Page 12 of Faerie Fate (Fae Academy for Halflings #7)

Chapter Eight

I searched the crowd for a glimpse of Mom but Livvy wasn’t there. Kendrick’s presence shifted inside of me, flexing his claws, trying to watch this world through my eyes. I pushed him back violently.

Livvy must have been trapped on the other side with the boundary between us more solid than ever. Had I finally found my mother only to lose her again?

Nurse Julie, however, had made it through.

She stepped away from Professor Marsh with a flicker of her iridescent blue wings.

She stared at me for a moment before forcing a faded smile and breaking the silence.

“Tavi? Let me have a look at your neck.” Her competence, her reputation, had students shifting aside to give her berth to reach me.

The tears continued to pour whether I wanted them to or not. Would they ever stop? Not damn likely. Would the horror of everything that happened over the last few hours ever feel manageable?

I stepped into Julie’s waiting arms and hugged her through the tears. “You’re safe? You’re not stuck in the human realm? I tried to look for you.”

“Your mother is the one who got me out, along with the rest of my charges,” Julie said. She squeezed me then pulled back, her jaw firm. “Livvy, she said? That’s her name?”

As far as Julie knew, my parents were both dead.

“She was supposed to be dead. I had no idea she was in hiding until Coral and I…” The story went farther back, deeper than I’d anticipated. “Coral’s mom is my aunt. We found Livvy in hiding.”

Livvy wasn’t her real name, either. It was one of those new identity deals she’d had to take to protect herself—and me.

I explained the whole thing to Julie in as many broken pieces as I remembered, my brain and attention scattered.

Julie kept her arms around me the entire time, to anchor me.

And with Noren sidled up behind me and leaning, he became my pillar of strength keeping me upright. There was no way I’d collapse again.

When I finished the story, I turned to Mike to gauge his reaction. Mike’s face was deceptively calm, and his lips opened slightly, no doubt ready to lie and tell me it would be all right.

Someone had to get the students out of here, though. They needed healing. More than Julie could provide alone.

“We need to go back in time and then cross over and get my mother,” I told him. “We can’t leave her over there.”

He stared at me, his eyes shuttered. He gave nothing away and despite our closeness, I couldn’t read him now.

Ducking his head, a lock of blond hair fell over his features, and his hand clenched at his side.

It was the slightest bit of movement and the only indication of nerves in his flawless facade.

“I’ll do my best,” he hedged. “I think I should be able to circumvent the closing of the barrier if I do it right, but I’ve never attempted anything so intricate before. I have to think about the best way to handle it.”

“We’ll give you the privacy you need,” Melia said decisively. “Professor Marsh? Do you want to help me get the kids upstairs? We’ll get them fed and settled. Juno Ians is already aware of the situation and ready to help with medical attention.”

Coral lurched into action. “I know these halls better than anyone. Come on. Chop chop, guys, we’re wasting moonlight.”

My cousin always had to be the center of attention, but between her and Melia, I knew they had it covered. Melia had the qualities necessary to multitask with the best of them, and Coral could micromanage everything else.

Bronwen smiled over at me, the gesture ghostly on her moon-pale face. “Tavi? Come on. Let’s get you somewhere where you can rest. You’re ready to drop.”

“I want to take a closer look at your wound, too,” Julie added.

“I’m going with Mike,” I insisted, inching closer to him. “I’m not going to just leave Livvy in the mortal world alone. She needs me.”

Julie pressed her hand to my forehead and her eyes narrowed. “Weak and feverish the way you are? I don’t think so. You need attention. You’re not going anywhere.”

I shook her off, distantly aware of the rudeness of the gesture, especially when she was so kind and concerned.

“This is my mom we’re talking about. I finally found her after so long and I’m not going to give her up now.

No matter how bad I feel. I’m sorry.” For everything.

I held my arms slightly out to the side to steady myself. “I’m going.”

Looking at Mike hurt but I forced myself to do it, seeing him through a wave of dizziness pressing inward from the edges of my vision. His gaze dipped repeatedly to my scar and he shivered.

Disgust.

My stomach lurched when he glanced away and refused to make eye contact. Between Julie and Noren I managed to stand on my own. On wobbly legs, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going down.

Not yet.

Unease and alarm mingled in me and drove daggers into my skull from the inside. This was worse than cramps—worse than the worst flu I’d survived.

Maybe it was the shock of being taken through time, or maybe I really had used up way too much power fighting against Kendrick. It hadn’t felt like too much at the time. It felt like the barest minimum, of survival at any cost.

But there was no denying how sick I felt.

Mike held out his hand for me, looking like he’d much rather hold a palmful of slugs than touch me. But his grip stayed strong when he linked our fingers together. He tamped down a groan and found something more interesting to look at near his foot.

Julie clucked her tongue. Whether she was disappointed in me or in Mike, I didn’t know. “Be careful,” she said. “Don’t do anything stupid, and try to come back in one piece, if you can.”

Mike dropped his head back on his shoulders for a beat before he scoured the empty basement. “I’ll send us back, and then see if we can go through,” he told me in an undertone. “There’s no guarantee it will work. But hopefully we can circumvent whatever barrier is in place.”

“I trust you,” I murmured.

I meant it. Hopefully Mike knew that.

He drew in another long breath and his magic rose, the same corona of summer-green sparks drawing us out of our current time and sending us shooting in reverse. I squeezed my eyes shut as vertigo sent my brain spinning inside my skull.

I can make it through.

For Livvy. For the mom I was only just now getting to know, the one I’d missed out on having all my life. I used the thoughts like a tether to keep me in my traitorous body until Mike deposited us in the past.

When I opened my eyes, we stood in the basement of the elite academy, the room emptied of bodies. The boxes were still in place but their towering heights were halved. A trail of footprints led through a layer of dust.

“How far—” A cough stole the rest of my words and doubled me over.

Mike squeezed my fingers tighter. “About two weeks. I’ve never tried to go years into the past. It’s much harder to do. But these short trips are manageable.”

Manageable? Hell. He looked like he was about to keel over, and his shoulders slumped forward at the energy it took to bring us even this far. Then Mike shook it off and reached for his Faerie key, thrusting it into the open air and twisting.

My heart lurched when nothing happened.

Mike glared at the empty space like it was to blame for the failure.

“It looks like the barrier is still locked even when you go backward.”

“If we can’t fix it going backward, then we’ll go forward,” Mike replied determinedly.

He sheathed the key back into his cloak and tugged me closer. I stumbled against him as his magic pulsed. It felt hotter this time, tainted with the dregs of his frustration as we erupted into time.

We both staggered when we landed, his magic remaining around us in an echo of the spell. This time when I looked at him, trails of sweat trickled from his hairline down to the sharp plane of his jaw.

Mike ground his teeth and tied the key again.

“How far?” I croaked.

“A month in the future.”

Mike sounded as exhausted as I felt as he twisted the key hard. Hoping for a different outcome and disappointed with the lack of a result.

The basement was colder than I remembered it being. And when I looked around, the lack of dust provided an almost sterile contrast to the scene I was getting used to observing.

What happened down here to make them clean this way?

I leaned heavily against Mike whether he wanted me to or not. “We could have gotten caught on the other side, too.”

“Narrowly,” he agreed. “The barrier is locked down. There’s no way around it unless we want to try something drastic.”

Judging by his ominous tone, we definitely didn’t want to try. Not yet.

“We have no way to get through to Livvy.”

Mike rolled his shoulders. “We’ll figure out a way.” The determination was clear under his breath. “We’re not going to leave her behind. Whatever’s happening, we’ll find a way through, if we have to go over or under it.”

“What if this is like the wall dividing Seelie and Unseelie?” I whispered.

He finally looked at me, his eyes pools of worry. “Then we’ll find our own version of the necklace that let you through. I’m not going to leave your mom behind, Tavi.”

His grip gentled and after he stowed the key, he brushed his fingers against my chin. A slight, feathering touch, over as soon as it began. Mike dropped the contact and heaved a sigh before his magic rose again.

His time manipulation brought us back to our present moment slowly, as though our feet dragged through quicksand. How did he know exactly where to go, how to get back to the exactly right nanosecond?

We never left the ground and yet it felt somehow like we’d been deposited down into the heaviness of what was supposed to be our present moment. And as I dropped my jaw to ask him, I collapsed.

The last bit of strength gave way under a wave of weakness that sent me down to the ground hard. I barely realized I’d moved until pain from my shoulder filtered through the rest of me from where I’d hit.

“Tavi!”