by Jessica Grey
The click, as the pieces slid into place inside Alex’s mind, was so loud she actually jumped. She wasn’t just a pathetic human. She didn’t know how or why but she’d bet everything she owned she and Becca, had fae blood running through their veins. And not just any fae blood either. She had been dreaming her ancestor’s dream. And there was no reason she couldn’t weave the same sort of spells Lyssia had mastered. If Lyssia could see a different place, a different person, and be seen by that person, than why couldn’t the three of them change the spell?
“I know what to do!” she exclaimed.
The other two girls looked up from their summoning spell.
“Let it go,” she said. “They aren’t answering. I know what to do.”
Alex crawled forward on her knees, crossing in front of Lilia and reaching for Becca’s free hand, the one that held the gold nuggets. As she was turning her back to Briar Rose, she could see the fae gathering her power for another attack. It was roiling up from the ground around her, blood red with streaks of black.
Alex grabbed Becca’s hand, forming the three girls into a true circle, like the three sisters had been in the tapestry. The diamond in her hand pressed against the gold in Becca’s, sparking and flaring against each other as their powers met. She pulled Lilia’s hand forward so that it rested on top of the gold and diamond as well and then she plunged the whole mass—hands, gold and diamonds, into the mud.
She felt the metal and gem burning against their hands. “We need to put as much power as possible into it,” she gasped. “Give me as much of yourselves as you can.”
Lilia and Becca both looked at her with huge, uncertain eyes, but the surety on her face convinced both of them and neither resisted. As Alex poured herself into her new spell, she felt some of her power receding from the protective wall, and it began to flicker as it tried to readjust itself.
As the magic flowed out of her hands and into the dirt, alyssum began to spring up, churning up out of earth and scenting the air just as it had done in her dream. But unlike her dream this time it was joined with lilies from Lilia’s hands and the heart shaped leaves and delicate purple flowers of violets spilling, tentatively, and then with gathering force, out of the earth around Becca’s fingers.
Briar Rose was through waiting. Either she had marshaled enough power, or the flickering of the protective wall told it her it was the best time to strike. The evil power flowed out of and around her like a crashing wave, black and red and frothing with magic that Alex knew they had no hope of standing against.
Alex felt the power of their newest spell growing, the alyssum, violets, and lilies boiling out of the earth like water from an overheated pot. She unfocused her eyes. She could see, but it was different. She was seeing on a completely elemental level. She didn’t see the flowers, but the fuzzy outlines of them rimmed with magic. She could see the power streaming out of Lilia and Becca, but the girls themselves seemed to be faded, their physical characteristics subservient to the glittering energy housed in their frames.
The magic streaming out of them was at a fever pitch, it was almost enough, almost enough. As more and more power leached away from their wall, and Briar Rose’s magic began to rush toward them, Alex had to hope that it was enough.
She began speaking; she wasn’t even sure what the words were, whether they were English or Fae, or something else entirely. They tumbled out of her mind and out of her mouth, soft but firm. As she spoke she saw out of the corner of her eyes the flickering image of three women in brightly colored cloaks appearing in front of their wall between them and Briar Rose.
The three sisters had come to their aid, and not a moment too soon.
The dark wave of power would have overwhelmed their defensive wall, but it was held off by three pairs of slim hands reaching out toward it. The blinding flash of their power was the last thing Alex saw before she closed her eyes and thought desperately of the first safe place that came to her mind.
There was a rush of magic from the earth surrounding their tangled hands. The flowers around them bloomed in a frantic outgrowth of the power. Elanthe and the gold pieces burned hot and fiery against their hands.
And with a bone-jarring thud the three girls fell in an untidy heap to the cement floor of the storage room at the museum.
~ Chapter Eighteen ~
“OH GOD, EVERYTHING hurts,” Becca groaned from under Alex. “There is literally not a part of me that doesn’t hurt. I think my hair hurts.”
Alex rolled off of Becca, disentangling herself from Lilia who was sprawled, limbs askew, half way across Alex’s legs. Her muscles screamed in protest, accompanying the sharp buzzing inside of her head. She agreed with Becca, every part of her hurt.
“Hurt is good,” Alex puffed as she got up onto her hands and knees on the concrete storage room floor. “Hurt means we aren’t dead.” She paused, waiting for the room to stop spinning around her before trying to get to her feet. After two attempts she resigned herself to the fact that she might never be fully upright again and slid back down to sit on the floor.
“That’s arguable.” Becca hadn’t moved from her position on the floor, except to drape her arm over her eyes to block out the overhead light. It was motion-sensitive so it had, presumably, turned on when they appeared, literally out of thin air, four feet above the storage room floor and fell the rest of the way. “We could totally be dead, and as it turns out, hell is storage room B-23 at GeMMLA.”
“Somehow that seems unlikely,” Alex said. “You didn’t break anything, did you? What about you Lilia?”
The only response from Lilia was a small grunt.
“Are you okay?” Alex scooted herself, still seated, the few inches back to where Lilia was sprawled out on the ground.
“I will live,” Lilia said. “Unfortunately. I think I hit my head on the damned bed on the way down.”
For some reason Alex found that hilarious. “So if it doesn’t get you with the hundreds of years of sleep, it’ll at least give you a concussion?” She tried to suppress the giggle that was bubbling up but it escaped anyway.
Lilia cracked open an eyelid and glared at her. “I fail to find the humor in the situation,” she replied icily.
“Really?” Alex asked, feigning surprise. “Or maybe you were trying to kill the bed with your head? It is really hard.” Lilia continued to glare at her, so she added, “Your head, not the bed.”
There was a snort from Becca, who had finally made it up into a sitting position.
“Also hard,” Becca pointed out, “the floor. You know, being concrete and all. We’re lucky nothing is broken. Especially me, as I am the one everyone else managed to land on.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Alex apologized. “I didn’t expect us to sort of, um, fall, quite like that.”
“What exactly did you expect?” Becca asked. “I’m really curious actually. You might have saved our lives there. Who knows if the sisters were able to hold Briar Rose off. And if they hadn’t come at all and you hadn’t been doing your little teleportation trick, we would seriously have been toast.”
There was a grunted assent from Lilia, still on the floor. She’d closed her eyes again, but there was a bit of a smile playing on her lips.
“But, what the hell?” Becca continued. “One minute you’re all ‘I can’t do magic’ and the next you are bending the time/space continuum. I admit I’m a little confused.”
Alex scooted back to the wall so she could lean her head back against it. The room was still spinning, but at least at a much slower pace.
“Well, there was the whole thing of us creating a huge magical braided cone thingy that took on Briar Rose’s storm. That may have been my first indication that I—we—could really do magic. When she was trying to distract us, calling us pathetic humans, pretending that we hadn’t actually managed to create this awesome spell between the three of us, everything started clicking into place. Why reference the fact that Lilia was demi-fae and we were just humans? Yeah, she hates h
umans, yadda yadda, but I think she was trying to distract us from what she already knew.” Alex closed her eyes briefly as she fought off a wave nausea. She wasn’t sure if it was from the spinning in her head, or the mental image of Briar Rose gathering all of her dark magic behind her and knowing that it had been headed for them.
“Which is?” prompted Becca.
“Sorry. Well, that we are—Lilia, what did you call it when people were part fae, not necessarily half like you, but only part?”
“Petite-fae,” Lilia supplied from the floor.
“Right, but because you’re half, you go by demi-fae. It was a matter of pride in Arraine, the more fae you had the better, right?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose I should be surprised at this,” Becca said slowly. “It’s not every day you come to the conclusion that you are, in fact, a magical being. Honestly, though, it makes a lot of sense. We obviously can do what Lilia can do, and she can do it because she has fae blood.” She scooted over and leaned against the wall next to Alex. “We’d have to be talking an extremely small percentage. We assume that we each have ancestors that come from Arraine, and eight hundred fifty plus years is what, more than thirty generations? I don’t even know if my brain could do the math on that at the moment.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think it’s necessarily like getting onto an Indian Reservation or something—like you have to be at least a sixteenth petite-fae or you can’t do spells. I’m wondering if maybe it’s more genetic, like maybe our parents each managed to have a recessive magic gene.”
“Oh my god, you did not try to put what just happened in that field down to genetics,” Becca laughed and then winced from the pain it caused.
Alex shrugged. “No, not entirely. I was just saying I don’t think it’s something that’s just based on how far down the family tree you are from the original fae. Besides, I think we may have special circumstances in our case,” she paused and Becca looked at her expectantly.
“Lyssia and Viola!” Lilia exclaimed propping herself up on the floor. “Oh, that makes perfect sense. Well done Alex.” Her eyes blinked rapidly and she turned a light shade of green. “Oh, dizzy, dizzy.” She flopped her head back down, putting her arm under it to cushion against the concrete.
“Okay, now I am surprised. You think we are descended from Lilia’s sisters? Why? Just because when you do magic you get alyssum flowers? Oh, I suppose those were violets coming out of my magic, and her name was Viola, but you have to have more than that.”
“There are the flowers, of course, but also me dreaming as Lyssia, and the whole us being able to braid together our magic like that. Lilia said she hadn’t ever seen anything like it, except when the two of you saw the three sisters bless the crown. And I saw it in the tapestry of the sisters as well—the braided magic.”
“That is right,” Lilia confirmed from the floor again.
“There’s no way to really know for sure,” Becca pointed out. “I admit, it makes sense to me, but we won’t ever know.”
“Not unless they tell us.” Alex turned her head to look at the three sisters who had appeared a moment before in the corner of the room.
Alex had seen the flicker of magic out of the corner of her eye, the shimmer in the air right before the three sisters had appeared. They must not take up much space she thought idly. The storage room should be feeling a lot more cramped with six people—seven if you counted Luke, stuffed into it along with the bed, the burial stone and the various other artifacts. And yet it didn’t feel any more crowded than it had a moment ago.
Becca gasped as she saw the three fae and Lilia managed to push herself to a sitting position facing her aunts. She looked a little wobbly so Alex helped pull her back toward the wall.
There was a long, silent pause. Alex had no idea what the proper etiquette was for addressing three such powerful fae, especially after having just summoned them into the midst of a fierce battle and then promptly ditching them. Lilia seemed to be in total awe of her aunts and offered no help. They glimmered and flickered at the edges of their cloaks, much like they had in Alex’s dream, and the way Briar Rose had out on the field. As if they weren’t entirely there, but being projected like film from some unknown source. All three of them were tall and slender, like Lilia, but their beauty was even more fragile and unearthly than hers was. They wore long, woolen cloaks, each a different color, light green, lilac, and a deep golden yellow.
“Um, hi,” Alex offered finally.
“Hello, Alexandra,” the one wearing the brilliant, light green cloak answered, her silvery hair spilling down her back and over her shoulders. She was almost too brightly colored to look at. When Alex blinked her eyes, she could see the fae’s image still burned into her retina. It was as if she glowed from within.
“Hi. Bryony?” Alex hazarded a guess.
“Yes.” The fae inclined her head. She stood slightly in front of her sisters. The next eldest after Liliana and Briar Rose—she had obviously assumed the leadership role in the family.
“Um, we’re sorry for just leaving. We were trying to escape when you came.”
“It was best that you should. And I am glad that you were able to marshal your powers to bring yourselves to a safe place. Facing a fae as powerful as Briar Rose may not have been the best choice for your first attempts at spell-weaving.”
Lilia, her face flushed dull red and her eyes trained on the floor said, “I am so sorry, that was my fault. It was all my fault. I did not know she would appear.”
“Child, you were never given the full training you should have been. There is no way for you to have known,” Bryony answered.
The fae in the lilac-colored cloak, Violet, Alex guessed, cut in. “Sweet Lilia, you have had a very hard time, and you have acquitted yourself well. You all have.” Her voice was so light and musical, it felt like it was being picked up and swept away by a breeze, although the air in the storage rooms was stifling still.
Lilia blushed even more red. “Thank you,” she murmured, raising her eyes, slightly.
“We came to make sure that you managed to transport yourself safely. It is not an easy thing for someone so young in their power to do. I can see that Alexandra was able to bring you back to where she felt most safe.” Bryony cast a significant glance at Luke’s sleeping form, and Alex felt suddenly warm, uncomfortable, and horribly exposed. “However, while we are here, I am sure you have questions for us, although I must tell you that you have managed to discern most of it for yourselves.”
“So then, it is true that my people turned against magic because of me?” Lilia’s voice was small and despondent.
“Yes and no. They turned against magic because they loved you and Briar Rose had taken you from them. You must not hold yourself responsible. Arraine was one of the last kingdoms on earth that so revered the fae, and since they turned from us, we have found it more…” Bryony paused as if searching for the right word, “comfortable to make our permanent homes in our own land. Liliana died in childbirth, and so there was no one to teach Lyssia and Viola, although they were so strong that they learned much on their own as you have.”
“They were running in Alex’s dream. Running in fear for their lives.” Lilia looked directly into her aunt’s face for the first time. “Did they—were they—”
“Your sisters escaped and lived long and blessed lives, and had many sons and daughters, from which your two friends are descended.”
Lilia smiled in relief, the brilliance of it almost matching the light that radiated from her aunts.
“I have a question. It’s the only thing I can’t really figure out. How did Lilia end up here?” asked Alex. “It can’t have been an accident.”
“No, she did not come to you by accident. We work quite well in coincidences. We watched over her as your world became less friendly to our magic. When we became aware of you and Becca, both descended from our sister Liliana, and so strong in fae power and living so close together, we began to prepare the way
for Lilia to be sent to you.”
“But if it requires true love to break the spell, how would we help with that?” Becca asked.
“Magic has many threads. Each fae can weave differently, even petite-fae such as you and Alexandra. We did not think that Lilia would awake so quickly, but we felt that it would be important for her to be close to you, for you, and even your children, if necessary, to guard her.” Bryony smiled at Alex. “But Alexandra had already set things in motion, unknowingly, by drawing Luke to the museum.”
“But why could he see Lilia if you had been protecting her?” Alex wanted to know.
“Your Luke is a very unique man, especially for your time. He manages to live in your technological world without being tied down by it. He is more connected to the earth, to nature, and by default to our world, than most. He was able to see through our protection spell, in its weakened state, because of that.”
“Luke the Luddite,” Becca whispered.
“Will he wake up now that Briar Rose has been defeated?” Lilia asked the question that Alex was desperate to know the answer to.
“No.” Bryony smiled a bit sadly. “Our sister has not been fully defeated, just driven out of your world and back into ours. We may have weakened her, but she will regain power, and her spell still stands. Even without her full power she will be strongest within the spells she has already woven such as this one.”
“But what will wake him up?” Alex asked. All three sisters looked at her silently.
“I have to kiss him,” Alex put voice to the unspoken answer.
“The terms of the original spell need to be met. The sleep is to be broken by true love and nothing less.” Bryony continued to look at Alex steadily, her light blue eyes betraying nothing.
“So, if I’m not his true love then the spell will transfer to me and I’ll be in Briar Rose’s clutches?”
Bryony nodded.
