Page 28 of Did It Have To Be Gnomes?! (Carry A Faerie #1)
Chapter Twenty-One
Winter
W as it just me or was there more to these twins than meets the eye?
Clearly, Chaos didn’t want us to know what kind of magic Aeson had, but I knew he definitely had magic—and a lot of it. I could feel it even from a distance.
Too bad the kids didn’t know that Lyric would’ve been able to figure it out the second they laid eyes on them.
My best friend had their secret, and unfortunately for me, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to get them to spill the beans either.
As they’d pointed out to Miles earlier, they never gave those kinds of secrets away.
Sigh .
Maybe I could get the kid to tell me himself.
I mean, it wasn’t like I wanted to use his magic for anything. I was just curious. Especially after what Aeson had pointed out.
An empath, a null, a necromancer, whatever Aeson was, and the kids didn’t even know Lyric was a sentire.
That was a lot of magic in one place. A lot of different and very, very rare magics. Very cool, but also very strange.
Most humans had no magic at all, and the majority of people with magic were just regular practitioners—most people called them regs—that cast spells and made potions and didn’t necessarily have a specialized magic like an empath or necromancer.
I’d never been around so many specialists at the same time.
It was a strange and heady feeling, but I kind of liked the mix of magics in the air. Well, I’d like it more if we got rid of the evil cursed magic, but even this was good too.
I shook off all the thoughts of magic and focused on the task at hand.
Right now, my only goal was to get everyone safely to the cursed seal, give Chaos time to examine it, and then get everyone the hell out of there so we could make yet another game plan for actually breaking the damn thing.
I said, “Alright, so now that I’m thinking about it, I think we should make a sort of circle around ourselves with the gates. I think that’ll be our best bet. Lyric, can you walk backward?”
“I can try. Not sure it’ll work, but I see what you’re going for. I’ll do my best.”
“Good.” I nodded at Miles and Chaos. “Can you two walk sideways and watch for attacks from the sides?”
Chaos nodded. “Sure thing.”
“Yeah.” Miles tugged nervously on the bottom of his glove—I’d noticed him fiddling with them a lot, like a nervous tick. “I think we need sticks or something to fend them off with.”
“Oh!” Lyric threw their gate down. “That’s a great idea. I’m on it.” They ran toward the garden in a flash.
“They didn’t even let me get a word in.” I snorted. “I guess we’ll have stick weapons, then.”
Miles grimaced and turned to face the teens. “I know we need to keep them off of us, but can you try not to hurt them too badly? I still want to release them into a gnome sanctuary when all of this is over with. It’s not their fault they’re attacking us.”
Chaos glowered, and I swore the cockatrice glowered along with him from her perch on his shoulder. “If they come at us, I’m not gonna let them hurt me or my brother.”
“I don’t want you to. Knock them back or throw them off, whatever you gotta do, just… try not to kill them.”
He huffed, looking exactly like the annoyed teenager he was. “Fine.”
Miles smiled. “Thank you.”
Chaos rolled his eyes, but Aeson grinned at Miles and held his hand out for a fist bump.
Miles stared at the fist for a long time before glancing at his gloved hand and hesitantly bumping it against Aeson’s.
The kid beamed and turned back to the front, looking ready for this mini-battle or whatever we were calling it.
From the look of surprise on Miles's face, I was pretty sure that no one ever asked to touch him, even through his gloves.
It kind of made me want to hug the kid because I had a feeling that Miles needed the casual touch a lot more than he was leading on. And it definitely made me want to touch the cute empath even more than I already had been. He was touch-starved.
That wasn’t surprising since it was an issue all empaths faced, but I hated that he didn’t have anyone in his life who helped him with that, and he hadn’t had anyone in a long time, if ever.
From the little he’d said, I wasn’t sure he’d ever had anyone at all.
The thought made me sad, but… but I was here now, and whether Miles ended up dating me—which I really hoped he would—or not, I was determined to at least be his friend.
With that in mind, I reached over and gave Miles's neck a small squeeze, offered a grin, then faced the teens. “You sure you’re okay with this?”
Chaos sighed. “Look, I appreciate that you’re trying to keep us safe or whatever, but trust me, this isn’t even remotely close to the most dangerous case I’ve been on lately.
I deal with the dead and the cursed. I’m put in danger all the time.
At least with this, we have a bunch of people helping protect each other. It’s more than I usually have.”
That… didn’t make me feel better at all, and from the sour look on Miles's face, he didn’t feel better about it either.
Before I could respond to that, Lyric came running back, huffing and a puffing. “Oh my god, there are a lot of pixies in that garden. Phew.”
“Are you okay?” Miles asked them, immediately concerned.
“Yeah, I’m good.” Lyric waved a bunch of sticks around. “Got our weapons. Here.”
They handed the long sticks out to everyone. Most of them were around three feet long, which seemed like a good size to me. Hopefully, they’d help keep the little critters off of us.
“Alright, let’s do this thing,” I said, offering a smile to each of them. “Ready?”
Everyone gave me affirmatives, so I gripped my gate in one hand and my stick in the other, then laughed when I saw what everyone else looked like.
We looked like a group of B-movie stars who’d run out of money for props.
Like we were a group of knights about to fight off a dragon with sticks for swords and baby gates for shields.
It was ridiculous, and I wished I could take a picture, but I had a feeling Chaos and Miles would both get annoyed if I did that.
To Aeson, I said, “If you open the door quickly, I’ll go in first to try and get the first wave back. Come in right behind me.”
“Got it.” He held the doorknob. “One. Two. Three. Go!” He yanked the door open, and I pushed my way inside.
Meep, meep, meep, meeeeeeeep!
The gnomes were so loud, I winced as I stepped through the threshold. I could feel the oppressive magic surrounding me, and I swore it felt even heavier than it had earlier.
I hated that the others were going to be affected by it, but there was little I could do about it besides grab them if they got especially murdery.
Meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meeeeep!!!!
With my baby gate low to the ground, I pushed the little buggers back, and they started screaming. I winced because I didn’t want to hurt them, but they really needed to get the hell away from us. I wasn’t going to let them hurt anyone else, so I kept pushing them back.
Aeson joined me a few seconds later, using his own baby gate to push the critters back. I put the end of mine against his so we didn’t miss any of them, and the two of us slowly made our way into the basement.
Miles stepped up behind me a moment later, and I checked over my shoulder.
He was standing sideways with his gate brushing the ground, and his stick pointed out over the top of it.
He looked worried and handsome and completely ridiculous, and I couldn’t help but smile as I turned back to focus on moving forward.
It was slow going, but we made our way across the room with only the occasional arguing between my companions. I had a feeling I was going to be quite busy in a few minutes because the tension between them all was so high I could practically feel it.
“Would you move your damn feet already, Miles? Geez. You’re so slow,” Lyric snarled from the back.
“I can’t go any faster, asshat.” Miles was just as snarly back. Sigh .
Lyric growled, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard them make that noise before. “Fuck. Do you think you could move any slower, Win?”
“Going as fast as I can.” I tried to keep my voice as calm as possible.
In a mocking voice, Lyric repeated, “Going as fast as I can.”
They were too far away from me to reach, so I was stuck with their attitude until we got Chaos to the seal.
“Stop being mean to him, Lyric,” Miles said, also in a nasty tone.
I sighed and muttered, “Not this again.”
“What did you just say?” Aeson asked, sounding pissed.
“Nothing. Just talking to myself. Let’s try to speed up a little. We’re close.”
Aeson grunted in agreement, although it sounded more like a growl.
I winced. Everyone was so angry, and I only had two hands. How the hell I was going to keep them all from going for each other’s throats, I didn’t know.
Finally, we reached the seal, and Miles, Lyric, Aeson, and I all formed a circle around Chaos so he—and Clucky—could stand directly in front of the cursed object.
I asked, “Can I put my hand on it while you’re doing that so everyone stops arguing and the gnomes stop attacking?”
Chaos shook his head without looking away from the seal as he pulled a small jar out of his bag. “Unfortunately, I need to see exactly what the curse is doing, and I can’t do that if you’re nullifying it.”
That made sense, and I agreed it was unfortunate. I sighed and reached over to hold Lyric’s hand for a few seconds so they’d get a bit of a breather. As soon as our skin touched, they breathed out a sigh of relief, the angry tension leaving them in a rush.
“Damn. That curse sucks.”
I snorted. “Agreed.”
“I swear to god, Lyric, if you’re mean to him again, I’m gonna punch you in the face.”
My eyebrows rose at Miles's intensity, but Lyric just laughed—which only made Miles more pissed—and said, “I’m not being mean, lover boy.”