Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Elfwaite glowed, smaller than my finger, and my best friend from the human world.
Before I’d known anything about Faerie, about wars and curses and generations of prejudice, Elfwaite had been my sounding block, my safe harbor, and the only one willing to listen to the grumblings of a kid, then a preteen.
She’d never once mocked me for my feelings.
Elfwaite was the one who first pushed me to meet with Barbara in order to make it through the Fae Academy. She was the driving force behind everything leading me to this moment
I’d left her behind in the mortal realm after heading back home to search for Livvy’s notebook and the spell to unlock my powers.
Too surreal, then, to stand here with Elfwaite now.
She was too small to hug but I held out my hand and she hovered above my palm, her arms wrapping around my thumb.
“I don’t want to cry but it’s good to see you too.” She squeezed me harder and my heart clenched. “I’ve missed you.”
I cried with reckless abandon. I wanted to be the same size so I could squeeze her tight and never let her go. “I missed you too.”
What was she doing here?
“We knew you’d need us, so we came!” Elfwaite exclaimed.
My head spun. “We?”
Luck wasn’t my thing any more than trust or patience. But it felt lucky to see my friend again after all this time.
“Me and my family, yeah. You remember my mom? Everyone from Twilight’s Hush who survived EverRose came, along with neighboring villages.”
Elfhame popped up from the group, a slightly darker purple than her daughter. The pixie queen had aged only a little since the last time I saw her. Again, although it was only a few days for me, it had been hundreds of years since the battle at the pixie stronghold.
Small scars in lines of lilac and violet littered Elfhame’s skin, crisscrossing her arms where the flowing gown left them exposed.
She’d been heavily pregnant when I left her. Now Elfwaite was grown, the same quicksilver presence I loved, and the two of them together completed the reality I’d known.
Elfwaite had never told me the exact circumstances that landed her in the mortal realm alone, but I’d always gotten the sense it was a sad story. Something that cost her a little more each time she shared it.
I hadn’t wanted to push, and if I were honest, I lacked the capacity to understand it in the way she deserved. I’d inevitably say the wrong thing.
“We never left Faerie permanently,” Elfhame explained at whatever she saw on my face. “We did retire to the human realm for a time, but there was no reason for us to live in complete exile. Not after what you did for us. You changed history.”
Elfwaite vibrated, the corona around her darkening to a rosy hue. “My brothers are here too. We’re all together, thanks to you! You’re in the history books, Tavi. People have taught their children about you for centuries.”
Thanks to me. I didn’t want them to feel indebted. I did nothing but try to clamber my way out of a deep, deep hole. It wasn’t even about survival anymore. It was something much more primitive, more primal.
I shook my head. “I’m so glad you have your family, Elfwaite. You deserve to be together and safe.”
“Joining the rebellion was the next logical step. The moment Melia contacted us regarding your return, we knew. We brought our forces.” Elfhame gestured to the camp.
“It’s a far cry more comfortable than the ruins of EverRose, isn’t it?
And Nora has been anxious to see you. She’s been instrumental in getting the pixies settled.
” Elfhame cupped her hands to her mouth and called out.
The sound of her voice tingled over my skin and left effervescent bubbles behind. It was all in my head, of course, but I couldn’t shake the feeling even as Nora jogged between tents.
Her mouth rounded in surprise when she saw us, and something in her expression cracked my chest open.
“Tavi!” She stopped short in front of us, her black hair cut beneath her chin and her glasses casting a shadow on her narrowed eyes. “I had no idea what happened to you after the tribunal. I was terrified.”
I wasn’t sure whether to reach for her or not. But a tiny chink in her bookworm vibe had me reaching, drawing her close, hugging her tight because life was too precious.
“Thanks for your help getting me out of there,” I whispered to her.
“I’ve done a lot of things I never thought I would have. And apparently you’ve been out there changing history,” she murmured.
Mike scoffed. “We tried hard not to.”
Elfwaite and Noren led the way toward the central bonfire outside the great tent. The war tent, Bronwen had christened it with pride.
Twilight bathed the clearing in peach and gold and indigo before we settled around the dancing flames on conjured cushions. Volunteers doled out food in magic-hewn wooden bowls
Whatever stew simmered with puddles of grease between potatoes, I was aching to devour a second bowl by the time Elfwaite spoke again.
She settled on Noren’s head between his ears with her knees drawn up to her minuscule chest and her wings nestled against her spine.
“Feel better?” she asked me.
“Now that I’m here? And with a full stomach?” I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt the way I did now. “There aren’t really words to describe it. Better will do.”
A sense of rightness, comfortable and warm, spread through my chest and grew at the ring of laughter. The people I loved were here. A few notable exceptions sprinkled throughout the group, several faces I knew should be there but would never show themselves again.
Uncle Will.
He’d have hated the dirt and grime. Anything to mar the polish of his shoes was met with a team of gardeners to prune it into submission.
He’d changed, at the end. He’d changed for me, and doing the right thing got him killed.
Noren sighed, huffed, made himself comfortable at my feet as Elfwaite nestled deeper into his fur.
I knocked potatoes through a sea of grease and trapped the words inside. “What are the pixies doing here? Did Melia actually contact you?”
Elfwaite chuckled. “It’s funny, really, how fate works.
Fate and time. Apparently, Oxana the Sightless was quite a prolific prophetess during the time of the Red Dawn.
One of the witch sorceress’s great prophecies stated that the pixies would join forces with a half-shifter one day to bring peace to the realm.
When Melia reached out, we knew the time had come. ”
Poppy smirked into her stew. “Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about that one.”
“This what happens when you hide behind pseudonyms, my friend,” Elfhame chastised. “You can’t keep track of the things you spout.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault people chose to take my prophecies and run with them. I had no control over them.” Poppy shoveled another spoonful of stew into her mouth and elbowed Mike, at her side, hard enough to make him miss his next bite.
Stew splashed across the V-cut of his tunic.
“She says, as though she didn’t grow into an even bigger legend.
” Elfwaite shook her head. “Either way, we knew it was time so we came. The pieces fell into place exactly the way they were meant to. We did have to wait, after EverRose, for the right moment. And I had to go to the human realm to meet you. But it was worth the wait because the time is now.”
A half-shifter bringing peace to the realm…
It sounded like a dream. Impossible, fraying, the fringes silvery and light enough to slip through my fingers.
I shivered and my mind flashed back to the day in the library at the Fae Academy, the drawings I’d seen in an ancient book and the prophecy about a shifter child.
How many prophecies had Poppy actually made?
How long ago had this all started coming together?
“You were imprisoned for a week and a half,” Mike said. “We had to wait for the tribunal, as you know, and while we waited we schemed. Friends and allies and believers set up this safe space in Faerie’s wilderness.”
“Who is here, exactly?” I glanced around the ring of familiar faces but we were small in number now.
Most of the people who had stopped to greet me had retired to their own campsites.
“Um, well, Juno. And Doug, and Allen.” Melia ticked off names on her fingers. “The shifters who survived the Fae Academy attack were contacted. Julie and Nora. And Raelynn.” Melia winked but that one took me by surprise.
“I thought I’d made a bad impression with my lack of baking skills.” I took another sip of broth.
“In only the best way,” Melia insisted. “Professor Marsh, of course. Lane, Flora, several of your buddies from the Claw & Fang. Oh, and Rooker.”
I almost choked. “The Bureau agent?”
“Like I said, you make an impression everywhere you go.”
I thought Rooker hated me too. Especially considering how his partner, Claribel, worked for Dorian Jade.
I set aside my empty bowl. “I’m really happy to see everyone. And I’ll make the rounds through camp and say hello to the others. But as for a rebellion…” I hesitated. “How do we win without an army? Without weapons? Right now we’re basically on the run from Tywin, and trapped between him and Jade.”
Elfhame flew closer. “We’re not weak. We have one of the greatest artifacts in Faerie at our disposal. The Augundae Imperium.”
Memory flashed.
Elfhame with the Imperium in her hands, cradling it, hiding the object until the right time.
“You used it at the trial. You spread the power between you.” I forced the words out. “Did you bring it to the rebellion, Elfhame?”
Poppy whistled through her teeth.
“I did. So no more worries of warriors and weapons. We’ll be fine.
The more we grow, the more tools we have at our disposal,” Elfhame replied.
I’d never heard her sound so bloodthirsty before.
“And your friends, Douglas and Julie. They’ve mentioned heading back through the veil to the mortal world to gather more support. ”
“Who will we find in the human realm?”
“I have friends,” Elfwaite insisted.
“And I’m sure my old pack will have some sympathizers among them,” Bronwen added. “What about people like Onyx? Given who his father is, you’d never have thought he’d be sympathetic. There are more people like us out there than we think. The ones who have had to hide who they are.”
Luckily I’d finished eating before his name came into the conversation. My appetite withered on the spot. “Onyx died a hero. I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for him.”
For the sacrifice he made by throwing himself into the Abyss.
Shit, it still hurt. The ache concentrated beneath my sternum and radiated out instead of diffusing.
Melia crowded closer, as did Bronwen, their heads resting on my shoulders.
Things kept happening and I’d never gotten a proper chance to grieve. I’d never given myself the time, not even in the dungeon, to consider the friend I’d lost and what his sacrifice meant. My gratitude for that…
But also my guilt.
“It’s going to be fine,” Melia insisted. She glanced around at our friends, nudging them nearer to the fire as night set in. “It’ll all be fine.”
“Will it be, though? Things have changed. The only thing I know is that we have to stand together for this.”
Coral snapped her fingers in agreement.
“I mean, King Tywin has ruled this place for longer than he should have.” The books in the Fae Academy library, the centuries where the mantle should have been passed on but never had. “He’s divisive, and his policies won’t serve anyone as we move into the future. It’s time for a change.”
Even as I voiced the truth, I wanted to tell Mike I was sorry for any disparaging remarks about his father and how it might make him feel. Because I never wanted to hurt him.
How will our relationship survive this?
I glanced at Mike and expected to find him reserved, shut down, closed off and unreachable in his stubbornness. Instead his eyes gleamed with fierce determination and something like pride.
I wanted to tell him I was sorry for any disparaging remarks about his father. Or how it might make him feel because I never wanted to hurt him.
His expression stoked the embers inside me.
I rose to my feet. “It’s time to stand up for change and for what we believe in. The way the pixies stood up for their freedoms too. The Battle of EverRose proved they might be small but they aren’t going to roll over and let someone’s boot crush their necks,” I called out.
A small crowd had gathered around us through my makeshift speech, eager to hear my words. Now suddenly it broke apart and people scattered.
Something had interrupted us. Something had entered the camp. In another beat I understood.
My mother stumbled toward the fire, the golden flames illuminating the blood covering her. Everywhere.