by Jenna Black
“Destroy how?” Keane asked grimly.
My palms were sweaty, but I shivered as I tried not to think too much about what I was proposing. The Erlking’s mark was like a tattoo, and I was hoping that like a tattoo, it was only skin-deep. Trying not to look as scared as I felt, I turned to look at the remains of our fire, which had burned down to embers over the course of the night.
“No!” Ethan shouted, struggling against his bonds. “We are not doing that!”
Kimber’s face was almost green, her eyes wide with horror as she clapped her hand to her mouth. Only Keane looked like he was actually thinking about what I said, so I focused on him.
“If we don’t find a way to destroy the mark, then the Erlking will catch me and he’ll force me to join the Wild Hunt. As if that isn’t bad enough, he’ll make me take him out into the mortal world so he can hunt defenseless human beings. If it’s a choice between that and dealing with a few minutes of pain, I’ll take the pain.” My throat tightened with panic even as the words left my mouth, and I forced myself to take a deep breath.
“No!” Ethan insisted again. He was struggling against the bonds so much I was afraid he was going to hurt himself.
Keane sneered at him. “Are you worried about her, or about your own pretty face?”
I thought sure my heart was going to stop. I’d been so focused on my own mark that I’d allowed myself to forget about Ethan’s. There was no point in destroying mine if his was going to lead the Erlking right to us anyway.
“Think what you want, asshole,” Ethan growled at Keane. “I’m not just going to sit around and let you burn a hole in my girlfriend.”
“No? How are you going to stop me?”
Ethan opened his mouth for a response, and Kimber jumped on him, clapping her hand over his mouth as magic suddenly filled the air. Ethan glared at her, but she ignored him as she gave Keane a pointed look.
“Taunting Ethan probably isn’t the best idea,” she said, trying for a tone of grim humor and failing miserably. She was visibly shaking, and I wished I’d never dragged her into any of this, never allowed her to come to Faerie with me.
“My bad,” Keane said, holding up his hands and looking embarrassed.
Kimber waited until the last hint of magic faded before she took her hand away from Ethan’s mouth, and she was poised to slap it right back into place if necessary.
“I wasn’t going to hurt him,” Ethan said, but I wasn’t so sure he was telling the truth.
“Don’t try that again,” I said. “If you’d rather we leave you behind, we’ll do it.” The words came out low and raspy, but he wasn’t the one who was in danger from the Erlking. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get Kimber to go along with it, but it turned out I didn’t have to worry about it.
“I’m not worried about myself,” Ethan said. “If I’d thought about burning it off before, I’d have tried it already. But it’s not really a tattoo. I don’t know if burning it will destroy the magic.”
His brows drew together as if he were concentrating hard, and then he shook his head and looked me in the eye. “The Erlking says to tell you to spare yourself the pain. It won’t work.”
My stomach did a nervous flip-flop. I knew Ethan could really communicate with the Erlking—thanks to the damned mark. But I also knew that if burning the mark would destroy it, Arawn would hardly say so. And that Ethan could have made this message up as a way to stop me from hurting myself.
“We’ll just have to find out for ourselves,” I said firmly, “because there’s only one way to know for sure.”
Ethan started to protest again, but Kimber grabbed a leftover strip of my T-shirt and stuffed it in his mouth. The glare he aimed at her was positively terrifying, but she was unaffected.
“We don’t have a choice,” she said hoarsely. “This could be our only chance.”
Ethan still didn’t agree, I could see it in his face. But by now he had to know that the rest of us had decided and he couldn’t change our minds, so when he managed to force the impromptu gag out of his mouth, he didn’t argue.
“Do me first,” he said instead. “I’ll be able to tell if it works, and I’m not sure Dana will.”
He was right about that. The Erlking had told me that if I fed magic into the mark, I could call him to me—though why I’d ever want to do that was anyone’s guess—but it produced no sensation right now, no tingle of magic that told me it was active. If I couldn’t feel it working, then I wouldn’t be able to feel it not working, either.
“Problem with that,” Keane said as he moved over to the remains of our fire and started poking at it, coaxing out some reluctant flames, “is that if you tell us it isn’t working, we won’t be able to believe you. The Erlking could force you to tell us that even if it isn’t true.”
Ethan grimaced, but Keane was clearly right. If the Erlking could force Ethan to try to drag me out of camp, then he could force him to lie. The only way we’d know if burning the mark worked was if we managed to evade the Erlking against all odds.
Keane found a piece of green wood that poked out of the fire, its end a glowing ember despite its obvious reluctance to burn. I swallowed hard and tried to slow my racing heart. I felt deep down in my gut that this was what I had to do, but that didn’t make it any less terrifying.
“You get to decide who goes first,” Keane said, “not him.” He jerked his thumb at Ethan.
I was scared to death of what was about to happen to me, but I suspected watching it happen to Ethan first was just going to make me feel worse. Besides, I had to make sure I wasn’t going to chicken out at the last minute. No reason to put Ethan through hell if I wasn’t going to be able to go through with it myself. I dragged in a deep, unsteady breath.
“I go first,” I said, then pushed my hair to one side of my neck. I unbuttoned the first couple buttons of my shirt and pushed it down, exposing the mark.
Kimber knelt beside me and adjusted the shirt and my bra strap. Her eyes were glistening with tears, and her hands were shaking.
“I’ll be all right,” I told her, hoping it was true.
She sniffled. “I know you will be. But this is still going to suck.”
“Tell me about it,” I mumbled.
“Maybe you should lie down,” Keane suggested. “Your instinct is going to be to pull away, and you have to hold still.”
I nodded, then positioned myself as comfortably as possible on the ground, my head pillowed on my hands. I felt Keane’s weight as he straddled my back and pressed one hand down on the opposite shoulder blade. I heard Ethan’s growl of protest at the intimacy of the position. Then, before I had time to think about it anymore, the ember touched my skin, and it was all I could do not to scream.
I’d burned myself on the hot stove a couple of times when I was cooking for my mother—she was often too drunk to be trusted near an open flame—so I thought I’d be prepared for this. I was wrong. The pain that radiated from my shoulder was like nothing I’d ever felt before, and though I managed to hold back the scream, I couldn’t help a moan of protest.
Keane was right about the instinct to pull away, and if he hadn’t been holding me down we would never have been able to finish. As it was, I felt woozy and sick from the pain, but I couldn’t escape it.
It felt like it went on for five minutes, but I know it was only a few seconds. My stomach heaved as I caught a whiff of burning flesh, and I thought for sure I was going to pass out. When it was over, I was shaking and sweating at the same time. I’d have liked to escape into unconsciousness, but I stayed wide awake and clear-headed.
With Keane’s help, I sat up, trying to keep my shirt and bra away from the wound. I knew it was only a small spot on my shoulder, but the pain seemed to be radiating throughout my body. I wondered if that was normal, or if it had something to do with the magic of the mark. It seemed to me having a burned shoulder shouldn’t be making my feet hurt, for example. I told myself that it was some kind of positive sign, that we’d done rea
l damage to the mark, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Are you all right?” Kimber asked, still looking like she was on the verge of tears.
“Yeah,” I lied hoarsely. I hoped that out here alone in the wilderness the wound wouldn’t get infected or something.
“I’m sorry,” Keane said, and I knew he meant it. He’d been acting all tough about this, but I noticed there was a slight tremor in his hand as he stuck the end of the branch back in the fire. I couldn’t help being sort of glad it bothered him.
Ethan didn’t look too good either, his face unnaturally pale in the firelight. I didn’t know if he was dreading his own ordeal, or whether he was freaking out about mine. Maybe it was some of both.
None of us could find anything to say as we watched the end of the branch, waiting for it to reheat. Keane poked around a bit, looking for another one that would do the trick, but he had no luck. I had a feeling that despite his dislike of Ethan, and despite his tough-guy facade, Keane was going to have a hard time with this. At least with me, he hadn’t had to look me in the face while he was hurting me.
“I should do it,” I whispered, because this was all my bright idea in the first place. And because I was the one the Erlking was after.
“No,” Ethan and Keane answered in unison. They shared a glance that had none of their usual animosity.
“You’ve been through enough,” Ethan said. “Let someone else do the hard thing just this once.”
It felt like cowardice, letting Keane take all of this on his shoulders. I could tell by the haunted look in his eyes that this was bothering him way more than he was willing to say. But the boys were nothing if not stubborn, and they had both made up their minds.
I think watching Keane burn Ethan’s face was worse even than having my own mark destroyed. Ethan barely made a sound, but I almost screamed for him. And then to see that horrible burn on his face where the stag tattoo had once been …
“I’d rather have the burn than the mark,” Ethan said, noticing my stare. “And if it makes you feel any better, I think it worked. I can’t feel my connection to the Erlking anymore.”
“We can’t untie you,” Keane said, and I thought he was aiming his words more at me than at Ethan. “If this didn’t work, the Erlking would make you tell us it did so we’ll let down our guard.”
Ethan nodded grimly. “That’s true. You shouldn’t untie me, and you should always have someone on guard, if for no other reason than that we aren’t sure the marks will stay inactive. The Erlking’s magic is like nothing else I’ve ever seen, and it’s possible they’ll start working again when we heal.”
Oh, fabulous!
* * *
Logic told us that even if we had successfully destroyed the Erlking’s marks, he would still be making his way toward our last known location. Which meant we had to move. The pain in my burned shoulder made me want to curl up in a little ball and moan in misery, but we didn’t have time for that.
We did the best we could to rub out all traces of our camp, but I didn’t think it would fool anyone. Certainly not an immortal hunter like the Erlking.
After a long argument that we couldn’t afford, we decided to head for the road. It was unlikely people would be searching for us on the road in the dead of night, and we’d be able to move a lot faster—and leave a much less obvious trail—on the road than in the woods. Plus dragging around a guy whose hands were tied in the deepest dark of the woods was slowing us down way too much, and every time Ethan stumbled or fell, he left another link in the trail the Erlking would follow. Keane glared every time, no doubt suspecting that Ethan was doing it on purpose. Maybe he was, but if so, it meant the Erlking was still controlling him through the mark, in which case the Erlking knew where we were anyway.
Kimber’s sense of direction didn’t fail us, and we found the road within about fifteen minutes of breaking camp. We watched from the bushes for a while, but there was no sign of activity in either direction, so we left cover.
The road wasn’t exactly smooth, its surface pitted by hoof marks and the ruts left by wagon wheels, but it was a whole lot smoother than the woods. Smooth enough that we were able to travel at a slow jog, at least for a while. My workout sessions with Keane had given me pretty decent stamina, but there was only so long I could keep up with full-blooded Fae. Even Kimber in her cute wedge heels ran better than I did, and we eventually had to slow to a fast walk.
We stayed on the road for several hours, tense and jumpy and sure we would hear the thunder of hooves chasing us down at any moment, but no one except us was out and about at this time of night. Well before dawn, we ducked back into the woods. There was no way of knowing how far off those standing stones were, but the Green Lady said we’d probably find them sometime today, so we didn’t dare take a chance that we’d run right past the stream that would lead us to them.
Fighting our way through the underbrush was grueling work, and more than once, a stray branch poked at my burn and made me whimper in pain.
The sun was just beginning to rise when we heard the distinctive burble of water in the distance. We were lucky the day was quiet and still, or we might have missed it, because it was farther from the road than we’d imagined. Our hearts all rose at having successfully found the landmark, and our footsteps quickened as we began to follow the stream’s meandering course.
With my sense of direction, I had no idea when the stream’s course veered away from the road, but by the time the sun was high in the sky, Kimber informed us we were now traveling west, instead of continuing south like the road. Unfortunately, we had no clue how far we still had to go before we found the standing stones, and we were all terrified that we would somehow miss them. The Green Lady had told us the stream would lead us to them, but she hadn’t told us what to look for.
It turned out we needn’t have worried about missing them. After we’d been following the stream a few hours, it widened out until it was almost broad enough to call a river. A very rocky river, interrupted by frequent outcroppings and sandbars. It was on one of those sandbars that we found the standing stones.
This circle was much smaller than the one we’d traveled through with the prince’s caravan. There were six stones, each only about six feet high, and we would have to wade through the water to get to them. Luckily, the water didn’t look too deep, though the current was dangerously swift.
We stood on the banks of the stream and stared at those stones, our impossible escape route that now seemed possible. Home was so close …
And yet, we were still hours from nightfall, when the stones would be naturally active, and we didn’t dare let our most powerful magic user call magic.
“I can work them,” Ethan said quietly, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was sorely tempted to take him up on it.
“Are you sure you can work them?” Kimber asked. “Or do you just think you can?”
Ethan didn’t answer, and we all knew what that meant.
“We can’t risk it,” Keane said. “Even if we were willing to risk letting you call magic—which I, for one, am not—you’d get us all killed if the spell failed.”
“I know that,” Ethan said irritably. “It just sucks to be this close to getting home and not be able to take that final step.”
“Yeah, it sucks, but that’s the way it is,” I said, though I felt as frustrated and anxious as Ethan did. “Let’s find somewhere to hole up for a few hours. Preferably somewhere out of sight of the stones. They aren’t exactly conveniently located, but that doesn’t mean we’re the only people who’d ever use them.”
No one found any flaws in my suggestion, so we wandered down the banks of the stream until we found a sheltered embankment where we could wait out the rest of the day. We were all exhausted, and determined to spend as many of the remaining hours of daylight sleeping as possible.
“I’ll take the first watch,” I told the others, though I had to stifle a yawn as I forced the words out. Tired as I was, I wasn’t sure I’d be
able to sleep if I tried. Now that I was sitting down and not fighting my way through the brush, I was much more aware of the searing burn, and it might well be enough to keep me up. The thought that I might fall asleep and accidentally roll over onto that shoulder was enough to make me break out in a cold sweat.
Kimber and Keane shared a look I couldn’t interpret.
“I’ll stay up with you,” Kimber said.
I shook my head. “Get some rest. I promise I’m not going to fall asleep on duty or anything.”
There was another of those looks between Kimber and Keane, like they were communicating silently.
“That’s not what we’re worried about,” Kimber finally said.
I heaved a sigh of exasperation, because this evasion was so not what I was in the mood for. “Then what are you worried about?” I asked, and I didn’t even try to hide my irritation.
“They’re worried about me,” Ethan answered for them. “If one of them is on watch and I start to call magic, they’ll feel it and be able to stop me. You won’t.”
It was time for Ethan and me to share the knowing look, because Ethan knew perfectly well I could sense magic. He even knew what I could do with it, having seen me turn Aunt Grace mortal. But obviously he still thought I should keep my ability secret, even from my best friends.
Maybe he was right. Maybe it was a case of the fewer people who knew, the better. Maybe I was being irrational because I was scared and in pain. But I was sick and tired of lying and keeping secrets.
“I can sense magic,” I told them all bluntly. “I know Faeriewalkers aren’t supposed to be able to, but I can. I can call it, too.”
Kimber and Keane gaped at me, and Ethan shook his head in disapproval. I figured since I’d gone that far, I might as well go the rest of the way.
“I don’t seem to be able to cast regular magic spells,” I continued, “but when I’m in danger I can do this spell that turns Fae into mortals. I’d never have survived the Bogle attack otherwise. A bunch of them almost caught me, and … and I turned them mortal.” The Bogles were monsters, and they’d been trying to kill me at the time, but I still shuddered with horror at the memory of what I had done. Monsters they might have been, but they were living beings.
