Chapter 16 Unfiltered
Unfiltered
Imight’ve passed out. I’m pretty sure I did pass out.
Something in my magic or consciousness definitely dipped, leaving me in a mindless limbo once the adrenaline left my body, which happened not long after Bones picked me up. I felt strange about that. I felt like I should be fighting harder to stay alert.
I had no luck with it whatsoever until the first shock of cold air hit me.
I sucked in a breath, and lifted my head off his chest reluctantly.
Every muscle in my body protested at the slightest attempt to clench or move any one of them. I looked blearily around at the dark, nighttime world, and my confusion deepened.
“Are we… on the roof?” I asked.
I’d just assumed he’d take me where he’d instructed me to go. He’d told me to go downstairs and leave the castle. He’d told me to go outside, to say… something. He’d given me some phrase to get myself back to the real world.
Up here, everything looked even more fantastical than it had when I’d been walking with Strangemore through the altered gardens by the lake. I could see people-sized figures flying through the air on golden wings, darting around a much larger beast.
The monster itself looked like a giant, blue-green snake, writhing underneath too-small, leathery wings. It exhaled plumes of fire, illuminating the night sky directly overhead.
“We have to do this fast,” Bones muttered. “Before that thing comes back.”
I glanced up at him and realized he was following the same creature with his eyes. But whatever it was, Forsooth had created it, hadn’t he?
It wouldn’t actually hurt us, would it?
Bones grunted. “He’s put a number of real obstacles throughout this whole fucked-up playground of his,” he grunted under his breath. “I’m not exactly in the mood to deal with whatever it would look like to fight that thing right now, whether I get some kind of present at the end or not.”
He was setting me down on my feet as he spoke.
He put me down next to a life-sized statue of a faun, or maybe the god, Pan.
I gripped hold of it immediately to stay upright, but still barely managed to remain on my feet.
I stared down at the cloven hooves and woolly legs, and found myself flashing back to the terrace of the real Malcroix Mansion, where Bones had stood, painted in gold, his body magicked to hide the scars I’d seen all over his upper torso.
As the real Bones came back into my line of sight, I blinked, and the image vanished.
He was holding wings. Two sets of wings.
“I can’t,” I protested.
Something about the adrenaline leaving my system made me feel simultaneously like I might be sick from the hangover it left behind, and a lot less in control of my body. I could barely keep my eyes open. I could barely clench my hands.
“I’ll help you,” he said. “We need to pass through the membrane that way.”
He pointed in the direction of the snaking river, which didn’t look like the Faerie, but followed a similar-enough track that I found myself orienting around it anyway.
I shook my head again. “I can’t.”
He exhaled in frustration. “I have no idea where it will let us out,” he said.
“It won’t be the middle of the damned party, at least, but I can’t guarantee there won’t be witnesses who matter.
I can’t fly through it holding you, Shadow.
You do it this way, or I carry you back down part of the stairs, and you leave the castle on your own. ”
I bit my lip. My mind dipped violently when I closed my eyes, so I jerked them open.
I really felt like I might vomit. The idea of throwing myself off the tower roof wearing the massive, metallic-gold wings he’d just tossed at my feet didn’t help my stomach at all.
But I could dimly comprehend the important parts of what he was saying.
It was this, or I go back alone.
Back to the party. Alone.
I could maybe find Miranda or Jolie, but that meant explaining this. It meant possibly running into Graham Strangemore, and whatever he might be telling people already. It meant possibly getting found by Voltaire, Scarpen, Maskey, or someone else.
No. I definitely couldn’t do that.
The wings would be better.
I struggled to get back to my feet, realizing only then that I’d slid down the statue to my knees. Before I could manage it on my own, Bones wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me up, carefully, like before.
“I’ll use my magic to keep you aloft if I have to,” he said. “And to steer you, if it comes to that. But this way, we can at least go through separately. I don’t trust any spell I might use to make you invisible would survive the shift in dimensions––”
“We won’t end up in the middle of the party?” I blurted.
He looked at me. “No.”
He sounded confident.
I couldn’t think well enough to decide if that confidence was real.
He helped me turn towards the wings, and before I could try to find either of my primals, the first set rose and began entwining with my magic, weaving into the muscles of my shoulders and around my spine.
I stood there, feeling unbearably top-heavy and back-heavy, gripping the Pan statue with both hands as Bones easily righted and attached his own set of wings.
The bright gold feathers made his eyes stand out even more. I saw a curl of that fire in his irises again and blinked. By the time I’d refocused, it was gone.
“Okay.” He held out his hand, and I took it without thought. He brought both of us over to a tall gap in the crenelated parapet. I gripped the side of the wall nearest to me, and fought to breathe. I turned to Bones, realizing he’d put me in front of him.
I was considering arguing with him again, when a loud SCREECH from overhead drew my eyes straight up.
The blood-red eyes and massive body of the blue-green snake monster looked very different hovering directly over us.
Its wings looked a lot larger. Its mouth looked a lot bigger.
It screeched at us again, and fire tunneled out of its mouth, not quite reaching us, but heating my skin enough that I stumbled backwards––
––and off the parapet altogether.
I tumbled through the freezing air, still wearing the dress I’d completely forgotten about, my long hair, which I’d unwisely left down for the night, blinding my eyes. I managed to think at my primal that I didn’t want to die.
My magical or muscle memory took over somewhere in that.
That, or Bones did.
The gold wings spread.
They caught me, midair, then pulled me into a smooth, ascending curve of flight.
My stomach absolutely hated it. I might have vomited right there, in the air, but enough of my adrenaline was engaged by then, my mind cleared marginally.
Once I’d managed to get my hair mostly out of my face and my wings leveled, I saw myself soar over the river, which I was now only maybe thirty or so feet above.
None of this is real, some part of me kept repeating.
It couldn’t possibly be real.
That, or we’d never left Malcroix, and Forsooth’s playground was just some kind of chimaeric skin over every real brick, stone, window, tree, and corridor, which meant Forsooth had likely emptied the entire campus to make his party.
I felt the shift a bare breath before I was upon it.
I barely had time to throw up my arms before I hit into it.
I let out a choked gasp, then fell straight down, and it was dark and air rushed up at me.
It felt different though, than it had from that tower.
For the first time, I realized how gentle the fall had been in Forsooth’s world.
Here, the fall felt sharp, and the air smelled completely different.
Instead of honey and roses and the faint whiff of lavender, here it smelled like water, grass, mulch, and stone, and everything was wet and cold.
Something caught me, right before I would have hit the ground.
I floated down the last handful of feet, and something set me on the ground so softly, I would have stayed upright if my body wasn’t still battling whatever drugs coursed through my system.
As it was, I sank to my knees in grass over two feet tall.
The grass was wet and freezing cold, but I didn’t try to get up.
I knelt there on my hands and knees, breathing hard, fighting to control the hammering of my heart. I think some of that must’ve been an echo of panic, even shock. Whatever it was, it felt more like a panic attack than any form of exertion.
It had finally hit me, through that haze of adrenaline and intoxicants, that Graham Strangemore had drugged me, in addition to attacking me.
I’d known that, of course, obviously I’d known both things, but it hadn’t really penetrated beyond the initial shock.
Strangemore dosed me with something, either in the second drink he handed me, or in both of them.
I guessed both of them, since I still seemed to be getting worse, not better.
Which raised a host of other questions, some of them about that costume party the year before.
Had it been my aunt who’d dosed me that time, either?
Or had she merely taken advantage of a drug I’d already been given?
It’s not like she couldn’t have overpowered me magically. She’d managed to knock Bones out.
Why wouldn’t she just do the same to me?
A hand wrapped around my bare arm, and pulled me firmly to my feet.
I let it, not even looking at him until he had me upright.
It dawned on me only then that my wings were gone. Bones’s were gone, too. He stood in front of me, and I stared at the suit he wore, a little bewildered at how he looked. Why had it not occurred to me until now that he’d be dressed for the function, as well?
“You can go back to the party,” I managed to get out, looking up to meet his eyes. “It’s early. It must be early.”
Bones didn’t even pretend to think about my offer.