by Everly Frost
I shake my head in shock. Until yesterday, I’d never seen or heard of glitter bulbs separating from the field. Imatra created the glitter field during the final battle between the fae and the humans—the battle during which I annihilated the human army. The glitter field is meant to be a defense mechanism along the border. Every stem of glitter grass carries a deadly bulb at the top. If disturbed by a living creature, the bulbs explode, cutting to shreds anything within its wide blast radius.
Last night, when the Vanem Dragon flew to Fell country to bind Nathaniel and Hagan to their fight, he also brought news that parts of the glitter field had become airborne. The Dragon said that several glitter bulbs had drifted into Bright and exploded there. Luckily, nobody was hurt, but it prompted Imatra to gather her guards and prepare for an attack, believing that Cyrian’s dark magic was at play.
Several bulbs also drifted into Fell country and exploded in the Misty Gallows.
Now there are possibly a hundred of them, gathered like a humblebee swarm on Nathaniel’s porch, some of them piled precariously high on top of others. All it would take is a living presence to disturb them and they will explode with enough force to cut through every person and building around them.
They would cut down the humans like a scythe through wheat.
Nathaniel’s people will never believe that I had nothing to do with this.
In my deepest heart, I’m worried that I caused it somehow. The Vanem Dragon said that the first bulbs lifted off the field at the same time a glowing mold moth landed on top of it. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it was the same moth that consumed the dust that remained on my hand after I stopped breathing at the burn site where I killed my parents.
“You sent the glitter bulbs here,” Geordie says, speaking up for the first time, his accusation striking my heart as hard as Esther’s declaration did. “This is the only place we’ve ever felt safe. We don’t anymore.”
I have no reply. I don’t even know if I can defuse the glitter bulbs. I’ve walked into the glitter field before and not been hurt, but I’m not sure what that many separated glitter bulbs will do if I step near them.
Mathilda’s expression remains shuttered as she hurries us along. When we reach the dining hall, she quickly orders the nearest trainees to shift the closest two tables so that they rest perpendicular to the door. She lays Nathaniel and Hagan down on them so that their feet are closest to the open door.
I move to follow her, but Christiana’s arm shoots out like a barrier, thumping into my stomach.
“You will stay out here,” she says. “Where we can see you.” She spins to Geordie. “Get the pole.”
He quickly disappears into the nearest building. I catch sight of tools inside it—shovels and fencing materials—before the door closes behind him.
Returning my attention to Nathaniel, I stand my ground as Mathilda’s dark light flashes. Pain strikes through me as patches of grass on the courtyard ahead of me shrivel and die. I’m worried about the extent to which she’ll have to drain our surroundings to heal him.
Anxiety builds inside me as she works. I can’t see what she’s doing or whether Nathaniel is responding to her power, whether or not he’s healing.
Geordie returns, holding a metal pole a little more than half his height that has a spike at the end of it and a hole through the center. He’s also carrying a large hammer, a coil of rope, and a short metal chain with large links at each end.
I eye all four items, my wariness increasing when he hammers the pole into the ground, his muscles bunching with every strike, until it stands securely and doesn’t move when he leans on it.
As soon as he threads the chain through the hole, wrapping it securely around the pole before attaching one end of the rope to one of the links, I take a step back.
I bump right into Christiana.
“I’m sorry, Aura,” she says. “This is going to hurt, but we can’t take any chances.”
Geordie reaches for me, his expression hardening. “Hands behind your back,” he orders me.
He’s going to tie me to the pole, but I can barely move my right arm, let alone extend it behind me. “No. My shoulder—”
“Give me your hands!”
I’m still nursing my right arm across my chest. I’m already at breaking point. Any increase in pain will be the final straw. My voice rises to a scream. “No!”
“Luciana Elect!” I recognize Maggie as she runs from the nearby building that houses the kitchen. She’s Null’s oldest resident. Her light brown hair is tied back in a single, long braid that thumps against her back as she runs.
Esther grabs Maggie before she can reach me. “That’s not Aura’s real name.”
Maggie yanks herself out of Esther’s hold. “What are you doing to her?”
Yesterday when I first met Maggie, she was hunched, aged, and sick with the Ebon Rot, but she was trying to hide it. I healed her. Now, she stands tall and strong, her hair glossy and her cheeks full of life.
“This woman saved my life,” she cries. “She isn’t like the other fae. Nathaniel trusts her. He loves her. Anyone can see that.”
Christiana reaches for her. “It’s not enough, Maggie. It’s my responsibility now to protect you—”
Maggie steps up to her. “You choose to ignore the truth because the truth makes you afraid. She is not our enemy.”
A deep, pained crease forms on Christiana’s forehead. “Until Nathaniel revives, we don’t know what she is.”
Maggie gestures at the pole and then me. “Aura’s in pain. She needs our help. Not to be tied up like an animal. She isn’t going to hurt us—”
“Didn’t you hear me? I can’t take that risk!” Christiana grips Maggie’s shoulders as the older woman stares at her, wide-eyed. “Until Nathaniel wakes up, it’s my duty to protect everyone. Including you. Even if I have to be a monster to do it.” Christiana is unyielding as she gestures to several trainees at the side. “Go back to Emily and the others, Maggie. We’ll call you when it’s safe.”
Maggie whirls as the trainees grab hold of her. “No! I won’t go. You can’t do this to her!”
She struggles and kicks, but she isn’t trained in combat and the more she tries to slip their hold, the harder they pull, forcing her back around the building and out of sight until her shouts fade.
I turn right into Esther’s fist.
The impact cracks across my temple, dropping me to the ground. Geordie catches me before I can hit the earth, yanking my arms behind my back at the same time.
I land on my knees.
My right shoulder pops.
Excruciating pain shoots through my chest and the world shifts, tilting in a sickening drop.
My scream fills the air and the ground moves beneath me as Geordie drags me back toward the pole. Sickening agony burns through me so fast that I dry-wretch into the dust. If my stomach weren’t empty, its contents would be all over the ground.
As soon as he draws me to a stop, Geordie loops the rope around my wrists and secures the rope to the chain. The chain through the pole means that I can’t attempt to fray the rope to free myself. It also means I’ll have to lift the pole from the ground if I want to escape—an impossible task while my shoulder is dislocated.
In the blurry distance, Hagan’s feet suddenly shift. His big body rolls off the table and he lands at a crouch, shaking his head as if he were trying to clear it.
Mathilda shouts for him to stay down, but he doesn’t appear to listen to her, rising groggily to his feet before he stumbles halfway down the stairs at the front of the hall.
“What are you doing to Aura?” he bellows, swaying on the spot, his gaze unsteady. He presses his hand to his head. “I heard her scream.”
His knees buckle as he tries to take another step. Reaching out to steady himself, he crashes against the railing, still shouting, “Christiana! Leave Aura… the fuck… alone…”
His eyes roll back and he drops where he stands.
Christian
a is frozen, her eyes wide, but she quickly whirls back to me, bending to glare into my streaming eyes.
“What did you do to my husband?”
Gasping for air, I meet Christiana’s angry gaze. Last night, when Cyrian used his dark magic to swing me up into the air, she winced, as if she still had some empathy left for me.
Now, her expression is completely hard.
The edges of my vision blur and darkness threatens to overcome me. Inside the hall, Mathilda’s magic flares again, an inky black flash that spreads across my vision, widening and swallowing everything I see.
The silhouettes of the people standing guard around me warp and shift, indistinguishable from the dark light.
I don’t see humans anymore.
When I finally black out, all I see are shadows.
Chapter 6
I can’t breathe. The world explodes around me, white light rippling in every direction, filling the sky as I lie on the burning ground.
I’m facing upward.
I know I’m dreaming. The same dream I had yesterday in the greenhouse. But I have an impossible choice: I can continue to dream about my past or wake up to the pain that waits for me in the present.
I choose to dream.
Embers float across the sky above me, glowing pieces of ash and hurtling shards of wood that resemble tiny suns circling my location. The sun is my enemy. A fiery force that chases my power away every morning, but it can’t stop my energy emerging every night at dusk.
A raging fire burns behind me, its heat and light so intense that the crackling sounds drown out the footsteps of the woman who runs toward me.
I still can’t see her face.
Her features are concealed by a cloak of dark light that prevents me from seeing through it. Her silhouette glows crimson, but now I think the glow is from the fire raging behind me and the fiery embers flickering across the space above our heads.
She drops to her knees beside me, her dagger raised, its blade the only clear object in my vision. It is wickedly curved, a hunting knife.
The man darts across the space behind her, dodging the falling debris, swinging his own blade across the air, aimed precisely at her neck. Unlike the woman’s, his face is clear to me now. His features are drawn, dangerous, the anger in his brown eyes relentless. An older version of Nathaniel, but with lighter hair. His armor and blade are pristine, not a drop of blood on them, only ash falling around him, clinging to the sweat dripping down the side of his face.
Golden light pours from his blade as he swings it.
If the vision above me weren’t so horrifying, it would be beautiful. The man’s golden light crashes into the woman’s crimson silhouette and all of it is backlit with the brightest white skyscape. Three forces raging against each other.
The woman screams and ducks just in time.
She wrenches the dagger from my chest, drops to the side, and balances on her dagger hand. Her free hand flies upward, a streak of burning firelight pouring from her palm.
She is fae.
Yesterday, I guessed she was Imatra, but now I’m sure of it. She is the queen I trusted, who betrayed me.
Blood drips down her arm from her powerful fingers as Solstice fae power pours from her hand. She was clutching a small, gleaming object, but she loses hold of it as soon as she opens her palm to protect herself.
The object drops to the space beside my head, glinting at the corner of my eye.
It’s a curved piece of stone, barely bigger than my fingertip and covered in blood. Its glowing surface is tinted scarlet like Imatra’s hair.
Nathaniel’s father retracts his weapon with impressive speed and tilts its blade, bracing for the onslaught of her power. I’m shocked when the stream of firelight hits the blade’s surface and rebounds.
Imatra screams. Her power flashes, a sudden rush of wind sweeping the flames to the side before she would be burned by her own ricocheting magic.
Nathaniel’s father shouts, a deep roar. “She’s just a girl!”
“She’s not a girl,” Imatra screams, her usually serene voice harsh and full of rage. “She was never a girl!”
The dream flickers, the images vanish.
Suddenly, the world explodes around me again, the same bright, white light filling the sky, rippling across my vision. The same spiraling embers float above my body, close enough to touch.
The dream begins again.
“Aura?”
Nathaniel’s voice breaks through the exploding dark, pulling me away from the nightmare. His fingers brush my cheek. His scent fills my head, dispelling the darkness.
He’s alive.
My eyes open, but they’re gritty. I can barely raise my eyelids. I don’t know how long I was asleep. It could be late morning now.
I make out Nathaniel’s shape, kneeling in front of me before my head drops to my chest again. My hands are still bound behind me, my legs folded beneath me. I barely feel his touch because my entire body is numb.
“Darkest star,” he whispers.
He’s still wearing his torn clothing, his hair matted and dirty, but his face is no longer beaten and bruised. His skin is perfectly smooth. Healed and clean. Strands of his brown hair fall across his eyes, dark shadows building, the inky flecks in his gaze becoming darker still.
“Breathe for me, Aura.” His voice is low and urgent, his fingertips seeking my lips, his forehead pressing to mine so that his face blurs in my vision.
His thumb presses gently to the curve at the top of my mouth before he presses a light kiss right across the top of it. “Breathe.”
My lips part and air slips through.
He draws back as I cough.
I exhale dust into the air—charcoal gray dust from my mouth. The same dust that the moth consumed yesterday. The same dust that coated my body when I stopped breathing at the burn site.
My eyes brim with tears as oxygen fills my chest. I didn’t think I had any tears left, but they trickle down my cheeks.
“Are you alive?” I ask, afraid that I’m still dreaming—a cruel twist.
“I’m alive because of you.” His lips draw into an unforgiving line. “I need to undo your bindings now.”
Pure panic races through me, drowning any rational thought. My shoulder has already been forced out of joint and then wrenched around on top of that. I can’t stand another move.
“No!” I scream, making him jolt. “Don’t touch me!”
“Aura—”
Sobs tear out of me. “Please don’t… Don’t touch…” My head drops again. “You’re alive. Everything will be okay now. Just let me go back to sleep.”
His jaw tenses before he places both of his palms against my cheeks, lifting my face so I’m forced to meet his worried eyes. “Aura, you’re in pain. I need to unbind you so I can help you.”
I grit my teeth at him, a cold calm filling me. “I won’t let you help me. If you make me healthy, I’ll be strong enough to fight you. Leave me be, Nathaniel.”
Turning my face away, I close my eyes and exhale before I sink into the waiting nothing again, the cold, empty dark where I don’t need to breathe anymore, where I can fall like a dead stone into icy water.
I’m only asleep for an instant before Nathaniel’s frustrated roar jolts me awake again. He lurches away from me, rising to his feet to pace back and forth across the dirt, wearing a track across the ground in front of me.
The path between the buildings used to be grassy, but every living plant in sight is crinkled and withered. Mathilda must have used up every shred of natural energy to heal him.
My vision is fuzzy, still gritty with dust, but I make out Mathilda, Christiana, and Esther standing behind Nathaniel, watching him pace. The other trainees have fanned out behind them.
I also make out Hagan. He stands apart from the others, an immense figure, a mirror to Nathaniel’s strength. He’s alert again, the sharp intelligence returned to his eyes. He isn’t in chains and I don’t know whether that’s because Nathaniel o
rdered that he remain free or because nobody could subdue him. Either is possible.
He tried to stop them tying me up before he collapsed again. Now, Hagan breaks his piercing study of me to glance at Nathaniel, but he doesn’t attempt to speak.
Nathaniel pauses in front of me. He doesn’t reach for me, doesn’t try to touch my injured arm, because he will never knowingly hurt me, but his voice rises to a violent roar as he turns to the others. “Who did this?”
His glare rakes across the humans as the silence stretches around us.
“Answer me!” he roars. “Who. Fucking. Did this?”
Geordie steps forward from the row of trainees, his head down, his shoulders hunched, and his mop of golden hair falling across his face, but Christiana quickly steps in front of him.
“I ordered Aura to be restrained,” she says. “But we didn’t dislocate her shoulder.”
“But you knew she was hurt when you tied her up and left her here for hours,” Nathaniel says, an accusation.
Christiana tips her head back, her long braids sliding across her shoulders, her gaze flashing with defiance. “It’s her sword arm. Like she said, it’s better that she’s wounded.”
Nathaniel advances on Christiana, his voice a sharp demand. “Where is your honor, Christiana?”
She stands her ground, her armor dull in the gray light. “I’ve never been afraid to play dirty, Nathaniel.”
Nathaniel turns his head so that I can see the careful glance he casts at Hagan. His voice lowers. “Be careful about getting into the dirt, Christiana. One day, you might find yourself desperate to wash it off.”
She glares back at him. “I would tie her up again to protect our people. As many times as it takes.”
Nathaniel’s expression darkens, a snarl on his lips. “You didn’t do it to protect anyone, Christiana. You acted out of revenge.”
She inhales sharply at the accusation, but the flush rising to her cheeks betrays the truth in his claim. Sudden tears fill her eyes, but she bats them away. “She deserves to suffer for hurting our family.”
