“Let’s get your bags.” Alice’s eyes widened when she stepped back and saw Cassie’s short blond hair and pink streaks.
Cassie smiled and tossed her head. “You like?”
“Let’s go get your bags,” Alice repeated.
* * *
Alice drove her pickup truck east along One Hundredth Avenue, cutting through the heart of Fort St. John. They passed the old Lido Theater and other places that brought back memories from Cassie’s youth. Growing up in Hudson’s Hope, if you wanted to see a new-release movie, you first had to make the hour-and-a-half drive to Fort St. John. A person really had to want to see a movie to come all this way.
They drove west with the Rocky Mountains looming before them and turned onto the Alaska Highway, the only real highway in all of the Peace River Valley. In minutes, the friendly little shops and businesses of downtown Fort St. John were gone, replaced by ugly brown pulp and paper plants. Cassie sipped her Tim Horton’s coffee and warily contemplated the plumes of dark black smoke rising from the stacks of the mills. How much carbon monoxide did these mills release into the atmosphere each day? The forests of northern British Columbia were among the most beautiful in the world, yet the main focus in the north seemed to be all about destroying them. She sighed.
“What’s up?” her sister asked.
“Nothing,” Cassie answered. Her sister worked for a logging company. There was no point in bringing up greenhouse gases and the environment again.
Minutes later, on the outskirts of the city, they drove by the provincial park built around Charlie Lake. In the light of the setting sun, the surface of the lake looked as if it was on fire. It was so pretty that just for a moment, Cassie forgot why she was home—but just for a moment. Then she saw the new sign on the side of the highway, advertising the economic benefits of the new Site C Dam and reservoir built along the Peace River.
“They built it already?” She heard the bitterness in her own voice but didn’t really care.
“It went up fast—surprisingly fast actually,” Alice answered. “It’s been operating for over a month now.”
“The first two dams weren’t enough?”
“Guess not.”
“One more nail in the planet’s coffin.” Cassie sipped from her coffee.
“People need electricity, Cassie. Even environmentalists.”
“Whatever.”
Her sister slowed the truck down and turned left onto Highway 29, a two-lane road that climbed through the twisting foothills of the Peace River Valley. They drove past a Shell station, the last gas station before Hudson’s Hope, the last symbol of civilization before Cassie was back in exile.
Cassie had taken this route so many times she could have followed it in her sleep. Once they were out of in the suburbs of Fort St. John, the few residential areas on either side of the Alaska Highway gave way to vast forests of lodgepole pine and spruce—one moment civilization, the next wilderness. They were in the real north now, unforgiving and ancient.
“So,” said Alice, hesitation in her voice. “Can we talk about this?”
“Not a whole lot to talk about,” said Cassie, not wanting to talk about it at all.
“Cassie, baby, I’m not stupid. I know the semester isn’t over yet.”
“It is for me.” Cassie turned her head and pretended to watch the trees flow past.
“What do you mean? It was a lot of money.”
“You’ve told me that before, a thousand times.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Alice glanced at Cassie. “You know what I mean. It’s just that, well, there isn’t that much money. Are you… pregnant?”
Cassie snorted, shook her head. “God, Alice. Right to that, huh? No. I’m not pregnant.”
“Well, why?”
“I kind of got into a fight.”
“Oh, Jesus, Cassie. Did you hurt someone?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“What happened?”
“Look. The fight, the thing with the police… this was just the last straw. Things weren’t really working for me at UBC. University wasn’t my thing.”
“The police?” Her sister’s eyes grew large.
“Watch the road!” Cassie snapped.
Alice swerved back to her side of the road just as a large transport truck blared past and then bit her lip. She looked so tired that Cassie felt guilty again, but then her anger forced it back down. Alice might have paid for university, but only because their parents had left her in charge of Cassie’s money, money they had left for Cassie. It didn’t mean Alice owned Cassie or got to make decisions for her. She wasn’t her mother.
“The police?” her sister repeated.
Cassie sat quietly for a few moments. “There was a party in one of the dorms. Actually, there were a lot of parties in the dorms, but this one may have gotten a bit out of hand.”
“Drugs, Cassie?”
“No, not drugs, Alice. Are you going to let me tell you or not?”
“Sorry, go on.”
“So, I was there with a friend, Belinda. I leave her alone to go to the bathroom, and when I come back, this asshole is trying to get her out the door. She’s barely conscious, and he’s practically carrying her, and no one is saying a word or doing anything. I didn’t even know this guy, and he wasn’t a student, just some dirtbag who crashed the party. I’m pretty sure he slipped her something. Anyhow, no one else was doing anything, so I did.”
“Oh, Cassie. Why?”
“So, I tell him to leave her alone, and he gets all up in my face and starts threatening me and—”
“Really, Cassie? Threatening you? Are you exaggerating a bit?”
“Were you there?”
“Go on.” Her sister’s expression was strained as though she was sitting on the toilet.
“So, I stopped him.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Cassie! You assaulted some poor man, didn’t you?”
“Weren’t you listening to what I just said? This is how serial rapists operate.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic. You’re not the hero here.”
Cassie felt her face flush. She shook her head and looked away. Why did she even bother? Alice lived in an isolated community in the North, a world where bad things didn’t happen, where there were no rapists, no drug pushers. And in her naiveté, she insisted the rest of the world was just like her, all evidence to the contrary. Even now, she just couldn’t accept what Cassie was telling her. She’d do anything to maintain her delusion that the world wasn’t dangerous and that it wasn’t full of really bad people who did really bad things. Cassie hadn’t been wrong. She couldn’t prove it, but that guy had been a shitbag who showed up at dorm parties to troll for young women. And he did slip something into Belinda’s drink—Cassie was sure of that as well. Belinda might have been drunk, but she hadn’t been insensible. Had it not been for Cassie, that asshole would have raped her—if he didn’t kill her as well and then drop her body into the Pacific Ocean to wash up on English Bay days later, bloated and half eaten by crabs. Bad things might not happen in Hudson’s Hope, but they sure as hell did in Vancouver—things that would send her naive sister into a spin wobble if she knew only a tenth of them. She’d never—not ever—get Alice to see that.
“Anyhow,” she continued. “The police took him to the hospital and me to jail.”
“Oh my God. Is he pressing charges?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, Christ, Cassie. We can’t afford lawyer fees, not with the tuition.”
Cassie bit her lip and stared at her hands. “That might not be a problem anymore,” she said so softly it was almost a whisper.
“Why? You can still go back and finish the semester, can’t you?”
“They kind of asked me not to. I’m not doing so good. In fact, I’m kind of failing.”
“Failing what?”
“Everything.”
“Cassie, how much were you partying?”
“That’s not it. Well�
� not all of it. The truth is it’s just too hard for me. This is not who I am. I’m not cut out for university.”
“That’s nonsense. You’re smart enough, and you know it. You’re just not trying.”
“I’m trying. You don’t know!”
“Yes, I do know. It’s all about the accident, isn’t it? You haven’t given a damn about anything since Mom and Dad died.”
Cassie rounded on her. “Don’t bring that up again! Not this time—not every time!” She knew she shouldn’t yell but couldn’t stop herself.
Alice slowed the truck down and pulled over to the side of the road, her tires crunching on the gravel. When the vehicle stopped, she turned and faced Cassie, torment in her face. Once again, Cassie felt the weight of guilt. This was all her fault. Everything was always her fault. She screwed up everything she did.
Alice tentatively reached out and put her hand on Cassie’s forearm. “Baby, you have to make peace with what happened. It’s ruining your life. Can’t you see that? It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know it’s not my goddamned fault.” She felt the tears welling in her own eyes, but she wasn’t going to talk about this. She wasn’t ever going to talk about this.
“No, baby. I don’t think you do know that. I think you blame yourself. I think you’ve given up trying—given up on everything.”
Cassie’s world was spinning out of control, and it needed to stop. “Please. Please. Just let it go. I’ve moved on, and I don’t want to keep talking about it.”
Her sister’s eyes had also filled with tears. “That’s just it, baby. You haven’t.”
Cassie wiped her own eyes and looked away. There was nothing but trees as far as she could see. “Please. I just want to go home, to be alone for a while. I need to catch my breath, to figure things out.”
Her sister patted her arm. “We’ll work them out together, baby.”
Cassie said nothing more, and after a long period of uncomfortable silence, Alice pulled back onto the highway.
Chapter 3
Maelhrandia stalked the clearing where the rest of the strange intruders had simply vanished. She had meant to capture at least two of the spies, but her boggart warriors had been too slow, and one of the gwyllgi had managed to savage its prey so badly that she had decided to just give the sad creature to her boggarts to finish off. They may have been a tad… extreme with their knives, and the strange creature had survived longer than she would have thought possible. But at least now she had a sense of their toughness.
There had been other intruders in these ancient ruins as well, but somehow, they had simply vanished. Now, all around her, boggart guardsmen combed the brush, seeking further evidence of the invaders. Boggarts, huge and muscular, made wonderful warriors but were of little use for anything else. Even now, several of the four-armed, blue-skinned warriors followed behind her gwyllgi hounds as they sniffed for scents in the jungle. The ambush had not gone as well as she had planned, and the invaders had actually managed to kill one of her gwyllgi. Their strange weapons threw fire, but she had sensed no magic in them.
She had underestimated the intruders, and she’d not make that same mistake again. But who were they? What were they?
Her sister Horlastia, Princess of Terlingas, the Mistress of Dunnewinder’s Shadow, was kneeling at the center of the ruins, examining the bizarre metal cylinder that was all that now remained of the intruders. It was the size of a small trunk but made entirely from metal. Truly, it was a wondrous device with intricate markings and colored glass. Whatever its purpose had been, it was useless now. Flames had burned it from the inside out, scorching its interior, cracking and scarring the glass, leaving it destroyed. Horlastia would take it with her, anyhow—just in case their mother, or her gnome tinkerers, could discover anything from it.
Maelhrandia had an unsettling heaviness in her stomach, and chills ran through her as she let her gaze drift across the ancient stone slabs within the clearing. These were fae seelie ruins; there could be no doubt. Centuries ago, her ancestors had built these stone obelisks—for a purpose she did not fathom—yet she, the ruler of this holdfast, hadn’t even known they existed. Horlastia would underscore that fact with their mother. The message would be subtle yet unmistakable: what kind of princess could not know of the existence of a place of power within her own holdfast? If Maelhrandia were lucky, her mother would simply believe she was stupid and lazy; if she were unlucky, her mother would suspect Maelhrandia had always known yet kept their existence a secret, a betrayal that would see Maelhrandia executed.
These ruins were a place of power. There was a ley line here, an arcane convergence. The place was throbbing with esoteric power; she could feel it in her bones, in her very being. She didn’t have her mother’s divination talents, but she could still sense a ley line—the cosmic thread that wove together space and time. It could be no accident that the invaders had broken through in such a place, but where had they come from? Where had they gone back to? And when would they return?
Maelhrandia’s talents lay with manipulation—using the forces of magic to cloak herself. She was perhaps the finest mage-scout of all her people. Whereas Horlastia, a mage-warden, excelled at destruction spells. Maelhrandia, while capable enough with Drake’s-Gift and Storm-Tongue, would never be able to stand in combat against her sister, a fact Horlastia never let her forget. Maelhrandia glanced at her sister’s armored back. Like all fae seelie, Horlastia was slight of frame with dark lavender skin the color of night. She wore dragon-scale armor but had removed her winged helmet, so her white hair hung down just above her collar.
“There are ley lines here,” Horlastia said.
“I sense it as well. The invaders must have used it to link to us.”
Horlastia snorted. “Not it, sister. Them. There are at least two, maybe three, all converging here.”
“That’s not—”
“Possible?” Her sister cocked her head, raised an eyebrow, and smiled condescendingly. “I say it is possible, sister. The convergence of three ley lines all within the ruins of our own people.”
Three ley lines? Now she did feel them. She had been so overwhelmed by the magical energy present that she hadn’t noticed there was more than one ley line. This must be one of the old sites, from the time of the Banishment. Maelhrandia felt the weight of her neglect upon her shoulders, her ignorance weighing her down. Not one of her sisters would ever accept that Maelhrandia had not known of this place. She would never have believed it, either. But her sisters didn’t rot away here the way she did. Her holdfast, the Tarloth Delta, was overgrown jungle for hundreds of leagues. The ruins of an entire city could have been swallowed by the jungle in the span of only a handful of years. This was not Maelhrandia’s fault. No one could have known of this place’s existence—not without stumbling upon it. Or being led to it. By invaders.
“I shall guard this site,” Maelhrandia said. “You must bring word of this attack to the seelie court, to our mother.”
“Must I?” Horlastia let the smallest smile creep across her lavender features.
Maelhrandia’s face burned. “Sister. The invaders have not attacked my holdfast. They have attacked the Fae Seelie Empire. They have spied upon us and have brought violence to our servants. Mother will wish to know.”
“Oh, of that I have no doubt… dear sister.”
A boggart captain approached and stood not ten paces away, his fishlike head bowed. She smelled him before she saw him. Behind him, his warriors still moved through the thick bushes, still searching. Yet all they had found so far had been boot prints and broken ground. The intruders had left almost nothing else behind except this burnt metal device.
Horlastia rose, brushed the dirt and twigs from her dragon-scale armor, and adjusted her curved saber so its hilt was close at hand. Maelhrandia considered her sister, feeling somewhat insulted. Did she really believe that Maelhrandia would attack her head-on? Idiot warriors.
“I shall leave immediately,” Horlastia said. “O
ur mother was most insistent that I bring back the prisoner.”
“Of course. I shall have it brought to you.”
Horlastia, looking uninterested, turned away and headed toward her mount at the edge of the clearing.
Maelhrandia glanced at the waiting captain and nodded. “Report.”
“Mistress, we’ve found nothing but these strange metal pieces—talismans perhaps.”
The captain, still holding his shield and sword in his outer arms, held out one of his thin, short inner arms, palm up. In it, he held the odd metal tubes that they had found scattered elsewhere after the invaders had used their fire-weapons. Maelhrandia reached out her hand but refrained from touching them.
“They are not iron, Mistress.”
Frowning, she took one, forcing herself not to flinch as she did. One end of the tube was open, exposing its hollow interior. She held it to her nostril and sniffed, immediately wishing she hadn’t. It stunk worse than a dwarven forge. She dropped the object onto the ground and wiped her palm against the captain’s dark-green cloak.
“String up the carcass of the one your warriors played with. If these spies return, make the carcass the first thing they see but also leave enough warriors to deal with them if they don’t turn and flee.” She turned away as the boggart captain bowed deeply.
Her sister was already at her wyvern near the outer edge of the clearing, where it had just enough space to land. The boggart warriors wisely avoided the creature, giving it all the space it wanted. The beasts were stupid but had foul tempers and were prone to lash out at anything that came within reach—with the exception of their riders. Now, her sister mounted the wyvern and sat upon its ornate black-leather saddle. Behind her saddle, tied like a corpse, was the sole surviving invader, a black hood over his head. He struggled in his bonds, but it did him no good. He was larger than Maelhrandia and her sister but shorter and less muscular than a boggart. And his skin was pale and revolting, the color of maggots, not at all the beautiful lavender hue of the fae seelie. The large saddlebags on the side of the wyvern held the weapons and equipment the invaders had been carrying. Her mother would want to see everything.
Starlight (The Dark Elf War Book 1) Page 2
