“Bringing the prince home would go a long way toward getting the charges against you dropped.” He rubbed the base of his neck. “Flying is not my favorite thing, but it will take two to get to Tiberius, assuming he’s in that nest. One person to climb and mount a rescue and one to distract Alyona.”
“Isaac…” I hated proving I was weaker than him, that I had trouble letting go when he managed to keep his fears in check. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just…”
Witnessing his fall out of the sky as his wings failed still gave me nightmares.
“I won’t take unnecessary risks,” he promised, tugging me close for a tight embrace. “I learned my lesson fighting Tiberius. I won’t engage Alyona in open skies, and I’ll keep an eye on my altitude.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled against his shoulder. “And no, thanks under duress don’t count either.”
Chuckling, he kissed my forehead and wiggled out of the packs. “Let’s get these hidden. We’ll have to come back for them.”
Once we had our supplies tucked away and had gone over the plan with Enzo, I took Isaac’s hand and forced him to prick my skin. My blood would give him heightened senses and some of the wolf’s grace without a full shift, and stealth was the only hope we had against their greater numbers and home-field advantage.
Enzo gave us ten minutes to find a hiding place. Much to my amusement, his distraction came in the form of a putrid mustard-yellow fog that smelled like rotten eggs and spoiled mayonnaise. He had basically dropped a stink bomb on them. I wasn’t sure if that qualified as a witchy skill or if the knowledge of how to create noxious fumes came standard on boys.
Either way it did the trick. Isaac and I held our breaths and prowled toward our marks.
Chapter 11
The outlines of the two remaining guards became more defined once Isaac and I cleared the edges of the yellow cloud boiling across the leaf-strewn grass. We had to trust Enzo could handle his two and do the same with ours. I still had fabric left from gagging the others, and I passed Isaac a handful. I mimed an artful gesture that I hoped translated to whack him upside the head. We had the advantage of knowing where they were without them having spotted us yet. Our scents were masked as well thanks to the sulfurous stink polluting the air.
Splitting apart, we came up behind our respective marks and attacked. I pounced on the back of the woman who had been preening her feathers and rode her down. She smacked the ground face-first, and I helped things along by clipping her jaw with my fist. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and I shoved the gag in first before gathering her arms against her sides. The wings made binding her wrists impossible, so I held her down while I checked on Isaac.
I had worried he might struggle after his earlier brush with death, but he handled the guard with quick and precise movements designed to incapacitate without causing undo harm. Relief swirled through me. The thing about being a dominant female was craving an equally dominant partner. Had Isaac buckled under the weight of his actions, I would have sympathized. I would have understood. The wolf might have made allowances too, eventually, but she wouldn’t have been half as interested in playing with a man who had shown weakness in the heat of battle.
Once he finished binding his siren, he strode to me and secured mine too. Together we hauled them several yards away and hid them beneath the underbrush so that Alyona wouldn’t spot them if she glanced over the nest’s edge. The longer we avoided engaging her, the better.
Shaking my hands out at my sides, I focused on the tips of my fingers until claws emerged. Only the more dominant wolves could enact a partial change. As beta, this was as half-shifted as I got. A golden tint to the eyes when the wolf was present came standard on wargs. Beyond that, sickle-tipped fingers were the extent of my mastery.
Isaac walked with me to the base of the oak and started swinging his arms as though warming up for a workout. With no time to spare I resisted the lure of his mouth, even for a quick peck, and tackled the climb. Footholds became more difficult to find as I climbed higher and the bark grew slicker, as if it had been greased. As far as preventative measures went, it wasn’t a bad one. Once, I resorted to holding my entire bodyweight with my nails. When one snapped, all I could do was grimace and keep pushing until the toe of my boot found a limb thick enough to accept my weight.
Alyona must have been confident in her ground forces. She didn’t peek over the edge or otherwise check in with her guards until it was too late. I gripped a fistful of sticks and hauled myself up and over the bowled lip of the nest, and she greeted me with a pissed-off shriek that crossed my eyes. I didn’t have long to debate how to take her out without her flinging me over the edge before a thickly muscled siren male attained the nest and raked his hind claws across her cheek. Her instinct was to ignore the pain and hold her position. But when Isaac clenched his talons in her hair and lifted her several feet off the platform before dropping her in a graceless sprawl, Alyona attacked. Her battle cries rang clear through the skies. Rilla would hear them and blaze a path here. We had to hurry.
With the crazy bird-lady out of my way, I could focus on the wooden hut rising from the cupped center of the nest. I circled the exterior but spotted no doorway and no windows. Sea foam and petrichor peppered the air, enough I was certain Tiberius had set foot here. How long ago, I wasn’t as sure. The frenzied weather of this section meant this nest got a regular cleansing from the storms passing through. The prince might have been here yesterday or last week. Impossible to tell with rain-soaked twigs dampening the scents.
“Tiberius?” I kicked the base of the wall. “You in there?”
No response.
I waffled for a split second as indecision crashed over me. What if I was wrong? What if Tiberius wasn’t here? What if my smash-and-grab was more smash than grab?
Isaac’s musical voice slashed across the sky, and I stiffened my spine. He was risking his life based on my hunch. This slim window of time was mine to prove or disprove my theory, and I took it, using my warg strength to kick through the nearest wall. The thin construction shattered, and a blast of magic exploded from the space where the hut had stood. The perimeter must have been warded. The force knocked me clear over the edge, and I plummeted. Impact would not be kind, but I would survive. Probably.
Just as I scrunched my eyes closed, taloned feet cinched around my upper arms and plucked me out of free fall. My shoulder wrenched hard, and I hissed out a snarl of pain. We both hit in the end, thanks to momentum and my head start, but I walked away whole from what had guaranteed broken bones. I called that a win in my book.
I flopped onto my back and stared up at my rescuer. Prince Tiberius ruffled his feathers and cocked his head in a birdlike manner. “Dell?” He tucked his wings against his sides and hopped back to give me room to stand. “Leandra,” he croaked. “Is she…?”
“She’s fine,” I promised him. “But your parents won’t be if Rilla has anything to say about it, though. We have to get you back to Earth.”
He leaned back as if drawn to the nest and the vow he had made his aunt to pick up the mantle of princely duty again in exchange for her word that she and hers wouldn’t move against his girlfriend.
“You’re asking me to choose between my parents and the woman I love.” He turned soulful eyes on me. “No matter what I do, I’ll betray one of them.”
Uncertain how much information his aunt had shared with him but out of time to finesse the details, I struck him low and hard. With the truth. “You understand that Rilla plans to lead an army to Earth, right? It won’t matter if she doesn’t strike out at Leandra specifically. The house where she’s staying is so close to the rift, there’s a good chance she’ll be a casualty anyway.”
The girl was bonding to the old stone cottage where she and Tiberius had taken shelter, and for a bean-tighe, that meant she wasn’t able to leave the grounds. That she had managed to uproot herself from Faerie in the first place was miraculous. Forcing another transplant so soon would doom h
er.
The prince’s eyes snapped wide. “I heard her talking with her cousins, but I thought it was bluster. She has the means to invade?”
“She’s won the king to her side,” I confirmed.
“Rilla is working alongside him?” Any larger and his eyes would pop out of their sockets. “She told me her plan was to have him deposed. He didn’t win the hunt. His former wife did. He took her place on the throne when she abdicated prior to her coronation.” The feathers in his hair fluffed. “My aunt, and most of the Seelie, refuse to acknowledge him. They’re calling for a sovereign chosen by right of hunt, and if they don’t get it, they will revert to the old ways. Right of might.”
Cute kid, thinking royals got deposed versus got dead. I didn’t disabuse him of the notion. He ought to be allowed to cling to any tendrils of innocence he had left. His aunt would cut them soon enough.
“That comes after, I think. After Faerie has stabilized enough to undergo a change in management.” I shrugged. “Or maybe she’s hoping he’ll die conveniently in battle. She plans on the assassination of your parents overcoming any lingering objections. She’s hoping to unify the masses by showing them what happens when noble fae treat with the conclave.”
“I’ll go with you.” Tough decision made, his mood lightened. “At least if I’m there, I can protect Leandra.”
I didn’t point out there was no way he was slipping out of protective custody once I returned him to the conclave. The stone house was too remote and too hard to defend for them to consider allowing their newly returned prince to visit, let alone remain Leandra’s guest.
Love is the most self-destructive emotion on the planet.
“Excellent.” I edged around him and waited until a blur whizzed past. “In that case, do you mind? Isaac could use a hand. Or a wing.”
An eager gleam lit his eyes as Tiberius launched skyward. He chased the darting smudges until a cacophony of shrill notes knocked my legs out from under me. I really should have invested in kneepads for this trip.
Firm hands gripped my arm, and Enzo hauled me onto my feet. “What’s happening?”
“Isaac is chasing or running from Alyona. It’s hard to tell.” I leaned against him until my ears stopped ringing. “Tiberius went to intercept them. How did you do? Nice stink bomb, by the way.”
His mischievous smile threatened dimples. “I learned the trick from a cousin of mine. I used to set them off in Miguel’s bedroom when he made my life miserable.” His gaze drifted higher as a buzzing sound increased. “I bound the two sirens who came to investigate and stuck them with the others.”
“Duck.” I shoved him down and sprawled over the top of him as a tangle of wings pinwheeled over our heads. “What the—?”
All three sirens crashed into the base of a tree. The tight ball of limbs broke apart, and Isaac swayed toward me. Tiberius shook off the impact and left a groaning Alyona in a heap. Enzo and I rushed over and gave her the same treatment as her guards. We gagged her and tied her wings flush to her sides.
“We have to go.” Tiberius shook out his feathers in favor of arms. “I spotted reinforcements dispatched from Red Maple. They’ll waste time untying the others before they start the search. They have the advantage in the air, and it makes them cocky.”
“We need to stick to thick cover then.” I held my next thought while I dashed off to retrieve Isaac and my packs from their hiding places. “You’re the only one of us to see the rift from this side. Can you get us back there?”
“It’s cut from the heart of Autumn.” He set off at a lope we had no choice but to imitate. “We can reach it in a few hours if we all sync our wish to get there.”
“Not a problem,” Isaac assured him, sounding plenty happy to leave Faerie behind him.
“Yeah,” Enzo chimed in. “Your aunt’s hospitality leaves a lot to be desired.”
I should have guessed the rift was under Unseelie control too. While the Seelie considered Rook a pretender to the throne, the Unseelie only cared that he was one of them. Their inclination to follow his edicts explained why we hadn’t seen larger numbers of insurgents. Or perhaps, as Rook had intimated, I owed thanks to the Huntsman. Had the portal opened in Summer or Spring, I had a hunch that the war would have been far less hypothetical at this point.
“Hey—” I tipped back my head and examined the sky. “What about your bird? She coming with us?”
“Don’t worry about Bea.” His lips quirked. “She’ll find her own way.”
“All right.” Worked for me. His pet thunderbird was not my biggest fan. “Let’s head out.”
Tiberius led us in a straight line that had me convinced he’d mapped this route from the air. We hiked a craggy mountain littered with so many butterflies I marveled it hadn’t lifted off for the skies. We skirted a bustling village inhabited by trolls that smelled like the business end of a donkey. And that was before we trudged through a boggy pass inhabited by massive blue toads with operatic tendencies and diva personalities to match. All I can say about that is ouch. My poor ears. They deserved a vacation after this. No, make that a staycation. There wasn’t much I wouldn’t give to leap this last hurdle and tumble into my own bed, in my RV, and sleep for a month.
The impossibility of that scenario pierced my heart. I had no idea how much hot water Thierry was in, but I had no doubt she was simmering in the consequences of her actions. I doubted she would be in a position to help me. Prison break was a big deal, even if you possessed super terrifying powers. I would be jumping out of the cast-iron fryer and into the heart of a bonfire, but what choice did I have? Fugitive back home or future wolfskin rug here. Both options sucked. Though I was more likely to survive the former.
The hours dragged as much as our collective feet. I was ready to call bullshit on the theory of time versus travel in Faerie when a peculiar sensation roused the wolf in my middle. One scent cut through the rest, light and clean and pure, without a dollop of magic saturating the breeze. We all exchanged hopeful looks and caught a second wind. Sure enough, within the hour, we reached what appeared to be a massive gorge cut into an otherwise rolling forestland. Staring into the warped ripples dragging across the surface gave me vertigo. Unlike when we looked up at the rift and saw a torrent of clouds, the view from here was unobstructed.
Home.
Butler, Tennessee was a hop, skip and a jump away. Okay, so more like a plummet straight into Watauga Lake, but still. It was right there.
And there was only one way to go.
Down.
I was about to cash in the favor Tiberius owed me when a brain-meltingly shrill serenade of screams rent the air. Ears ringing like discordant telephones, I lost my center of balance and had to depend on Isaac’s arm to steady me. Having noodle legs was getting old fast. I made a mental note to put a bug in Isaac’s ear about developing some type of wolf-friendly earbuds that could filter out higher frequencies. What good would the pack be if the sirens led the attack and disabled our world’s first line of defense with a few notes of music?
“They’re coming in fast.” Tiberius stepped between us and the flock of oncoming sirens. “We lost too much time on the ground.”
“Pardon me for not having wings,” I growled, woozy and irritated.
“There’s only one way this works.” Isaac held my gaze. “Are you ready?”
Enzo swallowed audibly but slid his pack from his shoulders. “Contrary to popular belief, witches don’t fly well.”
“Tiberius, I’m calling in your marker.” I prayed that was enough, that there wasn’t some type of song and dance of fae etiquette required to cash the favor. “I need you to give Enzo a lift down and Isaac a drop of your blood.”
“That’s two things,” he groused, apparently a stickler for formalities after all.
The rising wave of a battle-sharp melody spiked the air, and we all winced.
“This one time,” Tiberius allowed, “I’m feeling generous. I will grant your requests.”
“You’re a
good kid.” I followed Enzo’s example and shucked my pack. It was heavy and would make carrying passengers awkward. “Enzo, as the most breakable, you’re with the prince. Isaac, it’s me and you, babe.”
Together we all tossed our packs into the rift with an eye toward retrieving them later.
The prince offered Isaac his hand, and the two exchanged a bloody handshake. A shimmer of magic announced Tiberius’s shift, and he leapt for the sky, swooping low and gripping Enzo’s shoulders so hard his talons drew blood. The witch grimaced and held on tight to Tiberius’s ankles.
The change rippled over Isaac in a slow wave that spoke to his exhaustion. He mimicked Tiberius, gaining air before piercing the muscles of my shoulders with his pointed claws. I wrapped my hands around his stocky ankles and huffed out a slightly terrified breath.
Neither man spoke a word, but thrust their wings in powerful beats until Enzo and I each dangled from our lifts. Behind us more war cries sounded, and Tiberius uttered a defiant shriek before diving straight into the rift. Isaac made more of a comforting chirrup and then blasted after the prince.
I’m not sure what I expected, but reentering our realm was no different than stepping from one room to another. There was no pain, no disorientation, only elation that we had escaped. I was so giddy with triumph, I failed to notice the siren angling for Isaac until it was upon us. I screamed a warning, and he whirled aside to avoid having me plucked from his grasp. Too late I realized it had been a calculated move. He bumped straight into Rilla, and his wings flurried to maintain our altitude. I swayed between them, his nails tearing my upper trapezius muscles in a bid to hold me. Screaming triumph, she cinched her talons around my arm and yanked me free of Isaac before he recovered. While Isaac fended off his attacker, Rilla snarled at me, her beautiful face gone scarlet with fury.
Tiberius was nowhere in sight.
“I hope you can swim.” Her foot flexed open. “No, actually, I don’t.”
And then she let go.
Wolf at the Door (Lorimar Pack) (Gemini Book 5) Page 14
