by Liz de Jager
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This book, the final one in the trilogy, is dedicated to my parents. Mum, Dad, you raised me to never give up and to believe in myself. You taught me that stories matter. Thank you. I miss you every day.
The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for.
Mark Twain
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Prologue
The Otherwhere, Alba – The Fae Lands
Thorn stared down at the corpse of the great antlered elk at his feet. After a glance around the small glade to ensure he was unobserved, he placed his bow by his side and crouched by the head of the beast, resting a hand on the antler. He took a moment to mourn the passing of the majestic creature felled by disease rather than old age or a hunter’s arrow.
The soft velvet covering the growth felt unnaturally brittle to his touch. Leaning closer, he ran a gentle hand up to one of the tines and, gripping the point between his fingers, he gave a firm twist. The tip of the antler broke off and crumbled to dust in his palm.
Wiping his hands clean against his thighs, he picked up his bow once more, ensured his quiver was settled against his back, and stood to move around the animal’s body.
The clearing itself showed no sign of any animal or bird activity. What was more telling was that the beast had not been butchered by any of the goblins that inhabited the wilder parts of the forest. The elk had also been dead for at least a week and nothing had tried to eat it. Apparently not even Winter, wrapping her dark cloak over the land, could convince the various foxes, wolves, crows and ravens to dine on the red elk.
The giant red elk were rare in the Otherwhere and were truly the undisputed giants of the forest. He’d been taught they were completely extinct in the Frontier, in the human lands – there they had been hunted for their succulent meat and pelts thousands of years ago – and now they only survived in the forests of the Otherwhere.
As much as he regretted the creature’s passing, finding the dead elk had not been a surprise.
It had taken him weeks to pinpoint the discomfort he’d felt, which had settled into his bones. Acting on instinct, he’d eventually taken his bow and escaped into the ancient forest with his tutor (and jailer) Odalis’s hounds by his side. He’d been gone a week now, by his estimation. He’d walked from sunup till sundown, tracking the source of the dissonance that thrummed so deeply within him.
The sense of discord had been keeping him awake at night, a continual distracting background noise to all he did. He’d trekked for days, following the discordant tone and its feeling of wrongness. Then, as he’d neared the clearing with the dead elk, the hum of the tone had changed – becoming louder until it dominated all else. But when he’d knelt by the creature’s lifeless body, all sound had ceased and in its wake the silence was deafening.
A rustle from nearby drew his attention and two of the hounds loped towards him. Behind them he recognized the shape of the Fae high king’s forester, Crow. Like Thorn, he was dressed for moving swiftly and quietly through the forest; he bore a longbow in one hand, a long curving knife at his side and a quiver of arrows fletched with white feathers on his back.
‘Guardian.’ Crow’s lip twisted at Thorn’s honorary title. His gaze swept the glade, across Thorn, and came to rest on the corpse of the bloated animal. ‘You found him.’
‘I did.’
‘There is more. Come.’
He beckoned Thorn to follow him. The dogs jumped up at Thorn and, once he’d acknowledged them by patting their sleek heads, they spun off into the forest ahead of the two Fae, tails held high.
Thorn followed the forester for what felt like an age. The forest grew more and more dense, the light disappearing almost completely under the heavy canopy. The air felt damp and thick with ancient magics. The denizens here were primitive and not all of them were friendly towards the Sidhe sons of Alba.
Crow moved swiftly ahead of him, occasionally making sure Thorn was keeping up, but he gave the young prince no quarter, setting a punishing pace.
The forest was so very old that it almost seemed to have developed a life of its own. Thorn couldn’t help imagining it as one unique living and breathing entity – and like every living entity it had to have a heart. Thorn suspected this was what Crow wanted to show him. If the heart of the wood was sick, the rest of the organism would also suffer.
‘Look up.’
Thorn frowned at the curt instruction but obeyed, his jaw dropping open at the sight of an enormous tree stretching to the heavens. He struggled to take it in at first, then turned back to where Crow stood patiently waiting for him.
‘This is what we are allowed to see – above ground,’ Crow said. ‘Come, she is ready to meet you.’
‘She?’
‘I call her she. She seems to like it.’
Crow pressed a hand against the bark and gestured for Thorn to do the same. It felt warm beneath his touch and Thorn almost pulled his hand away in surprise. He leaned against the trunk and closed his eyes, breathing in deeply. The air here was pleasant and smelled of warm, lazy summer days a
nd rich earth. For all the tranquillity, Thorn could sense something bruised, something darker. The undertone of decay.
Crow watched him with an intent look and when the forester gave him a nod, Thorn steadied his heartbeat and allowed his consciousness to shift and sink into the heart of the forest.
He was disorientated for only a moment, then she was there. A majestically tall figure behind his closed eyes. She reached for him imperiously and he allowed her to drag him deeper into the wider stream of power that made up her pulse. His consciousness was flung upwards, and suddenly he was seeing the vast primeval forest from her dizzying upper heights. The forest was vast and sweeping, stretching from horizon to horizon.
She pulled at him once he’d taken in the endless forests, and he scrambled to bring all of himself present. He thought that she would leave it at that, but instead she plunged his consciousness ever downwards and then flung it outwards. He realized that he was not only to see the forest from above, but to experience it from below as well.
She pushed him through the intricate root system at disorientating speeds; he sagged heavily against her bark, unaware of Crow steadying him. He let her push him ahead of her and he now saw the reason for her urgency. As tremendous as the forest appeared from above, the root system was even more intricate and impressive. It was also where he found the cancerous growths. They grew thick and black on the roots of the trees, ugly pustules that suffocated and killed their hosts.
There were so many, hundreds of thousands of them, spread throughout the entire forest. The trees were dying, suffocating from below. And as they were dying, the animals living off them were also being poisoned, and so the sickness spread wide. He saw wooded groves lying dead or dying and felt the ache of their loss in his bones.
If the dark forest died, the heart of the Otherwhere would die. The death of the forest meant the death of the Otherwhere, and what happens in the Otherwhere happens in the Frontier. Fleeting images of a desolate wasteland, skeletal buildings and savage packs of humans and animals preying on one another came unbidden. The vision was so vividly powerful that Thorn struggled to disengage from it, ultimately dipping himself further into the magic surrounding him in an attempt to escape it.
A sense of her approval came over him and he realized she’d meant for him to see this, to understand fully that it wasn’t just the Otherwhere at stake. She pulled him from his reverie and led him back into the clearing, her presence fading gradually as she sank into the leylines once more.
Thorn moved away from Crow’s steadying embrace and sat down heavily on the ground beside her trunk. He opened his eyes with difficulty, fully expecting still to see roots before his eyes – but instead he found the forester watching him curiously.
‘She showed you the disease?’
‘It’s everywhere,’ Thorn acknowledged. ‘The infection is everywhere.’
‘I have walked this forest all my life, boy. I sense the ebb and flow of its magic and it no longer feels stable. Nura and the other foresters are reporting that there are more remote parts of the forest that can no longer sustain those that dwell within. And the disease is spreading rapidly.’
‘The roots of the Otherwhere bind the realms together and the Veil sustains the magic within the Otherwhere. In turn the Veil is fed by the power in the goddess.’ Thorn closed his eyes. ‘The root of all of this is the goddess’s power failing. Our world is coming apart, Crow, and I don’t know what to do to fix it. I’m not … I’m just not up to the task. I know nothing. What if I’m not able to save the Otherwhere? The worlds would die.’
‘Nothing lasts forever, boy.’ Crow put a hand on Thorn’s shoulder. ‘And there is time yet. It’s not in our nature merely to accept our destruction.’
Thorn stood and moved away from the forester, pacing the small clearing. ‘Imagine what would happen to the Frontier if the Veil between the Fae and human lands came apart entirely? We’d have packs of redcaps and ogres roaming their cities, picking off solitary humans, and then they’d become brazen enough to attack whole city blocks. The carnage, once the human authorities caught wind of what was going on, would be impossible to determine. If humans then found their way into the Otherwhere, into Alba, there would be a full-scale war – and in a war between humans and Fae, neither side would win.’
Crow cast a thoughtful eye over the younger noble Fae, before speaking once more. ‘We will do what we can to ensure the safety of our worlds, Guardian. As long as we are alive, we can fight; and if we fight there is a chance we might succeed.’
Chapter One
A month is not long enough to recover.
The speedbag hums under my steady rhythmic onslaught. I break from it. Pick up the rope and start skipping, varying my speeds as I watch the clock. I skip for ten minutes before I jog over to the wooden man and flow into a series of blocks and blows.
Kick.
Block.
Punch.
Duck.
Punch.
Kick.
I do this until I realize my exercise playlist has cycled over for the second time. I’m the only one down here in the Garretts’ gym, and if the playlist is repeating itself, it means I’ve been down here for at least three hours. Although I’m tired, I’m still carrying residual anxiety that makes me feel tense.
It doesn’t help knowing that I’m not up to full speed or fighting fitness and that this is mostly due to cuts and bruises not healing the way they should. And that in turn is down to me being unable to sleep for more than two or three hours at a time, if I’m lucky.
I’ve gulped down half a bottle of water when I jump, realizing someone’s watching me from the doorway. I turn, readying for a fight, but find myself staring at Dante. He’s propped himself against the closed door with a thoughtful expression on his face.
‘Creeping much?’ I say, and my voice shakes only slightly as I recover from the shock of his sudden appearance.
‘I’ve called your name twice and you didn’t hear me,’ he points out evenly and walks over to hand me a fresh towel.
I take it and wipe my face and neck before tossing it aside.
‘You gonna come train with me?’
‘No. I got tired just watching you and I’m worried that if I spar with you, you’ll just punch me out.’ His smile smooths the bite in his tone. ‘Besides, you’ve been down here for hours ignoring us. Come upstairs, we’ve ordered pizza. We’re doing a movie night and Leo’s here, kicking Aiden’s butt on Xbox – so you have to come and save him from being completely annihilated.’
‘Leo is a deviant Xbox fanatic. There is nothing I can do to save Aiden. He’s on his own.’
‘But you’ll come up and hang out with us?’ He leans a little forward and drops his voice, making it drip with schmaltzy sexy allure. ‘Pizza, Kit. Real pizza. Not even the frozen stuff, but homemade pizza as made by the Italian restaurant around the corner.’
I grin at his antics and push his face away. ‘Fine. But I’m not sharing with any of you.’ I’m hungry and pizza fixes all ills. Or at least, it goes a long way to fixing all ills. I grab my towels and the remote, turning the music off before switching off the lights in the gym. I follow Dante down the passage to the showers.
‘Aiden said that if you needed any T-shirts, he’s left some in the bathroom for you.’
‘Yeah, I got some blood on my T-shirt and I didn’t bring too many changes of clothes for the weekend.’
‘You got “some blood” on your T-shirt? Huh, I’ll pretend to take that story at face-value but when you’re ready to tell me the truth, you know where to find me.’ His gaze settles heavily on my face. ‘You know you can talk to me, right? We’re still partners, still friends.’
I nod and duck my head so he can’t see my face properly because I really don’t need his kindness or concerned looks right now. I don’t deserve them.
‘Take your time. The pizza place will have their hands full as the guys ordered seven pizzas, all large.’
In the end I have
a long shower and change into yoga pants and one of Aiden’s softest, oldest rock T-shirts.
I ignore my face in the mirror as I swiftly finger-comb my hair, smearing product into it and despairing that it’s getting long again. I don’t see my too-pale face or how my eyes are stark and a little too big and wild. No, I ignore any signs of that and instead I practise smiling and looking like a nice person rather than someone who would fail their mission. Someone who would leave small children trapped in faerie, having the life leached out of them to keep a goddess alive.
There is a lot of noise. Aiden and Leo are playing Mortal Kombat on the Xbox in the main lounge off the kitchen. There’s more shouting, swearing and the occasional punch going on there than on the screen. Shaun, Aiden’s older brother, is talking to someone on the phone, possibly his dad, and Dante’s flipping through a newspaper, waiting for the kettle to boil.
He looks up when I walk in.
‘You look better.’
‘Thereby implying I didn’t look okay before?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re a terrible flirt.’
‘So Aiden keeps telling me.’
I laugh outright at that because Dante looks so very disgruntled. ‘I’d love some coffee, if you’re okay with the stink of it?’
