Chapter 15 #3
Gemma’s glamour begin to crack around me, as if it were ice and I a warming spring. Luthaes stared down at me in shock as my true power illuminated him from below. Soon I would be obvious—my hair newly lustrous, my skin suffused with light, specks of gold in my brown eyes.
“What are you?” Luthaes whispered. The pressure of his hands let up ever so slightly, enough for me to throw him off me and roll. Gasping for air, I grappled for something, anything, to use as a weapon. My hand landed on a stone as big as a dinner plate. It would do.
I wrenched it out of the earth, spun around, and threw it hard.
It crashed into Luthaes’s head with a sickening crunch, killing him immediately, but I didn’t stop there.
My power was hungry, tired of being trapped behind a glamour, and this fae deserved no peace, even in death. He had tried to kill Gareth. My Gareth.
Feeling wild, I strode over to Luthaes, picked up the rock, and struck him with it again and again.
I was battle-hungry, my power lighting me up like a storm, but I knew exactly what I was doing.
With each blow, I heard his body crunch and watched his bones shatter.
A scream burst out of me, punctuating my final blow.
Luthaes was a pulpy ruin beneath me, and the rock in my hands was hot and slick.
I rose and tossed the rock aside, breathing hard and fast. When I wiped my mouth with my sleeve, I tasted copper and salt, and smiled.
“Mara…” Gareth’s voice was quiet.
I turned to face him, realizing a second too late how I must have looked to him—half glamoured, covered in blood, grinning like a madwoman. The air rippled hotly around me; this snowy forest was a desert, and I was both the mirage and the true oasis.
But then Gareth’s stricken gaze dropped to the ruin of Luthaes, and that single look punched all the air out of me.
Monster. The word spiraled viciously through my mind.
I was monstrous. I craved pain and death and rejected love.
I belonged here with the fae and their beasts more than I did back in Edyn.
And Gareth knew it. I could see it on his face.
One of his lenses was cracked, and this small, stupid detail made my eyes burn.
His glasses were broken, and he was terrified of me.
I breathed steadily, slowing my heartbeat. I imagined stone flooding my insides, cooling me, settling me. I couldn’t let the damaged glamour fall.
“Come on,” I said shortly. “We have to go to Gemma. She’ll guide us to the key. I hope.”
I held out my hand, and he took it in silence, grimacing as the movement jostled his hurt arm. Quickly I inspected his wound—a welcome distraction. It wasn’t deep and had already stopped bleeding. But a nasty blue-black bruise surrounded it, and the nearest veins had gone dark.
“Venom,” Gareth said through gritted teeth. “A variation of what poisoned Farrin at the ball, I think. Their spears are laced with it. I have an antidote back at Rosewarren.”
I glanced up at him. “Can you run?”
He gave me a wry smile. “Not as fast as you.”
I didn’t believe that smile, not for a second. He hid his revulsion well, but I knew better. My heart twisted as I imagined what he must be thinking.
“I’ll slow my pace to match yours,” I muttered. “Just try and keep up the best you can.”
As we ran, the forest grew quiet. Too quiet.
Besides the crunch of our boots in the snow and Gareth’s labored panting, there was nothing.
My nape tingled with misgiving, but when I scanned the darkness, I saw nothing but more trees.
Somehow that made me feel worse. I started doubting my senses; was I following the right trail?
Maybe damaging my glamour had muddied my connection to Gemma.
But then, so suddenly and brutally that it was like crashing through a thick sheet of ice, we tore through something cold and sharp—a magical barrier of some kind.
Damaged ward magic, I guessed, meant to guard against intruders but no longer intact.
We plunged into darkness, and sounds exploded all around us—the clash of swords, battle cries.
Shot arrows, rumbling earth. My sister singing.
We tumbled down an icy slope into a sunken clearing. I caught Gareth’s arm at the bottom, steadying him, and took a moment to grasp what I was seeing.
A colossal tree stood before us, even bigger than the Heart Tree in the Rosewarren barracks. Its bark was black, its shape gnarled, and it was thrashing. A dozen branches snapped through the air like whips. With each movement, the ground beneath us quaked.
“The tree that never sleeps,” Gareth whispered.
I looked around, my blood pumping fast. It was dark here, the snow dull and the air thick with shadows, but my sentinel eyes were sharp.
Ryder and Posey were engaged in combat against two armored fae.
A fierce cry made me whirl around to see Danesh and Edra fighting three fae on the other side of the clearing.
Four more fae leapt toward them through the trees, spears in hand.
And amidst all of them, choking the clearing, were huge white flowers as tall as the fae themselves, weaving and rattling like angry snakes. I watched in horror as one of them lunged for Danesh, the dark pistil at its center yawning open.
Danesh dropped and rolled right before the flower’s head slammed into the ground.
The impact flooded the clearing with a rancid, sour stink.
Danesh pushed herself up with an angry roar and slashed her sword through the flower’s thick stem.
The whole thing collapsed and convulsed, hissing furiously. Watching it made my gorge rise.
“Where in the name of the gods is Bette?” Danesh cried.
Bette—the earth elemental in our ranks. I allowed myself a quick hope that she was alive, then bolted for my sisters, who were at the base of the giant tree. Talan stood guard over them, his face bloodied, chopping down any flower that snaked too close.
And my sisters… Gemma was slumped beside Farrin, her sweaty face tight with pain and her hands clutching the root nearest her. Farrin held her up, singing something so vast and multitonal that its magic rushed toward our friends like water from a broken dam.
I knelt in front of them, and Gareth sank down to my left.
“It’s in there,” Gemma murmured. She nodded toward the tree, then glanced over at me. “I can feel it. The tree has a tight hold on it. It’s lodged deep.”
Gareth touched Farrin’s arm, gave her an encouraging smile. “Can you get to it?” he asked Gemma.
“I think so, but I’ll need all of Farrin’s attention to get me through it.”
“You mean she has to stop singing for the others?”
Gemma nodded miserably, her eyes bright. “I’m so sorry. There’s so much magic here, and I can’t… It hurts so much. I can hardly breathe. Her music will keep me conscious.”
“You are brilliant and brave,” I told her, “and I’m so proud of you.”
I glanced up at Talan, whose body flickered right before my eyes.
He was Talan, beautiful and raven-haired, and then he was a tangle of thick roots, shielding us from the battle beyond.
He ducked the blow of an attacking flower, then reared up and decapitated the awful thing with one smooth hack of his sword.
At the same moment, the solid shield of roots stood in the same spot he did.
A demonic illusion. He was right there, still guarding my sisters, but to our attackers, he would simply look like more of the tree.
“I won’t let anything get to them,” he shouted back at me, his voice fierce, battle-hard. “Go. Hurry!”
“Give me your sword,” Gareth said to me. “I’ll help him.”
From somewhere beyond him came a scream of agony—a woman’s scream. A Rose’s scream.
Wordlessly I gave him the sword and turned away from the sound, shoving past my anger to focus on Gemma. “Tell me how to help you.”
“We have to dig,” Gemma said. She drew in a shuddering breath. “Follow my lead and keep an eye on the tree. Once it realizes what we’re doing…”
It would stop fighting the others and come straight for us.
I nodded. “I’m ready.”
Gemma briefly closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were bright as blue fire, and her hand, marked by the scar from the Three-Eyed Crown, glowed just as brilliantly.
Her power rose up fast, her body suddenly scorching hot.
She pressed her lips together, grabbed the nearest root, and tugged hard.
It came free with a thick, muscly snap. Gemma tossed it to the side and let it writhe, which it did for only a moment before falling still, crisped, slightly smoking.
Gemma smiled a little. Her beauty was astonishing, her hair gilded with inner fire. With her attention divided, our glamours were fading. Through the cracks came the telltale shimmer of her godly light. She worked fast, and with each root she wrenched free of the earth, she grew faster, stronger.
I worked at her side, not even my sentinel strength powerful enough to keep me from straining with effort. I could pry up only one root in the time Gemma took to rip out four, but we were doing it—slowly boring into the tree’s heart, creating a tunnel big enough to crawl through.
Ahead of us, something silver glimmered in the thick tangle of roots.
The moment my eyes locked on to it, a hot wave of magic rushed past us and raced out into the clearing.
Talan let out a sharp cry of pain, confirmation that something belonging to Kilraith was here.
The echoes of servitude that still lived in Talan’s body could feel it.
Gemma faltered slightly at the sound and paused to recover her breath, and right at that moment, a ball of sizzling magic slammed into the tree over our heads with a deafening crack.
I looked up just in time to see a huge section of the tree fall away. The root Gemma held lashed out, throwing her back toward Farrin. She hit the ground and was still.