by Alexia Purdy
It felt like Faerie, but not quite, and I took it that it wasn’t supposed to look this desolate.
“Cranston!” Aveta’s voice wailed into the wind, her desperation leeching out into it. As we made it over a hill past the dead poppies she’d mentioned, a cabin appeared, looking decrepit, with part of the roof caving in and a pathetic tendril of smoke rising from its chimney and quickly dissipating in the wind. “Cranston!”
Aveta came to a stop a few feet before it, with me a few feet behind her. I heaved, my chest burning. Running was not something I did often nowadays.
I turned to look at the dark queen to find tears streaming down her face, her hair wild and unkempt. She looked younger now as I stared at her, the mask of a young girl who had sought sanctuary in this place long ago. I guess even queens got disappointed.
“Who’s Cranston?” I asked, hoping I wouldn’t set her off.
“He—he’s my love,” Aveta mumbled as she took an unsteady step forward. At the door, she reached out to knock on the rotted wood, first softly but then desperately as she continued to call out his name.
“Cranston! I’m back. I’m back!” she sobbed, sniffling through her tears. She turned toward me, her eyes beckoning. “I can’t.” She stepped away from the door, collapsing onto her knees and rocking back and forth. “Please,” she begged.
I knew what she wanted. I took a deep breath as I stepped closer, reaching out to touch the knob and turning it, half afraid it would burn me. It didn’t. It was made of something else… plastic? It couldn’t be. I stared at the black knob, dull and scratched with use. It wasn’t metal at all. It was definitely a hard plastic made to look like metal. Why would there be plastic in Faerie?
I decided I’d think on it later and pushed the door open. It creaked, the old wood groaning in complaint. Inside, the cabin was dark, but a small fire cracked and popped in the fireplace, with a chair sitting before it. Soft snores emanated from the chair, and I could see an arm dangling off the side of it. Everything here looked decades old. Was there a human here? How was he surviving Faerie when my own siblings had been forced to leave?
I could see why Aveta didn’t want to come in and find a corpse. I was nearly afraid the person sitting in the chair wouldn’t wake up from their last snooze. As I rounded the corner, I held my breath. A middle-aged man sat there, gray hair peppering his dark beard and scalp, wrinkles etched into the edges of his eyelids and mouth. His hands were worn down, skin thickened and callused from hard work. This wasn’t a faery who conjured up his every need. No, this was a man who worked for his food and shelter.
A drop of water landed on my cheek, and I peered up toward the rear of the cabin, where a hasty tarp had been tied to keep the rain away from the hole in the roof. One corner had come loose, but it was so high up in the rafters, I doubted the man had realized it before he’d fallen asleep.
I flicked my hand, letting my elemental air powers rush up to the opening and tighten the edge of the tarp to the roof, covering the hole. At least the rain would stay out for now. I could fix the cabin later.
“Cranston?” I whispered, softly nudging the man on the arm. “Excuse me, sir, are you Cranston?” Please be him. I didn’t want to face Aveta if it weren’t or if the man told me Cranston was no longer among us.
The man sputtered, shaking off the sleep as he inhaled sharply, startled at my voice. He narrowed his eyes and stared, studying my face.
“Aveta?”
I blew out the breath I was holding. “No. But she’s waiting outside.”
“Who are you? Are you an angel?” He startled and glanced around, a wild look in his eyes. “Am I dead?”
“No, I’m not an angel. And you’re not dead.”
“You’re like her. Like Aveta. But… not.” He squinted, trying to reason what sort of being I was.
“Yes, kind of like her.”
“Cranston?”
A voice behind me made me want to squeal with a start, but I remained quiet. I wished she wouldn’t sneak up on me like that.
“Aveta?” Cranston stood up, a bit wobbly at first, but he gained composure with each step. “Is it you?”
“Yes, Cranston. It’s me.” Aveta took a hesitant step forward, her tears of anguish still staining her face. “I came back. I told you I would.”
“But you look the same. You haven’t aged.”
“I do not age.”
He frowned. “I have.”
Aveta reached out, melting into his arms and squeezing him tightly. “I know.”
“What’s been happening? The crops are dying, the trees are bare. I’ve been living on roots, but even they are sparse.”
“It’s Faerie. The land… it’s dying.”
“I see. We’ll have to leave here then.”
“No, we don’t have to. I know a way to save it.”
My mouth dropped open. “What?” I choked out. “You know how to save Faerie, and you never said anything to me about it?” My anger boiled inside. Maybe I needed to wring out all the secrets from this dark queen after all. “People are dying, and you keep quiet?”
“I had to be sure. I had to come back here and make sure.”
“Make sure of what?”
“That Cranston was still alive. If he were, I can fix this. If he’d died….”
“Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t have been so willing to fix it if he had kicked the bucket now, would you?” I grumbled. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“No, I would, but it would have been too late,” Aveta said, never letting go of Cranston. He gently stroked her hair, inhaling her scent as they held on to each other, looking unwilling or afraid to let go.
“Well, how do we save it? There isn’t much time. I feel the magic ebbing away in my bones. We have to do something now.” I had ignored the dread of the fluctuating magic for a while, but now I had to know how to save Faerie sooner rather than later.
“We opened one gate to the Netherworld thanks to you, Shade. You have to help me open the other gate. One gate leads to Faerie. One leads to the mortal realm.”
My eyes opened wider. “What? Why would you want to do that?”
“There are people here, like Cranston, part human, part fae, but without powers. Humans came here long ago and lived in harmony with faeries. Now there are no faeries here and barely any humans, so the land is dying. It’s the heart of the two realms. Without life, it dies. We must bring fae and humans alike back to this place. The power of unity will keep Faerie alive. The mortal world has its own magic too, after all.”
I didn’t understand her, but I was willing to try anything. “I’m not sure about this, but what have we got to lose? What do I have to do?”
“Help me restore Cranston. Our magic will keep him young. Then we can open the other gate. It’s across the poppy field to the west.”
“And you do know how to open it, right?” I asked. Something in the way her face tightened told me otherwise. “You mean you don’t know? You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Aveta avoided my eyes as she held Cranston at arm’s length. “I do know how to open the gate, Shade, but you’re not going to like it.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Dylan
I grumbled. Of course there would be another delay, another waste of time. Soap was still asleep in his glass coffin at the Scren Palace, and I had to return to wake him with the spell I’d gotten at the archives. That’s if it would even work.
I sighed as I held out the orb I always carried to summon Camulus. As I rubbed it, it flashed in my fingers, turning bright white with light then fading to black. I dropped it as it stung my flesh. Confused, I stared at it sitting on the ground, looking like a harmless stone.
“What the…?” I shook out my hand and bent down to pick up the orb.
“What happened?” Nautilus asked as his eyes flicked between me and the stone.
“The orb… it flipped out.” I plucked it from the ground, no longer feeling any stinging from it. It remained a charred black color.
“I think it short circuited and died.”
“Well, hell. How are we getting back to the Scren?”
“I don’t know.” I pocketed the damaged orb and groaned. The fluctuating magic had probably been too much for it. “I doubt Camulus even got a summons before it broke.”
Nautilus chewed on his bottom lip, scratching his chin as he pondered a way to get us back home. I did the same but knew it would be a long trek. I made my way to the front of the house and plopped down on one of the steps. The porch was real enough even when the tower in the back of the house was glamoured.
I wished the gate had needed just one key. We still had to return to the Scren to wake up Soap no matter what. I had the spell to reverse his slumber, but I had failed to rush back home to apply it. Why?
I placed my face into my hands and rubbed the fatigue away. I didn’t have to sleep, but I could feel the need to rest screaming in my bones. We had been going nonstop since entering Guildrin, and the questions had only grown. Astenos had told us that Soap and I had the keys forged in the Heart of Fire and Ice, the polar opposite of this portal here in the tower, but why it had chosen to melt the keys into our arms out of our wedding rings was impossible to answer. Astenos couldn’t say. It’d been an opportunistic event, random to us but meticulously arranged by the magic of Faerie.
I hated being part of its bigger plan. The pain of the metal melting into my skin had been excruciating. There had to be a better way.
“Come on. We need to get going. There’s no fast way to get back without the orb.” I jumped to my feet and took the steps two at a time, not waiting for Nautilus. He would catch up. My frustration had me wanting to head straight out of there without looking back.
“Dylan, wait!” Nautilus jogged to catch up, falling into step next to me. “I have an idea.”
I tilted my head in his direction as we turned onto the sidewalk and headed out of this small neighborhood. It was eerily quiet, and my senses buzzed as though something were about to happen.
“What sort of idea?”
“We can—”
Before Nautilus could finish his suggestion, we were sideswiped by someone running by faster than the wind. I could barely see the figure as it blurred and attempted to cut me with a blade which I only saw when the sun momentarily broke through the clouds and reflected off of it, allowing me to dodge it right before it sliced into my arm.
“What is that?” Nautilus dodged the blade as well, the sun being our one helper in this situation. Without light, the warrior would have been invisible, but the sun made him stand out like a beacon, flashing off the mirror-like finish of his sword.
“I think you mean who. We’re about to find out.”
I reached out, my electrical blue fire igniting on my arm as the warrior attempted to hack at me once more. This time, one brush of my hand at the side of his blade sent the warrior tumbling down to the ground, rolling like a boulder with a puff of dust shooting up behind him. I whipped out my own blade from my pack hidden in a small waist sack and held it down to the man’s throat.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
The guy choked on his breath from the stun of my power shooting through his body. I was pretty sure he couldn’t feel much of it right now. He could barely catch his breath. I hoped his mouth was working, but it didn’t seem to be since he glared at me in silence.
“Who are you, and what do you want?” I asked once more, digging the blade into his shoulder. He yelped but couldn’t move his arms to shove it off. Moaning, he blinked up at me.
“Please, don’t,” he coughed, phlegm shooting from his mouth, mixed with the dirt he’d eaten when I’d dropped him.
“Please don’t what? I should cut your throat. You’re the one trying to kill us,” I growled as I stepped an inch closer. He gasped as the sword remained steady at his neck. “Now tell me what I asked, or I won’t hesitate to shove this through your pathetic throat.”
“I’m Jax! Hunter of the Noruck Court.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I’ve never heard of that court. You’re lying.”
“No! I swear I’m not. We live ironside.”
I eyed him hard, my glare intensifying as I ran his words through my mind. “That’s impossible. There are no courts outside of Faerie.”
“There is one. I swear.”
“Why did you attack us?” I asked, unmoved by his pleading.
“You’re trespassing on the fringes of our territory.”
“Where does the court reside?” I asked. “I demand an audience with your ruler.”
“Our ruler is Queen Sage. She will not be happy to see you.”
“I don’t really care.” I stepped away, kicking his sword to the side and motioning for him to get up with a jerk of my head. “Take us to Sage, and we might let you live.”
“Okay.” He struggled to his feet, his long reddish-brown hair dusty from his tumble. His clothes were cargo pants and a dark green T-shirt. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was former military, except for those long, unruly locks and pointed ears that told me without a doubt that he was fae.
He stood, wide-eyed, as he took a good look at me and sniffed the air. “You’re Teleen.”
“And you should be walking already.” I held out my sword. “Move.”
“All right, I’m going. I’ll take you to Sage, but she won’t be—”
“She won’t be happy. Yeah, yeah, we heard you.” I turned toward Nautilus. “Grab his sword.”
Nautilus scooped up the blade and followed along quietly. He looked skeptical about Jax, but I ignored it.
“Oh, did you know we used to call her our dragon queen?” our captive said. “We don’t have live dragons anymore. They’re all dead, skeletons and relics of the olden ways, in a building near downtown. They are nice to see, but I would’ve been scared to see one alive. They went dormant in our old homelands when we were chased out.”
“You sure are chatty now that you’re a prisoner. What did you say your name was?” I asked.
“I’m Jax. Hunter of the Noruck Court. I also serve as a perimeter guard.”
“What are the boundaries of your court?” Nautilus inquired. I threw him a sharp look, but he ignored me. We didn’t want to get buddy-buddy with this Jax character. In fact, I didn’t really want to see their stupid court in the first place, but I hoped this Jax guy was of some importance to the queen, for I was going to ask her for one big favor if she was truly a faery queen at all.
She might have a teleporter in her clan. If we had a ride home, this little side tour wouldn’t put much of a dent in our timetable at all. There had to be someone, a sorcerer or someone who had a faster way to travel. Especially after seeing this warrior fight us with super speed.
“Hey, Jax,” I called out to him in front of us.
“Yes?”
“How did you move that fast when you attacked us?”
He cleared his throat. “My sword has speed powers.”
“Ah, like some sort of comic book character.”
“I guess so.”
Nautilus held up the sword, studying the intricately carved designs in the metal. It was made with some iron, and the stench of it radiated from its blade. Nautilus made a face.
“It reeks.”
I nodded. “How is it this sword doesn’t burn you, Jax?”
“Our court… we were blessed once long ago with immunity to iron.”
“Are you half-bloods? Part human?”
He nodded. “Long ago, we lived in another realm of Faerie where the sky was pink and orange and the forest grew with red-leaved trees. I never saw it myself, but it’s in our history books. This place granted us powers no other faeries had. We were more humanlike than the fae of the other parts of Faerie. We had iron in our blood and could live our lives intermixing with humans.”
“So why are you ironside now?”
Jax hung his head down, looking like a teenager, not a full-grown man. “I don’t know. Only the queen knows that; it’s
a secret passed from one ruler to another.”
I wrinkled my nose. I’d never heard of such a realm in Faerie. I wondered what it had to do with the tower gate. Was that what was on the other side?
As we turned the corner and Jax announced that we were close to the entrance of his home, I knew I’d finally found a bargaining chip that could get us back. I just hoped this Queen Sage was all in for it.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Shade
“What do you mean I have to sacrifice that which I love? I’ve already done that a few times over.” I scowled at Aveta, who stood hand in hand with Cranston, her long-lost love. It made me sick. The hellish Unseelie queen was getting everything her heart had ever desired; even resurrection, for crying out loud. Why? I had nothing I craved for my life, and I was an Ancient of Faerie. It didn’t seem fair, and I was done helping her.
“You need to sacrifice your husbands. Their blood will open the other gate that leads to the human realm.”
Aveta’s face was blank, but Cranston threw her a look of surprise. “You can’t mean that. You can’t ask her to do that.” He shook his head, his hand letting go of hers. “That’d be like her asking you to sacrifice me.”
“Fortunately, that’s not what is needed.” Aveta straightened, patting down the wrinkles in her dress.
“No. I won’t do that. How was it opened before? There has to be another way.” I couldn’t believe what this witch was asking me to do. If I’d been coldhearted like before, I wouldn’t have flinched so much at her words, but now that my emotions were intact again, her demands were impossible.
“I don’t know how it was opened in the past. And the only other way is through the labyrinth. You’ve seen enough of it to know that anyone who takes that path risks death.”
“What closed the gate in the first place?”
Aveta stared at me with her inky black eyes, not giving away any emotion. She should have been an Ancient. She’d fit perfectly in this position. I internally rolled my eyes at the notion.
