by May Dawson
Raura hid in a local village while Arlen, Lake and I rode on to Faer’s castle.
When we arrived, Faer—a slender, lavender-haired man who looked very much like Alisa—was warm in greeting us. He didn’t mention the way he’d almost destroyed one of my village and slaughtered three hundred people just to send a message. Maybe he thought he didn’t have to.
For my part, I neglected to mention the fight as well, or the way we’d routed his guards… with his sister’s help.
Lake had cautioned me that Alisa might be something of a sore spot for Faer.
Faer insisted that we needed to come to his ball the next day.
That night, I dreamt of my father, but when I sat up from the dream, he was sitting on the edge of my bed.
I rubbed my arm across my face. “What is it, Jorden?”
I’d been having a strangely nice dream, remembering my father taking me into the forest to cut down trees, but then I scrambled out of bed to get away from him. That memory belonged to the father who had raised me—and died trying to protect me—not to Jorden.
“Leave my memories alone,” I warned him.
“I just wanted us to have some nice memories together,” he said, sounding wounded. “After all, you’re about to leave me, aren’t you?”
“I have to go back to my own world. Help my friends.”
Jorden hesitated. “I know. When you leave…” He smiled, before he admitted, “I do too.”
“What do you mean?” I demanded. I’d been asleep and I was still foggy-brained, and that was not a good time to deal with my father. Or any Fae.
“My spirit is attached to that ring,” he nodded at the ring I still wore on my finger, and I twisted it absently, “and to you, Tyson.”
I nodded slowly. I didn’t want to destroy the last of my father’s ghost, and yet… what choice did I have?
“Is there another way?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “And I wouldn’t ask you to stay for my sake. But I do want some… memories.”
“I understand,” I said. “But that’s not how you make them. We have to have our own.”
“I’m dead, Tyson,” he said, with a laugh. “How am I going to make memories with you?”
“Come on,” I said, throwing on my jacket.
The two of us traveled through Faer’s dark castle and into the garden which was shadowed by statues and to me, deeply creepy.
As we walked, I asked him, “Do you think my mother could still be alive?”
I explained my theory about the sleep spell, and he said, “I doubt it, Tyson.”
My heart fell a little, but he added, “What could be the harm in digging her up and checking, though? I hope for your sake, you can have her back.”
I pulled down one ripe red apple from a tree, then a second, and tossed one to him. It went right through his outstretched, ghostly hand, and I told him, “You are terrible at catch.”
“I’m a ghost,” he said, and then laughed. “Is catch something fathers and sons play in your world?”
“Yep,” I said. “I used to watch Penn and his father play sometimes.”
His face grew sober. “I’m sorry I wasn’t around to raise you, Tyson.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’m glad my life worked out the way it has. Most days, anyway.”
I had a weird life, that was for sure, but it was pretty amazing too.
“I wish there was a way you didn’t have to die when I leave,” I admitted.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Different Fae believe different things about the afterlife, but for me… I believe that we all end up in the same place in the end. Everyone. Fae, human, shifter. One big free-for-all.”
“That’s a nice thought.”
“I don’t want to see you for two hundred years,” he said, then frowned at my grin. “Wait, how long do mortals live? It’s even shorter than that?”
“Eighty years seems pretty typical, give or take a decade.”
Jorden looked scandalized. “That’s barely enough time to live.”
“We make do,” I said. Because we had to.
“A hundred years, at least,” Jorden said, as if he could negotiate me into accepting a longer lifetime.
“A hundred years,” I agreed.
The two of us wandering through the garden’s twisting paths, surrounded by fragrant night-blooming flowers that shone silver and white under the moonlight, and the statutes. His feet didn’t dent the grass.
“Tell me about how you met my mom,” I said. “Walking through the garden like this in the middle of the night, listening to your stories… that’s something I’m never going to forget. Father.”
The word felt awkward in my mouth, but the way Jorden’s eyes brightened made it all worth it.
One night of memories with my father wasn’t enough, of course. But it was more than I ever had before, and I was going to be grateful for every minute of it.
Chapter Thirty
Maddie
The next day, I didn’t see Silas or Rafe. I kept an eye out for them as I quickly ate my breakfast, which looked an awful lot like dinner the night before, then headed out into the yard.
Jensen and I were assigned to work on tearing down a half-burned barracks building, since we didn’t have any regular assigned job like the other prisoners.
“Do you think it was struck by lightning?” I asked another prisoner curiously.
Half of the roof was burned away, but strangely enough, the entire inside of the barracks had burned away. I wondered what had happened there. I hadn’t seen anything like it ever before, but I also was far from an expert on lightning.
The prisoner just looked at me and then walked away. Well, good talk.
Jensen sidled in beside me. He’d shed his prison jacket earlier—of course he had—since even in the cold, we were all sweating. Now he was shirtless, except for the leather gloves we all wore handling the rough wood.
“I don’t think it was lightning, Maddie,” he said softly. “I think this was some kind of…execution.”
Unease twisted through my gut. I felt sick at the thought, but I said, “It seems a bit dramatic.”
“Magicians seem to be.”
“I wonder if that has anything to do with their attempt at an uprising a few months ago,” I said.
“Might fit the timeline. Looks like the rain and snow’s been beating down on the inside of this place for a while.”
I glanced over my shoulder, curious how anyone had tried to escape. We were on the other side of the building from the bored guard watching over us; there was a long slope down the hill, a deep pit of water that reminded me of a moat, and a wall beyond it, made of stone in places and wood in others. The fence didn’t seem that high, but I had a feeling that was a lie.
It was only because I was studying the wall that I saw Isabelle.
She must have escaped, and yet she was coming back now, squeezing through the wall.
It took me a second to realize she was stuck. She was frantically trying to perform magic, her lips moving and a stick gripped in her hand as a makeshift wand.
Wait, could she actually use magic despite the rune?
Yet somehow she was trapped. We had to help her.
Jensen followed my gaze and frowned. “What kind of idiot would break into Elegiah?”
“What kind of idiot indeed,” I said, even though I knew what he meant. If Isabelle had a way of escaping, why the hell hadn’t she just run?
What was going on with Keen, Sebastian and the others? I couldn’t get Isabelle to talk to me, but something was going on here that I didn’t understand.
I heard the guard’s voice coming and grabbed Jensen’s wrist, determined to keep them from coming around the corner and seeing Isabelle.
But when he slipped around the edge of the building, he had stopped and was talking to another guard. For a second, I didn’t even realize Silas; he had such a knack for blending in and he was wearing the crisp navy blue uniform tha
t made the guards all blend into one for me.
Once I recognized his face, a sense of relief flooded me. It was so powerful that my bone-deep trust in Silas surprised me.
“You two, get back to work,” the guard shouted at us. He reached for the baton on his belt.
Silas never looked our way, but he said something and the guard laughed and relaxed subtly.
“Go,” I whispered to Jensen. I could busy myself at the edge of the building piling fallen stones into the wheelbarrow, but it was definitely a task for two.
He gave me his skeptical eyebrows, but he went, climbing up onto the rooftop to help pull with the demolition of the cross-beams that were being torn out. I loved him for that. Jensen always listened to me.
Actually, he had since the beginning. That was what I thought about as I worked on piling the stones, trying to keep an eye on Isabelle and on the guards. Even when Jensen and I were engaged in our little war, he’d made it clear he valued my intelligence…even as he tried to chase me out of the academy.
I couldn’t think of any way to help Isabelle. I couldn’t access my magic—just the thought made my hand burn, a painful tingle working its way almost to my elbow—and if I tried to get close enough to talk to her, I might draw attention. She was on the other side of the moat, halfway through the wall, her legs and one arm apparently still trapped within the stone.
How had she defeated the rune that blocked her magic? And why hadn’t everyone done the same?
A third guard joined Silas and the other; they were apparently doing shift change.
Silas wandered toward me a few moments later, doing his circuit as the other two walked in the opposite direction.
I kept a watchful eye on the guards, feeling sweat blossom along my brow as I piled rocks into the wheelbarrow. I was filling it too full, and it was going to be painful to push—especially on the meager meal I’d had this morning—but I didn’t want to abandon Isabelle. Someone on the ground would have to come around the building to see her, and I glanced up at the castle, wondering if there were watchers up there that could see across the moat.
“Go ahead and take that to storage,” Silas said, because there was an entire construction storage area. It certainly seemed as if they had long-term plans for the camps, maybe there were always more Rebel Magicians.
I took a step back around the corner, so he could see me but others couldn’t see my lips moving.
“Isabelle’s in trouble,” I mouthed.
And she was trouble.
Silas didn’t glance around, but I was sure he knew where everyone was in the colony and who could see or hear us. Silas didn’t miss much.
He stalked aggressively toward me as if he might hit me, until we were concealed by the edge of the building, and grabbed my arm tightly. It was all pretense; anyone who could see us from above would be able to see his aggressive posture, but not his gaze as he found Isabelle.
“Fuck,” he whispered, the word barely audible. “The wards. She must have a way to get through, but they just refreshed them this morning—she must have been on the other side already.”
“How do we help her?” I asked.
“I don’t see a way,” he said. “She’s smart. If she’s got a way to get through, I’m sure she’s got a way to deal with new wards. We just have to buy her time.”
“You need to talk to her,” I warned him. “She’s not sure she wants to leave.”
“She’s not sure she wants to leave,” he whispered, his voice disbelieving. Then he said, “Well, I guess she has the ability to leave if she wants to anyway. What the fuck is going on here?”
I didn’t know, but we had to find out fast.
This part of our mission was once again supposed to be a quick twenty-four hours, and like every other part, it was going deeply awry.
“Move the wheelbarrow,” he said. “I’ll keep watch.”
I nodded and did, arduously pushing the wheelbarrow. When I glanced back, I saw Jensen watching me surreptitiously as he worked, and I knew he was watching over Isabelle too from his vantage point. He’d alert Silas if we were in trouble.
I pushed the wheelbarrow fast enough to make my breath come short even as I was returning, my back and shoulders aching.
“I don’t know how I’m going to make it until lunch at this rate,” I muttered as I was passing another prisoner.
“There is no lunch,” he said, which really was not what I wanted to hear at the moment.
I was returning when I heard Jensen whistle softly. At first I jumped, then I was almost comforted to hear him whistling perfectly as he did—and then I picked up the notes. He was whistling the hanging tree, reminding me of the moment when he’d be held, accused of killing Farro.
I realized there were guards moving toward us, and they would see Isabelle.
I shoved the wheelbarrow the rest of the way, my shoulders burning, until I saw Silas, who looked pale and strained. I shoved the damn wheelbarrow back into its place and as I knelt to pick up a rock, I murmured, “I’ve got to create a distraction.”
She was almost out, only one of her legs was still trapped. But that didn’t matter. She was in deadly peril, and from the strain on her face, she knew it well.
“No,” he said softly. “I’m not going to protect her at your cost. If she’s caught like that, as long as she doesn’t resist, they likely won’t kill her. Just torture her to figure out how she escaped.”
Just torture her. Christ. I loved Silas, but sometimes his big-picture review was hard to understand.
“You don’t know that,” I said. What if they did kill her? I wasn’t going to let Silas watch one of his friends die. I’d do whatever it took to protect him, and that meant protecting Isabelle. “You don’t know everything about how this place works. It looks like they don’t mind killing prisoners.”
“Maddie.” He paused, and I knew he was aware of that risk.
I made an impulsive decision. “I’m going to try to escape. If I run down the hill, it will draw them away from her. No one should look her way. She only needs a few more minutes.”
“No.” Silas sounded so sure of himself when he gave orders; he sounded just like Rafe. No wonder the two of them fought. There was only room for so many alphas in a pack, and on a team. Everyone had underestimated Silas when they assumed he wasn’t just as much an alpha male as they were—wolf or not. “Maddie, they’ll hurt you.”
“You just better get there first,” I said.
“Then I’ll—” he cut himself off, sounding frustrated.
“I trust you to hurt me first, Silas,” I told him. “They might do lasting damage. You can make it look good without killing me, right?”
“You’re crazy,” he accused me.
“That’s why you love me,” I said, right before I straightened and threw a rock in the general direction of his handsome face.
Chapter Thirty-One
Silas
Maddie’s rock missed, which was how I knew she was never really aiming at me. It struck the wooden building behind with a powerful crack and fell at my feet.
I would have tried to stop her, but the feint gave her just enough time to sprint off on her escape. As she ran across the yard, the guards that had been walking toward us whirled to track her, then shouted at her to stop.
By the time they took off toward her, already pulling their batons from their belts, I was moving to get there first. Through my blur of movement, I saw a familiar face—Tobias—and my stomach clenched, knowing what he would do. Not that any of these guards were probably any better than Tobias.
“No worries, gentlemen,” I said, striding on my route to intercept her first, making myself look unhurried. “It’s just one little girl having a tantrum over her lost magic. I’ve got it.”
Tobias nodded and stopped, although I could feel his gaze boring into my back. The camp was warded against magic, so I couldn’t protect Maddie the way I had when we were in Echo’s compound. Those blows had hurt at the time, but th
ey’d left her unharmed.
Now I’d have to actually hurt her, and the thought was agonizing.
But that didn’t stop me.
She was right, it was our best play. I would’ve put myself in that situation if Rafe or Jensen or she were the one playing the guard. I didn’t like to hit a girl, but Maddie was so much more than a girl.
She was at the very edge of the moat when I caught her. Our boots were sinking into the mud, both of us sliding on the edge of the hill, as I grabbed her and reeled her against my body, just for a second.
“Don’t fight back,” I snapped in her ear. “If you attack a guard publicly, it’ll be a lot worse.”
I had to make sure I hurt her just enough that no one else would feel the need to join in.
I pushed her down into the mud. She raised her arm defensively, her fingers spread as if she were about to raise a shield, and for a second I thought I saw wisps of magic crackle around her fingertips.
Then they were gone and she winced as if she were in pain even before I kicked her over and whipped the cane across her shoulders. I looked for the safest places to aim, making sure I wouldn’t do any permanent damage. She tried to roll, automatically trying to protect herself and get away from me, but the movement exposed her softer places as she tried to scramble away. I dropped to pin her with my knee, which reduced how much I could swing my arm anyway.
I looked up and saw Jensen watching me from the rooftop. His jaw had fallen open, and the look on his face was thunderous.
If he could’ve reached me then, I knew he would’ve tried to rip my head off my body like I’d done to the robot.
We had a mission. I always kept my eyes on the long-term no matter what happened in the moment.
No matter what it cost me.
Because as I backed away and left Maddie in the mud, her face twisted in pain, tears of pain shimmering in those beautiful blue eyes, it cost me a lot.
“No running in the yard,” I told her, my voice cold, pretending that was all she’d been up to.
I turned to find Tobias and the other guard looking on with faces that seemed appreciative. Good. Then I’d done enough.
