by Lina Jubilee
Xerxes chuckled, looking at the pink dome above him. “She told me Alanna’s negation doesn’t work on you. I wonder why.” He clonked his dagger against the pink, but it bounced helplessly, though Rajani still slumped over. Her head lolled back as she was held upright by the two Nelians.
At first I thought he’d struck her somehow, but then I realized perhaps she’d fainted at the sight of the blade headed for her throat.
“Well?” asked Xerxes, stepping toward the vine cage. “Are you going to keep me in this bubble with you? Or wrap you and your little Earth scum lovers up in it, leaving all your friends here vulnerable to my attack?” He gestured back to Rajani and to Hazel and her companions, too, as if that threat would have the same impact on me.
Hazel stiffened. “We’re on your side.”
Xerxes stormed over to her, his blade brandished threateningly. “You’re Earth scum and you’ll do as you’re told, even if that means bleeding at my feet.”
Hazel stumbled backward. “No. You promised—”
Xerxes spun and clobbered his elbow straight to her eye socket, knocking her to the floor out cold.
Sheila and Pepper screamed.
Xerxes pointed his dagger toward them. “Anyone else have anything to say?”
They shook their heads, clutching each other’s hands. Jerry just stared at Xerxes, his eyes widening, and then he turned and vomited right next to Hazel’s head.
While Xerxes was distracted, I tried my theory, recalling the bubble of protection to the inside of the vine cage, lining it up just right behind its surface.
Xerxes chuckled darkly. “So you’d surrender all your friends to me, leave their fates in my hands? No matter. I have you right where I need you to get your coward of a father to show up. You can’t keep that little bubble of yours up forever.”
Trey put a hand on my shoulder, and Derek on the other. Rio slipped his hand beside Derek’s and Zeke his beside Trey’s. That beautiful sensation flew through me, spreading all the way down to my toes.
Mother Nelia herself seemed to be soaring through me.
Focusing all my concentration, I told that protection bubble extending from my hands that I needed it to shred those vines to pieces. To protect me, to protect everyone I loved—and even those I didn’t—those vines had to go.
With a mighty roar that ripped free from my lips, the bubble pushed out between the holes in the lattice cage and squeezed through like one of those banned things called balloons being jammed into a tiny space. Xerxes turned on his heel at the sound of the vines ripping, straining, but it was too late. With a pop, the vines shattered, raining down on the ground like streamers.
“What have you—” started Xerxes, but I compressed my bubble and turned it toward him, slamming him clear across the cave and into a wall.
There was a scream from the other side of the cave and the two Nelian women charged toward us, the one tossing her torch to the ground as she drew a stone dagger from her belt. The men dropped my friend like a sack of potatoes and joined them in charging against us.
“Get behind me!” I snapped in Pepper, Sheila, and Jerry’s direction.
“What about Hazel?” asked Pepper.
“Now!” I screamed.
They actually moved.
Sending out a projection bubble around the eight of us was easy enough, but there was Hazel’s prone body off to the side—assuming she was all right—and more importantly, Rajani out there behind the advancing row of rebel Nelians. I’d just have to keep drawing their attention.
Zeke growled and raised his fists, everyone but Sheila and Pepper taking a fighting stance around me, but I wouldn’t let anyone inside this bubble.
Spreading its range farther, the first Nelian woman came in contact with it and her dagger bounced off with a clatter as if stabbing into a rock. She tried again and this time I focused on the area of the bubble where her dagger would hit, molding it, making it almost gelatinous. Her blade slid in, and though her brow furrowed as she tugged and yanked, it wouldn’t pull back out.
She screamed in frustration and two of the other Nelian rebels who’d been slashing with their own stone daggers uselessly pulled back.
I looked around. Where was the fourth Nelian? Near Hazel, helping Xerxes to his feet.
Xerxes struggled, then shoved the other Nelian man in order to stand on his own, a trickle of blood running down Xerxes’ temple and across his cheek.
He didn’t say anything, his breath coming out so raggedly that I could hear him clearly even some yards away.
Then, before I could blink, he bolted across the cave—straight for Rajani.
“No!” I screamed.
But as I moved to reshape the bubble of protection, the Nelian woman’s dagger falling to the floor with a thud, a force of energy shot through it from the inside, an icy ball roaring with power that popped through the bubble and landed with precision on the ground right behind Xerxes. It exploded, sending shards everywhere, some of which bounced off the outside of my bubble. Several shards lodged like knives into the back of Xerxes’ calf.
I stared at Derek and blinked. His powers were back. Which meant my aunt was either asleep or—
A gust of wind rose up from beside me and Rio was gone. I blinked again, taking note of how the Nelian rebels’ hair all flew up in one motion, my arms falling in the gust and the protection bubble blinking out. Then Rio was behind me, gently placing an unconscious Rajani on the ground beside Sheila.
I was at her side in a second, searching for signs of life. Her chest rose and fell, and her head lolled, clearly groggy.
She was okay.
Unbidden tears welled up behind my eyelids.
Around me, grunts and growls told me the battle wasn’t over. Even Pepper got into the fray, shooting light out against the Nelian rebels she’d just been helping.
But it only went on half a minute—ice pinning a Nelian rebel to the ground by his foot, a Nelian man running from the sudden appearance of an illusion boar, a Nelian woman spinning like a cartoon character as Rio ran in a circle around her—until Trey’s voice rang out, echoing across the cave. “Everyone, stop!”
Everyone went still, the slight crack of Derek’s breaking ice the last remaining sound in the cavernous space.
Trey took a deep breath and looked to me. “Bryony, you’re in control.”
The tension in my muscles relaxed, and I stood, getting a better lay of the situation, looking for Xerxes. He was crouched, frozen while headed toward Hazel on the ground, his face scrunched in pain.
“Zeke, Rio, Derek,” continued Trey, “you’re in control.” My other men sprang to life again, gathering back round me.
Sheila, Jerry, and Pepper stood obnoxiously still behind us, their limbs bent out in weird positions, as if playing Red Light, Green Light and giving it their all.
With the precision touch of a surgeon, I projected my protection bubble again, manipulating it across the room to the five Nelians, shaping it to cocoon each one like budding leaves on a tree. Stretching and straining the bubble, I gathered the rebels all together, shoving their still forms against one another one by one.
Trey looked back at Hazel’s cohorts and nodded, not releasing them from their spell.
“How long do people have to follow your orders?” asked Derek.
“As long as I want them to,” said Trey. “Or as long as I’m near them, I suppose.”
A crack of light broke through the darkness, right behind Trey and Zeke.
I only had time to look over my shoulder a second, to make out what I thought was—Mom? Normak? Had she boosted his portal-creating powers so he could act alone, and from the Earth side of things?—when Trey stumbled from the force of the portal opening and fell backward into it.
I felt the slam of force against my bubble before I saw it, whipping back around to focus back on my powers, but it was too late. Xerxes had seen his chance and taken it, diving to grab hold of Hazel’s prone body as my protection bubble shattered to
pieces.
“Bryony!” shouted Mom through the portal, reaching a hand out, almost touching Rio, who’d stood nearest to Trey before he’d fallen through.
Xerxes shouted at his companions and one Nelian man and one Nelian woman held their hands out toward each other, creating a portal of their own.
Hazel under his arm, limping from his leg wound, Xerxes was halfway through the portal.
And before I could confer with any of my men, I recreated the protection bubble around me and slammed myself forward toward Xerxes, pushing up against his back and sending the three of us alone tumbling through it.
There’d be no more of this. We were ending it today.
With a crack, the portal snapped out of existence behind us as we continued to tumble, Hazel’s golden-white hair flying as she went rolling into the grass and clonked against a swing set.
A swing set.
I blinked, pushing myself up, looking around. Veras Academy’s backyard.
We were home.
And he was fucked.
He seemed to understand this as he raised himself up on one forearm, his leather Nelian vest torn in several places.
A wry chortle escaped his lips. “You followed me? Why? Tell me.”
I’d had no intention of telling that asshole anything, but I found my lips moving before I could stop them.
I’d forgotten about his truth-pulling ability.
“You took Hazel.”
He glanced at her prone form, arching an eyebrow. “She told me you were her enemy.”
Settling on my knees, I brought my bubble of protection out and wrapped it around him before he could get any ideas. He could ask me whatever he liked, so long as he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Do you show pity to your enemies?” His voice shook slightly as he spoke. “Tell me.”
“I do,” I answered, the truth surprising even me. All the rage burning inside me at my plan gone disastrously wrong, at Hazel’s idiocy and cruelty, and that was the answer that was my truth.
“How fortunate for me,” said Xerxes. He groaned as he attempted to sit up straighter.
“Tell me, did Alarik’s plan work?” he asked. “Is your world saved from destruction?”
“It is,” I said, drawing on everything I’d learned about this planet’s history, how close it had come to permanent detrimental change to its climate and life forms. “You’d understand that if you bothered to pay attention during your decades on Earth.”
“I’ve been in a prison,” he said darkly. “A place I never even knew could exist before I encountered this putrid species.”
I let the comment slide. The door to the Academy flung open and out burst Trey—he’d simply fallen through to the school, thank Mother Nelia—followed by Mom and all four of my dads. So many of my professors, along with a cluster of Nelian guards and bodyguards, funneled through the door like a massive wave and spread out in the yard, headed toward us.
“You had help,” I said, my bubble not wavering. “And not just the idiots here.” I jutted my chin toward Hazel. I didn’t even know if she was alive. Her face was swollen, her chin dyed with red.
“Not every Nelian embraces King Alarik’s methods of letting humanity’s hubris and stupidity go unpunished,” said Xerxes. His mouth turned up in a cruel smile. “Saving this Earth of yours was only half the job Mother Nelia tasked us with.”
“You’re wrong,” I said.
“Oh?”
“Not everyone here deserves your hatred.”
“Well, princess,” said Xerxes, his gaze turning toward the mass now just a few yards away, his voice almost hard to hear beneath the shouting. “When you’re queen, I hope you’ll remember that not all of your people feel that way.”
I would.
I’d stop thinking of my destiny as some kind of dull fate.
“Then I’ll show them what humanity has to offer,” I said, offering him my truth unbidden.
Epilogue
“Mom, I’m fine. I remembered the sunblock.” I shook the bottle in front of my phone so Mom could see the proof.
“But remember you have to reapply it,” she said. “And watch out for sharks in the water—”
“Okay, darlin’, I think that’s enough smothering,” said Papa Zander, directing the hovering phone screen away from her. In my head, even across these hundreds of miles, he was able to speak. “Sorry, pumpkin. It’s just that you’ve never been out on your own like this. And so soon after last week. She can’t help but worry too much.”
I’m not alone, I told him in my head back, taking in the beach all around me.
This was nothing like the beach surrounding the lake back home. The sand was warm beneath my toes, the water bluer, the sun brighter overhead. Beside me on the towel beneath the beach umbrella sat Rajani, as fit as a fiddle, sipping on a piña colada.
“Nothing’s going to take me by surprise again,” she said, flexing her arm and letting her metal scales grow. “Not even a fucking shark, Professor Aurora.” She spoke loudly so my phone could pick her up and I readjusted the screen to get her in the video.
“See?” I said. “I’m fine.”
Papa Zander smiled. “I know you girls are. Probably don’t even need the—what was it? Five men you brought along?”
“If Bry was going to bring her four dates, I figured what was one more?” She turned and looked toward Connak, who was dipping a toe carefully in the lapping water, his chest still covered in a bandage from the wound Xerxes’ rebels had dealt him last week. He jumped and Rajani laughed, taking another sip of her drink. “I like them buff and dorky,” she said under her breath.
Pop Nash got on the phone. “Rou and Darien asked me to remind Derek not to lose track of his passport.” Yeah, the “spring break road trip” had become more of an all-expenses-paid tropical vacation to the Caribbean. I was dating three princes, after all. And Natch engineers had figured out how to make air travel less pollutive in the past couple of decades.
Derek lounged next to me on a beach chair, his Hawaiian-style shirt open and exposing his broad, chiseled chest, his flower-patterned swim trunks nothing out of the ordinary but really setting off those calves like no one’s business. His nose was in an old-fashioned book, but almost like he felt me looking at him, he looked up and beamed.
I grinned. “Derek can take care of himself, too.”
“Yeah, but you know how he is. Head in a book. I’m surprised the kid takes so well to a workout,” Pop Nash added.
“He does indeed.” I peeled my sunglasses off and bit the ear piece as I watched him.
“Okay, okay,” said Pop Nash, reddening. “You be careful, kid.”
Dad Jayden took over the phone and got right to business, giving me an update on the situation back home. “Xerxes is now in Nelian custody. There’s no one to blackmail on his home planet. They’re building him a special jail cell outside of the heart of Nelia.”
Daddy Alarik appeared in the camera beside Dad Jayden’s shoulder. “It’s a cabin,” he explained. “With guards posted—guards I can trust.” He ran a hand through the top of his thick, green hair and muttered under his breath. “The others are getting their own cabins. Separate from him.”
Since there was no prison on Nelia—there’d been no need for it before the schism between Daddy Alarik and his former best friend—this was something, even if it might have seemed rather cush, considering what they’d threatened to do. But Daddy and I had discussed it. It was time for Nelia to serve out punishment—but in our way. A gentler way. A way more likely to change hearts than letting a man rot in a cell for several decades.
“What about Uncle Rhett and Monroe?” I asked.
“Fine,” said Dad Jayden. “Wade discharged them last night. They just need time to recuperate and they should be back on their feet in no time.”
“Alanna is taking good care of them,” Daddy Alarik added.
“But what about her head?” I asked. Despite being bound outside of the cave we’d been imp
risoned in, Alanna had managed to knock herself unconscious by striking her head against a rock in order to let everyone’s powers return and give us all a fighting chance.
“Nelians heal quickly,” said Daddy Alarik. “She’s doing better than her husbands are.”
That was a relief. She had looked fine when I’d seen her last. Then there was the question I was dreading. “And Hazel?”
“She’s almost well enough to go home,” said Dad Jayden matter-of-factly. “Though she’ll need plastic surgery if she wants to fix her nose.”
I grumbled under my breath. I hoped her nose never settled quite right again. It would be the least punishment she deserved.
“The royal family of Britain is working on how to handle her once she’s arrived. Since we had her deported,” said Daddy Alarik, his nose in the air. “I wish I could banish the rest of her traitors away from you.”
“It’s fine, Daddy. They were all expelled—just two months before graduation. I think that’ll give them plenty of cause to regret their actions.”
“Well, we’ll let you get back to it,” said Papa Zander, taking over the phone. “Don’t have too much fun,” he added in my head.
I sent him an image of me sticking my tongue out in my head, but I was all smiles on the phone.
He clamped his lips together, his eyes sparkling in amusement.
“Bye, honey!” called Mom. I said goodbye to each of them, blowing a kiss before ending the call.
After slipping the phone back into my beach bag, I put my sunglasses back on and stared out at the beach around me. We were missing a few of our group. They’d only gone inside for something in the hotel room; it shouldn’t have been taking them this long, especially not with the fastest man on Earth among them.
Maybe it was just the events of the last week, but the back of my neck prickled as panic started brewing in my gut.
“Did your brother get in trouble?” asked Rajani.
“Huh?” I turned toward her.
“Sage. For the firework distraction you told me about,” she said.
“Oh, no. Least of my parents’ worries, I guess,” I said. “He and Lacey are having a staycation over the break. She seems to be doing better. Must have been nerves about sharing the news about the engagement on top of everything else.”
