by R. A. Rock
“So this group’s name is the Shadows?” Finn said.
“Yeah, so?”
Tess gave a wry smile.
“It’s just that in the Fae language, our spirituality is all based on the Stars because that’s where we came from.”
“From the Stars?” Jayde said, bewildered. “You mean outer space?”
“No, our ancestors were Stars,” Finn said. “And the King sang them down, and when they fell, they became the first Fae.”
“Frickin’ faeries,” Ethan said, shaking his head.
“Anyway,” Tess went on. “All our curse words involve Shadows. The worst is the equivalent of your F-word. We say Shadows take me. Or variations thereof.”
“Coincidence?” Jayde said.
“It’s highly unlikely that it would be a coincidence,” Ethan said, thinking of his earlier conversation with Doyle. “That’s just a word you humans use when you don’t understand the factors at play.”
Jayde nodded. “So you think that maybe this group that attacked you, twice now, were the Shadows?”
“Could be,” Tess said.
“But why attack us?” Finn said, scooping up his last bite of soup. “We don’t have any artifacts.”
“No, but maybe they’re trying to stop us from getting the Chalice,” Tess said.
“That makes sense,” Finn said.
“How would a human group know anything about Melisende’s house?” Ethan asked. “And also, they used Dark Magic.”
“As far as I know, the Shadows don’t have magic,” Jayde said. "They're human."
“And yet, they keep finding artifacts before the experts and somehow just waltz in and take them away from the people who have rightly found them,” Ethan said, tipping back on his chair.
Jayde scowled. “That does sound like magic, now that you point it out.”
“You have to stop thinking like a human, mortal.”
Jayde gave him a half-smile.
“So, there are possibly the Shadows after the Chalice. Plus the Hunters loyal to the Church. Both these groups seem bent on stopping us, if not killing us,” Finn summarized.
“And potentially, there are two groups from the Fae lands who are probably looking for the Chalice and trying to stop us from getting it as well,” Tess said. “We shouldn’t forget about them. No doubt by now, the King and Dark Queen have each sent teams to find us and stop us from getting the Chalice.”
Jayde’s eyebrows went up.
“Four different groups plus us, all trying to get the Chalice and trying to stop everyone else from getting it? And there’s magic involved?” Jayde shook her head in disbelief. “Sounds like the excavation of 2012. What a goat rodeo that was.”
“Goat rodeo?” Tess laughed.
“I heard that expression once and liked it, so I started using it. It means a total madhouse of a disaster with everything crazy and complete chaos. That dig was a shit show with fighting and stealing. The police finally had to step in before someone got killed.”
“That sounds like what might happen,” Finn confirmed.
“So here’s the thing, Jayde," Ethan said, and his tone was so serious, everyone settled down right away.
“We,” he pointed to himself, Tess, and Finn, “are immortal, which gives us a decided advantage. And you are not. It’s going to get a lot more dangerous before we find the Chalice and send these Faeries back home.”
Jayde stared at him, a solemn expression on her face.
“There’s no doubt that we need you. And that you would be a valuable asset in our search. But the question is, do you want to risk your short little mortal life on a quest that has nothing to do with you or your human world?”
Ethan leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest while he waited for her answer. The little human tilted her head as if she was thinking about it for all of three seconds before she opened her mouth to speak.
“Oooh, oooh,” Finn said, jumping in before she could say anything. “It’s like this one movie I watched. The guy had a choice. He could take the purple pill and go back to sleep. Or he could take the yellow pill and see how far into the hole he could go.”
Ethan shook his head. “That’s not how it goes.”
“How did it go, then?” Finn said, scrunching up his face as he tried to remember. “I’d been watching movies for eight hours straight by that time.”
“You’re probably familiar with the story, Jayde? You take the blue pill and you go back to sleep. I’m your blue pill. I can make it so that you don’t remember anything that’s happened. You continue with your little humdrum human existence and never know that there’s anything more.”
“What’s my other choice?” Jayde said, her voice sounding breathless.
“You take the red pill and find out just how many of your dreams and nightmares are actually real.” Ethan stared into the mortal’s eyes, flashing only a hint of his true power.
Jayde gasped.
“Are you all right?” Tess said, concerned.
Jayde nodded, still staring at Ethan.
“So, what’s it going to be, mortal?” Ethan said.
“That’s a no-brainer,” Jayde said, her face lit with rapture. “I choose the red pill. All the way. This is what I’ve been waiting for my entire life.”
“I’m glad you’re all in, Jayde,” Finn said. “But I have a question to ask Tess.”
“What do you want to ask me?” Tess said, perplexed.
“I want to know if you want to tell me anything.”
“Tell you what?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Finn said, pretending he didn’t know what to ask. “Why don’t you tell us about the fact that you can do magic on the Earthly Realm?”
“You can?” Jayde said.
“Apparently,” Tess admitted. “I wasn’t hiding it, Finn. Everything’s just been crazy and I haven’t even had time to process it myself.”
“This isn’t normal?” Jayde asked.
“No,” Finn told her. “It’s not. On Esper, Fae can’t do magic. We use spelled objects.”
“The reason you can do magic on Earth,” Ethan said, “is because there’s less ambient magic.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Tess said.
“It does,” Ethan said. “Think about it. In Ahlenerra, there’s so much ambient magic, it pushes against your own magic, keeping it contained. But here, there’s so little ambient magic that there’s nothing keeping it contained, and if you make an effort and push it out, then…”
“You can do magic,” Finn said, as pleased as if he could do it himself.
“Now, you aren’t allowed to do magic,” Ethan said, fixing Finn with a serious gaze. “You don’t have enough Starlight to fool around.”
“Got it,” Finn said.
“And you,” Ethan said, turning to Tess, “need to remember that every time you do that, your Starlight goes down, shortening the time you can stay on Earth.”
“Got it,” Tess echoed.
“That said,” Ethan gave her a smile. “It’s pretty cool, right?”
“It is,” Tess said. “Maybe I should join the Order.”
Chapter 36
“The Order?” Jayde said, her eyes gleaming. “What’s that?”
“They’re the Fae that make the spelled objects that regular Faeries use in their everyday lives. They’re very closed mouthed about their life. It’s difficult to get into. And not many of them leave once they go in. And word has it that it’s a very hard life,” Tess said, repeating what she’d been told recently about the secret group. “And if it wasn’t obvious, I don’t actually want to join. It was just a joke because I can do magic here.”
“Yeah, we get it, Stars,” Ethan said.
“So what happens now?” Jayde said. “What’s first?”
“How about I explain everything, starting at the beginning?” Tess suggested. “If you’re all in, Jayde, then you have a right to know what exactly you’re getting into. And you’ll need to
know more than just the fact that we’re magical beings.”
Jayde nodded several times excitedly, quickly clearing the table. Tess got up and helped bring it all to the kitchen.
“You got anything to drink, mortal?” Ethan asked. “This sounds like it could be a long story.”
Jayde brought a half bottle of wine that looked dusty and had probably been sitting on her shelf a long time. In her other hand, she had a fancy bottle of some sort of green liqueur and a heel of a bottle of whiskey.
Oh well. Immortals couldn’t be choosers.
She brought four shot glasses, four wine glasses, and four of those cutesy little liqueur glasses from her small china cabinet. Ethan looked at his choices and picked a cutesy liqueur glass to pour his whiskey into. It didn’t seem right to put whiskey in a wine glass and a shot glass was too small.
Tess began. “Finn and I, as you know, have been looking for certain magical objects for the spell to end the Severance.”
“So the Severance is what divides the Fae lands in half into the Dark Court and the Light Court?” Jayde asked before sitting down.
All of a sudden, Jayde got a pensive look on her face.
“Wait, I also have tequila,” she said and jumped up. She opened her front closet and climbed on a chair to reach the top shelf. She brought back a bottle in a gift bag.
“My cousin was going to get married. Then she called off the wedding. Turned out the guy was a bit of a psycho,” Jayde explained with a disgusted look on her face that turned angry. Then she held up the bottle cheerfully. “But he did like tequila. I didn’t give it to the bastard, of course, so that’s our gain.”
“Perfect,” Finn said, taking the bottle and pouring a shot of tequila in a shot glass and tipping it back into his mouth. “You are correct about the land being split into Light and Dark courts.”
“And nobody’s allowed to cross?”
“Nope. Most people don’t even think about it.”
“But you two are going to stop all that?”
“We have the Scroll of Severance that’s been hidden for thousands of years, waiting for a prophecy in which a certain Fae will get it and end the Severance.”
“And that’s you?” Jayde said, pointing at Finn.
“That’s me,” Tess said, correcting her.
“Everyone is so sexist,” Ethan said, annoyed on Tessa’s behalf that everyone kept underestimating her. “Including me. Do you get tired of being underestimated?”
Tess shrugged. “Story of my life, Hunter.”
He got a warm look in his eyes as if he liked her calling him that nickname, and Tess made a note not to do it anymore. She didn’t want him looking at her like that. It made her feel all squishy inside. And that was the last thing she needed.
“So, the Scroll sort of holds the spell. And it also lists exactly what we have to do to break it. We need seven magical objects.”
“The Scroll, of course,” Finn said. “The Unity Blades, which we already have. That’s one. The Crown, which we just got. That’s two. And now the Chalice, which we will soon have.”
“Cocky,” Ethan muttered, sipping his whiskey.
“That’s three.”
“What were the others again?” Jayde asked, her eyes bright. “I know you said, but…”
“The ring, the mirror, the potion, and the amulet.
“For various reasons, we were sent to the Earthly Realm to get the Chalice next,” Tess said.
“Mostly to save our asses,” Finn said.
“Yes, that,” Tess conceded. “But also to help Finn with what’s wrong with him.”
“And what’s that?” Jayde said.
“He’s got a case of… he’s dying,” Ethan said.
Jayde scowled. “What? Really?”
“No,” Tess said, giving Ethan a black look.
“How can he die if he’s immortal?” Jayde asked. “You said you three were immortal.”
“We’re not immortal immortal, like Ethan,” Tess began explaining.
“Oh here we go,” Finn said, pouring another shot of tequila. He and Ethan clinked glasses but Tess ignored them.
“There’s two kinds of immortals. Fae are only functionally immortal.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that as long as nothing interferes and we drink Elixir regularly, we can almost live forever. Or a really long time, anyhow.”
“How long is a really long time?” Jayde asked.
“The Keeper of the Scroll, who recently died when he gave me all his Starlight seemed to be getting old and maybe near to death from running out of Starlight, was probably more than ten thousand years old.”
“Ten thousand years old.” Jayde looked stunned. “I can’t even comprehend that. So, you could potentially live that long?”
“Potentially,” Tess said.
“But…” Finn said, holding up one finger.
“But there are various ways we can be killed,” Tess finished. “All of them involve all of our Starlight running out.”
“I don’t understand,” Jayde said. “And I have a Ph.D.”
“Won’t do you any good when it comes to Faeries,” Ethan informed her.
“For instance,” Finn said. “If our body is in pieces, far apart from each other, then eventually our Starlight will run out without us taking in Elixir. And we would die.”
“Gross,” Jayde said.
“Or in the castle where we just spent a week, there was a ghost wyrm that sucks Faerie Starlight. If the ghost wyrm passed through us, it would absorb all our Starlight and we would die.”
“Almost did,” Finn put in.
“I’m sorry, what’s Starlight?” Jayde inquired.
“More Faerie nonsense,” Ethan said.
Tess shot him another dark look. “It’s part of our origin tale and it’s not nonsense,” she said. “The story goes that the King got lonely and he sang down the stars. And when those stars fell, they became the first faeries.”
“Right. You said that. How beautiful,” Jayde said, her face alight with amazement.
“You would think that, mortal,” Ethan said.
“Anyways, Starlight is the energy that provides life to everything. There’s Starlight in everything on Esper.”
“My Kookum—my grandmother—she told me the same thing. That there’s spirit in every creature and every object, even the rocks.”
“Exactly,” Tess said, tapping her index finger on the table.
“Want some wine?” Jayde offered and Tess nodded. “So what does this have to do with what’s wrong with Finn?”
Jayde poured red wine into two of the wine glasses, filling them only a third and setting one in front of Tess.
“I made a palm vow,” Finn took up the explanation. “Which is when two Faeries press palms together and exchange Starlight. It creates a magical vow that must be kept or else the vow will kill you.”
“We just thought that was a story. That the vow would kill you. Until we saw it in action with Finn,” Tess added.
“You can also make a palm vow with yourself, which is what I did,” Finn continued. “In my grief, I swore I would kill whoever was responsible for the death of my girlfriend.”
“Faerie drama,” Ethan muttered, swallowing the last of his whiskey and pouring another into the dainty glass.
“Oh no,” Jayde said, dismayed.
“Oh yes,” Tess said.
“This glass makes me feel less manly with every sip,” Ethan said to no one in particular.
Everyone laughed and he seemed surprised and gratified that he had made them laugh. He ran his hand through his hair self-consciously, a little smile on his gorgeous face.
Off limits, Tess reminded herself.
“But I haven’t even gotten to the really bad part,” Finn told Jayde. “The person responsible is the Dark Queen.”
“Oh no,” Jayde repeated, alarmed now.
“Oh yes,” Finn said. “But that’s not the worst of it.”
&nb
sp; “How could it be worse?” Jayde said, distressed.
“The King and the Dark Queen are tied to the land—to Ahlenerra—in ways that no one quite understands. All we know is that if either of them dies, it would destroy our world.”
“You’re kidding.” Jayde sat back in her chair and took a large gulp of wine.
“I wish I was,” Finn said, his face turning serious. “Because I can neither keep my vow nor can I not keep it.”
“What?” Jayde looked understandably mystified at this statement.
“If he keeps the vow,” Ethan said, “Ahlenerra is destroyed. If he doesn’t keep it, the vow will destroy him.”
“Ohh,” Jayde said, getting a sad expression on her face.
“But while he’s here, the progression of the vow is stopped,” Tess went on. “Because there’s so little ambient magic in the air.”
“What happens when he goes back, though?” Jayde said, her sharp mind jumping to the crux of the problem.
“We don’t know,” Tess said, exchanging a worried look with Finn.
“But of course, he’s got bigger problems here on what you Fae like to call the Earthly Realm,” Ethan said. “Because his Starlight is already low and getting lower every day.”
“Fae can only stay on the Earthly Realm at the most for about six months,” Tess told Jayde. “But because Finn came with so little Starlight, Ethan’s told him he’s only got three weeks.”
“Can you stand up, Finn?” Ethan said.
Finn stood, still looking a little shaky.
Ethan shook his head, seeming disappointed and concerned. “It’s probably down to about two and half weeks now. You shouldn’t have set up that warding spell.”
“What?” Tess said. “Just like that? How do you know?”
“Look, Tess, it’s not an exact science. I can sense magic, like you can. But I can also sort of see it. When I look at you a certain way and concentrate, I can see your magic. It fills you from the top of your head down to your ankles. So you’ve probably got a good five and a half months in you or more.”
