Unwinnable

by May Dawson

  “I’ll try not to let it go to my head,” Ty agreed.

  Maddie hugged them all tightly, and when she squeezed me, there was power in that hug. I wrapped an arm around her, drawing comfort and strength from her lithe body against mine. I kissed the top of her head, that shining blond hair, then she raised her face and I pressed a kiss to those sweet pink lips.

  “Promise me we won’t be apart too long,” she whispered.

  “Nothing can keep us apart.” I kissed her again, then pulled myself away with effort because it was always hard to leave her, and I knew it was hard for everyone else. It was time to go.

  Silas brought down the magic surrounding the barn that the Fae had used to keep us locked inside. Time to go—just in case this attracted Fae attention.

  I stepped through the portal first. Cold washed over me, a deep, airless darkness that made me think of space, and I was just on the edge of panic because I couldn’t draw a breath, and then I was out.

  I didn’t quite manage to walk through the rip with the same casual ease that Silas did, his hands in his pockets as if wandering between worlds was nothing. I stumbled a bit, caught myself as I whirled to take in my surroundings.

  It was night in our world too.

  We were back on academy grounds, deep in the woods, the same place we’d gone through. I looked up through the tangled dark branches above us to the outline of the moon. It was the same moon that Rafe and Maddie stood beneath now, the same moon in every version of our world. The universe was vast, and the little changes in how our world spun apart and divided didn’t register beyond our own atmosphere.

  Chase flew out behind me, his jaw tense and his big body ready for a fight, then Penn and Silas. The four of us strode through the woods, and the sound of branches breaking underfoot and leaves scuffling made me wince. We’d lost our wolfish grace.

  We reached the empty green quad, which felt eerie with the moonlight falling across the grass and no one around. Even after curfew, when students were safe in the houses, there was a sense of life here. And the Guard Patrol would still be out, watching…

  No, we were really alone.

  The realization struck me hard, and I raised my hand, motioning the other three to stop.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said softly.

  “We need to get to them,” Chase said, and he didn’t have to say who, we all knew he meant Blake and Skyla.

  “We will. But we need to be smart,” Penn said, so I didn’t have to.

  I gestured to the academic building. If there was anyone on campus, I’d expect them to be there. At the very least, we’d be able to get some weapons, since ours were still held by Turic in the Fae world.

  We were almost there when several wolves raced across the quad. We all stopped, hearts racing.

  Wolves. Someone could shift again.

  Were they guard patrol? Had Clearborn or the packs found a way for us to regain our magic while we were gone?

  One of them stopped as if he scented us, and when he looked our way, his lip peeled back from his teeth. But then he was gone, racing on behind the others.

  No, those wolves weren’t on our side.

  We were still unarmed; we couldn’t take them. Chase started after them, a growl slipping out of his lips as if he were half-wolf himself again, and hope jumped in my chest. Maybe somehow our wolf magic had been restored while we were gone.

  But I grabbed Chase from behind, forcing him to stumble and slow down, and he stayed human.

  “Let them go,” I ordered. “We need weapons.”

  I could feel his resistance, but he stopped. Tension rippled through every muscle of his powerful body, as if it took everything he could not to tear apart anyone he thought might be a danger to his family.

  “Silas, follow them,” I said. “We’re going to Clearborn’s place to look for Blake and Skyla.”

  We ran up the trail to the guest houses. The night was eerily quiet. The only sounds were the crunch of our feet over the gravel as we ran and Chase’s labored breathing—more from panic for his siblings than lack of cardio.

  Clearborn’s car was parked outside one of the houses, and the front door stood open, light spilling out from inside.

  I jumped the porch steps in one bound, so I was the first one to see him in the entryway.

  Clearborn lay on his side, his eyes wide and horrified, his throat partially ripped away. He made a gagging sound when he saw us, as if he were choking on his own blood, but he was still alive.

  “You’re going to be all right,” I promised. I dropped to my knees beside him. Despite how confident my voice came out, my hands shook as I reached for his ravaged throat. I’d worked hard on developing my magic the past few months, but I wasn’t sure I actually could heal him.

  He kept trying to speak, which just made more blood pump from his throat and slip down the corner of his mouth.

  I muttered the words in Latin, and golden magic sparked at my fingertips. I clumsily pressed my fingers through the raw flesh, finding the places where his airway had been slashed, his tendons broken through, and healing those together.

  By the time I staunched the worst of the bleeding, I was swaying on my knees, and Silas pressed his shoulder against mine to push me aside.

  “I’ve got him,” Silas said, taking positive control, just like we’d been trained, and his hands overlapped mine for a second before I pulled away. I dropped back against the cold wall, my mind reeling with the effort, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

  Silas took over healing Clearborn. Meanwhile, Penn stood at the window, looking through the blinds, and Chase had run to the phone in the back of the house.

  “They’re gone,” Penn said. “What the fuck just happened?”

  “Someone can shift again,” I said. And that someone had ripped Clearborn’s throat out, or tried to. There were deep defensive wounds gouged across his arms and hands, which were leaking blood across the carpet.

  Chase swore as he threw the phone back into the cradle. “Blake’s not picking up his cell phone. It’s one o’clock in the morning—where the hell are they?”

  “We’ll find them,” I promised. “Silas, where did the wolves go?”

  “I never should have left them!” Chase sounded furious. He reined himself in with difficulty and looked to Silas.

  “They had a car on the road. There was no sign of Blake and Skyla,” Silas said. “I tried to put a tracking spell on them but—I think they were just the cleanup crew.”

  “Cleanup crew?”

  Silas dared to glance up from Clearborn’s wounds, his hands hovering above them. “The guards are all dead, Lex.”

  Hector. Roman. Their faces flashed through my mind.

  “They weren’t killed by witches,” I said, waiting for Silas to confirm the terrible thought. The Day was all but destroyed. The academy was warded to prevent witches from entering campus.

  Our academy had been attacked by wolves.

  “Not by witches,” Silas said, his voice somber. “By wolves.”

  “What’s the spell you used to track them?” I said, rising to my feet. Hopefully I had enough magic left. “Silas, Penn, stay here with Clearborn. Chase, we’re going after the wolves who ran.”

  Chase was in no condition for a mission, but hopefully he’d get his head in the game. I couldn’t leave him behind—he’d lose his damned mind.

  Clearborn rose on his hands and knees, pulling away from Silas, and crawled on his hands and knees across the room to the black steel weapons cabinet in the corner. He pressed his bloodstained thumbprint against the lock, then fell back to the floor, as if the effort had exhausted him. Even after being healed, he’d still be exhausted.

  I made eye contact with Penn, although I hated to send him alone. “Make sure the buildings are clear. Check the academic building, the Patrol Guard house—see if there’s any wounded there.”

  Penn nodded. I hated that we had to split up.

  I pulled a sword in its sheath
out of the locker and tossed it to Chase, then handed him a 9mm handgun in a holster, which he clipped at the small of his back.

  I did the same, then grabbed a pair of rifles for us both, along with a box of ammo—and another of silver bullets. I spied Clearborn’s leather bag on the couch, so I dumped the contents onto the coffee table, then shoved the extra ammo into Clearborn’s bag. I grabbed his car keys off the entryway table.

  We didn’t have time to find another vehicle. Clearborn would forgive us.

  I didn’t dare ask Silas if he thought Clearborn would survive when the man was still conscious, hanging on through a hell of a lot of pain. But Silas and I traded a worried look.

  “Be careful,” I told them, even though it felt like it meant nothing right now when we were strung so thin.

  “You too,” Silas said.

  The look on Chase’s face was tortured as we moved out.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Maddie

  When Silas had brought down the magic surrounding the barn that kept us locked inside, the whole world went suddenly bright, then the light flickered out, as if it had been a power surge.

  And even the amazing Silas Zip had swayed on his feet, his long fingers trembling as the magic swirling around died too.

  “Are you all right?” I’d demanded, grabbing his shoulder to steady him.

  He’d given me one of those small Silas smiles. “Will be. If Turic gains any more power…” he’d trailed off, then said, “he already has a bit too much than I think any being should.”

  “We’re not going to let him become king,” Tyson said.

  “We’re going to complete our mission before we even think twice about this damned Fae world,” Rafe said. “Let’s move out.”

  The guys had left us behind, vanishing through the portal. Silas glanced at me over his shoulder, and then he was gone. Even though I still had half of my men with me, I felt alone without the other half, as if I were being torn apart when some of them were in one world and some in another.

  Turic had our swords—Clearborn was going to kill us if we came back without them, but priorities—and so we carried pitchforks and shovels, ready for a fight, as we moved out into the dark of the Fae night.

  Raura was next to me, her hands bound in front of her but her chin held high. She looked at me wide-eyed. “You’re all crazy, you know. No one goes out at night, not since the Ravagers came.”

  “You’re welcome to stay behind in the barn if you prefer,” Rafe said. “I don’t want to add kidnapping to our long list of crimes in the Fae world.”

  “Oh, I’m always up for an adventure,” Raura said blithely. “I’ll come along.”

  “Fantastic,” Rafe muttered. “Can you try bringing up a shield for us, Ty?”

  Tyson’s magic had been growing, but the kind of magic that formed a bubble around us required constant vigilance to the spell in the back of one’s mind, something that Silas had trained for years but the rest of us had three months experience with.

  And yet when Tyson finally muttered the words of the spell, his magic shot out of his hands and formed a bubble around us, thick and shimmering and silvery-translucent.

  “Holy shit,” Tyson said, his own eyes wide with wonder as he looked up at the magic in the air.

  “First rule of being a wizard,” Jensen said. “Never act surprised when a spell actually works.”

  “But he’s not just a wizard,” Raura said. “He’s the heir.”

  When the four of us looked at her hard, Raura shrugged and raised her hands to one of her pointed ears. “Sorry! I’ve got big ears.”

  Tyson closed and locked the barn doors behind us, making sure the animals were safe, then rushed to catch up. There were still a few lights blazing in the house on the bottom floor.

  “I’d expect someone to be watching the barn,” I said, glancing at Rafe. Surely they would’ve seen the way Silas had lit up the whole farm when he broke Turic’s magic, and Turic should have felt his magic snap too.

  “They’ll know we’re escaping,” Raura said calmly. “But they won’t come after us until dawn. They’ll leave us to die out here.”

  “Think positive,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Fine. They’ll leave us to get mauled out here?”

  Once we moved into the trees, Tyson’s shield shimmered, then popped. It wasn’t supposed to be used on the move; it couldn’t adapt to changes in the landscape like trees. We could each try to raise our own shields, but it wasn’t worth draining our magic. We all traded glances, though, uncomfortable with being out here unprotected and still weaponless.

  The Fae world at night was beautiful, but in completely different ways than during the day. Night-blooming flowers that were closed during the day opened up. In the darkness, the riot of color that was the Fae forest, dripping with blooms, all faded into muted colors, except for the shimmering white and silver and gold blooms that had come out instead.

  And the Fae world felt more alive than our world. The forest was full of nocturnal animals, from white squirrels that chittered at us and then raced up their trees, to big cats that prowled through the darkness. We caught their glittering eyes at a distance, but the cats slunk away, apparently already sated with some other unlucky dinner.

  Tyson unfurled his palm, and the magical compass glowed, its light reflected faintly off his fingers. “This way.”

  I felt a surge of pride. He was using Silas’s spell, and it seemed almost effortless. He even seemed comfortable with magic—which was a huge change for him.

  “Oh, you’re not actually here for Hooksbane?” Raura asked. She began to yawn, then ducked her head toward her slender shoulder to cover her open mouth too late. “I am shocked. Shocked, I say. No one saw that coming.”

  “Raura,” I whispered, warning her off. I didn’t want the team to see her as a threat, if she wasn’t.

  Maybe I really needed some girl friends back home, because I’d bonded with the Fae princess in record time.

  She flashed me a mischievous look and mouthed, “Can’t leave me behind now.”

  “But they can rip your throat out,” I mouthed back.

  “You wouldn’t let them.”

  No matter how confident Raura was in the sway I held over the team, I wasn’t sure she was right.

  We seemed to walk forever through the trees, under a heavy silver moon, until finally we emerged onto a long field of broken white and pink marble that glittered under the first rays of the dawn. We all breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Why are the Ravagers worse at night?” I asked Raura. “They’re not nocturnal, are they? They attacked us during the day.”

  “I think they’re worse at night because Turic wants them to be worse at night,” Tyson said.

  “Who else would have the power to use that control sigil?” Rafe asked.

  “The Delphine council, of course,” she said. She glanced at Tyson. “And I imagine a long-lost heir like you could do it as well.”

  “Could I control the Ravagers?” he frowned. “And all the other monsters coming through the Rips?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I think a king would be able to. But we’ve been short a king for quite a few years now. That’s part of what makes my father’s case for his coronation—the people hope he’ll save them from the Ravagers.”

  “If Tyson can control them, that would’ve been handy a few days ago when we were attacked by the Ravagers,” Rafe said. “That was a nice warm welcome.”

  “We don’t know if Ty can control the Ravagers now. He might need to be crowned first.”

  The thought of Tyson being crowned as a king in a foreign world made something cold twist through my stomach.

  “Why wouldn’t I, if Turic can?” Tyson demanded. “He’s further from being the heir than I am.”

  Well, he had rapidly gone from a skeptic to a believer on the ‘king of a Fae world’ front.

  “Yeah, but you’ve spent a lifetime hiding from your powers instead of developin
g them,” she said. “You made yourself weak.”

  Tyson gave her a hard look. “There was definitely a nicer way of saying that.”

  “Sorry,” Raura said, not looking sorry at all. “I didn’t realize you wolves needed to be coddled.”

  “What does it cost?” I asked abruptly. “To become the king of the Fae world?”

  Raura half-laughed, half-scoffed. “Cost? I don’t know, the willingness to bear the adoration of your people, plus the fact you have to deal with the Fae—”

  “There’s always a cost to magic,” Rafe cut her off. He and I shared a worried look, as if he understood my concerns. “Be honest with us.”

  Raura said, “Our kingdom needs a king. And it can’t be Turic.”

  She looked past Rafe to find Tyson, and her gaze locked on his. “The spring court needs you, Tyson.”

  “Don’t,” Rafe warned her, but I looked at Tyson’s face and I knew that the Huntress’ arrow had landed.

  Ty always needed to be needed.

  But I needed him too.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  As we approached the temple, it almost felt as if those first rays of dawn had frozen, though I knew it was an illusion. The predawn remained dim, and the noises of animals moving through the bushes as we startled them—which had been constant—came to a stop. The flowers all disappeared.

  When I realized that many of the trees looked burned, their branches twisted and black and scarred, I turned to Raura. “Forest fire?”

  “Yes,” she admitted, “but not like any other fire. It was magic fire that raced out of control, and it still surges sometimes.”

  “Why?”

  “There are torches at the temple that never die,” she said, with a sad smile. “And ever since Jorden died, sometimes when there’s a storm, the wind carries sparks of that magic fire to the ground. And then…”

  She gestured around her, at the charred and lifeless forest.

  “What was he like?” Ty asked suddenly. “King Jorden?”