“They would,” she says, her lips curling into a smile, “if I found the right bargaining chip.”
“Bargaining chip?”
“If I found someone they want more than me.”
My breaths come faster. A sense of foreboding nudges my thoughts. “There isn’t anyone they want more than you and Amon.”
“There wasn’t,” she says slowly, “until I told them that the one they’ve always wanted most is actually still alive.”
Blood pounds in my ears. “What did you do?”
“I traded his life for mine.”
I stop breathing. When I find air again, a painful gasp of it, I manage to say, “You didn’t. He’s your son. You wouldn’t do that.”
“How could I not do that?” she counters. “He left me rotting in a prison cell for over a decade. And then to come crawling back with lie upon lie about wanting to be part of my plans? Ha! He is no more a son to me than I ever was a mother to him. I knew he was alive all this time. I had no doubt. I waited and waited for my son to come and get me, until the crushing moment I realized he had chosen to leave me suffering behind bars for the rest of my life. Since then I’ve been waiting every day, every single day, for the moment I could repay his treachery in kind.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “Where is he?”
She lifts her shoulders in a careless shrug. “I can’t be certain. He ran off in that direction with a hoard of guardians on his tail.” She gestures vaguely over her shoulder into the thick forest of bushes and trees. “Something tells me he won’t have the strength to get far, though.” She lifts her hand as if holding something invisible. Slowly, a large metal disc appears, suspended from a cord in her grip. A gong. Which can only mean …
“The morioraith,” I murmur.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she complains. “I had to give the guardians a fair chance, didn’t I? And he’s still conscious, although—” she lifts her hand, displaying the telepathy ring on her finger “—I can’t discern much from his thoughts. It’s all pain and despair and misery.” Lighting crackles nearby, followed by the dull boom of thunder. “Ah, it’s sounds like he’s putting up a bit of a fight. How fun.”
My face scrunches up in anger, in loathing. “You’re despicable.”
She laughs—and then she lunges at me, her face twisting with rage. In a split second, I realize this is the moment. The moment I saw in Rick’s vision, with her hand reaching out to claw at me. I embrace it, throwing myself at her and knocking her arm aside. We fall to the ground and I pin her down, surprised to find that she isn’t nearly as strong as I imagined. I expected a powerful foe, an invincible force, but she’s nothing more than a regular opponent. Her fist swings at me, but I catch it, tearing the ring off her hand before she throws me off her with a push of magic. My body rolls to a halt against a bush. I climb to my feet as she rises to hers. I push the ring into my pocket while distracting her with an illusion of the nearest bush catching fire. Then I spin and kick. She goes down a second time, and I don’t hang around. I jump past her and run.
I hear her laughing behind me, making no attempt to chase me down. My feet carry me as fast as they can, which isn’t nearly fast enough amidst the thick tangle of bushes. I push between them, slashing with magic at the branches in my way, relieved when I finally reach an area that isn’t so dense. My arms pump at my sides as I race toward the storm. It isn’t as powerful as I imagined Chase’s storms to be, and that fills me with terror. What state is he in if his sheets of lightning barely brighten the night sky and his thunder doesn’t even rattle the ground?
I run into a long, narrow clearing and see motion up ahead. With a cry, I push myself faster. My breath burns in my chest as my feet fly across the ground. The shapes ahead of me take form. A carriage, wide and solid. Something moving on the other side of it. Wings? Pegasi? I see bars across the back of the carriage as I near it, and the emblem of the Seelie Court. Run! I scream at myself. Faster! Then the carriage begins moving, and I know with crushing, heartbreaking certainty that I’m too late.
“No!” I shout, racing after the carriage with a burst of magical speed. I fling myself at it and grab onto the bars. “Chase!” I can see him now, heavy chains attaching his arms and legs to either side of the carriage. Chains that are no doubt blocking his magic. He droops between them, the picture of defeat. When he looks up, his eyes are focused far away on distant nightmares. “Chase. Chase! It’s me!”
He blinks and frowns. Confusion turns to recognition. “Calla?”
I push one arm through the bars, but I can’t reach him. “Tell me what to do. Tell me how to get you out.” With a lurch, the carriage lifts off the ground. I cling more tightly to the bars.
“We’re flying,” Chase says, shaking his head and becoming more alert. “You have to let go. We’ll be too high soon, and then—”
“No!”
“Hey!” I look up and find a guard in a smart uniform frowning down at me. “Get off,” he commands, pointing a stylus. Instantly, he’s joined by another three guards, all balancing atop the edge of the carriage with practiced ease.
Ignoring them, I look back through the bars. “I can’t leave you,” I yell in desperation.
“You have to. Everything will be okay, I promise.”
“Chase, I—” A spark strikes my right arm. Then my left. I cry out as I lose my grip on the bars. I tumble through the air and hit the ground, rolling several times before coming to a stop. My body aches and the burns on my arms sting like hell and all the air has been knocked from my lungs. I lie on the ground gasping for breath and watching the sky until the carriage is long gone.
Until Chase is long gone.
I roll onto my side and hug my knees, and my tears soak into the ground as the cold night wraps itself around me.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
I return to the mountain in the early hours of the morning to find Ana and Kobe pacing the living room while Gaius sits with his head clasped in his hands. I stop in the doorway. They look at me, the same question of each of their faces. My voice is dull as I say, “He’s gone. Seelie guards took him. Angelica gave him up in exchange for her freedom.”
Ana’s hands rise to cover her mouth. Gaius seems frozen in place. Kobe shakes his head and says, “I knew something was off. I knew the moment we got down to the bottom river and there wasn’t a single merperson to be found. Then Angelica’s people showed up, hours earlier than planned and far more of them than expected. We knew instantly that she’d set us up.”
Ana’s hands turn to fists, clenching tightly against her chin as she looks at Kobe. “If only Darius and Lumethon had been with us instead of saving the Seers. If we’d hidden amongst the rocks instead of climbing out of the water, we could have waited for Chase and Calla to arrive. We could all have fought together. We could have prevented this.”
Kobe crosses his arms and turns away, his voice gruff as he says, “Instead we wound up passed out and useless.”
“This isn’t right,” Gaius says, sounding lost. “Chase doesn’t get caught. He just doesn’t.”
I lean against the doorway as my body sways with exhaustion. My eyes, burning from all the tears, slide shut. “He did this time,” I whisper. Then I turn and slowly climb the stairs to my bedroom. Cold and tired and drained, I get into bed and pull the covers over my head. There are thoughts at the back of my mind—thoughts about guardians torturing Chase, about the execution they no doubt have lined up for him, about never seeing him again—but I refuse to let them take center stage.
I fall into fitful sleep filled with muddled dreams. Some time later, I wake with one thought at the forefront of my mind: the telepathy ring. With a sudden spike of hope, I tug it out of my pocket and push it onto my left forefinger.
Chase?
Chase!
I don’t know if he has the other ring. I assume he took it with on our Wishbone Rivers mission so he could speak to Angelica if he needed to, but I don’t remember seeing it. I don’
t remember feeling it as our fingers laced together or when his hands trailed up my arms. I press my eyelids shut, clinging to the memory.
Then I lie down again and hug one of my pillows, silently calling his name and waiting for a response that may never come.
* * *
Later in the day, I hide in the Creepy Hollow healing wing until a healer and a guard escort Mom to one of the bathing rooms. She’ll soon be dressed and ready to head downstairs for further questioning. No one knows yet if she’ll be allowed to go home after that.
I slip into her cubicle and begin my hurried examination of the room. My fingers slide over the wall and along the frame of the bed, feeling for markings or signs of magic. I crawl under the bed and find nothing. I scan both sides of the two picture frames before removing them, along with the tablecloth, from the cabinet and pulling all three drawers out. My inspection of every inch of the wood reveals nothing. I straighten and place my hands on my hips, considering whether to rip the pillows apart in case there’s some kind of charm hiding inside them.
Then my eyes fall on the painting in the second picture frame. I didn’t bring it here, and neither did Dad. Perhaps it was Matilda, like I suggested to Dad—or perhaps it was Zed, who said his job for Amon and Angelica was done after he escaped the Guild. I pick up the frame and remove the back piece—then drop the two halves onto the bed in fright. Staring up at me from the back of the painting is a drawing of an eye. It glows faintly.
I rip the painting out of the frame and tear it in half. Then I tear it again and again into dozens of tiny pieces. I scoop them into a pile on the floor and set fire to them with a snap of my fingers. I watch them burn, feeling a tingle across the back of my neck as I imagine Angelica in her prison cell watching us through the little picture frame I saw sitting on her table.
The curtain moves. I quickly conceal myself and the pile of ash. I asked Ryn to meet me here, but it might not be him. A healer sticks her head between the curtains and says, “She isn’t back yet.”
“That’s fine. I’ll wait here,” Ryn says from the other side of the curtain.
“I know I’ve had to tell you this before, Ryn. Visiting hours are—”
“This isn’t a visit. I’m here to take her downstairs for questioning.”
“Well, perhaps you should wait in—”
“Can you smell something burning?” Ryn asks. “I think you need to check on that.”
The healer disappears and Ryn enters the cubicle. I drop the illusion and hold up the two pieces of the empty picture frame. “Angelica was watching everything that happened in this room. She saw and heard all three visions.” I point to the floor and add, “I burned the painting that had her spell on it.”
Ryn walks over to me and takes the picture frame. “I still can’t believe they let her go. I’d love to know exactly who approved that decision. The Council is supposed to decide these sorts of things together with all its members, but I’ve heard nothing.” He adds the picture frame to the pile of ash and sets fire to it. “May as well burn the entire thing.” He stands and watches the flames consume the wooden pieces.
“Is Victoria all right?” I ask.
“Yes, she’s fine. A healer came over and checked her out. And Jamon sent a few reptiscillan guards to the house to keep Vi company, in case anything else happens.”
“I’m so, so sorry, Ryn.”
“Why? You have nothing to be sorry for. You stopped a delusional man from hurting Victoria.”
I wrap my arms around my chest and look away. “That delusional man … I know him. I met him when we were both prisoners in Zell’s dungeon. I saw him again years later, and that’s when I asked him to teach me how to fight. He’s the one who trained me. Then he ended up with the wrong crowd of people, and now he believes he has to exact vengeance on the Guild—and you in particular—for leaving all those Gifted people in Zell’s dungeon to be tortured and used. I had no idea he’d end up like this. I’m so sorry.”
“So that’s the guardian who trained you,” Ryn says quietly. He shakes his head and adds, “His delusions aren’t your fault.”
“But …” I keep my eyes fixed firmly on the floor as I admit what I’ve done. “I saw him when he was escaping the Guild, and I didn’t stop him.”
“He’s that man?” Ryn says. “The one who escaped the detainment area recently?”
I nod. “He’s also the one who killed Saskia and spread the dragon disease, but I doubt we can ever prove that. Or catch him.” I risk looking up. “You said the guardians didn’t find anyone in the forest near your home?”
“No.” Ryn sits on the edge of the bed. I lower myself to sit beside him. “He sounds incredibly dangerous, Cal. I know you’re feeling guilty that you didn’t alert anyone when you saw him. You’re expecting me to be angry with you. But my guess is that you couldn’t have stopped him if you tried. He would have made sure he had a way to get out.”
“I guess so. It seems he had everything else planned out.”
Ryn places his hand over mine. “Do you want to talk about … the rest of last night?”
“Only if you’ve heard something.”
“Not a word. If the Seelie Court has custody of a man they believe to be Draven, they haven’t told anyone yet. Normally he’d be at Velazar by now, but we haven’t heard from them either. There are other prisons he may have been sent to, but Velazar makes the most sense. It’s the most secure. And then, of course, there are the rumors about a hidden prison controlled by the Seelie Queen for personal enemies of hers who never end up anywhere near the official Guild system. But that’s completely illegal, so of course there’s no proof that it’s true.”
“He could be anywhere,” I murmur. “He could even be … dead.”
After a long pause, Ryn says, “He could be.”
I shut my eyes and say, “Please don’t tell me he’s getting what he deserves.”
“Calla—”
“I know you don’t like him, and I know he’s done terrible things in the past, but I happen to care a great deal about him. You don’t know how my heart aches to think of what they’re doing to him. To think that I’ll never see him again.”
“Calla.” Ryn tightens the hand that’s clasped over mine. I open my eyes and look at him. “I was only going to say how sorry I am for how this all turned out. I wish there was a way I could fix it for you.”
I hear Mom’s voice out in the passageway as she speaks with a healer. I stand, whisper goodbye to Ryn, and slip between the curtains before Mom and the healer reach the cubicle. I carry Ryn’s words with me all the way back to the mountain, not because I want him to find a way to fix this, but because if a way does somehow exist, I will find it.
* * *
I dream of our kiss. I dream of him being so near that no space exists between us. His arms, my heartbeat, his lips, my breath. Magic radiates from my body, causing fountains of golden water to arc through the air all around us. In one moment I’m joyfully happy—and in the next my heart breaks, because I know what’s about to happen. The whirlpool begins. It sucks all the water away, leaving me standing alone on dry earth watching a carriage disappearing in the distance.
“Calla!”
I press my hands against my ears because I can’t bear to hear his desperate cries.
“Calla!”
I shake my head, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Miss Goldilocks.”
* * *
I jerk awake, leaving the dream world behind. I rub a hand across my eyes and sit up. I stare at the bedcover, feeling the thud of my heart and trying to forget that horrible feeling of loss that pervaded my dream, blotting out everything else. Perhaps I should have taken something to help me sleep, but—
Calla?
I gasp out loud and clap a hand over my mouth.
Calla?
It’s his voice, inside my head. I look down at my left hand where the telepathy ring encircles my forefinger. Chase?
You got the ring back, he says.
You’re alive! Unimaginable relief explodes inside me.
Of course. Didn’t I tell you it would take a lot to finish me off?
Questions stream through my head too fast for me to stop them. What happened? Where are you? Are you okay? Did they hurt you?
Are you okay? he asks. You just vanished. I was so worried. When he mentions worry, it’s almost as though I feel it. And then a great weariness and a sense of defeat. I know it’s difficult to hide emotion when communicating like this, but fatigue seems to make it even harder for him to conceal what he’s really feeling.
I’m fine, I promise, I say. Tell me about you first.
It was an ambush. A whole lot of Angelica’s faeries. I was so stupid to trust her. So, so stupid. As I fought them, they steered me toward the final whirlpool. When I arrived back at the surface, Angelica was there with dozens of guardians and a morioraith. I ran, but the smoke caught up to me. It paralyzed me, giving the guardians a chance to pin me down and get the chains around me. Angelica was there to control the creature. She let it scratch me, just once, just enough to keep me weak with hallucinations of the past.
I feel a ripple of the horror he’s remembering. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I should have got to you sooner—
I’m glad you didn’t. They might have taken you too.
Where are you now?
Turns out the Seelie Palace conceals a world of darkness beneath its polished marble floors. There are prison cells and torture chambers down here that I never knew existed, not even when I thought I had control of this place.
So you’re at the Seelie Court? A place impossible to find unless you’re shown the way by someone who knows where it is?
That’s the one. Most well-hidden place in the entire fae world.
And now I understand his dejection. How will we ever find him if he’s concealed in a place that barely anyone knows how to get to? He truly is beyond our reach. My fingers dig into the mattress as my hope begins to slip away. What do they plan to do with you?
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