by Chloe Jacobs
“Oh yeah? How will that work?”
“You must find the prince and princess,” he said.
Greta laughed. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“I am not.” His expression remained cool as ice. Of course he wasn’t kidding. He probably didn’t know how.
“That’s not going to happen.”
He shrugged. “It is the only safe way. Prince Byron’s ability is both concealment and envelopment, and Princess Leila has the opposite gift of Siona; she heightens the power of others instead of dampening them. You know this; you’ve experienced both. If they agree to assist us, we would have a much better chance of doing what you propose.”
That actually made sense. Greta turned to Siona. “That night when we holed up in the treehouse…with the fire and the blood wraiths…” She hated thinking about that night. Every time…it took forever to get the burning smell out of her nostrils again, to shove the screeching blood wraiths to the back of her mind. And the greedy hunger that wanted to consume everything she was…she’d thought that would go away after Agramon was purged from her soul, but it still crept up on her when she least expected it.
That’s because he’s not entirely gone, isn’t it? She shuddered.
“When Byron touched my arm, the smoke didn’t burn my eyes, and I could actually breathe, like there was a little bubble around us.” She paused. “But I guess you already knew what Byron and Leila were capable of.”
“Yes, I knew and did nothing to stop them,” she admitted. “Which is why I don’t think this is a good idea. How are we to trust them?”
“You can trust me,” Dryden said.
Could she? She actually thought she could, but would Isaac agree with her?
Well, he wasn’t here, and there wasn’t time to wait until night to seek out his opinion. The decision had to be made now.
“Maybe we can’t trust any of them,” she said, and too bad if Dryden knew she was talking about him as well as the crazy faerie twins. “Byron and Leila are totally crackbrained, but I’d work with them at this point if it would make a difference. At least when they tried to take over the Glass Kingdom, it was because they believed that Queen Minetta wasn’t fit to rule the faerie race. And to give them credit, they were right. So, maybe we—”
Siona took her arm, pulling her to a stop.
Greta hadn’t even realized she’d started pacing while she talked it all out. “Sorry,” she said.
“All right. We’ll go.” Siona said with a glance over her shoulder. “Do you want to tell the goblin boy where we’re headed, or should I?”
She groaned. “He’s nervous enough around Dryden. It would not be a good idea to bring him with us, but I think I’ve got another task for him.”
Ethan was stuffing their few, stolen belongings into the sack. She took him aside and clapped him on the shoulder. He was a strange mix of lingering childhood innocence and the feral attentiveness remaining from his Lost self. He reminded her a lot of Sloane, actually…without the potty mouth.
“You’re going to keep going west toward the goblin forest and find the goblin king, and along the way, you’re going to gather as many people to join you as possible. Your king has shelter for the young and the sick, but he also needs able-bodied subjects who will stand by his side and fight in the battle to come. You’ll have to be careful, but if you travel in a large enough group, the gnomes won’t attack. They won’t like those odds.”
“I think I would be of more assistance at your side.”
She told him where they were going. His face blanched, and he swallowed hard, but then he gritted his teeth and squared his shoulders. “I will come with you.”
She frowned, surprised. “You don’t want to go back to be with your own people?”
“Are you not going to be my queen?”
“Well, uh…I suppose that’s the plan,” she said, feeling the heat rise in her face.
“Then you are my people, and I am bound to protect you.”
“I don’t want you bound to anything or anybody. That’s the point of all this. Everyone should be free to live their own lives, to make their own choices, and to do it without fear.”
“Even more reason for me to stay at your side and make sure you survive to see this plan through, then.” His grin took her breath away. It was probably the first time that anyone in Mylena other than Isaac and Siona had completely accepted her, knowing who and what she was. He looked at her without an ounce of fear or disgust or resentment.
She sighed. “All right, I guess I can’t make you go, but I won’t be able to baby you, either. You’ll have to keep up and pull your own weight.” The kid was nodding like a bobble head. “And do whatever I say, exactly when I say it.”
She turned away, anxiety and elation doing somersaults in her belly. All the times she’d wished to find her place in this world and be accepted by its people, she hadn’t realized how heavy the responsibility would feel.
It was only one more day’s travel to meet with Isaac from their current position, but approximately two days to the Glass Kingdom. At night, Greta relied on Siona, Dryden, and Ethan to take turns standing guard while she retreated to dreams so that she and Isaac could reach the Lost.
During the day, they came across more of Agramon’s search parties and managed to release six more faerie warriors, but a seventh was loyal to Agramon. Surprisingly, Dryden was the one who took her down, although they were pretty sure she managed to alert the demon and the rest of the hive to their position, which was only another few hours to the Glass Kingdom.
Late afternoon on that second day, the group—now almost twenty strong, thanks to the addition of the faerie warriors and five more goblins who were no longer Lost, plus two sprites who’d been lying low from Agramon’s goons until they saw Greta and decided to firm up their allegiance to the goblin king—caught a glimpse of the shimmering structure towering over the canopy of evergreens against the backdrop of the mountains.
Greta was still looking up, trying not to dwell on the horror she’d gone through the last time she was there, when Dryden pulled her to a stop. “Agramon will know where we’re headed by now. We should enter from the back way.”
“There’s a back way?”
He pointed to the jagged peaks. “We climb.”
“Of course,” she muttered with a groan. After all, what was a rescue mission without risking life and limb on the side of a mountain? “Why is it always heights?”
They left Ethan and the other goblins with the sprites, and Dryden led the rest of them, including the faerie joiners, through a narrow path to the rear of the castle. She looked up. Here, there was no wall surrounding the glass kingdom—there didn’t need to be. The rock face was slick with patches of ice and smooth from hundreds of years of brutal weather.
“How the hell do we…” She didn’t even finish. Her throat was closing just thinking about climbing that.
Dryden gave her a curious look. He didn’t seem to think this was going to be a problem. She shook her head and pursed her lips. “Never mind,” she croaked.
With a deep breath, she went first. That’s what a queen did, right?
Chapter Twenty
Miraculously, they made it to a natural plateau in the rock about halfway up without anyone falling to their death.
Greta had quickly been surpassed by Dryden. Relieved, she’d focused on putting her hands and feet exactly where he did, but she’d lost her footing twice and been saved by his quick, iron-manacled grip on her flailing wrist both times. If she’d still doubted his loyalty, he’d done a good job of changing her mind.
“Thanks,” she said as he pulled her up to the shelf. She pressed her butt against the wall and leaned over with her arm across her stomach, waiting for the nausea to pass. Her fingers were still frozen into claws of fear, and her breathing wouldn’t settle. She didn’t know if she could make it the rest of the way.
“How much farther?” she asked, careful not to look up to check for herself, b
ecause it made her dizzy. So far, they hadn’t been spotted, but she didn’t think their luck would last for long.
“Agramon had the prince and princess locked in the dungeon,” he said, his gaze tilted upward as Siona pulled herself over the edge and stood beside Greta. She looked breezy and comfortable, like this was a great excuse for some exercise.
“Do you really think we can get up the rest of this cliff and into the castle without anyone catching us?” she asked, doubtful. As much as they expected most of the faeries to join them, until they were released from the hive, they were all subject to Agramon’s will.
“We aren’t entering the castle,” he said, pointing to a spot in the mountain about ten more feet above them.
She risked looking and noticed a dark spot in the rock. Was it an opening?
“Hold on,” she said. “You can’t seriously—”
“Yes. We’re going to break right into their cell.”
She squinted. “There are bars on that window. We can’t possibly fit through them.”
“Not to mention, the prison is spelled to prevent faerie prisoners from escaping,” Siona added.
She assumed he had a plan. “How do we do it?” she asked.
He glanced at Siona. “The two of us will climb. Siona will extinguish the magick surrounding the cell, and I will take care of the bars over the window. Then you and the others can follow.”
Speaking of the others, they’d simply been hanging there from the cliff since there wasn’t enough room on the shelf to hold everyone. Whatever they decided, it had to be soon, before someone got tired and fell. She nodded. “All right, hurry up and go.”
Greta forced herself to watch, holding her breath the whole time. She shouldn’t have been worried. Without her along to hold them back, they made the climb much faster, and in moments, Dryden had his hands on the bars and was doing his icy magick trick.
As she watched, he seemed to freeze the iron until it was too brittle to hold its integrity and shattered like glass. Greta covered her head with her arms as the shards fell. Then he was climbing through the window into the dungeon cell. Siona remained perched in the window for a long moment.
Greta held out her arm, silently motioning for everyone behind her to wait.
Finally, Siona poked her head out and nodded. Greta pushed herself upward, mentally preparing for the prospect of dealing with Byron and Leila once again.
When she got to the window and looked down into the cell, she paused. Her people stood on one side of the room, and the prince stood opposite. Her people.
Byron’s gaze was dark and shuttered as he watched her drop down the seven feet or so from the window to the floor. He looked haggard, with a blond beard covering his face.
“Well, if it isn’t the queen of nothing,” he sneered as she came forward, but then the other faerie warriors started dropping down through the window, until the cramped space was almost too full to breathe—not that she wanted to breathe, given the prince’s rank scent.
She crossed her arms and looked him over. His skin was covered in dirt and grime, and he was still dressed in the torn and bloody clothes he’d been wearing the day of the battle with Queen Minetta. She felt a frisson of satisfaction but quickly quelled it. This was no time to be petty, even if this guy had tried to kill Isaac and sacrifice her for his own selfish ends.
“I don’t think you’d win if we decide to compare positions right now, do you?” she said. “And that’s not why I’m here, anyway.”
He crossed his arms and sent Dryden and Siona dirty looks. “Why don’t you have a seat in the parlor and tell me all about it,” he said.
She was getting tired of his snarky attitude. Why couldn’t they have picked Leila’s cell first?
“This isn’t worth the trouble,” she muttered to Dryden, but she knew she had to make it work. “Listen, you can either be of some use to me and we’ll let you out of here, or you can be a dick. Guess what happens if you decide to be a dick?”
His expression tightened. “What do you want?”
She turned to Siona. “Is he connected to the hive?” she asked.
“No, and the faerie in the cell next door—who I assume to be Princess Leila—isn’t, either.”
She nodded. “Okay, good. In case you haven’t heard, being cooped up in here for the last little while and all, Mylena is being destroyed by Agramon. Goblin, faerie, sprite…all the races will be snuffed out, even the gnomes who aligned with him. Idiots haven’t got the foresight to see that they’re expendable, too, once he’s got no more use for them.”
For once the prince’s defensive mask cracked. “There’s nothing anyone can do,” he muttered. “The demon is too powerful. Nothing can stop him now that he has Queen Minetta’s power and a link to the magick of every faerie.”
“We can help the faeries be free of him,” she said. “We can take back some of that power for ourselves.”
Dryden nodded. “The human tells the truth,” he said. “She and Siona liberated me from the hive and from Agramon’s control.”
He glowered at the warrior. “So that’s why you’ve become her adoring pet.”
Dryden didn’t take the bait. He simply said, “I swore fealty to the goblin king and queen, because they are the only ones brave enough to stand up for all of Mylena.”
“Pretty words, but it will only get you killed faster.”
“At least I will die knowing that I am not a coward.”
She was impressed. Dryden was going all out with the words and the sentences.
Greta interrupted. “You can help, Byron. You can prove that you care about your people and not just yourself.”
He hesitated. It was obvious from the utter disdain in his expression that he hated the idea of working with her, but he was thinking about it. “You will release my sister and me from the Glass Kingdom?”
“If the other faeries agree to join forces with us,” she said. “If we work together to rid this world of Agramon.”
He finally nodded, but his gaze had moved to Siona. “If we are actually successful, you will agree to forfeit any claim to the faerie thrown.”
Siona shrugged because she didn’t care about becoming the queen of anything. And Greta held her tongue. She would bet her new faerie sword that Isaac had no intention of letting Leila and Byron claim dominion over anything more important than a chunk of ice somewhere beyond the Luna Pass…but she needed Byron, at least for now.
You’re already becoming a politician. She swallowed the distasteful thought and prodded the faerie prince. “You’ll agree to help?”
“Yes.”
Dryden immediately stalked toward the cell door and placed his hand upon it. She felt the cold coming from him. So much that the lock fell apart in his hands. He tossed it away, and it shattered across the stained cobblestone floor.
They quietly left Byron’s cell, and Dryden did the same to the lock on the next door. The princess stood in the center of the room, waiting. Greta opened her mouth to tell her exactly what she’d told her brother, but Leila raised her hand. “The walls are not that thick,” she said. “I will follow my brother’s lead…and yours.”
“All right, then let’s get this done.”
Greta had every intention of walking out the front door. Siona touched her shoulder when they reached the stairs. The group careened to a stop behind her. “Two guards wait at the top,” she warned in a whisper.
The staircase was narrow, too narrow for more than one of them to go through the door at once, which meant that Greta took on both sentries. At least Siona was able to block whatever magick they might have attempted to throw at her.
They incapacitated three more guards—no killing, she ordered—on their way to the castle’s great hall, and then they were opening the massive front gates.
Before anyone could take serious notice of just who was standing before them, she motioned for Byron and Leila to come forward. “Time to do your thing,” she said. “Can you extend a net of invisibil
ity around the entire city?”
“It will take everything we’ve got, but we will do it.” Byron clenched his jaw, and Leila’s brows drew together in concentration.
At first, there was next to no one on the streets below the castle. Siona stepped forward. She bowed her head. Greta looked on, sword in hand. She wanted to believe that all the faeries would be grateful for their freedom, but she knew people better than that and prepared for the worst.
Slowly, bodies started to file out of buildings. The crowd was eerily like the lynch mob that had greeted her when she had been led into the city the first time around. She tightened her grip on her sword, silently reminding herself that these people only wanted what everyone wanted: to be free.
Still, as it became obvious what Siona was doing, a group of faerie warriors rushed the gates where they stood.
Greta braced herself, but as more faeries charged her small group, she hoped she hadn’t just signed their death warrants by leading them here on a fool’s errand.
Dryden stepped forward, ready to blast the faeries. She grabbed his arm. “No killing,” she reminded him. “They’re still part of the hive and haven’t yet been given a chance to choose.”
He frowned. “I want to save them as much as you do, but if they don’t agree to join us, you realize you’ll have to kill a few enemies to win this war.”
She scowled. “It isn’t that I haven’t killed before, or that I’m not prepared to do so now,” she snapped, “but these faeries aren’t our enemy.”
He looked at her like she was talking in a foreign language, when he was the one contemplating the slaughter of his own race as if they were ants in his path. “If they are not dealt with today, they will only form part of Agramon’s army as he marches upon you and the goblin king later.”
That was probably true, and maybe he was the better warrior for seeing it that way. But she still couldn’t give him the okay. “Even if they don’t want to join us, it doesn’t mean they’ll join Agramon. Keep them away from Siona and make sure they don’t cause harm to anyone else, but unless it’s absolutely necessary, we let them live.”
