by Kamryn Hart
“Oh, look at that,” I deadpanned, “It didn’t work. Now that that’s out of everyone’s system, let’s get serious again.” But I didn’t hate it. I didn’t hate it at all.
Babaga sighed in exasperation. “You have to mean it or a kiss isn’t going to do anything. You know this by now.”
“How do you mean a kiss? I kissed him, didn’t I?”
Babaga bobbed her head. “Maybe you’d like to share how you feel in words, then. Your emotional constipation is the worst.”
I balked. “Emotional constipation?!”
Caspian wiped at his lips with the back of his hand. He resembled a scared little rabbit cowering in front of a big bad wolf as he looked at me. It made me grin. I liked to see him flustered because he was always trying to be so perfect and werewolf. Sometimes it was nice to think that he wasn’t. It made it feel like we were almost equal and like I wasn’t so fucking far out of his league I should have never ever ended up where I was beside him.
I swallowed, wondering how I’d put this into words when I had a hard time acknowledging or understanding these feelings more than half the time, because I hated werewolves for so long, because I had werewolves I actually cared about, because my sister was hurt by one, because my sister was in love with one. “I care about you, Caspian,” I said slowly. “You’re my best friend.” They were hard words to say but true. “I want you to win, and I want you to take my moonlight to do it.”
We weren’t touching at all anymore. Babaga said touch made this transfer easier, but my moonlight was activating regardless, leaking out of my pores in a strange mist and reaching out to the Phantom Prince. The mist condensed, resembling blue flames as it brushed his skin. He closed his eyes and allowed it to coat his skin in a thin film while slowly sinking back down into his own pores. It was working.
I never said it before. I had never called Caspian my friend. I never said I cared. I hadn’t realized how much I cared until Gala almost killed him right before my eyes. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. And I was afraid to lose him. I could admit that to myself now.
“Very good,” Babaga said with a nod of her head. “Honesty is the only way this will work.”
“Honesty?” Rodrick rumbled. “Why didn’t you just say so, witch?”
Babaga gave him a death glare I was proud to witness. “Because it’s ridiculous I have to hold your hands so often. Open up. Count on each other. Your relationship was tenuous before, but you were still Phantom Fangs before Sorissa. You can’t hate each other all that much.”
Rodrick shrugged. “I hate feeling talks, but fine. I’ll be honest, too.” He stood and walked over to Caspian. “I’ve already sort of said this, and I know you can feel it because sometimes I can transfer moonlight to you, but let’s just set the record straight, shall we?” He pressed his hand down on Caspian’s shoulder and grinned. “Naive and kindhearted prince, you’re not allowed to lose because I’ve sacrificed everything for you, for all of you. You have the kind of heart that leads to the makings of a great king, and I truly believe that. I even saw that back when I was a rebel spy. I saw something great in you, but it was buried so deep I never thought it would break through like this, but it has. You’re doing all of this work to make sure you win the Alpha Challenge, so you can change things. You’re your own kind of werewolf. I believe in you, and I’m behind you a hundred percent. That’s a promise.”
Just like that, Rodrick was able to transfer his moonlight to Caspian as well. Sorissa clapped her hands and grinned, eyes sparkling. The joy was clear enough to see, but it bloomed inside of my chest, too. Everything had been turned up a notch, like this bond had been reinforced. Babaga was only worried about focusing on the spiritual side of Sorissa’s claim, but mixing it with the physical, sealing Sorissa, was the way to bind it once and for all. Todd was proof of that. I could sense it. Nothing could break him and Sorissa, but the rest of us weren’t there.
“You’re right, Aerre, but it wouldn’t be as easy to break you off from Sorissa and each other as you think—even as you are now. The rest will come in due time,” Babaga said. “You needn’t rush it.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t do that. How is it you can read our minds better than we can read each other’s?”
“I’m a witch.”
I let it drop because she never answered things she didn’t want to answer. “So now Rodrick and I can transfer moonlight whenever we feel like it?”
“With much more success. I won’t lie and say it’s a guarantee. But I’m satisfied with this. We would have gotten here much sooner if you three,” she pointed out me, Caspian, and Rodrick, “weren’t so stubborn when it comes to guarding your emotions.”
Rodrick snorted. “Don’t lump me in with them.”
“You’ve done well, considering,” Babaga amended. “Very well. I have one more thing I want you to do before you return to Wolf Bridge. Caspian, you must defeat me in a fight. Do that, and I’ll consider this a complete success. But you don’t have much time. The full moon will come again in five nights. Are you ready?”
Caspian looked at each one of us. Then he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were blazing blue with moonlight. It wasn’t active. He didn’t call on it. It was like Sorissa in her moonlight form. He was overflowing with it, holding more than his normal capacity. He was glowing, dark skin like the night-sky backdrop to the two full moons of his eyes. Gods, he was something to look at. My heart sputtered, and I ached. It was a deep ache, collecting over years, never allowed to surface.
“I’m ready,” he said.
“We’re ready,” the rest of us echoed.
CHAPTER 26
CASPIAN
BEATING BABAGA IN A fight turned out to be the hardest thing I had ever attempted to do, and I wasn’t even alone. Sorissa and Phantom Fangs were inside my head, living in my bones, and we still couldn’t beat her. I was sore from all the times she had grounded me with her magic. Her attacks were relentless, and she had magicked several parts of the Moon Mirror to dust. There wouldn’t be any solid lunalite left of it at this rate.
It had only been four days since we started this, nothing compared to the time it took us to get to this point, but it seemed a lot longer because of how fucking sore I was. Moonlight would have helped, but I had depleted a ton of it with this training and needed to pull back. There was no way I could defeat Babaga without it.
Tonight was my—our—last chance. We needed to return to Wolf Bridge early tomorrow morning whether we accomplished this task or not.
“Take a break,” Babaga said with a flick of her knobby fingers. Black sparks crackled in the air with the gesture. I shuddered, remembering those same sparks crackling and burning my skin earlier. It wasn’t pleasant. It was sort of electric, sort of freezing, sort of burning. I didn’t want to touch it again.
I rubbed a new sore spot on my arm and joined the others in the tall grass. We huddled together, hoping to form a plan that would work this time.
“It doesn’t matter how much moonlight I use, she always beats me,” I said. “Rodrick, I need you to guide me. You know combat better than the rest of us.”
“We’ve tried that,” he growled. “You never listen to a word we say.”
“I try,” I insisted, “but it’s impossible to implement it in time. Exchanging words doesn’t work well in a fast-paced fight like this. I haven’t had all the hand-to-hand combat experiences you’ve had, Rodrick. I don’t have your intuition. Yes, Aerre, even though I’m a werewolf.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Aerre countered.
“But you were thinking it.”
“Let’s get back on task, Phantom Prince.” I didn’t know why his blue eyes made me shiver, but they did. They were like ice.
Gods, I can’t believe he kissed me.
I sighed and said, “We’ve been Phantom Fangs, on missions together, since three months ago now, and I’ve learned a lot from all of you, but you can’t just transfer your skills and knowledge to
me. We’ve tried that, too.”
“But we kind of can,” Sorissa said. “You’re constantly hearing our thoughts and our emotions. Instinct and intuition are just another branch off of that.”
“It all gets muddled when I’m in the middle of a fight.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” Todd said. “You’re listening too much. You need to treat instinct like instinct, intuition like intuition.”
“Why does Todd have the answer to everything?” Aerre asked.
“One of us has to.”
“So, go beat Babaga yourself.”
“That’s not beneficial.”
I chuckled, but it turned into a hysterical laugh. Gods, I was tired.
Sorissa placed her hand on my back. “Let’s do what Todd said.”
“Okay, but what about Babaga’s magic?” I asked, rubbing my eyes. “Is there a way around that, Sorissa? You better not have been holding out on us.”
“I don’t know, but we can only do our best,” Sorissa said. “We’re out of time. We’ll need to sleep before too much longer. If this exhausts you before the Alpha Challenge tomorrow, then it isn’t beneficial at all.”
“All right,” I said, “let’s get it over with, then.”
I broke our huddle and walked over to meet Babaga on what was left of the Moon Mirror once again. I was kind of mortified when she sent the first lunalite dust cloud flying, but it wasn’t like we were going to do anything with the broken lunalite anyway… and it was kind of beautiful like this, literal stardust sprinkled all along the ground. It twinkled in the light of the nearly full moon, casting rainbows.
I widened my stance, bare feet digging into the dusty lunalite. It was cool to the touch, almost like dipping my feet into a lake. I thought lunalite wouldn’t be able to amplify moonlight in this state, but I felt it sinking into my skin anyway, a soft blue glow floating up from the dust, slowly swimming through the air to reach me and form droplets on my skin. It was reacting a lot stronger tonight since the moon was so close to full. I hadn’t really noticed it before, but it made sense that we would have all been passively absorbing moonlight every night since coming to Howling Sky because there was so much lunalite around. That was why our moonlight didn’t seem to drain much or at all when we had been using it and passing it around.
I lamented the fact that the Moon Mirror wasn’t whole, though. It would have given me far more moonlight, but anything helped. Maybe this little bit would be just enough to give me an edge.
“Think you’re ready for this?” Babaga asked. She pressed down on her wood cane to straighten her hunched back. Her old bones creaked. She never showed fatigue, but she had to be tired by now.
“I have to be ready,” I said. “This is the last chance we get.”
“Make it count, then.”
I took a deep breath as Rodrick called the fight to start. Instead of rushing for Babaga like I had been, thinking I’d take her with speed, I circled around her cautiously. It was time to fight differently because speed was no issue for her when she could lob magical sparks and wind at you from any direction. I tried to feel it out, to rely on my instincts—our instincts. I wasn’t going to think this time. I would feel my way through it.
I wasn’t alone. Their warmth blanketed me, made me steady. It wasn’t me against Babaga. It wasn’t me against the king. We were in this together. We’d win together, or we’d fail together. They accepted that. It was time I accepted it, too.
Rodrick sent a thought my way. “Don’t let the fear of failure stop you, or you’ll never give yourself a chance to succeed.”
Babaga stepped forward, holding out her hands as the fabric of her gray dress began whipping around in a sudden wind. I tensed, ready to run. But my body got unbelievably heavy. Lifting a foot and setting it back down to take a step left me sweating. I was sinking into the dust, into the ground. I blasted my moonlight. I hated when she did this. This intense gravity made my bones screech in protest; if I didn’t counteract with moonlight, this magic would break them.
“Damn.” I took another step forward, but I was going to collapse if she kept this up.
“Distract her,” Todd thought.
I didn’t know how I was supposed to do that when I could barely move. Reaching where she stood a few feet away was like trying to span miles like this.
“Use more moonlight,” Aerre directed.
“In your feet. Press off the earth,” Sorissa added.
Instead of the delay that always followed when they tried to offer me advice like this, I reacted immediately. I didn’t think about the change of flow in moonlight or where it needed to go. It was like they were doing it for me as a part of me. Gods, it was weird, but I let it happen. I let their decisions and ideas meld with mine, really meld with mine.
Then it all happened in a blur.
I pressed back into the lunalite dust and sprung forward, flying at the witch like a bullet. The whites of her eyes betrayed her surprise, but she flung me around with a gust of wind. I managed to gain traction again with my feet skidding on the dust and pressed forward, but she stopped me again by grabbing my wrist and pinching a nerve. I buckled down onto my knees as fire raced up my arm. I gritted my teeth, out of ideas. Luckily, Rodrick knew what to do next. He wasn’t blinded by pain like I was and took control of my free hand. I landed a hit in the center of Babaga’s stomach. She gasped and stumbled back. She actually stumbled. And she was still retreating.
It was now or never. I activated all of my moonlight, every last drop Sorissa and my squad gave me, and focused it with instinct, intuition, with emotion. The blue flames licked everything within a fifty-foot radius. I was a blazing blue ball of fire, and I moved as fast as lightning, but time slowed to the point I could see everything, react to anything. I created my own gale-force winds. Lunalite dust picked up and twisted into a sandstorm. Babaga stumbled back. If I crashed into her like this, I’d kill her. I couldn’t do that.
“Keep going!” Babaga roared.
A wall of black flashed a couple feet in front of her, faster than me, and I couldn’t avoid it. I rammed into it, shattering it into little fragments that burned and sizzled into smoke. Then they exploded.
Dust flew everywhere. Lunalite white. Earth browns and reds. Blue and yellow lights. I landed on my hands and knees only a few inches back from where I hit the wall. The explosion hadn’t touched me.
But what about everyone else?
“We’re okay!” Sorissa shouted and coughed. “Warn us next time you do that, though!”
When the dust cleared, I was the only one standing in the Moon Mirror’s remains. Babaga had been blown back into a tree. She was grumbling and brushing leaves away, but she seemed okay. Sorissa and Phantom Fangs were in a similar state—except they were piled on top of each other in the stagnate water of the largest fountain in the courtyard. Aerre had a lilypad on his head along with a peeved frog. The amphibian let out an undignified croak and hopped back into the water. I stifled a laugh, but I couldn’t hide my smile.
“Now that’s how you do it,” Babaga wheezed.
“Let me help you,” I said and rushed over to take her out of the tree. She was light as a feather. Was there anything to her? How was she alive? Her skin was like rice paper, transparent and grayish.
Sorissa was standing next to us a second later, sopping wet and arms flailing. “Babaga! Are you all right?” She carefully embraced the witch once I placed her back on her feet.
“Never better, dear,” Babaga said, patting Sorissa awkwardly on the back. “You’re ready. You’ve succeeded in all of my lessons. Now you must rest, all of you, to leave bright and early in the morning.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m not sure we could have done this without you.”
“You would have eventually. I only intervened because time is not on your side, werewolves. I fear you have an arduous journey ahead. I fear you will face great pain.” She turned her hazel eyes to the moon and they flashed a milky white. “Keep each other
safe, and make my Sorissa happy.”
“Sorissa is one of us,” I said as the others gathered around. “We look out for each other.”
Sorissa smiled. “My pack.”
“Pack,” we all agreed. There would be no breaking us now. We could only grow stronger together. That was a promise. I couldn’t afford to let them down again, because they were counting on me.
CHAPTER 27
TODD
IT WAS TIME. THE sun was rising, and we had everything packed into the roader’s cargo bed with Garstraude sheathed and tied safely on top. The blade sort of sat on the roof and the cargo bed so it wasn’t dangling precariously outside of the vehicle somewhere, waiting to wipe out or a tree or something equally as unsuspecting. We’d be back in Wolf Bridge sometime in the early evening. I almost didn’t want to say goodbye to Howling Sky. I got used to the castle looking down on us, the lunalite, the quiet. I did miss the Heart and all of my tech, though. I hadn’t used much tech out here. It surprisingly wasn’t terrible.
I had also grown used to hearing the thoughts and feeling the emotions of my pack. Lately, we were usually on a similar wavelength since we had been working hard toward the same goal. This morning was different. There was dissonance. I let it all brush by, but it was hard to do. Sometimes, it was a nuisance knowing so much about each other. And we still didn’t know everything. We couldn’t know the specific details of what each other was thinking unless we wanted to share, and we learned how to mask some things so they weren’t so loud and distracting, but this overall dissonance couldn’t be hidden.
We seemed to average at about a seventy-percent resonance. We were individuals, so much less than a hundred-percent resonance was to be expected. At one hundred percent, nothing would be hidden.
