Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
The ground around Madam Muerte’s headstone rumbled, an ominous portent of awful things to come, and several more body parts thrust upward through earth and roots.
Undead zombies stumbled out of what should have been their final resting places as Mike surged to his feet.
Zombies.
Maybe watching Madam Muerte burst through her grave had numbed me. This wasn’t even the weirdest thing that had happened to me today. But the sheer number of them, the way they excavated to the surface one by one…something wasn’t right.
I still had more of the grave mixture to go and hurried to swallow, but with no saliva in my mouth it threatened to choke me.
I wanted zombies to surprise me. I really did.
In another life, I’d have screamed, scrambled, panicked.
Instead I choked on grave dirt.
“You son of a bitch.” Poppy kicked the nearest zombie in the face. Her boot split the thing’s skull and it tumbled backward. Three more shambled up to take its place. “What the hell is this? Who’s responsible? Where’s the necromancer?”
A necromancer?
I ground my teeth together and forced another mouthful of mixture down my throat, focusing on the taste of the blossom instead of the literal dirt.
Already my head was clearing, my blood no longer burning. Only a few more bites to go. I had to get it all down.
Mike wasted no time before joining his grandmother in the fight. Once he’d made sure I was safe, once he’d cast a final look at me, nestled between two lichen-stained gravestones, he snapped his fingers.
Twin fae lights glowed above his palms and he hurled one at the zombie crawling toward Poppy’s boots.
“I swear to all that is holy—” Poppy’s curse dropped off into a growl as she whipped around and kneed another zombie right in the groin. Bone splintered. They kept coming. One after another they turned up, relentless, merely animated instead of alive.
Poppy yelped as skeletal fingers wrapped around her ankles, and Mike launched another light.
I chewed as fast as my tortured stomach allowed but it wasn’t fast enough to help them, not when the next wave of graves opened.
We were out of time.
Who was doing this?
Suddenly the weight of the air on my skin changed. It writhed away from familiar sensation with a kinetic buzz of awareness. There was more going on here than fighting off zombies.
A male voice sounded from the rise beyond us, magically amplified. “A little gift from me to you. Or maybe it’s better to describe them as a greeting.”
My heart stuttered and missed a beat. Because that voice was unforgettable, a snake-like and slithering charm. Then Dorian Jade showed himself, his arms folded casually across his chest and his demeanor enthusiastic and bright-eyed.
I hated him.
I hated his handsome face. I hated the way he walked like the world owed him something.
Today, the violet-eyed self-proclaimed leader of the Unseelie Fae held a wand of dried morsana flowers above his head. The stems were woven together in an intricate knot and petrified.
A quick flick of the wand and the zombies in the next row of graves burst into action.
Instead of being intimidated the way Dorian anticipated, Poppy chuckled and dusted her palms together. “Right. So that’s the bad thing about morsana still existing. I guess I should have mentioned it earlier.”
Morsana conjured the dead? Oh, great. My gut took another deep dive but the distraction helped me swallow more of the mixture. I scraped the circumference of the bowl for the last drops.
“This is a trial run,” Dorian explained condescendingly. “Nothing fancy, you understand. Rather simple. Understated.”
He carefully picked his way toward us, with the corpses creeping to his side like a personal horde for him to direct and use at his discretion. As if I needed a reason to hate him more.
“I haven’t stopped trying to convert Fae to my side. I’ve simply started creating an army. I intend to use this army to take over Faerie.”
If he started to pet their heads, I was out.
“The merciful savior?” Mike snapped. “Give me a break, Jade.”
Dorian held his arms out to his sides in an open gesture, magnanimous. Accepting the insult like praise and lapping up every drop.
This was what happened when a megalomaniac swam too deep into his own delusion. He stopped thinking rationally and the goal became the only vision he had. The only thing that mattered.
If I ever got that bad, I needed someone to take me out behind the castle and end me permanently. I didn’t want a morsana wand to be able to bring me back, not if it meant giving up control to a madman like Dorian Jade.
He was working with Kendrick, with Selene. He had my mother.
Poppy shot me a cutting look over her shoulder with an unmistakable meaning: Stay the hell out of this. I had my job to do, and she had hers.
I had to trust her and Mike to handle Dorian and his ghouls.
Trust and patience were two things in short supply.
“I’ve come across better necromancers than you, boy. And I’ve cut them down.”
Poppy lurched into action without her twin swords strapped to her belt, her weapons having been confiscated by the king’s guard. She didn’t need them. Not when she’d trained for centuries to fight against shit like this.
Mike was no less eager but he had maybe a tenth of her experience and it showed. They made their stand between graves, sunlight splitting the hill into shade and glare.
Poppy grabbed one of the zombies around the neck and yanked. The creature’s head dislocated from the rest of its decaying body but its spinal column remained intact. Her magic wrapped through the bones, binding them, and she slashed out at the next round of zombies with her brand new bone sword.
Mike threw his lights at the zombies and most of the time the attacks bounced off their shredded skin, leaving piles of it on the ground.
I gagged and the dirt in my stomach threatened to heave right back out. No. No. I didn’t fancy eating it a second time.
The love of my life and his grandmother fought the zombies while I scooped the last bit from the bowl and sucked it from my fingers, not daring to even breathe until I had managed to swallow.
Spite helped people accomplish a number of things in this life. Today, it helped me swallow the last of the horrible potion, helped me ignore every crumb sticking to the inside of my esophagus.
Dirt coated my stomach reeking of spent life and lost dreams.
The moment my final bite passed my tonsils, something changed inside of me.
Invisible chains snapped and broke.
Dizziness I’d learned to tolerate melted away and power spread through me, rushing into the places it used to reside. The well I’d always drawn from filled as I pushed to my feet, warmth spreading and obliterating the frosted spots where the blood curse had stifled me.
Life, heat, power, more power than I’d ever felt before because now my true power unlocked—Fae, witch, shifter—and the curse disintegrated.
Chains snapped, broke.
I was whole. At last.
Dorian stopped laughing.
The world went black and white. A wave of magic so potent it curled my hair yanked itself free from the depths of my being.
Keep my loved ones safe.
The wave spread across the field, blanketing the ground, sending the zombies flying, a scream caught behind my tongue.
When the magic receded, nothing remained. The same thing I’d done at EverRose only magnified, worse. It returned the zombie bodies to ash or something even smaller, the space between atoms.
A stiff breeze kicked up but nothing stirred.
My magic…had annihilated the zombies.
“Oh.” The single syllable falling from Poppy’s lips summed things up nicely.
The violence of it, the eruption I’d contained inside of me—
Mike’s strong arm wrapped around my shoulders, and Poppy transported us away from the graveyard with a muttered curse about not sticking around for that asshole to raise more of the undead.
Where she set us down didn’t matter, as long as it was anywhere but the place we’d just left.
Had I gotten Dorian, too?
Mike continued to hold me and I let him, even though my body was rapidly recovering. I wanted to stay in his arms forever
“Michael! Where do we go from here?” Poppy snapped.
I winced at the harshness of her voice. The only thing I knew was that we’d made it outside of Eahsea and far from the reaches of King Tywin.
We needed to go farther.
Mike’s brow furrowed in concentration. “Mom told me a story about a stretch of forest between the eastern divide and the northern sea. She said it was west of the Dasha plain, but if you hit the mine where they harvest magnasterium then you’ve gone too far.”
I knew those places. Didn’t I? They’d been important to me once.
“Our camp is at the fork in an unnamed river above the flood line and near a tree large enough to sing with the voice of the goddess,” Mike said as if the words were an incantation.
It was like poetry. When had he had time to put together a whole ass camp?
Poppy nodded at this description of our final destination. “Got it.”
My skin protested at her strong grip as though she thought I’d slip free. We paused for only a beat to catch our breath before she portaled us to a place outside a wall of trees.
The thick forest blocked out sunlight. Limbs wove together, a greater barrier than the wall dividing us from the Unseelie court.
What side were we on? It had to be our side. I hadn’t worn any pendant to get us safely through and neither had Mike or Poppy.
Did it matter anymore?
Mike’s magic brushed against mine in a soothing caress like fresh green grass and spring leaves. “Hold on for a little bit longer, Tavi, and we’ll get you settled. Okay? Trust me.”
He lifted his hands and faced the tree line. Rich clouds of emerald haze pulsed out of his fingers, twisting and dancing through the air as if he plucked an instrument none of us saw.
Another flick of his wrist and a clear bell-tone reverberated through my ears.
“This way.”
His smile held, its corners caught beneath the hollows of his cheeks.
Mike took the lead and we stepped into cloying, creepy darkness. The trees magically separated for us then knitted themselves back together behind us.
The further in we walked, the easier it was to exist, to think and breathe. Magic took care of me. I fell into step behind Mike, with Poppy bringing up the rear swearing enough to put a sailor to shame.
“You think I want to be trekking through the Wighted Woods at my age? Boy, you should have come up with a better hiding place. Fuck!”
Several minutes later, the forest spit us out again. Trees thinned and roots drifted into grass and clover like a cushion underfoot.
A slight incline led down to the banks of a river. The meadow between water and woods gave the camp a sweeping vantage point.
Fires pulsed from strategic points between tents, scents of roasting meat and cheese coloring the air. The balefires, it seemed, correspond with certain points in a larger rune, anchoring this place out of sight.
Tents—they were everywhere. Most of them sat low to the ground but the closer to the center of the camp they grew, spokes on a wheel.
The center point of camp was marked by the spike of a tent like someone stole it from a circus, tip cutting up into the cloudless sky.
“Mike…” I trailed off.
“I know. It’s something, isn’t it? We’re lucky you’re good at making friends, Tavi, because we never could have pulled this off without the help of people like Doug.” Mike surveyed the camp with pride. “And Juno.”
I blinked. “Professor Ians is here?”
“Sure. Coral even rounded up some of our classmates from the Elite. I know you didn’t personally like Lane, but he’s been a great help.” Mike took my hand. “He’s the one who came up with the protective ward. As long as the balefires stay lit, we’re untraceable. No one can portal in or out.”
I was so far behind the times, behind the tasks, behind on whatever master plan brought all these separate pieces into connection.
“You did this for me?” I whispered.
Mike heard me anyway. “Not only for you. For everyone. Come on.”
He tugged me out of the mire of my thoughts, down the sloping hill to the flat spot where someone was laughing. I hadn’t heard anything like it in a long time.
“Tavi! There you are. I knew I felt a disturbance in the force.” Melia ran up to us, with Bronwen and Coral trailing. “We’ve been waiting for you to show. Took you long enough.”
Hair a wild mane around her head, Melia grabbed me in a hug and held on tight. Neither of us wanted to let go.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get you out of the trial sooner,” she murmured against my cheek. “The king had to actually sentence you to death before the morals and values of the Rebellion would permit us to drain him of magic.”
“It’s one of those bullshit hoops you have to jump through.” Coral sounded personally insulted. “Ridiculous waste of time but Fae love nothing more than their rules and regulations.”
“The Rebellion?” I asked. “What is all this?”
Melia’s eyes sparkled when she leaned back. “You didn’t hear? We’re anarchists!”
“Not the right word,” Bronwen corrected, bumping my shoulder with her knuckles. “We’re protectors of everything good and decent and just, I’d say. Because people suck and we’re trying to make things suck a little less for those who have no voice.”
“They’re saying you inspired it, but really I think it was time for a good rebellion,” Coral added. “Rebellions happen every few thousand years or so and I guess this was our time. Like we needed the Warrior of EverRose to start something.”
My throat thickened. “This is the perfect time for a rebellion.”
A howl cut through the noise of the reunion and Noren loped over. Melia released me and I dropped to my haunches and wrapped my arms around his familiar heft.
“Oh, goddess. I’m glad you’re okay,” I breathed into his ruff, and he butted my head.
Poor direwolf. Before my magic broke him, he surely wasn’t used to affection, only abuse. Now I peppered kisses across his snout until his eyes rolled back in his head and his lips lifted in a lupine grin.
Two ears, four legs, not a fiber of fur out of place, and out of his particular brand of warrior form, Noren was back to normal.
“There’s something else you’ll want to see,” Bronwen murmured.
A group of pixies darted between tents and zipped closer, their wings beating like hummingbirds in shades of pink and purple.
Their leader, tiny and purple-skinned, stopped with mere inches to spare between us. Minuscule hands rounded to her hips.
“About time you showed up!”
I burst into immediate tears. “Elfwaite. It’s so good to see you.”