Chapter 8 #2
“Look who got shitfaced on less than three beers,” Betty said, laughing still.
“I wasn’t shitfaced, asshole. I was just tired,” I muttered, but she was absolutely right.
“Right, right,” Betty said, smiling. “Anyway, people have been texting me like crazy. They’ve given up on trying you. They’ve all turned to me now.”
That certainly surprised me. “About what?” I’d seen all the friend requests and follows and whatnot on my phone, but I hadn’t thought much of it. I hadn’t really cared, to be honest.
“Meeting you, of course,” Betty said. “They all wanna hang out now, all the fuckers in our class. Even the older kids—and Hamilton, too. You know Mandy Klein’s older brother I’ve crushed on since sixth grade?
Well, he’s in town and he texted me yesterday, said he’d love to hang out with us and hear your story. ”
I gave her a look. “Don’t you dare try to drag me into it. Go out with him if you want—I am not going.”
“I know, I know—just telling you about it,” she said with a grin. “I’m still gonna fuck him, but right now my hands are full with you.”
Impossible not to smile. Her energy was contagious.
The rest of the way, she told me all about how the kids we grew up with, who’d always bullied me and made my life a living hell, had invited her to go out and to parties and to all kinds of gatherings, hoping to get her to talk about me, where I’d gone, and who Helid and the royal guard escort they’d seen in my driveway really were.
I really was glad that the people were no longer bothering her—or my dad and Fiona—but I was struggling to remember the time that I did care about what they thought.
I was having such a hard time trying to come up with a good reason why I ever let it bother me.
I shouldn’t have. God, none of them even mattered. None.
Yet I’d let my entire life revolve around it. I’d let it become my whole goddamn personality.
And then there was the Aetherway.
I knew it even before I went close and called for my magic that it wasn’t going to let me through. I knew the pain was coming before it did. I knew the shadows so full of magic would refuse to let go of me, refuse to let me through.
But I still tried. I still stood there in front of the portal, felt the warmth of it just like I did that first time, and I asked it, begged it to let me through. When it didn’t, I tried to force it with all the magic I could let out.
Then the pain shut down my mind just like it did the other two times.
When I woke up less than a minute later, my nose was bleeding, and Betty had dragged me to sit against that same tree where I’d spent most of the day, just across from the Aetherway.
That was the first time that it occurred to me that I really couldn’t get to the other side even though I had magic. That was the first time I actually believed that there was no way back to Verenthia, that I was stuck on Earth forever. For real.
And since he hadn’t until now, there was a very good chance that Rune was not going to come for me, either.
I tried again half an hour later, and this time I didn’t pass out because I stopped just before I knew that the shadows were going to pull me under. My nose still bled and the pressure still remained on my shoulders, but I didn’t pass out.
And so, a few minutes later, I tried again, even after Betty’s protests. She hated to see me hurting, and she stayed as close to me as she could through it all, but there was only so much she could do.
Fuck, I was tired. Letting out all that magic, experiencing all that pain three times in a row had left me more drained than I thought possible, but the night wasn’t over yet. I was still going to try.
“Can’t you just wait, for fuck’s sake! Wait for your boyfriend to come get you or something—just wait, Nil. You’re hurting yourself,” Betty said for the sixth time since we started.
I wiped the blood from my nose and tried to appear as if I was fine, which I wasn’t. “I can’t just wait.”
She sat on the ground next to me, and the light I’d made on the way here, which instantly faded when I started to try to break through the Aetherway but regained intensity as soon as I stopped, came to hover over us.
“Why not?” Betty demanded.
“Because, Bet,” I said with a sigh. “Because if he hasn’t made it here by now, I don’t think he can come.
He’s a king now, and…” I shook my head as the fear pierced holes in my very soul.
“I don’t know how any of it even works. I don’t know what that means.
I don’t know if he’s…he’s…” Overthrown, or still a king, or already attacked, and God forbid killed by his father’s people.
He had been their ruler, after all. And who was to say that the Midnight fae wouldn’t turn against Rune?
The thought terrified me, but I knew how fae felt about bastards. I knew how they’d looked at Rune, and how they’d treated him in the Seelie Court all his life.
“If he’s half the guy you told me he was, he will come,” Betty said.
“I know it. You just have to be patient.” She grabbed my hand in hers and came closer.
“C’mon, it’s not so bad here, is it? I get that you’re apparently used to magic and shit, and Lavender Hill sucks balls, but it’s home.
We can go out, do stuff, hang out with people—or not.
” She added that last one when I gave her a look.
“We can watch movies and eat buttered popcorn and drink beer over your garage or mine every night until he comes.”
Fuck, she sounded so sure—but that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that I wasn’t.
The problem was that the idea of actually staying here for long enough to have time to hang out and watch movies freaked me out so badly I was having trouble breathing.
Rune was in Verenthia, and who knew what the hell it meant that he’d killed his father.
Vair was there, too, all alone, probably lost again, just like he had been before he found me in the Mercove.
And I was here, in front of the Aetherway that refused to let me through.
Fucking hell, it pissed me off.
I stood up, ignoring the weakness in my body.
“Nilah,” Betty called, and she stood up, too, came with me closer to the Aetherway.
“I’m thinking,” I told her—and I was. “There’s another Aetherway here on Earth, Bet. Helid told me about it—he said there are two of them on Earth, and only one in Verenthia.”
Betty paused. “Where?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.” Because I didn’t think I’d ever need to know. Not even in my wildest imagination could I have foreseen that I’d actually get banished by a dying king.
“And you think the other one is going to let you through?” Betty wondered.
Goose bumps all over my skin.
We were standing just three feet away from the trees, and she still couldn’t even see the shimmer, but it was there. The fae light that hovered over my head reflected on it, and I felt its warmth. I knew exactly what it was and how it worked.
“I don’t know,” I repeated, but I did. Because it wasn’t this Aetherway that was the problem. It was the magic inked on my skin.
Then we heard the snap.
Both of us jumped around, and the light over my head moved forward without my needing to even specifically command it to.
For a second, we didn’t breathe, didn’t blink, didn’t move a single inch. The snap had come from somewhere behind us, all right, and it sounded like someone had stepped on a twig. The magic in me burned by how quickly it cooled down the blood in my veins.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” Betty whispered, and I grabbed her hand absentmindedly, stepped forward and pulled her behind my back.
I was not afraid. It was an animal that had come near us—it had to be. “Who’s there?” I demanded, and I didn’t actually expect an answer.
I expected silence or the footsteps of the fox or the raccoon or whatever kind of animal had come close to retreat somewhere in the darkness, but…
Something moved right behind that same tree where I’d been sitting with Betty a moment ago.
A creature no taller than four feet was standing there, half covered by darkness, half under the fae light hovering in the air over us.
I saw the eyes, the hair, the skin—and the skirt made of bright pink sequins.
“No Aetherway is going to let you through, I’m afraid.”
The voice was female, soft, and she spoke with a perfect American accent.
“What the fuck.” This from Betty, and she sounded positively shocked.
Then the creature stepped forward and under the fae light so that we could see all of her with clarity. My mind stopped functioning completely for a good moment because, holy fuck, it’s a golem!
There was a golem in the woods with us.
“Hi,” she said, raising a hand with four fingers on it. “I’m Arez Valdi. It’s nice to meet you, Nilah Dune.”
My mouth opened but no words came out for much longer than I liked to admit.
The night was far from over, indeed.