Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
“So typical of the Fae to think themselves the only creatures powerful enough to hold the key to a prophecy,” the Dragon scoffed in the back of my mind while Bane and Islasees fought each other and the other Fae fought with the Hollows, cutting down the dead one after another.
I’d scrambled away from the fighting, not needing to risk my neck by getting in the way.
“What do you mean?” I hissed, looking around in alarm as Helga dove behind another tree with Devlan, the two of them seeming as content as I was to stay out of the Fae fight and hide from the Hollows.
“Why would the key be the royal blood of the Fae?” the Dragon muttered, its voice rough with disdain. “What care does the Great Elm have for their crowns?”
“But if she doesn’t care for their crowns then what does it mean ‘imperial blood?’” I asked, quoting the words Hendrix had spoken about the key, realisation sinking into me as my fingernails dug into the bark of the ash tree I’d hidden behind.
“What, pray tell, does the Great Elm value most dearly?”
I scoured my mind, the riddle to that question setting my thoughts scattering.
We needed to figure it out. We had to get inside the labyrinth and return the amulets to the Great Elm itself.
So what did she care about? The trees, yes.
The Lost Children perhaps? I tipped my head up to search the branches, looking between the countless faces that watched us from above.
“How am I supposed to convince one of them to come down here?” I muttered, looking around for a place where I might be able to start climbing but the Dragon huffed loudly, its power spilling from the amulet in a gust of wind which spun my hair around my face.
“Yes, she loves her children, but they are not born of her magic,” it harrumphed like this conversation was so very draining.
I opened my mouth to make another guess but cried out as a grey and rotting hand took hold of my wrist and hauled me out of my hiding place. The Hollow grinned, its skin sagging as it branded its yellowing teeth at me.
“Ferris!” Bane barked, lurching towards me, though Islasees swung his sword out to block him.
“Risking your life for a human, Crownthief?” Islasees sneered as he forced Bane to parry a savage blow and I was thrown to the ground beneath the Hollow. “I knew you were low but the reek of desperation on you has truly deepened if you’re reduced to fucking the short-lived peasants now.”
I kicked and fought beneath the impossibly strong corpse, its yellowed teeth closing in on my throat as it lunged for me.
My spirits were writhing through the corners of my mind, waiting for my call but with the Hollow’s hands locked around my throat I was unable to make it.
Bane lunged for me but Islasees blocked his advance again and he roared a wordless command as he was forced to block his opponent’s sword once more.
The Hollow jerked back as if a string had cinched tight around its neck and heaved it from me.
I gasped as I scrambled away from it, the ground turning to festering spoil at my boots as the dark power of the Necromancer bled from Bane. I didn’t know what would happen to me if I touched it but with his focus on his fight with Islasees, I couldn’t risk finding out.
“You’ll hold your tongue if you value keeping it inside your skull,” Bane growled, feinting to the right then swinging for Islasees’s gut, cutting the fabric of his tunic and drawing a thin line of blood.
“Get out of the way,” he barked, his eyes on me and I nodded as I scrambled aside, not needing to be told that twice. But Islasees watched our interaction with calculating savagery and a knot tightened in my gut as I ran for the closest trees.
“Grab that human!” Islasees bellowed at his pair of brutish followers though their attention was firmly fixed on the hoard of dead beings who were intent on their demise and they couldn’t follow his command. Yet.
“Think, spirit singer, you’re allowing yourself to get distracted,” the Dragon chastised as I ducked behind a horse chestnut tree and hunted the shadows for signs of more danger.
“It’s hard not to be distracted when most of the creatures in this glade would like nothing more than to see me dead,” I hissed.
“Less griping, more thinking.”
I bit back a retort and did as the spirit had commanded, running over all it had told me along with the Hag’s words to Bane.
Not a Fae royal. And it wouldn’t be human either – not that any of our royalty were here if it had been.
Not a Lost Child but something the Great Elm cared about, something born of her magic…
“Is it you? You and the other spirits?” I gasped, darting from my hiding place as the fight between Jadina and the Hollows she was fending off drew too close.
“We spirits don’t bleed in the way of living beings,” the Dragon dismissed.
No, they didn’t bleed like a human. But…
I did. I was human but I was born of the forest, I’d been born of the forest over and over again, always following the call of this place.
I’d come here thirteen times and if I really was the key then that made sense because they would have needed me to open the door.
That was why the Great Elm had given me to my mother.
It was why the forest and the spirits favoured me too.
They knew I was the one who was needed to open the door and allow them to return to their mother.
It seemed impossible that such an enormous task could have been placed on my shoulders all along but it was the only truth that made sense.
“It’s my blood?” I guessed, my heart thumping wildly at the thought, the Dragon’s only reply that deep and mocking chuckle in the back of my mind.
But that was enough for me. The moon had risen into the sky overhead, the trees were all thrashing back and forth while the Lost Children sang their wild songs. Every amulet was here barring the Serpent and I had to have faith that my sister would deliver that last piece of the puzzle in time.
I could only believe that this was the first time any set of Champions had come so far and for every life I’d lived before in whatever form that may have been, I could well have been the key. So if that was the case then I was going to have to unlock the labyrinth.
“Please, help me,” I begged of my spirits and at last the Dragon relinquished, allowing the Raven and Unicorn to join it as all three of them burst from their amulets at my throat.
The rush of power spilling away from me had me staggering, a gasp catching in my throat. The Dragon roared and the fighting taking place in the heart of the clearing before the entrance to the labyrinth stilled for a beat as the incredible beast tore past over their heads.
The Raven circled me, cawing in wild warning as I ran for the stone door, the image of the Great Elm carved upon its face seeming to writhe across its surface as if beckoning me closer.
Islasees released the Tiger from its amulet at his throat and the enormous beast leapt straight at Bane, slamming into him and sending them both tumbling away across the clearing.
The red-haired Fae turned my way with a sneer, lifting his sword as he levelled his focus on me but the Unicorn charged at him before he could get close, its horn lowered and flowers blooming everywhere its hooves struck the forest floor.
Islasees was forced to throw himself aside, the Rat leaping from its amulet as he ducked behind the trees.
I stared in wonder at the spirit he’d sent after my Unicorn as the creature raced forward.
It was the size of a large dog and where its fur might have been on a real rat, this creature was instead crawling with insects of every variety, its job to protect and ferry them around the forest.
The Unicorn turned to charge at Islasees again but the Rat raced into its path, squeaking shrilly and sending a flood of cockroaches spilling away from it across the ground to swarm my spirit and hold it back.
I shrieked in alarm as the carpet of insects hissed and chittered, climbing the Unicorn’s legs and tail, sending it whinnying and rearing up in panic.
The Raven swept around me as I stumbled back, my path blocked by the Hollows behind me, the Rat and its hoard of insects ahead, and Islasees striding from the shadows on my right, his sword drawn.
“Benson!” Islasees barked. “End her!”
I whirled around as Benson shot an arrow for me, my death flying for me so fast I was only able to stare it in the eye as it came.
Bane bellowed from the trees beyond the clearing, the Tiger roaring in what sounded like pain. And then the Raven was there. My sweet Raven with wings made of midnight was diving into the space before me, the arrow which had been meant for me instead piercing its breast.
“No!” I cried, lurching for my spirit as it crashed out of the sky, tumbling across the dirt and knocking a swathe of cockroaches aside.
I threw myself down with it and it gave me a harrowing caw, its feathers silken soft beneath my fingers for a moment before it spilled away into tendrils of night and returned to the amulet at my neck.
“Sleep,” it whispered in my mind before its presence faded away and I scrubbed tears from my cheeks as I stood, hoping against hope that it truly only needed rest now.
Islasees leapt from the trees and came for me again, Bane lurched into his path, his teeth bared in a feral challenge.
His shirt was torn open with four bloody gashes showing through it where the claws of the tiger had cut into his side, but he wasn’t slowed by the wounds and there was no sign of Islasees’s spirit returning from their fight.
“You’re alive,” I breathed, the relief palpable in my tone and my beautiful Fae warrior turned a roguish grin my way that made my heart fall over itself.