Unwinnable

by May Dawson

  He dropped it on the ground, and some of the food rolled off into the hay that covered the rough wooden floor.

  “It’s nice to see all the animals together,” he said, bowing at the waist. “Including you, Princess.”

  She whirled as if she might attack him, but he was already banging the door closed again. She slammed into the wooden door, then stopped, her forehead pressed against the door, her fingers splayed above her head.

  Magic shimmered through the air as they sealed us back inside for the night.

  “They’re really charming,” Penn said and yawned, turning over onto his side. He seemed as if he were ready for sleep, no matter where.

  Meanwhile, I was already sliding across the hay, toward the ladder down to the first floor.

  “Maddie,” Rafe said, his voice warning.

  “You told me to talk to her earlier,” I said.

  “In the baths,” he began, then cut himself off. “You know what, Maddie, you use your best judgment.”

  I blew him a kiss before I started climbing down the ladder. It probably just seemed sassy, but it was the only way I could show him in front of all the guys that I appreciated what he’d just said. Trying to express that properly would embarrass all of us.

  But his faith meant more than I could say.

  When Raura saw me step down from the ladder, her eyes widened. Then she moved into a fighting stance. It was a subtle shifting of her body that I might not have noticed if I weren’t as well-trained as she was.

  “Relax,” I said, holding my hands out. I looked at the food, which had obviously been meant for all of us, which was now scattered in the hay. “They’re some real assholes, aren’t they? It’s all right, they gave us our packs, we’ve got food in there. Are you hungry?”

  She shrugged, then pressed her fingers to her lips.

  “He put a spell on you so you can’t talk?” I said. “Well, that seems innocent, doesn’t it?”

  She smiled, just faintly.

  “Silas,” I called, turning my head over my shoulder.

  He was right there, standing behind me. I jumped, then smacked him for scaring me.

  He glanced down at my hand on his chest, then raised an amused expression to my face. “Are you annoyed at me for always being at your service, Maddie?”

  “If only that were true,” I said.

  “Always,” he said, catching my hand and raising it to his lips. “Even if you don’t always care for how.”

  Before I could respond, he dropped my hand between us and moved to Raura.

  “I’m going to take the spell off, all right?” he said. “It might hurt.”

  She shook her head, her eyes resigned, as if she didn’t think he could succeed.

  “I might have some tricks up my sleeve,” he promised her. “After all, you were the one who seemed so impressed when you called me wizard.”

  She might not have been able to speak, but the way she quirked her eyebrows said a mouthful, anyway.

  He tried one spell after another. She shifted her weight impatiently, crossing her arms.

  “Just be patient,” Silas chided her. “I’m not done yet.”

  He began another incantation.

  Suddenly, there was a crackle of magic in the air. It spread through the room, and in the distance, I heard Lex say, “What the hell is that?”

  The magic snapped. I felt the ache of that broken magic in the back of my throat, like a tickle, and I coughed into my shoulder.

  Raura fell to her knees, her hands rising to her throat.

  Silas and I traded glances, then knelt next to her. She was wide eyed and horrified.

  Her voice came out in a rasp when she said, “He killed my mother.”

  “What?” Silas asked, his hand grasping her shoulder, steadying her.

  She shook her head, swallowing hard. “Never mind.”

  “Turic killed your mother?” I asked. “Did he put a spell on you so you couldn’t tell anyone?”

  She swallowed hard, touching her fingers to her lips. “There was a spell, but he wasn’t the one…it’s not important. Is Arlen all right? I saw him riding but…”

  I was pretty sure that it was important that Turic had killed her mother and that someone had sealed that secret away in her mind for however many years since. Silas and I exchanged a look, and he dropped his hands to his sides, his bright blue magic like smoke around his fingertips that disappeared into nothing.

  “He’s fine,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure if Arlen would see it quite the same way. “What happened?”

  “I was trying to take out Turic,” she said. “No one else. I didn’t want to kill him, but someone has to stop him…”

  She licked her lips, which looked raw and chapped, and sagged back against the wall. “I know it’s hard to believe. I wouldn’t believe me. But I was trying to warn Arlen off—when he grabbed you—and I also have to provide some cover for the Huntress. But that’s over now.”

  “And with Rafe?”

  “I didn’t recognize you two,” she said, frowning. “It all happened so fast.”

  “Why did you have the goblins attack us?” Lex asked. His voice was gentle, and I looked over my shoulder at him, glad that he was the one who had come to talk to her.

  “I didn’t,” she said. “As soon as I started shooting, the goblins seemed to come out of nowhere.”

  “They had a nest,” I said. “And someone marked it with runes.”

  “What did it look like?” Silas demanded.

  I marked the rough shape in the hay with the toe of my hiking boot.

  “It’s a control sigil,” Raura said. “Specifically for monsters. But I don’t use that one. It takes a massive amount of power.”

  “Like your father’s?” Silas asked. She cringed at the word, but nodded.

  “And he wants more power?” I asked.

  “He has some of the power of the king, but not all. Not yet.”

  “Tyson,” I called.

  He slid down the ladder and was by my side a minute later, a plastic bag of rehydrated stew in one hand and a plastic spoon stuck in the corner of his mouth. He still looked ridiculously sexy, with his rumpled hair and piercing eyes. “Yes?”

  “The rune you saw in the cave. Did it look like this?”

  Tyson studied it. “I mean, mostly I see hay, so…”

  “It looks like this,” Silas said, as magic ignited on his fingertip. He drew the rune on the wall, and it glowed golden.

  “Yep,” Tyson said. “That’s the one.”

  “Whoever opened that portal also sent the goblins after us,” I said. I turned to Silas. “Can you use the spell to control the Ravagers?”

  “If we can get them out of our way,” Lex began, then trailed off. I knew he didn’t trust Raura to speak openly.

  Raura sat down heavily on the stone floor. “You’d think I would never be surprised by what he can do, but… the people are terrified of the Ravagers. It’s the one reason they plead with the Delphine to let him take the throne—because when he’s at full-power, then he promises he can rid us of these monsters—”

  “We’re going to figure out a solution together,” I promised.

  “Maddie.” Lex gave me a warning look.

  “What?” I demanded. I trusted my instincts, and my instincts said Raura was innocent. I’d been the one to destroy the Huntress.

  “You’re part of a team,” he mouthed at me. “So you don’t get to make promises.” He jerked his jaw toward the loft.

  Raura tried to smile at me. “I think I’ll find a place to spread my bedroll down here. It’s been a long, long day.”

  I wanted to tell her that she could come up in the loft with us. I hated the feeling of being torn. But Ty put his hand on my back, giving me a look as if he had something he really wanted to tell me, so I went with my men back across the barn.

  As I climbed the ladder back into the loft, I wondered how everything had become so complicated. We’d had such a simple missio
n; come into the Fae world and get the shield. We hadn’t even made it to the temple yet.

  When we reached the loft, Rafe threw a worried look at Raura on the floor below, then summoned us all into the corner of the loft.

  “New plan,” he said. “We’re leaving Turic behind now. I don’t like—”

  Outside, there was a distant roaring, some beast we couldn’t identify, and we all tensed.

  “The team needs some rest,” Lex said. “We need to wait until close to morning, at least.”

  “And…creature…activity should diminish closer to dawn,” Silas said.

  “Chase, you’ll head back home,” Rafe said, and Chase nodded. “Lex and I are splitting up the team. Since Silas can open a portal, he’ll go with you.”

  He trailed off, reluctant to suggest any of our fellow shifters might not be perfectly trustworthy. But he admitted, “I think we’ll all feel better with our own team back home to deal with Alice and the Day.”

  “I will,” Chase said, his tone brusque.

  “We all will,” Rafe promised him, resting his hand on Chase’s shoulder, just for a second.

  I didn’t think Chase really believed that Skyla and Blake mattered to us as much as they did. Maybe it was hard to be a human who becomes part of a pack.

  “We’re going out there at night?” Penn jerked his thumb toward the world outside. “We don’t think maybe that’s a bad idea, given the monsters? That even the Fae are terrified of?”

  As if to punctuate his words, something roared again—closer this time. My heart beat a little faster.

  “We had to stay with Turic because he would’ve chased us,” Rafe said. “But he lost a lot of men today. He doesn’t have enough people to follow us and to deal with Raura.”

  “Oh no,” I said. “We can’t leave Raura behind.”

  Rafe turned on me, his brows rising. “You know she shot me earlier today, right? And for all we know, Turic sent her in with us as a spy. Don’t be naïve, Maddie.”

  “Don’t be naïve?” My voice came out soft.

  Tyson turned away, running his hand through his hair.

  “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings,” Rafe began.

  “No, fuck my feelings,” I said. “I don’t care about that. You see me as naïve, that’s fine,” I almost stumbled, because I hadn’t thought Rafe ever saw me as stupid, that was a new one. But it didn’t matter now. “What matters is that Raura might very well be innocent, and you know Turic is going to hurt her…”

  “Or she might not be innocent,” Rafe said. “Mission first. We’ve got to get that damn shield and get back home.”

  Tension seemed to shimmer in the air between us. His dark eyes were flashing, even in the dim light of the barn.

  “Maddie’s right,” Tyson said. “We need to get the shield, yes. But Raura helped us when we needed her. We can’t forget that.”

  Penn gave Ty a meaningful look, but Ty shook his head.

  “What?” Lex demanded, his voice harsh. He was obviously tracking their unspoken conversation. “Ty, there’s something going on with you. What the hell is it?”

  “It might be nothing,” Ty said. The seven of us turned skeptical gazes on him, and he seemed to relent under that pressure. He admitted, “I found this ring.”

  He unwound the bandages from his hand, revealing a slender gold ring on his right ring finger.

  “You found some weird jewelry in the Fae world and you put it on,” Jensen said. “Interesting life decisions.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to hear from you about life decisions,” Tyson said, but his heart wasn’t in it. “It almost seems as if—I know this sounds crazy—the ring talks to me.”

  “Oh my god.” Jensen said. “There’s some Lord of the Rings shit going on, and you didn’t think it might be worth mentioning?”

  “All right,” Rafe said, his voice rough, cutting everyone off. He pointed to Tyson. “Talk. I want the whole story. From the beginning.”

  “I found the ring in the Feddlewigs’ cave, buried near the portal. Ever since I put on the ring, I’ve been having strange dreams. I didn’t think it was real at first.” Tyson said. “There’s a ghost that says he’s… my father.”

  I stared at him in shock. This must be the secret that Tyson had mentioned.

  “I didn’t mean to keep it from you all, it was just so weird and unbelievable, and we had real, concrete shit to deal with,” Ty began.

  “I can’t believe you’re a rising fourth-year and your judgment sucks this much,” Rafe said, then controlled himself with visible effort. “All right. From the beginning.”

  Tyson told us how he found the ring, how it wouldn’t come off his finger, how the ghost identified himself as King Jorden. The ghost—if it really was one—seemed almost desperate to convince Tyson to speak an enchantment where he would say he was the heir, and he would bind himself to the Fae land and its people.

  “What does that mean exactly?” I said sharply. “Binding yourself to the Fae land?”

  Tyson didn’t answer my question. He hesitated, then said, “I don’t get a malevolent feeling from the…ghost… at all. But I do get the feeling he needs me to say those words. That he’d do anything to get me to say them.”

  I cared about ending Turic’s brutal reign and protecting the kids back at the keep. But Fae promises were dangerous. Fuck the dead Fae king if he thought he was taking Tyson from me forever.

  “And what exactly do you want to do with this information?” Lex asked. “If it’s true?”

  “Nothing,” Tyson said. “I want to go back home with you all. Back to our real life.”

  His gaze found mine, and all the fear that had run cold through my body when I heard he might be a Fae prince bloomed into warmth when he looked at me that way. He added, “I think I wasted enough time this past year.”

  Rafe stared at him, a long, hard look that then seemed to soften just slightly, although his jaw was still tight. “You still should have told us. Just in case.”

  “I know,” Ty admitted.

  “What if we let Raura go?” Penn said. “We don’t take her with us—we just escape.”

  “She’d be in danger,” Ty said.

  “She’s in a hell of a lot of danger if we leave her here,” Penn said. He looked to Tyson, the two of them clearly plotting together, and Rafe’s jaw tensed.

  “It will distract Turic,” Jensen said slowly. “If she runs, he’ll probably be more interested in tracking her.”

  “All right,” Rafe finally agreed. But only because it seemed like our best chance at getting to the temple and getting away. He seemed frustrated with us all.

  Mission first¸after all.

  I was coming to hate those words.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Lex

  Rafe and I moved to one corner to have a whispered conversation. Rafe’s voice was even softer because he was on the verge of blowing. I had to lean close to hear him.

  “Can you take Penn with you?” he asked. “I need Tyson here, but the two of them together are pissing me off.”

  I nodded, because I knew what he meant. Penn would always have Tyson’s back, whatever he thought himself, and vice versa.

  “We need to talk about whether this is really the right move,” I said. “Leaving Raura on her own. What if they kill her, Rafe?”

  He started to answer angrily, not wanting to repeat himself again. Then he broke off. “Raura will be fine—she started a fucking resistance on her own. I don’t think the Fae need us, Lex. I’m pretty sure that if we told them they did, they would all tell us to fuck off dirtside.”

  There was something troubled in his eyes, though, when he asked, “You’re doubting this too?”

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “You guys could take her with you.”

  He chewed his lower lip, thinking about it. I’d rarely seen Rafe hesitate when there was any decision to be made before, but this was our first true mission.

  I could never forget about the stakes, and
I doubted he could either. If the Fae realized what we were after, it would become a thousand times harder to reach the shield.

  We could lose our chance to regain our wolves…forever.

  “It’s dangerous,” I admitted, because I wasn’t sure if I were irrationally influenced by what Maddie and Ty thought. They were both smart and insightful—but it wasn’t their call. “We don’t know that we can trust her. You’re right, she could be working for Turic after all.”

  “We can’t blow this,” he said softly. “The packs know what Maddie did with the Dark Crown. It wasn’t her fault, but you know damn well they won’t see it that way.”

  I nodded slowly, even though I didn’t want to admit it. We all grieved our wolves and the loss of the powers that had come with them. Most of the packs were made of good people, but the truth was, sooner or later someone would come for Maddie, to take their rage and hurt out on her.

  Rafe and the rest of the team and I would be there, standing between her and her enemies.

  But it would best if we could just fix this. It was our responsibility.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Take Raura with you as far as you need to, to make sure she doesn’t get eaten. Then cut her loose. She’s Turic’s own daughter—he’s not going to kill her.”

  Turic didn’t act as if he would kill her, although he might lock her away.

  “But after,” I added.

  Before I could go on, Rafe said, “We’ll come back for her.”

  I nodded. “They can’t ask for anything better.”

  Rafe scoffed at that. “When you’re not the one in charge, you can always ask for better.”

  We made our final plans, then split up.

  Silas opened a portal for us, right there in the barn.

  “I think the Ravagers will be drawn to the magic,” Silas admitted. “So things might get interesting around here, given how many seem to be out there.”

  “I love interesting,” Tyson said, resting a pitchfork that he’d found over his shoulder.

  “I don’t,” Penn muttered, but he and Ty hugged goodbye quickly, pounding each other’s backs. “Be careful, brother. Don’t become a Fae prince and get weird. Weirder.”