Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Thunder rocked the earth.
A horrific boom rippled across camp and shook the bed, sending the inside of the tent into a tilt. It tore through my bones and jettisoned me out of a sound sleep.
Mike’s arms banded around my torso to keep me still, but the two of us trembled, a buoy tossed in an uncaring ocean.
He yelled against my ear to be heard. “What the hell is going on?”
As quickly as it began, the thundering halted, leaving a silence worse than the initial explosion. The quiet seemed to breathe. My pulse echoed in my ears.
“Come on.” I jumped out of bed, scrambling for my clothes.
I held a hand out for Mike and he slapped his palm against it, letting me haul him up to his feet. A thought had his own clothes draped over his naked body.
Noren had found his way in during the night and now rose with a stretch, claws unsheathed.
“You think it could be a storm? Or an earthquake?” Mike asked as he trailed me out.
Either was a possibility and both were considered bad omens, a sign of something wrong. Storm after storm had blasted through the world when I first arrived there.
“Could be both. There’s clearly something happening with Faerie besides the political mess.”
“You mean like your powers?”
I wanted to smack myself.
Dawn littered the camp with thin light, the rebels rousing from their tents beneath a bruised sky. The central fire had gone out, and people rallied to get it lit and the spell resumed before we were discovered.
I pulled Mike toward the impact sight, which had hooked through my senses with a physical weight of wrongness clouding the air. Noren trotted behind us.
We drew up short at the split in the earth. The crust had heaved up, leaving a gaping fissure beneath it, the bulge spreading through camp.
Sharp peaks of stone jutted outward as cutting as shards of bone. The reek of freshly churned earth filled my nostrils.
It had been like this at EverRose when the pixies utilized their earth power to use literal dirt and rocks to fight the Fae. They’d dragged massive boulders from the depths and sent them flying with ease.
This wasn’t done by the pixies. The fissure belched steam into the air, the split winding through the tents and wreaking absolute havoc.
Mike tugged me away from the edge of the crevasse. “Tavi, there.”
Several people had been trapped when a tent fell, pinned beneath the ribcage of supports. Screams spanned out from the epicenter of the attack.
We helped as many people as possible but the chaos was too great to be contained, and the camp lay in shambles. Dawn perched above the tree line, violet and navy, and we stood dead on our feet.
“Honey, you need to rest.” Melia slid an arm underneath mine “Sleep a little and then you can get back to it.”
I shook my head. “There’s too much to do for me to stop now.”
“Your body is going to stop for you if you’re not careful. How much rest did you get?”
“Who needs rest? People need help. I’ll sleep—”
Melia started walking. “If you say you’ll sleep when you’re dead, then I am going to send you into the pit myself. Okay? Everyone is waiting to talk to you. Get through this meeting and then get the hell back to bed.”
My stomach gave an audible growl of protest but Melia was right. The rest of me refused to go on. The second she took my weight for me, my legs gave out, my feet numb and dragging like clubs. Melia sat me down on a puff of a pillow and Mike took her place on my other side.
“I’ve got her.”
“Both of us,” Melia said. “Seems like it’s gonna be a two-man job.”
“I’m fine, guys. You don’t have to baby me. Especially not when there are people out there—”
Julie strode into the tent, wiping her hands together. “They’re helped,” she replied dryly. “You stay. We have things to discuss.”
Doug followed her in, along with Coral, Bronwen, and Elfwaite. Noren crept in and immediately curled at my feet, resting his head on my lap.
My entire chest dropped. “I wondered where you’d wandered to.”
His yellow eyes found mine. The more time that passed from when I first encountered him, the less he looked like a monster. He was much larger than a normal wolf now but his features had evened out, his fur growing in and his gaze filled with a humanity I never noticed before.
“I’m sorry I forgot about you.”
He huffed out a breath and shifted closer, tucking his tail underneath him.
Unseelie direwolves were weapons. Mutated dark magic turned them into a tool instead of a living creature. Any guilt I might have had about taking over his mind and changing his loyalties was gone.
“Does anyone have any idea what happened?” Doug was all business. He reached to his back pocket and drew out his notebook and a black pen. “I’m listening.”
Coral rolled her eyes at the wolf shifter. Or maybe she had an issue with law enforcement in general.
Elfwaite fluttered her wings, her mother hovering beside her. “It wasn’t the pixies. Not this time.”
“No one said it was,” Bronwen added gently.
“It’s easy to point fingers at us, with our earth powers.” Elfhame shrugged. “It’s a fact.”
“Not here it isn’t.” Julie’s expression hardened.
“We don’t play those kinds of games like other Fae. Trust me.” Even Coral sounded pissed, and when my cousin got a burr in her fur, she was even nastier.
“So what do we know about what happened?” Melia asked.
Bronwen settled beside me and Noren, her head against the direwolf’s chest. “We know a pit opened up in the ground and we’re lucky no one got sucked down into the sinkhole.”
“Good point.” Mike hugged me closer to his side.
“The pixies have heard rumors of a terrible cataclysm among the Dryads. I wonder if our current issues are connected to their upheaval.” Elfhame hovered in the center of our circle and her skin took on a strange glow I hadn’t seen from her before.
“The Dryads? Come on,” Coral scoffed.
“They are deeply connected to the earth. We can’t be sure that’s why the land is misbehaving here, but it’s a strange coincidence, if so,” Elfhame replied.
“How would an issue with your Dryad people cause a disruption here?” Doug kept his voice clinical and even.
I’d always thought he was gruff. But his gruffness worked for us now.
“Do you have a better theory?” Bronwen asked.
He scribbled a few lines of notes in his book. “I’m working on it. I’m not used to all this…this…” Trailing off, he gestured around the tent, but I knew what he meant.
“It’s a different world, and it does take some getting used to,” I replied. “I wonder—” I paused. Should I tell them the truth?
If not these people, my core group of people I trusted, then who?
I was done hiding. I was done trying to pretend to be something I wasn’t and make myself smaller. When I spoke again, my voice was louder.
“I think it may be fallout from my powers being unlocked.”
Doug chuckled, the fingers of his free hand flexing around a phantom to-go cup of coffee. “Why would the Dryads have an issue with your powers being unlocked? And why now?”
“It was heavy magic. What I did at EverRose wasn’t good. It exploded out of me. Same thing yesterday with the zombies. It’s not the Dryads who specifically have a problem. They’ve probably been caught in the consequences.”
“Would the ripple of the spell be felt across time this way? It’s been years and years since the battle,” Elfhame said. “Although you were gone. I suppose this could be the tip of the wave, reaching us now after so long, because you’re back.”
“And it might only get worse,” Poppy said, rushing into the tent.
“Her attack against the necromancer might have set things in motion again.” The flaps closed behind her with a decisive and heavy snap.
“We think this is bad?” She sniffed. “Wait until the next wave hits. And the one after that will be even worse. Not everything is good in Faerie, ladies and gentlemen.”
“I’m sorry.” The apology aired automatically but Poppy waved me away.
“We knew the consequences, didn’t we? We also knew we had no choice. Those powers had to come out. The prophecy said so.”
Coral grumbled but said nothing; the only other sound in the tent was the scribble of Doug’s pen on his notebook.
“Well, this is uncomfortable.” Poppy tugged the front of her tunic and coughed. “Hate it when things get tense like this.”
I seconded that but there weren’t a lot of choices left. Not to mention my friends and I had gotten pretty used to discomfort. A peaceful afternoon with nothing to do and a cup of tea…now that we’d have no clue how to handle.
I scrubbed Noren behind the ears the way he liked and waited for someone else to speak. The silence stretched and folded over itself.
“Can you tell me where to go to find the Dryads?” I asked Elfhame finally. “I’d like to talk to them myself.”
Coral threw her arms in the air. “There’s got to be a better way to communicate than physically leaving camp, Tavi. Are you serious?”
“With the shit going down, I highly doubt cell phones are going to work,” Melia said, the voice of reason. “Not to mention we are on the run for treason! Do you want the king and his goons to be able to track us? No offense, Mike.”
He brushed her off. “None taken. I’ll start gathering supplies.”
“Hold on,” Poppy cut in before Mike stood. “This is something Tavi will have to do alone.”
Every single person in the room lifted their voice in protest at once. The arguments rang out in a single loud blare of noise but Poppy refused to cower.
“No.” Her voice held firm. “Tavi, you know I was very clear about the consequences of unlocking your powers. There were no loopholes to sneak through this time. There is a debt to be paid, and you are the only one who can pay it. I won’t have my grandson in the direct path of destruction.”
“She’s not going alone.” Mike crowded closer and his arm banded around my waist.
“She won’t be alone. Okay?”
“That kind of undercuts you literally just saying she will have to do it alone.” Coral was red-faced and ready to argue. “Or do you not hear yourself?”