the Holy Wand like a spotlight to double-check that there weren’t any zombie stragglers beneath us. We were in the clear. So I squeezed my heels into the pegasus’s sides and eased him to the ground.

  Sure enough, the others followed.

 
We stood as closely together as we could, and then Julian, Reed, Torrence, and I used our magic to create a super dome around all of us and our pegasi. It was more powerful than the type of dome we used whenever we set up camp, or when we stopped for lunch, because it blocked the weather and the noise.

  The wind must have been pummeling the area for a while, because it was a barren, dusty wasteland. Most of the trees were snapped at their trunks. The ones that remained were bare of leaves and tilted so much that their tips touched the ground. Besides the occasional zombie impaled through their thick branches, there was nothing green or alive in sight.

  Although, I supposed the zombies weren’t technically alive.

  My pegasus lowered himself down onto his knees and rested his wings on the ground. Blood seeped through the edges of some of his feathers.

  I ran my fingers through his silky mane, wishing I could help him. Unfortunately, healing magic was a rare gift among royal full fae that I didn’t possess. When I’d “healed” the half-bloods, I was technically reversing the spell inked on them by the fae. And Torrence and her group hadn’t brought any healing potion with them from Earth. Even if they had, healing potion only worked on humans and witches. We had no idea if it would work on pegasi.

  “I’ve never been to Hell, but I always imagined it being nicer than this,” Sage said as she looked around the stormy wasteland.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, since we’d learned enough about Hell to have a general idea of what it was like. This was most definitely worse. And despite common misconception, Hell wasn’t the same place as the Underworld. Bad people didn’t go to Hell after they died.

  Hell was simply the name of the realm where the demons lived.

  “We need to discuss our plan from here,” Julian said, getting all of our attention. “We’re not making any progress on the pegasi. Their wings are too fragile to fly in these conditions.”

  “What are you proposing we do?” Reed asked. “Go on foot?”

  “Yes,” Julian said, and Reed balked. “We can’t travel nearly as quickly as the pegasi, but we’re stronger and more durable than they are. According to the map, we only have a bit over ten more miles to go. It won’t be easy, but if we all hold hands in a line to ground ourselves, we can push a boundary dome forward as we walk.”