by Kristie Cook
Without the prince home to be our personal gourmet chef, Saoirse, Sadie, and I had spent several evenings dining on the plaza. We’d enjoyed the live music, conversed with the locals, and shared drinks and delicacies with many whom Saoirse called friends (which honestly had surprised me—for some reason, I’d never expected her to have friends). No slaves, no judgment of others, no ongoing torment to suffer while simply trying to exist under a cruel king or in a post-apocalyptic world.
While my life would not play out the way I would want it to—namely with Sadie on my arm, not the sexy prince—I could easily make this place my home. These could easily be my people. It was even easier to fall in love with them than with Tor.
Which meant I needed to protect them. I needed to ensure they didn’t unintentionally become like those of another town in a far away land.
“I told you she would come to her senses.” Sadie’s voice floated over to me as I approached the last bistro, the one closest to the manor, on the far side of the circle from where I’d started. She and Saoirse sat at an outdoor table, three wine glasses before them. I swallowed mine in one gulp.
“You’re ready to face your fears?” Saoirse asked, her purple eyes studying me as I sat in the empty seat.
I nodded. “It’s time.”
“We can help,” Sadie said. “We can be there with you. You don’t have to do it alone.”
My head cocked. “What do you mean?”
“You’re part fae,” Saoirse said, always having to remind me. “We have the ability to project our thoughts and memories to others.”
That’s right. I remembered my grandmother telling us about this ability. Our mother had told us the story about the trials and tribulations she and Dad had faced to be together, including an actual trial with a testimony from our fae grandmother who did just that—shared her memories with the entire court room.
Homesickness suddenly washed over me with the memory, a waterfall crashing through me. Heartache burst in my chest and gut. My hand pressed against my heart, as though ensuring it was still there because it suddenly felt ripped out of me as my sister and my parents’ faces danced on the outside of my vision. Oh, how I missed them! Oh, how I ached for them! How long had it even been? I didn’t know. Time meant nothing anymore. I just knew I didn’t want to do this without them. Especially not without Brielle, who’d been there, who would understand more than anyone.
Or would she?
Sure, she’d been present, but had her experiences been the same? Had her emotions and intent matched mine? Or had she watched in horror as her twin allowed the Darkness to win? She was the good daughter. She was driven to make the world better by serving with her heart and mind and soul. I couldn’t fathom the idea of her giving in to the Darkness. Yes, it still resided within her as it did me, and yes, I’d seen her lose control. And I’d also witnessed how harshly she had judged herself for it. How harshly she had judged me when she thought I was to blame.
Maybe she wouldn’t understand. Maybe, when the memories all came back to her, too, she would. Right now, I couldn’t possibly know because she wasn’t here. And a large part of me didn’t want to—didn’t want my sweet sister to know the horrors we’d survived, let alone about my side of things. So it was probably a good thing she wasn’t here.
And that Sadie was.
“You’ll probably want a couple more of these first,” Saoirse said, pushing a refilled glass of wine toward me.
After a meal I hardly touched and a few more glasses of faerie wine, the three of us changed out of our fighting leathers and into comfortable sleepwear of silk pants and tops of the softest cotton-like material I’d ever felt. We sat on oversized pillows in the middle of the sitting room, a fire crackling in the hearth. The only other light came from dozens of candles scattered around the room and several arranged in the space between us. Crystals and faerie stones were also laid out carefully, and Saoirse painted our skin with fae runes representing strength, insight, and other virtues we may need to call on. Using my mage magic, I’d already called on the four directions and the four elements to make a circle of protection. We were bathed in magical energy, making Saoirse’s natural fae markings glow and Sadie—
“I’ve never noticed that before,” I murmured, brushing my fingers over her cheekbone, where her skin was raised in intricate swirls and whorls not unlike fae markings.
“You’re avoiding,” Saoirse accused impatiently. She’d thought all of this was unnecessary, but she’d only had a small glimpse while dream-walking in my head. She didn’t know everything, and a part of me feared how we’d all react—how much hatred may bloom that Saoirse would consume. That could be helpful for Sadie and me, unless the Shadow fae lost control of her own power and came to the same conclusion as Maeve’s brother and others—that I shouldn’t exist and needed to be eliminated. “Let’s be done with this already.”
She reached for my and Sadie’s hands, and when Sadie’s and my palms pressed together, an electric energy zapped between us. Our gazes locked, and a knowing light filled her eyes, but she shook her head. Later, she seemed to say, the word almost as clear in my head as my mother’s when she used her telepathy.
Saoirse, whose fae blood flowed more strongly, instructed us to close our eyes, and she led the way into my mind, guiding me to open it and find the truths we sought. The room around us disappeared, and we were suddenly in a forest, three teenaged girls sprinting around the trees ahead of us.
“Brielle, hurry your ass up,” I called over my shoulder as we chased the demon through the woods. “We’re losing it!”
She lagged behind Charleigh and me not because she couldn’t physically keep up, but because we’d already passed through the protective wards of the Loft, leaving the safety of the shield a few hundred yards back. Which meant we’d broken our word to our dad when he’d allowed us to help Charleigh forage today while he and Mom were at Amadis Island on the other side of the world. Technically, we’d already broken his word when we didn’t wait for Sasha, who had left long before we did for her early morning hunt. Brie cared a lot more about those technicalities than I did. I just wanted to kill this demon that had come too close to the Loft, as far as I was concerned, making it a serious threat to our people. I may have also wanted to prove to my mom that I deserved to be on her demon assassination squad.
The demon seemed to be taunting us, darting in and out of the forest, flying up above the tree canopy and then dropping down in plain sight to run on cloven hooves, always staying just out of reach of our weapons. The colors of its oily, mottled skin flickered with various hues, sometimes blending in with the trees in greens and browns and grays, and other times shining a bright yellow or orange.
“Screw this,” I muttered under my breath as I pulled out a silver throwing star. It probably wasn’t enough to end the beast’s existence here on Earth, but the silver might at least slow it down. As soon as I flicked the star, though, the demon soared beyond the trees and didn’t come back. I slowed to a jog, knowing we’d lost it. “This sucks balls! If we’d only come into our powers or at least had our wings, we’d have taken it down and killed it already!”
“But since you don’t, if we do catch it, what then?” Charleigh asked from my side, the August sun filtering through the leaves setting her orange hair on fire.
I gave her a wicked smile. “You kill it, of course. After Brie and I take it down.”
Charleigh’s magic was powerful enough to send the beast back to Hell, where it belonged. But not today. We came to the edge of a ravine, the demon flying out of sight. I stopped abruptly, feeling the need to punch something.
“Fucking demons,” I growled, hating the taste of failure in my mouth. “One of these days, I swear to the angels, I’ll annihilate them all!”
I turned in a circle, peering as far as I could see in every direction, trying to catch a glimpse of where the demon had gone. It seemed we’d lost it for good.
“Can we go back to the Loft now?” Brielle aske
d. “I promised I’d help clean the medical ward.”
Sheesh. My sister, the goodie two-shoes. We’d been out here today to help Charleigh with her chores. Now Brielle couldn’t wait to do someone else’s. I was sure she also itched to get back inside the wards as quickly as possible. Our sixteenth birthday was in two days, and she took Dad seriously that we wouldn’t see it if we broke our promise to stay within the shield.
“You know, you volunteer way too much. You deserve a break. You already do more than your fair share,” I said.
“Well, someone has to do yours, don’t they?” she retorted.
“The sun will be setting soon,” Charleigh chimed in to prevent an argument before it started. She bumped her shoulder against mine. “And when you get back, you can finally talk to your parents.”
I frowned. “They have more important things to worry about.”
Brielle opened her mouth to argue, but then a twig snapped not too far in the distance. Thinking the demon was back, I grinned before spinning on my heel to the right and taking off again.
And nearly ran into a pack of zombies.
Mom and Aunt Vanessa’s sperm donor had created what was probably the most unnatural part of everything in our world, which was saying a lot. He’d mashed up a highly contagious virus with necromancy black magic and spread it at the beginning of the war. Whether he had any idea it would continue infecting humans seventeen years later, nobody knew, but pretty much every human who died reanimated with a craving for flesh worse than a newborn vampire’s thirst for blood.
The demon’s odor of brimstone and sulfur must have masked the stench of this herd, the only explanation for why we hadn’t smelled the decaying bodies before. All three of us unsheathed our weapons, fell into formation, and went to work at cutting them down, making them dead-dead. We were almost through the pack when I fought with a half-corpse dragging itself on the ground by its hands, its teeth snapping at me. It almost bit me because I was all caught up in the hot-pink roots of a young colata tree that were lifting out of the ground, encircling my legs and growing upward for my waist. I gritted my teeth as needle-like spikes pushed out of the tentacles, pressing into my leathers, poking my skin. At least this was just a sapling. In a year or so, those spikes would be venomous flesh-eating teeth. It took both my sister’s sword and Charleigh’s magic to kill the thing and free me.
“So now can we go back?” Brielle asked, offering me a hand to help me to my feet.
Taking it, I sighed. “Yeah, I guess.”
Passing the pile of zombie corpses, we began making the trek back toward the Loft, walking rather than running now.
“So would you rather be bitten by a zombie or a colata?” Brielle asked, starting one of our favorite games to pass the time.
“Colata,” Charleigh and I both answered easily.
“Faster death,” I added.
“I don’t know,” Brielle said thoughtfully. “If you were bitten by a zombie, I’d put you out quickly. Wouldn’t want you developing a taste for me.”
I snorted. “So you’ve said a hundred times, but whether you could do it or not is another story. I’d be eating your brains before you finished listing out the pros and cons.”
They giggled, but we all knew her hesitation would be more than that. I hated the thought of ever having to give her a merciful death, and I knew she’d struggle with it even more.
“Would you rather eat a colata or zombie flesh?” I asked to lighten the mood.
“Gross, Elli,” Charleigh said, gagging. “I just threw up a little in my mouth.”
Brielle only laughed. “Colata. At least it’s alive.”
I nodded. “Good point.”
“So . . .” Charleigh poked her elbow into my side. “Would you rather tell your parents or be kissed by Corbin Morty?”
“Ew!” Brielle and I groaned. The thought of kissing the greasy-haired new kid—
“Now I just threw up in my mouth,” I said.
Charleigh laughed. “I’m sorry. That was a bad one.”
“Would you rather tell Mom and Dad or I tell them?” Brielle asked, the teasing gone from her tone.
“Brielle,” I gasped, feeling like I’d been punched in the gut. She and Charleigh were the only souls I’d ever told about my sexuality and Charleigh only in the last few months. Brie had known for years. How could she threaten this?
“I’m sorry, Elli,” she said, “but it’s nearly impossible to keep this secret from Mom and Dad any longer, especially Mom. I’m pretty sure she already knows, and if I’m too relaxed and she decides to confirm with a peek into my head . . .”
“It’s my secret to tell,” I said quietly.
Her hand squeezed my forearm. “I know,” she said as quietly. “Consider it an offer, if you think it would help. Until you decide, I promise I’ll still keep it to the best of my ability. I have this long, right? But seriously, El, you need to tell them. I’m one-hundred percent sure they’d want to know and one-thousand percent sure they won’t be mad or sad or anything but happy. I mean, Mom might be hurt because you hadn’t told her sooner, which is why you just need to do it.”
I knew she was right—about their reaction and also that Mom already knew. She’d given all the indications not too long ago in an attempted heart-to-heart. But I hadn’t been able to open up. I honestly didn’t know why. Probably because I hated disappointing them, especially Dad, even though it seemed like that was all I knew how to do.
“Fine,” I finally said. “I will. Soon.”
“Promise?” Charleigh asked, and we all stopped when she held up her hands with her first two fingers of each raised, as though giving us the peace sign.
I blew out a heavy breath, then held my hands up the same way, pressing two fingers against Charleigh’s and holding the other hand out to Brielle. She joined us, pressing her fingers to each of ours.
“Promise,” I said, and I knew I’d have to keep it. This had been our way of making unbreakable vows to each other since we were little. Aunt Blossom said they used to do pinky swears when she was young, and Aunt Vanessa had told us all about blood promises, but being a vampire, she loved to talk about anything bloody. We did this. We used to pretend magic bound us to the promise. Now, Charleigh could make that a reality, but we chose to trust each other instead. Our bond as family—by blood and by choice—was stronger than any magic anyway.
We walked in silence for a few minutes when an odd sensation tugged at me as though a fishhook had lodged in my gut and was reeling me in.
“This way,” I murmured aloud, turning to the right. “We have to go this way.”
Unable to stop myself, I broke into another sprint. Surprisingly, Brielle ran after me. She must have known I wasn’t chasing a demon this time. She must have felt what I had. A compulsive need to go this way. There was something here. Something we needed to find. I ran harder, Brie right on my heels.
When we charged into a clearing, the energy shifted, and I came to a sudden halt, Brielle crashing into me. As we collided, a force rocked through me, radiating from deep within outward, and then the air itself seemed to explode, knocking us to the ground. We climbed to our feet, looking around. Though shaken, I felt as though this was exactly where I needed to be, but it was nothing but an unremarkable small clearing.
“You feel that, right?” I asked quietly, to be sure I wasn’t imagining things.
“What is it?” she whispered back.
I had no answer. Our backs to each other and our hands clasped tightly together, we turned in a circle. The trees around us appeared to be thicker, closer together than I’d realized while we’d been running. The clearing itself was only about six feet in diameter, black tree trunks creating a perfect circle—except for one place where it protruded to make it more egg-shaped than round. And right in the middle of that place, as though hanging in the air, was what appeared to be a portal, the space beyond it dark. Very. Fucking. Dark.
Without thought, I grabbed Brielle’s wrist and took
a step toward it, as though my feet moved on their own. She balked and debated, and even Charleigh protested, but in the end, neither Brielle nor I could fight the pull as it once again strengthened. Our pace quickened.
“Do you feel it?” I asked, hearing a touch of fear in my own voice. Then realization hit me. “Oh! I know where we are!”
Brielle’s eyes widened. “Me—”
She screamed, the sound one of agony. At the same time, I felt as though a knife carved over my shoulders and down my back. We both fell to the ground, writhing in agony.
“What’s happening?” Charleigh yelled, panic filling her voice.
“Get . . . help,” Brielle gasped. Charleigh disappeared, the only one of us able to flash since Brie and I hadn’t come into our powers yet.
I could only hope we lasted long enough for her to return with help, both of our backs arching up and down as though trying to escape the pain.
“What. The. HELL?” I screamed as another wave shot through me, feeling like every bone in my upper torso was breaking and reforming. Like my skin was stretching beyond its limits and then shredding apart. Like something was carving me from the inside out.
Then with a terrifying ripping sound, two huge, dark appendages sprang from Brielle’s back. I felt the break through my own flesh. And just as suddenly as the pain had come, it was gone.
“Holy . . . shit,” I gasped. “Our wings.”
One moment we stood there, marveling at them, and the next, we were both suddenly at the portal, reaching into it.
And then everything went black.
I didn’t know how long I’d been out, but I came to in a small cell made of three stone walls, the fourth consisting of metal bars.
