I heard another dry laugh from Adam at my side and looked up to see him moving against a sharpened stone, the bonds falling apart at his wrists as he stared down Theo, who laid sprawled out on the ground. A wicked smirk overcame the man as he looked at his King, almost daring Theo to stop him.
“That is enough of this boy,” Camden snapped as she pushed off the ground beside Theo, her hand raising unsteadily and the ground sinking just before Adam managed to untie himself, darting away.
“I wouldn’t say I’m a boy anymore, Camden,” Adam said with a snap of his fingers, the flame engulfing his hand as he stumbled to his feet. “In fact, it’s probably better if you don’t say anything,” he mused, and then the fire left his hand, whizzing by her and narrowly missing the ends of her sharply cut black bob. She gave a shriek of indignance.
I would have loved to watch, but—
“Hello, Wren,” Luka said as he rolled me out of the way, a dome of black falling over us as a hand came crashing by, attempting to grab whatever it could. “Interesting day, wouldn’t you say?” His voice was heavy with sarcasm.
I marveled at him, his hands going to my back, making to untie me. “I think it might be one of my favorites with you,” I said, the ropes at my wrists falling away.
“I’ve learned so much about you today,” he said, a genuine smile overcoming his features as I pulled my hands from behind my back and inspected them. I wish I could have saved the look on his face. “You really did prefer my ears.”
“The only liar out of the two of us is you, Kinsley,” I said with a grin, watching as the dome around us faded. My fingers grabbed his collar, pulling him down for a kiss before the rest of the world came back to me. His wonderful black eyes and beating heart were all I wanted to see, the most beautiful things in the world. But not the only things in the world.
Everything else was not a pretty sight.
“Adam!” Theo howled, watching as the man lobbed flame after flame at Camden, The King struggled to stand. “You stop that right now,” but he couldn’t manage to muster the amount of calm he needed to compel him. Not when another man sauntered up behind him.
“Hospitality,” Kristin reminded him, a vine began weaving around Theo’s ankle and pulling him down to the ground. “You’ve given me so much, so let me return it.” I think I heard a grunt from Kristin just moments afterwards.
A hand jerked me to the side, out of the way of an oncoming rock, Luka chided me, “Let’s pay attention, shall we, Wren?” I forgot that we weren’t the only ones on the playing field.
Of course, some of them were gone as soon as the fight started. I caught a whisp of smoke as the Gancanagh disappeared into thin air. But there were still guards, still Mylene, and still unfortunately, Nikolas. There was much to worry about.
And not enough time to worry.
A bullet went sailing past my head as I finally came to attention, jerking out of the way to hit my back against Luka’s chest. “I can mainly do illusions and some shields,” Luka reminded me as he caught me, hauling me up to my feet.
“Together then,” I said quickly, raising my hands. “We’ll stay together.”
“As always,” Luka said, “I can promise you that.”
It was a disaster. Something that Theo could have never predicted, but a disaster all the same. Between bullets, magic, and giants; it was pure chaos. But it was the only way out.
Between shocking people and ducking behind Luka’s cloak of darkness, we were somehow still alive. Making it this far felt like a miracle, especially with all that was going on. I honestly never thought we’d get so far.
But we did, the two of us fighting side by side as the rest of the world faded away. Even as my brain began to hum and my knees became weak, I did not give up. I could not give up, not for anything. And that was where we stood. We would die fighting, or, with a lot of luck, we wouldn’t die at all. I think the others shared that sentiment.
All around us, rocks began to fall, and the entrance to the cave shrunk under the rubble—but we did not stop. Because either way we went, there was no future in Whynne for us, that much was clear. The land that I knew was one that would never be the same.
“Luka,” my arm wrapped around his shoulders and jerked him back, narrowly missing another bullet as it ricocheted on the rocks behind us with a deafening bang. He looked at me with wide eyes, thankful to have missed it.
“Wren,” he jerked me against him as an arrow whizzed by, practically panting with the effort. I heard a scream as another giant’s hand flew by, the air becoming a mixture of dust and gunpowder from the action. It was hard to see, but we would make it. The dust was so thick that it was hard to see anything.
It was not so hard, however, to feel the metal that had touched my temple at that moment, cutting through all sound with its sharp, distinctive click. A gun.
“Let go of him,” a voice demanded, a young woman finally having found a use in the battle. “Let go of him right now, you whore.” We had been far too distracted.
My hands dropped from Luka’s side just as his rose from me, raising up in the air to sit at either side of his face in a show of peace.
“Step away from him,” she commanded, and for once the bullets did not whoosh by.
I followed her instructions, if only for that moment of peace. “Mylene—” Luka began, not even bothering to look at her.
“Don’t say my name.”
My throat went dry as the gun clicked at my head, the girl standing far enough away to not be touched.
“Put your hands by your sides, and don’t touch anything.” She said, and the dust settled just enough that I could see her; her normally perfectly ironed skirts rumpled and her hair jutting out in every direction. Danger.
“There is a war going on here, Mylene,” Luka tried. “The Unseelie will die—”
“I don’t care about that,” Mylene said quickly. “I care about her. I care about revenge. I care about killing this girl.”
“Alene wouldn’t have wanted this—”
“Alene wanted you,” Mylene snapped. “Alene wanted to be by you, to be loved by you, and you wanted this. You wanted a little maid, one that scrubbed the floors at somebody else’s estate, one that couldn’t even look at you. One that thinks she’s so much better now that she’s been boosted in station, one that is the reason that both you and I are here. Don’t tell me what you think my sister wanted, because I think I know her well enough.” I don’t think she even knew how to use a gun, and that was what made her the most dangerous thing of all. “If I don’t do this, Wren will ruin everything. She will put an end to the King, the one who has saved this land from the Unseelie, who wouldn’t have let my sister die if given the chance. So…”
“So,” I repeated, exhaling.
“So,” Luka swallowed, his eyes on me.
I wondered if it would hurt.
Would they bother to bury me? Or would I be left to the woods?
Would Luka go soon after, or would he live to a ripe old age?
Death. I’d faced it more than once. It wasn’t so frightening now. Not as scary as it had been on the lawn underneath Adam. It was calming, even, in a cold, calculating way. Because at least then, there would be rest.
But when I thought she would pull the trigger, she didn’t.
“You annoy me,” A voice said from behind Mylene. I almost believed it to be some sort of goddess. “I wish you had learned whose boots you should lick.”
And just like that, Mylene crumbled to the ground, an icy sheen overcoming her body—not dead, but frozen. And above her, standing in strange, foreign clothes with broken leaves decorating her braids, stood one girl. The one from far away, from over the wall. The one who the King bought because she was meant to be lucky.
Lindy. And just as suddenly as she appeared, the walls around us began to crumble.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“We need to go,” that was Luka’s first thought, his first desperate statement. We had to go, and we
had to do it as quickly as possible.
All around us, the sides of the mouth of the cave were falling, giving way under the pressure of the giants, the ones who had slowly begun to eat their fill. All around us, people were panicking. Fights were stopping, the deep understanding that soon the mountain side would crumble overtaking everyone.
And yet it was so hard to find anyone amongst that mess. Amongst what little remained. I could make out a few, a few guards crushed, a few moaning in pain, a few hints of the Unseelie on the outskirts.
But not much else.
“Winry,” I panicked, my eyes darting along the carnage for her.
“I would not worry about her,” Luka said. “I think of anyone, Winry is well suited to the forest, she’s always been gifted with plants. We’ll find her.”
“We need to get everyone,” I said.
“Finally, someone respectable,” Lindy muttered.
“I don’t think we’re going to clear this mountain,” Luka said. We wouldn’t, there was no way. Something in it has intrinsically changed, something was shaking it from its very core, even as the massive, foreign beasts moved around us, the forest was handling its own business, taking care of itself where they could not. The land itself was rebelling against the actions taken by the people of Whynne.
It was tearing apart the mountain. Soon, everything would crumble. If we kept this up, the palace would fall, collapsing right onto our capital city. We had to leave, we had to stop. We could not let it continue.
“This is how it ends,” Lindy said simply, “Whynne?”
“No,” I replied. “This is how something awful begins.” And I was right. I knew it. I knew that this was only the beginning, that much was clear.
In the distance, a fire blazed, streak after streak of it burning through the night. Adam. We had to get Adam.
But Lindy’s attention turned to someone else.
“Stupid man,” she said, and my head whirled around, all too ready to see another gun pointed in my direction. There wasn’t one, however.
Just Nikolas lying crushed under a shoulder.
“Wren,” Luka warned me, failing to catch hold on me as I ran, darting across the battlefield. “Wren,” he called louder, sprinting after me. Lindy did not bother to run, she walked slowly behind us.
“Nikolas!” My voice carried faster than I could move, trying to stir him, trying to reach him before Luka caught me, no doubt pulling me back. “Nikolas, wake up!”
“He tried to kill me,” Luka shouted, just barely missing me before I dropped to my knees, sliding the last few feet to the man. “Wren!”
But I couldn’t look at him, even if I wanted to. “Nikolas,” I said his name again, my voice frantic, my hands moving on their own accord, shoving at the mass on top of him. “Nikolas!” It wouldn’t move, it couldn’t move, the bolder was too heavy, it had pinned down his legs and knocked him unconscious. “Nikolas, you stupid lump!” I groaned, trying to pull him up. “You cannot die in front of me!”
“Wren,” I heard Luka’s voice beside me, but it was like a blur. Nikolas. Nikolas was there, he was trapped, he was unconscious. Nikolas, the man who I had danced with. The man I’d once imagined myself falling in love with. The one that Luka and I had mocked mercilessly.
Not a war hero, not any kind of hero. Far from it.
But part of home.
His gills still moved, opening and closing, sucking in dust around the scales on his neck. His eyes, however, did not open. Not even a little bit.
“We have to push it off,” I said hastily, turning to Luka. “You have to help me push it off.”
“Wren, he tried to kill me—”
“Multiple times, I know, but please—” I put my whole body into shoving at that rock, trying to move it off him. “Luka, please.” I couldn’t do it alone. I needed Luka.
“You want me to save his life?” He asked in astonishment.
“Please,” I repeated, desperate to move it, desperate to save him. He couldn’t die, not there, not like this. Even if he was annoying and one of the most massive pieces of shit I had ever met, he couldn’t die. Not if it would be my fault. I wouldn’t be responsible for his death. “He is stupid and he is stubborn, along with far too self-assured and ambitious—but I cannot stand to see someone die in front of me, even someone as idiotic as him.”
Luka sighed, and I heard the rustling of fabric, his forearms appearing at my side with the sleeves rolled out of the way as he sat beside me, desperately trying to gain purchase on the ground to do one of the most obscenely stupid things I had ever asked of him. No doubt he was cursing my name.
But then the rock moved just a little bit, and I gave a small cry of relief, understanding that we could do it, we were capable of saving him. We couldn’t fix anything else, but we could stop Nikolas from dying.
“You are a strange girl,” I heard Lindy say from my other side. “One who is just as stupid as she is kind. I would have left him to die.”
I thought that was a compliment, in a way.
The rock fell away completely and revealed him underneath. Nikolas was sprawled out and flattened, but still alive. Still breathing.
There was only one thing left to do.
“I’m sorry Nikolas,” I whispered, raising my hand to his cheek. “I really do hope you survive.” And just like that, a sting of electricity shocked him awake.
Nikolas’s eyes shot open, and I think for a moment, he thought he was dreaming, because I was sitting on top of him, my hand on his face. He even reached for me, gawking at me as he took my cheeks in his palm, his eyes misting over as he looked at me. His lips parted, puckering ever so slightly. But then, very quickly he was knocked out of the notion of a dream…
By Luka’s fist colliding with his jaw.
“You run,” Luka snarled at him as he pulled me off of Nikolas. “You run and you do not come back. I don’t care what you do after this, Nikolas; so long as I never have to see your face again.” I honestly didn’t think Luka had it in him. But he did, and as he spoke, Lindy emptied the chamber of Nikolas’s gun out over the man, letting every bullet scatter across his face.
“I do not trust you not to shoot,” she said.
“Go,” Luka said, his arms wrapping around me, tugging me into his chest. “Just go.”
“But Wren—”
“Go!” Luka barked, his chin tucking over my shoulder. It was a gesture of possession and, seeing Nikolas’s longing stare, I don’t think I could have blamed him.
“Goodbye, Nikolas,” I said, feeling how tightly Luka’s arms wrapped around me. “Let this be the end.” That snapped the noble fae back to his senses.
Nikolas’s eyes narrowed at me, looking very much like it wouldn’t be. But the ground gave another shake, and he could not argue further. He gave Luka one last loathsome look before turning around, stalking away from us.
As he walked, a pair passed him by, brushing shoulders with him.
“Where is Adam?” Were Kristin’s first words, practically slumped against Winry’s shoulder as Nikolas disappeared in the background. Where was Adam?
Where was he?
This was a question that was soon answered as we made our way up the side of the mountain, searching for a sign of him. Luckily, he left plenty of evidence for the five of us to follow.
The trail of singed grass and torn up earth formed our path. Ahead, we could hear yelling, absolutely furious yelling. The air was tinged with smoke.
He was a wildfire burning through the mountainside, leaving chaos in his wake.
“He can’t last much longer,” Kristin said. “Not even a fae could use that much magic.” But no fae could even compare to Adam Harlow, I think even the King knew that. All we had to do was follow the yelling.
When we came upon him, he was still fighting. Still lobbing, still throwing, still grunting with every motion. Even from afar we could see him, drenched in sweat, his brow set heavily. The shirt that once sat upon his skin was nearly burnt away, revea
ling an expanse of white tattoos running across his body, telling a story much as the ones Pili had likely had. Across them, from his arms to the tips of his shoulders, was fire. Large, towering flames, ones that nearly engulfed him with every single scream, years of pent-up anger being released at his fingertips, all aimed at her.
Camden.
I had not seen her power before, but now I understood it. It was the ground beneath our feet, the soil, and the lull of her voice. She was powerful in a typical fae way, an untamable, wild magic, and in a human way through presence alone. She was not the type to lose, and yet…
Long strips of black covered her dress, and portions of her hair were missing, her skin was red and blistered. She’d been hit more than once, and a part of me dared to wonder if the marks would scar. He would not lose to her. Adam would kill her if he could, even if it took his dying breath.
Though he hardly needed that.
She finally fell, tumbling to her knees in front of him as she dodged yet another burst of fire, her eyes showing more white than black when she realized what she’d stumbled into, one of the various rabbit holes she’d sunk into the ground to capture him. She was stuck, trying to get back up but failing as the realization hit her, a twisted ankle or a shifting bone. Things that fae healing could not fix on its own.
Just enough of an opportunity for Adam.
“You do not know how long I have waited,” he said. “To see you on the ground begging for your life.” I could not move, could not fathom rushing towards him as the flames danced in his eyes. This was retribution for her mistreatment, for him being forced to become a chess piece in a war she created. She would pay for her sins. “After everything you’ve made me do.”
Her eyes rose to his, her chest heaving with every bit of air she took in, never exhaling.
Quill and Cobweb (The Chronicles of Whynne Book 2) Page 23
