by Eva Chase
My life would really be a lot easier if they bothered more often.
Here and there I paused with an instinctive urge to leave some behind. For next time. My hands balled, and I shoved more into the bags.
There wasn’t going to be a “next time.” No more rebirths. No certainty that no matter what happened, I’d find my king again. This was the last life we were going to get, however little might remain of it.
Darton meandered amid the shelves, stopping to finger a folded cloth, to sniff a bunch of herbs dangling from the top of one shelf. He wrinkled his nose. “It reminds me of the apothecary shop. At least, as well as I remember that at all.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve had any other incredibly helpful memories?” I said. His recollection of visiting the apothecary in our first lives had led us to the brainstorm of using lenses to amplify the power of sunlight. That idea had allowed us to destroy the dark fae mercenary who’d attempted to grab Darton for his own purposes, and powered the sun trap in our house.
“Not so far.” Darton rubbed his mouth. “I still can’t even remember why I was looking into the dark fae without talking to you about it. I mean, it’s one thing to want to help on my own, but having seen what I have now, I’m pretty sure I was smart enough to realize I’d accomplish more with your knowledge on my side.”
“You grew up back then knowing you’d be king,” I said. “You weren’t used to having to hold yourself back for anyone else. Besides, knowing me, you might have asked and I just told you to leave it alone and let me handle everything.”
Although I didn’t actually recall Arthur ever coming to me asking what strategies I’d looked into for defeating the dark fae. He’d listened well enough when I’d talked about them, but he’d seemed willing to leave that conflict to me while he dealt with his many totally human opponents. I’d never realized he’d wanted to tackle that part of our problem himself.
“Hmm,” Darton said, sounding unconvinced. “I’m sure I could have pressed you into talking if I’d tried hard enough.”
That was also true. I’d always had trouble denying my king anything.
I moved to my stacks of musty journals, some dating back hundreds of years. A pang ran through me at the thought of the different set of better-cared-for journals I’d left behind on the other side of the ocean. My father’s friend Cormag—the elder who’d insisted on the damned oath—had given me a set of my father’s journals that detailed his observations and thoughts on the dark fae influence on Arthur’s family line. It hadn’t made sense to bring them to our confrontation with Rhedyn. I’d left them with two of Jagger’s fae-hunter colleagues for safe-keeping, thinking I could come back for them.
I hadn’t expected to be making quite such a huge or hasty exit.
It would have been good to pour over those more thoroughly right now, but the truth was that nostalgia and family ties aside, they hadn’t offered me much useful information in the skim I had been able to give them. If my father had figured out anything that could definitely have changed Arthur’s fate, I’d have known about it.
Darton crushed a few leaves of the herb between his thumb and forefinger. A sharp, bittersweet smell drifted through the air. His gaze had gone distant.
“You said Rhedyn let us kill her. That she sacrificed herself so that she could free the Darkest One. Right?”
“Yep. A sneaky trick. We were going to kill her anyway, but she stopped fighting at the last moment. Giving herself over so she could tap into that magic.” I made a face and opened up one of my journals to check the contents.
“So she could just make that choice in the moment, because she wanted to? Did she need any magical materials for that? Or is it something the fae can just naturally do?”
“Sacrificial magic is completely internal,” I said. “It’s about the shape of your will and the strength of your intention.” I paused, glancing up. “Why are you asking?”
Darton shrugged. “I just wondered. Obviously it’s not something we’d want the fae using against us again.”
It wasn’t something I wanted him thinking about either. Darton could be a little too eager to prove himself a hero sometimes. You’d think years of princely and then kingly valor would have satisfied that urge. It wasn’t as if a twenty-year-old college guy could match that kind of past. But so far that fact hadn’t stopped him from trying.
Which was why I loved him, wasn’t it?
That was another line of thinking it wasn’t wise to go down. I bit my lip, poked through the rest of the stacked journals, and finally grabbed a couple to add to my bags. I wasn’t sure they’d be useful, but they seemed like the most likely.
The duffels weighed heavily on my shoulders now. “Okay,” I said. “I think we’re done here.”
Darton held out his hand in an offer. I let him take one of the bags off me. I swung the other behind me and heaved up the storage room door. The bag bumped against my hip with each step as we walked down the hall. Fifteen hundred years of stockpiling and experimenting... and it still didn’t feel like anywhere near enough to sustain us through the battle ahead.
Chapter Four
The newscaster’s solemn voice carried from our TV. “This catastrophic storm shows no sign of abating. Many coastal areas have completely flooded, but the intense winds are making further evacuation difficult both by land and by sea. Rescue teams are doing as much as they can under these extreme conditions. Still no agreement from meteorologists on what might have caused this truly bizarre and horrific weather over the United Kingdom.”
The five of us huddled on the couch and loveseat winced together at the video footage of telephone poles toppling in the gale. On the TV screen, shingles flew away off a nearby house’s roof. The pelting rain colored the entire image in shades of gray.
No lightning, of course. The Darkest One wanted her torment to be as grim and gloomy as possible.
“So all that was stirred up by just one of these faeries?” Keevan said, his eyebrows high.
“The oldest and most powerful of all of them,” I said. And probably not quite at her full power yet. She was just warning up. My stomach listed queasily. “Plus she’ll have all the lesser dark fae in the country pitching in.”
“Man.” He rubbed his hand over his dark face. “That’s just— Shouldn’t you be over there, like, fighting her or something? Isn’t that what wizards do?”
“I’m the only wizard I know, and I can’t match that.” I waved at the TV. “If we’re going to stop her, or at least contain her, we’re going to have to be incredibly smart about it. She’ll show more of her hand soon.” I hoped... and also dreaded. I couldn’t imagine she’d wait much longer before coming after me and Darton.
“But all those people...” Izzy shuddered where she was perched next to Keevan, her pale auburn waves drifting over her shoulders. “What about the light fae? Those enclaves you talked about, here and over there. Can’t they do anything?”
I made a face. “The light fae generally don’t care about anything they don’t have to care about. The ones affected in Britain will be doing what they can to protect themselves—and not wanting to expend any additional energy trying to get into some sort of fae war. The ones here won’t see any reason to get involved, since it isn’t affecting them. They’re not exactly philanthropists.”
Beside me, Priya twisted her hands in her lap. “My old enclave might be willing to do something. They did help monitor what the dark fae were up to around here last week.” My former roommate had grown up with the light fae as a sort of changeling, until they’d brought her back to the human world to be adopted. And to be fair, her bunch had stepped up when we’d needed them. But keeping an eye on things and waging war were pretty different requests.
“I’ll keep that in mind, when I have a better idea of our best strategy,” I said. “The other enclave I’m familiar with around here wasn’t even willing to keep us protected on their own territory, so they’re definitely not getting involved in some huge confl
ict off of it.”
The news broadcast moved on to the next big story. “With the International Peace Summit approaching in just one week, the Windy City’s hotels have already started to fill with citizens from all around the world, eager to have a voice in their leaders’ conversations. The summit is scheduled to be hosted at Chicago’s Fairning Convention Center in—”
Darton switched off the TV and stood up. “We’ll do what we can, when we can. Let’s get the table set. The food should be here any minute.”
The rest of us ambled with him to the kitchen. He’d texted his best friends last night to let them know we’d gotten back in one piece, for now, and I’d reached out to Priya. After all the five of us had already been through together, I guessed I shouldn’t be surprised that they’d all insisted on coming right over after classes to confirm the whole “in one piece” part in person. But all their visit was leading to was a whole bunch of uncomfortable conversations.
“Wouldn’t it be better if you were at least closer to where the dark fae are casting their magic?” Izzy said, grabbing glasses out of the cupboards. “I mean, so that when you know what to do, you can act right away.”
I turned away from her to place a stack of plates on the table. “I don’t think there is any safe way of getting into Britain at the moment.” Maybe flights were diverting around the storm to land in France or other countries closer than we were right now... but the closer we were to the Darkest One, the more I’d feel that impulse to fulfill my oath. Even now, the itch scrabbled faintly under my fingernails. Darton hadn’t let me go off to my storage locker on my own—he sure as hell wasn’t hanging back here while I flew across the ocean.
Thankfully my king was also quick to defend my reasoning, even if he didn’t know all of it. “Em jumped us back here in five seconds flat,” he said, handing Keevan another Coke from the fridge. “If we need to get somewhere, distance isn’t going to be a problem.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Keevan asked. “I mean, I’m still not cool with evil faeries and crazy magic and all that, but you know if you need someone to have your backs, we’re here.”
Izzy and Priya nodded. My heart squeezed. I’d never really had friends in any of my lives before—no one except my king. I’d never been able to let anyone else in on the secret of who I was. It was scary... but also kind of wonderful.
“If anything comes up that I can delegate to you guys, I’ll let you know,” I said, and I meant it. We wouldn’t still be here at all if it weren’t for them.
For a moment, the room went quiet except for the faint clink of Priya setting cutlery around the table. I suspected we were all trying to think of something less dire to talk about. And apparently failing, because when Keevan cleared his throat, what came out was, “Are you two staying holed up in here again for the time being, then? No classes, no football practice...”
“At this point, I’d probably be putting everyone else at college in danger by showing up there,” Darton said. “I don’t like it, but that’s just the way it is.” He caught my eyes with a meaningful look.
We’d argued over the last couple weeks about how much of his regular life he’d have to leave behind for his safety. How much he didn’t want to leave it behind. But that had been before the dark fae had threatened his sister and nearly blasted us into pieces.
“Well, we’ll keep our eyes open around campus,” Izzy said. “If I see anything strange, I’ll let you two know right away.” She’d proven especially sensitive to glooms and other dark vermin that normally passed beneath human awareness.
“The campus crusaders!” Keevan announced, slinging an arm around Izzy’s shoulders to give her a quick hug. She laughed and elbowed him. He let go of her sooner than I’d bet he wanted to, given the puppy dog look on his face as she turned away. I wasn’t the only one around here who had it bad.
A cool prickling ran over my skin. I froze and focused on my senses. The feeling wasn’t the same as the oath’s itch—I could still feel that too. This was an impression wafting in from beyond the house’s walls. Something was present out there that I didn’t like. I knew I didn’t like it very, very definitely, even without knowing what it was.
The prickling didn’t have the pungent flavor I’d have expected if the Darkest One herself had suddenly vaulted to our doorstep, impossible as that was anyway, but my heart started pounding. “Something’s outside,” I said.
The others fell silent. “The Chinese delivery guy?” Keevan ventured with a weakly hopeful smile.
I shook my head. Whatever it was, I didn’t get the sense it was moving. It was just there. Waiting. Somehow that unnerved me even more. It almost felt as if the presence wanted me to notice it.
Priya shivered. “I, uh, suddenly don’t feel so well either.” She rubbed her arms. “What’s going on, Emmaline?”
The house’s protective systems hadn’t tripped. The baggie of salt I’d replenished and returned to my pocket wasn’t trembling in warning of a dark creature crossing the boundary I’d drawn around the house. Whatever was causing that sensation, it was keeping a healthy distance. For now.
I swallowed hard. “I’m not sure, but I think I’d better check. The rest of you stay in here. Keep the door closed until I’m back.”
“Em,” Darton protested. I walked past him to the wand I’d left in the basket by the coat rack for exactly this sort of situation. My fingers curled around the warm wood. The pulse of life and magic inside it soothed my nerves just slightly.
“I don’t know what kind of danger we might be facing yet,” I said. I’d spent all day putting down every protection I could think of around the house, but some of them were untested. They might not be enough to hold an attacker at bay, depending on what was out there.
Darton jogged down the hall to his bedroom and emerged a second later with Excalibur in his hands. Held upright, ready to strike, it glowed with its connection to his soul. I’d enchanted that sword for my king centuries ago in our first lives, and it still lit up for him like no one else.
“Holy shit,” Keevan said, his eyes widening. “You didn’t tell me you brought back souvenirs.”
Darton’s lips formed a crooked smile. “Everyone, meet Excalibur. I’m pretty fond of it, mostly because the dark fae don’t seem to like it very much.”
That was an understatement. Okay, maybe I was better off with Darton out there with me. We had worked together, sword and magic, awfully well back in Britain.
“Fine, fine,” I said. “But stay close to me and to the door. The lights aren’t potent enough to completely repel a full dark fae, and I don’t know if the rest of my spells were enough to do the trick.”
He listened to me at least on that count. I eased open the door, stretching my awareness ahead of me. Nothing close. Nothing in motion. I slipped outside, and Darton joined me.
We stood shoulder to shoulder as I kicked the door shut behind us. He held the sword poised, his eyes intent on the darkness beyond the flood of the solar lamps. It was only mid-evening, but the contrast made the space beyond the ring of light nearly black.
But only nearly. My salt pouch shuddered a second before a shape shifted near the edge of the light. I tensed, my hand clenching around my wand. Words of a spell leapt to my tongue.
A face framed by tendrils of shadow swam into view at the edge of our protective light. Brown skin, pale eyes, a mocking smile. The salt’s vibrations intensified. Another figure emerged, and another, standing several feet apart, all around the house. Not the Darkest One, no, but her minions. We were surrounded by a circle of dark fae.
They didn’t move any closer. The sun-powered lights might not have been able to stop them completely, but they’d still drain the fae’s power. Maybe my herbs and salt and the rest were enough to hold them in place. Or maybe they weren’t here to take Darton quite yet anyway. Their master was still making her preparations, wasn’t she?
“We see you, halfling wizard,” a pale-faced woman sneered. “We know your weak
nesses.”
Another chuckled. “Consider this a reminder that we can take what we desire whenever we want.”
“The Darkest One is rising, and when she arrives, you will crumble in front of her.”
“How does it feel to know you’ve already failed?”
That last remark and the smirk that followed it cut deep. I swallowed hard and nudged Darton backward. “Stand around puffing yourselves up all you want,” I called to them. “We’ve got better things to do than listen to your rambling.”
They stayed where they were until I’d hauled the door open. Then I felt, like an exhaled breath, the pressure easing as they faded farther back into the shadows. But they didn’t leave completely. No. They were still waiting along the fringes of the forest beyond the field.
I’d felt them like that before, hadn’t I? So long ago the memory rose up like a mist in the back of my mind.
The horses’ hooves clopped along the packed dirt road. A thick, piney scent carried on the breeze from the dense forests on either side. An autumn chill laced the air, but the voices of the soldiers around my king and I were light with pride and relief. Even Arthur was smiling, in a weary sort of way.
We’d won. We’d finally pressed the invaders back far enough, sent them fleeing, left them so wrecked that they shouldn’t think it wise to return for a very, very long time. The country was safe. The people had been protected. What wasn’t there to celebrate?
A prickle crawled across my back. I wasn’t the only one who sensed it. My mare, who was calmer than most horses in the face of my half-fae nature, shied a few steps to the side. Arthur glanced at me with eyebrows raised, as if to question whether I’d managed to lose what little horsemanship I’d gained over the last several years at his side. He couldn’t feel that waft of unease.
They were here. I tugged my mare back into the line, but my gaze searched the shadows between the close-spaced trees. Something cold and cruel was watching our procession, out of the reach of the setting sun. Something fae. And only one kind of fae would give me that impression, like the edge of a cool blade scraping down my spine.
