A Dance With Darkness (2020 Ed)

by Jenna Wolfhart

  One of the swords belonged to Kael. I stiffened when I saw him. His cruel eyes, his thin curving lips. It was the first time I’d laid eyes on him since the night he’d abandoned me on the cliff to face the Redcap alone, and anger still very much burned in my veins. This fae before me, who had thrown me at the feet the very thing that had killed my friend, without any help from him…he was probably my mate. Instead of Liam.

  I almost hoped he charged with his sword. That way, I’d have an excuse to fight him for all I was worth.

  When he flicked his eyes across my face and then to Liam, he frowned and lowered his weapon, motioning for the others to do the same. They were all wearing leather armor and bracers made from steel. I’d seen some of them during Watch Duty, standing guard for the Academy.

  “Liam, where the hell have you been? And why do you have Norah with you?” His voice was cold and edged in steel.

  The muscles in Liam’s back tightened. “She has the weekend off, no? I was just showing her around Otherworld.”

  Kael’s glittering dark eyes narrowed. “Her roommate reported her missing. We thought she’d been taken. Or worse.”

  Whoops. I hadn’t even thought about what Sophia might do when she found me missing. I’d been too swept away in the excitement of a quest.

  And the idea of spending time with Liam.

  “It’s not like you to overreact, Kael,” Liam said with a chuckle. “Students explore Otherworld all the time on the weekends. There was no reason to jump to conclusions.”

  “I wasn’t jumping to conclusions.” Kael frowned and glanced at the four guards who were watching the exchange with expressions ranging from irritation to anger to distrust. Kael raised his arm and waved at the looming Academy behind him. “Return to your posts.”

  As the four guards began to disperse, each heading toward a different watch tower, Liam dismounted the horse and held out a hand to help me do the same. This time, I only stumbled a little, though I did almost twist my ankle. I was improving?

  “What’s with the armed guards?” Liam asked, gesturing to the retreating fae. “Night doesn’t fall for another few hours. We don’t need to worry about creatures just yet.”

  “While you two were having your little joy ride, the Academy has been undergoing a series of attacks from the Redcaps,” Kael said, his voice as icy as his eyes. “Last night, the student on Watch Duty in the northwestern tower was attacked and killed.”

  Horror pounded through me. I glanced from Kael to Liam, whose face reflected the same revulsion I felt. A strange buzzing filled my head. A student was dead. A changeling keeping watch in the northwestern tower. I swallowed hard.

  “But that’s Norah’s tower,” Liam said, fists clenching. “That’s where she usually stands watch. She’s spent five out of seven nights there since she came to Otherworld.”

  Kael gave a curt nod. “So, you can see that I wasn’t jumping to conclusions, Liam. This cannot be a coincidence, especially after what happened in Manhattan. The Redcaps appear to want Norah dead. It’s not safe for her to leave the Academy.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  My life at the Academy went from strange-yet-intriguing to just plain terrible after that. Finn, Liam, Rourke, and Kael seemed convinced that my life was in danger at every turn, and I was forbidden from stepping outside of the Academy walls. That included restricting me from participating in Watch Duty, something they all thought would please me.

  But I’d kind of enjoyed the task, as strange as it sounded. It was doing something, even if it was nothing more than just keeping out an eye for danger. It had been time outside, under the stars. Now, I could longer breathe in the fresh air of summer and smell the wildflowers that dotted the campus grounds.

  Instead, Kael had taken it upon himself to add some in-depth one-on-one training to my curricula, which meant I was supposed to spend an extra four hours a day doing coursework. With him. In the library. He seemed to think it was the only way to keep me alive.

  Not that he cared if I lived or died. Clearly.

  When I showed up for my first extra lesson with him, I glared at him for awhile before plopping into the chair across the table from him. I waited, wondering if he’d bring up what had happened. He didn’t.

  Instead, he pushed a book across the table and told me to read about the various types of flowers found in the Winter Court’s lands. Candlelight flickered in the quiet library as I dragged my eyes across the pages. Kael just sat there, watching. An hour later, he yanked the book away and told me to recite what I’d learned.

  “There’s the Winter Moonlight,” I said, chin on fisted hand. “It’s a white flower that turns to pink toward the end of winter.”

  “Wrong.” He tapped a finger against the bandage on his arm, something he tried to hide under his sleeve but failed. “It’s called the Winter Moonbeam. Come on, Norah. This isn’t, as you humans say, rocket science. You can do better than this.”

  “I’m exhausted,” I said, frowning at him. “And I don’t see how this is at all relevant to fighting Redcaps.”

  He let out an irritated sigh. “Because you need to understand and know your world before you start swinging swords around.”

  “Why are you even helping me?” I fisted my hands and leaned forward. “You act like being in my presence is the most annoying thing in the world. Like you’d rather be anywhere else than training me.”

  “You’re just not what I expected.”

  “Gee, thanks.” I rolled my eyes. “You know what? Neither are you. But I guess we’re stuck with each other, aren’t we?”

  “At least I am trying to prepare you to join my Court,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You? You act as though you’d rather be frolicking around with Liam in the woods.”

  “Maybe that’s because you left me for dead on a cliff with nothing but a bow and arrow I clearly can’t handle.” I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him. “Of course, maybe that’s what you wanted. That way you wouldn’t be stuck with a mate you don’t want. I bet you even hoped I’d get killed.”

  There it was. All the words I’d been dying to say since the moment he’d vanished into thin air, abandoning me to pretty much certain death. I knew I’d gotten lucky. It wasn’t skill that had saved me that day. It was pure, unbridled fear zeroed in to determination.

  “This is tedious.” He pushed back his chair and stalked over to the window, peering out into the darkness of summer midnight. His whole body was tense, the back of his neck rippling beneath the soft glow of the library torches. Of all four of my instructors, Kael was the hardest to understand. He was so cold and distant, much more so than the other Winter fae who studied or instructed at the Academy. And it was as if he held all of it against me, in particular.

  It seemed like it was more than just the fact I was a lot different than what he’d wanted.

  Why else would he have left me for dead?

  After a moment of strained silence, Kael let out a bitter sigh. “The reason I want you to study the plants is because knowing them may come in handy one day. Winter Moonbeam looks a lot like another flower, one that can heal a Redcap bite wound if used quickly enough.” He looked over his shoulder and met my eye with a pained expression. “That one is called Winter Starlight, and it’s very difficult to tell the difference between the two flowers unless they are studied very closely.”

  What?!

  I swallowed hard, my head ringing at his words. “So, it could have saved Bree?”

  “Perhaps.” He pursed his lips. “Perhaps not. Some wounds are too deep and too fatal, but others are...”

  He trailed off as he clenched his hands around the window ledge. The move almost looked…pained. That was strange. Had he lost someone to the Redcaps? Had he tried to save them but had been too late? They were questions I was dying to ask, but I never would. Not with him. He’d only brush me aside like an irritating fly that wouldn’t stop buzzing around his head.

  And as much as I hated myself for i
t, I felt a small piece of my heart soften toward him. But only a small one. Because he was still a jerk. One who didn’t deserve my sympathy.

  “Well, can you show me then, please?” I asked through clenched teeth, hating that I was asking. It felt like he’d won. “If there’s something out there that can help save someone who gets attacked, I want to know what it is. Hell, I want to know everything I can about the Redcaps.”

  With a nod, he strode back over to the table and dropped into the chair. His dark eyes met mine, and for a moment, my breath caught. He no longer looked as though he couldn’t stand the sight of me. He almost looked as if...as if the raw depths of his soul were yearning to make me see something no one else could. But then he blinked and sat back.

  What the hell was that?

  “As with everything, there’s a lot you don’t yet know about the Redcaps.” He held up a hand when I began to ask what. “Don’t worry. I’m going to fill you in, but there’s a lot to learn. We’re going to continue with the basics. How to fight them. Then, we’ll get into exactly who and what they are, and why it’s essential to prevent them from taking more lives. For the future of Otherworld.”

  I furrowed my brows. “So, that’s that then.”

  He glanced up from the book. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not going to apologize for leaving me to die.”

  “You didn’t die, Norah. You’re sitting right in front of me.”

  “But—”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “That doesn’t matter. I could have died.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I don’t see how that matters. Your intent was—”

  “To prove to you that you aren’t helpless.”

  My mouth dropped open, shock pummelling my gut. How had he known how much I worried about being helpless? He couldn’t read minds. Could he?

  “I’m going to start reading now, and I expect you to take down some notes.” He pointed at the parchment before me, and then he began reading. I opened my mouth to try to turn the conversation back onto that horrible night, but he carried on as if he didn’t notice.

  Grumbling, I grabbed my pen. And then I took down his every word.

  I took the books and my parchment of notes back to my quarters. Sophia’s door was ajar, and her light snore drifted toward me while I tiptoed past the sofa and into my bedroom. Kael had taken me through plant after plant for the past hour, pointing out the various properties of each. I had to admit, my eyelids hadn’t been as quite as heavy as they had been before, mostly because I finally understood the importance of what he was trying to teach me.

  There was a plant out there that could cure a Redcap bite. A flower that could save someone’s life.

  I didn’t understand the how or why of it, but a lot of things about Otherworld didn’t make sense.

  After changing into sweats and a tank top I’d borrowed from Lila, I settled into bed with the books, scanning the words until my eyelids finally drifted shut. I wasn’t sure how long I sat there like that when a long, sharp screech whispered through my open window. Immediately, I was on my feet, eyes wild and heart pounding madly in my chest.

  The curtains fluttered in the soft summer breeze, bringing with it the stench of sweat and blood. And then a long, sharp claw slid onto the window-frame, hooking around the wood.

  I stumbled back, wildly searching for anything I could use as a weapon. A broom handle. A kitchen knife. Anything at all.

  But I only had me.

  Another claw hooked around the frame, and I watched in horror as a Redcap slid through the billowing curtains, landing heavily on the hardwood floor of my room. My heart thundered in my ears as the dark creature, covered in mounds of grimy black fur, cocked its head and stared at me.

  Those eyes, I thought as I stumbled back another step. They were a rich, deep blue. So different than the black eyes of the Redcap I’d fought on the cliff. For a moment, I almost forgot I was facing off against the creature of my nightmares with nothing but my fists. There was something so familiar about those eyes. And they looked so horribly, horribly sad.

  The creature began to shudder, its dark mangy fur trembling in the night air. For a moment, I thought it was a strange form of pre-attack, like it was readying itself to launch my way with its claws. But then something different began to happen. The fur transformed, the thick darkness of it melting away to reveal pale skin.

  The fangs began to shorten, and the claws disappeared into long and slender fingers. I stumbled back, barely believing my eyes. For the first time since I’d arrived in Otherworld, I suddenly wondered if I was going crazy again. Because the beast was melting away to reveal a form that was very much human.

  A human who looked a whole lot like...

  A girl, one with long dark hair that was matted to a pixie face. The girl glanced up at me from where she heaved deep breaths, clutching the ground as her entire body trembled. Those deep blue eyes locked on my face, and everything within me exploded at the sight.

  I stumbled back, eyes wide, my hands clutching frantically at my throat.

  “Bree?” My voice was small and timid. My mind was unbelieving.

  “Oh, Norah,” she said with a sob. And when I heard my best friend’s familiar voice, all I could do was fall to my knees and weep. I crawled toward her and took her dirt-painted face in my hands, searching those familiar eyes for the truth.

  “Is it really you?” I asked as the tears streamed down my face. “I thought you were dead. That thing. It killed you. How are you here? How are you alive?”

  And why did you look like one of the monsters two seconds ago?

  She shuddered, her body soaked in sweat. In an instant, I ripped the sheet off my bed and draped it around her shoulders. Her body felt like ice. I stayed there silent next to her while her chest heaved, waiting until she felt as if she could speak.

  Finally, she said, “When that thing attacked me, it turned me into one of them. I’m a Redcap now, Norah. That’s how I’m here. And it’s how I’m alive.”

  With a deep breath, I shook my head, even though I’d seen her transform right in front of my eyes. “That can’t be right. It must be something else. Some kind of weird magic that makes you look like one.”

  “No,” she breathed as she slowly lifted her eyes to meet mine. “And it’s worse than you think.”

  “What do you mean?” My heart hammered hard. I couldn’t even wrap my head around Bree being alive, much less the fact that she was now one of the very monsters I’d been training to fight. She was Bree. My best friend. My family. And now she was here. Alive and well, though a hell of a lot worse for wear. All I wanted to do was hug her tight and wipe away the tears, but there was a cloud of dread hanging over our reunion.

  “I followed you through the Faerie Ring,” she began, sniffling. “At first, I was going to try to talk to you, but you’re constantly surrounded by those four fae who would kill me in a heartbeat if they saw me.”

  Frowning, I shook my head. “They wouldn’t.”

  But that was a lie. They would. If Bree was right, if she truly was a Redcap, they would.

  “Yes, they would,” she said in a harsh voice, wrapping the sheet tighter around her shoulders. “To them, I’m a Redcap. A thing to be hunted and killed, even though they are the ones who created them in the first place.”

  Dread dripped down my spine. “That can’t be right.”

  “Oh, it is,” she said bitterly. “When I realized I couldn’t get to you, I went in search of other answers. I ended up stumbling on a pack of Redcaps, ones who can still change back into humans like I can. Have they taught you where the wolves come from yet? Have they told you what happens to the human babies they steal?”

  My heart jumped around in my chest. Because I knew without a doubt that I would not like whatever would come next. These had been questions I’d been asking. Questions that had been expertly dodged for days. The Academy didn’t yet want us to know the truth about the human c
hangelings, a fact that had been niggling at me since I’d arrived. And yet, I’d blindly accepted it. The vague answers. The dodges. The carefully changed conversations.

  “Tell me, Bree.”

  She winced and placed a trembling hand on her neck. Deep red scars crisscrossed her skin. The place where the Redcap had slashed her with its massive claws.

  “The pack of Redcaps told me that the humans who are brought to Otherworld are corrupted by the magic and the power here. Humans weren’t built for this world. So, they change. Into something dark, something vicious. Something part-fae themselves. They become these monsters.” She took a deep breath. “And then they’re let loose in the human realm, spreading their disease with a swipe of their claws.”

  “No,” I whispered, eyes full of burning tears. “They must have been wrong. The fae wouldn’t do something like that.”

  Liam wouldn’t do something like this. Finn wouldn’t either.

  Or would they? I’d only been here a couple of weeks and already I’d come face-to-face with how devious, dangerous, and dark they could be.

  “It’s part of their Tithe to the demon realm,” Bree continued. “In exchange for the demons leaving Otherworld alone, the fae create sixteen Redcaps every year. On the Summer Solstice, they’re sent to prey on humans.”

  With a shuddering breath, I stood from the floor and began to pace across the hardwood. As happy as I was to see Bree, the news she brought me was worse than anything I could have imagined on my own. To hear that the fae were behind this...

  “But they have Hunters specifically trained to fight the Redcaps. Why would they—”

  “The Tithe only says they have to return the monsters to the human realm. It doesn’t say they can’t kill them after they do. And don’t forget that it’s more than just the human changelings who get transformed. Any innocent who comes into contact with one, well...look at me. I got attacked, and now I’m one, too. And there are hundreds of us. Some have come back to Otherworld, like me.”