7 LONNIE
THE DEADEYE DISTRICT, INBETWIXT
Time felt as if it stopped on the dark, windswept dock, and I froze. Then, all at once, movement erupted around me.
A shout cut through the night, piercing and terrible, sending fear pounding through my veins. “For the Dullahan!”
Cold dread washed over me, the sound of those words bringing back too many memories and sending me running. Sound was everywhere, roaring in my ears, and my feet were moving before my mind had fully caught up with the far too familiar sight of black, hooded cloaks.
Across the dock, Cross gritted his teeth as he swung his sword, the metal glinting in the pale moonlight. Behind him, Siobhan shot one arrow after another into the oncoming crowd, but for each enemy she sent toppling into the harbor, it seemed two more would appear out of the darkness.
I ran a few paces, only to come skidding to a shocked halt. I stared in disbelief at the space between two buildings. Where a moment before there had been no one, there now stood one of the many black cloaked figures, his face completely obscured by a hood.
With slow, sluggish clarity I realized he had appeared out of thin air, which could only mean one thing: he’d shadow walked into existence.
Thus far, the rebel soldiers we’d come across had primarily been human, but apparently not anymore. Either Ambrose Dullahan had been recruiting among the most powerful High Fae, or he’d kept back the best of his soldiers until the castle was won.
Both possibilities had terrifying implications.
In one swift motion, a strong hand yanked my cloak and made me stumble backwards. I let out a piercing shriek, and reacting on pure instinct, I kicked out, my foot connecting with the male’s knee. The rebel tripped, and I scrambled back, stumbling to regain my footing.
His hood fell back and our eyes connected.
As I’d thought, it was a fairy that looked back at me. All Fae were lovely, but as compared to the Everlasts, this male was almost plain looking, with hard, dark eyes and pale blonde hair pulled back in a knot at the nape of his neck. Source-forged scars crossed his face, and they pulled tight as he grinned at me. I didn’t recognize him, but upon seeing me, his eyes lit up with excitement.
“There you are,”
he said in a low rasping tone. “The mortal queen, right? You’re the one we’ve been looking for.”
My blood ran cold. I knew, of course, that Ambrose Dullahan was searching for me, but I’d been lured into a false sense of security by the word of Cross’s spies. Seemingly, the Dullahan would not wait the several weeks we’d expected to come searching for me. Perhaps then, he wouldn’t bat an eye at killing me here and now.
I took a step backward, my hands curling into fists at my sides. “Don’t touch me,” I hissed.
The rebel laughed. “Or what?”
Anger sparked at the back of my mind, and I focused on the sneering, arrogant face of the Fae. My hands shook, and the telltale heat of magic crawled up my skin for the first time since the battle at the castle. Distantly, I realized that perhaps I needed to be in danger for it to work. That perhaps practicing within the thieves’ den truly had not been enough motivation, and only now would I know what I was really capable of.
But then, I looked around at the dozens of people filling the harbor, and the flames just below my skin seemed to flicker and die.
I couldn’t do this. Not now…perhaps not ever.
Nearly every time I’d used my magic, either consciously or unconsciously, afflicted creatures seemed to spring from nowhere, like moths drawn to the flame. The afflicted were not sentient creatures, they were the echoes of former Fae, warped by Wilde magic. They could not be controlled, and calling them to this harbor would only put all our lives in greater jeopardy.
Real fear washed over me, such as I hadn’t felt in sometime. Not the fear of losing something precious to me, or of battle, but of knowing without a doubt that I was too weak to fight back. If I could not call forth any of the magic I hated as much as I relied on, for fear of destroying my friends, then the Fae would kill me. Just like I’d always expected them to.
I took a slow step back, knowing it would not matter where I ran, the rebel would follow.
Out of nowhere, a silhouette emerged from the darkness behind him. Bael, towering and muscular as compared to the other male, materialized out of nothing. His intense yellow gaze was furious, predatory, like that of a lion stalking its next kill.
Feeling the shift behind him, the rebel turned his attention from me to Bael, his eyes widening in fear. With a swift and fluid motion, Bael reached out and gripped the male’s neck.
The rebel let out an inhuman scream, which was cut short as Bael twisted his head sharply, snapping the bones with a sickening crack.
I watched the body go limp in the prince’s hold, but he didn’t stop there. He glanced up at me, meeting my eyes, and kept twisting.
My heartbeat sped up, my skin heating as I watched. I recalled Scion once telling me that Bael had ripped out twice as many hearts as he had, and it was my hypocrisy that didn’t allow me to see that. I saw it now, as he tore the scarred Fae’s head from his neck, holding it from a rope of unkempt hair, its vacant eyes staring blankly into the night sky.
I saw, but I didn’t care.
Tossing the head to the side with a wet thump, Bael advanced on me. I didn’t flinch away as he grabbed me with his blood-stained hands, and forced my face up to focus on him. “Did he touch you, little monster?”
My mind worked to follow what he was saying, when all I could see was his heated gaze. A deeper flush covered my entire body, and a hum of awareness traveled through me. Truly, I could have kicked myself. It was neither the time nor place to be thinking of how those bloodstained hands might feel tracing over my skin.
After a long beat, in which the fight around us seemed to fade away, I shook my head.
The prince smiled, showing every one of his too-sharp teeth. “Good. If he had then that would have been far too quick a death.”
Before I could formulate an answer, he’d taken a tighter hold of my waist. Without asking my permission, he dragged me forward, the shadowed darkness swallowing us.
We only spun for a fraction of a second before reappearing. The same scent of sea air and sounds of shouting, metal on metal, told me that we’d only moved to the other side of the dock. Bael quickly dropped me, and my feet hit the ground too hard, my feet wobbling slightly before I could steady myself.
“Run. I’ll catch up with you.”
“What?”
I demanded.
“They’re here for you.”
His tone was almost exasperated. “Not to kill, most likely, but to capture. You need to go.”
“Not without the others,”
I said stubbornly.
He muttered a string of words I couldn’t understand, most of it being in the old language, though I gathered from the tone it was likely curses.
“They’ll be fine,”
Bael insisted, switching back to the common tongue.
“But Cross and Siobhan?—”
“Aren’t who they’re looking for.”
He looked up, as if appealing to the gods. “I can’t heal you if you get hurt, so please, I need you to act against your nature and run.”
I bit the inside of my lip, but nodded. Bael’s yellow gaze locked onto mine, a silent promise passing between us before he dashed off toward the chaos.
I stood there for a moment, before turning and fleeing into the darkness, the clash of steel still ringing in my ears.
The land outside the gates of Inbetwixt was wild.
As I sprinted through the dense forest, the branches whipped against my face and it felt like the darkness was closing in around me.
The sounds of the battle slowly diminished, and my mind was flooded with memories of my first night in the Waywoods. A wave of dread cooled my skin, my mind conjuring images of an unknown entity lurking in the shadows.
A branch snapped behind me and I whipped around.
My heart pounded. That had been a footstep, I was sure of it.
I stood still, straining my ears for any sound, but the only thing I could hear was the faint rustling of leaves in the wind. Letting out my breath, I turned back around and continued.
Without warning, agony seared through my shoulder.
I closed my eyes, and for a moment the pain almost stopped, my breath catching, as if I momentarily lost consciousness between breaths. I let out a scream of agony a beat too late, everything seeming to occur just slightly delayed.
Finally, I looked down, and nearly gagged. A crossbow bolt, as thick as my middle and pointer fingers held together, jutted out of the side of my chest. From the angle, I guessed it would be sticking out my back as well, somewhere just above my right shoulder blade.
Behind me, leaves crunched. Footsteps pounded, no longer bothering to creep along in the darkness. My eyes darted back and forth like a frightened rabbit, but the forest was too dense to see who might be following me. Worse, I couldn’t run like this, and whatever rebel had followed me had to know that.
My heartbeat quickened, the throbbing ache in my chest radiating outward, burning, like a hot poker against my skin. I closed my eyes, willing myself to disappear, when an idea struck. I could, literally disappear.
It was a terrible idea, if only because it was nearly impossible.
I hadn’t even been able to shadow walk out of the store room into the hallway, and most Fae could not shadow walk while injured. That was how Aine, Thalia and Gwydion had been stranded in the burning tower, and even Bael said he’d rarely managed to disappear while in pain.
The sound of pounding footsteps echoed closer and panic set in, making my decision for me. I had to at least try to escape, because the alternative would be infinitely worse.
The pain was almost unbearable, but I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, feeling my body tremble with the effort to hold back the tears. I could feel the magic pulsing within me, like a strong current running through my veins. I could hear it, like the crackle of electricity before a storm.
I tried to focus, to concentrate on the image of the place that I needed to go, but my mind was jumbled. I couldn’t think of anything clearly, except the pounding ache.
Without meaning to, I let my eyes flutter open once more, just in time to see a stranger sprinting toward me out of the dark. I caught a glimpse of his hard face, and the tattoos covering his scalp, before the edges of my vision blurred and I felt myself sliding to the side. Distantly, I thought I heard a raven cry, and the wind seemed to beat at my face, as if with a rush of wings, then my unfocused gaze went dark.
I just barely had time to wonder if I’d managed to shadow walk, or instead, fainted on the forest floor.