Page 16 of Faerie Fate (Fae Academy for Halflings #7)
Chapter Ten
I might puke. Or die. Whichever one came first and neither were really great options.
My body didn’t give a crap, though. I focused on breathing, in and out, my own meditation as Mike’s magic pulsed.
The green corona was a writhing, living presence around us, linking us together, forcing us out of our current position in the universe and shooting us backwards like a dark star. I squinted, my eyes closed, Noren’s muffled bark of displeasure unsurprising.
I sucked air in through my overheated nostrils, and when the universe stopped spinning, I exhaled sharply. For a beat, none of us moved. We froze together like pieces of ice in a raging river and waited for the last pinpricks of magic to fade.
The dizziness was gone. So was the nausea, the swirling sensation in my skull. All of it.
No more pain. No more Kendrick.
My eyes popped open with a laugh even as Bronwen fell to her knees, heaving. She pushed her hair behind her ears.
“You do this for fun?” she groaned out to Mike before she ejected the contents of her stomach.
Even Mike looked a little green around the edges but damn, I felt great . I turned away to give Bronwen privacy while she threw up.
“Are we here?” I dropped Mike’s hand and rubbed my own together. “We made it?”
We certainly weren’t in the basement of the Elite Academy. For sure. We stood instead on the crest of a hill with trees blocking the distance. The dirt road beneath our feet was hard-packed and well-trod with thin grooves from wheel marks in parallel lines.
A field to our left boasted rows of raised dirt with the first green flecks of buds breaking out from the soil. Trees lined the opposite side, and a smattering of wooden buildings marked the outskirts of the fields like caretaker cottages on an old estate.
The air was sweeter. Less polluted by people and magic. The clear sky overhead was the most unnatural shade of blue I’d ever seen, and devastatingly beautiful.
Mike ran a hand down my hair and I jumped at the contact. “Tavi? Are you okay?”
Okay? No. “I’m actually fantastic,” I said with a laugh. “Better than I’ve been in a long time.”
I filled my lungs to their bottom with that sweet air and held it inside of me. My heart no longer clanged out an abnormal rhythm, struggling to beat as my body degenerated. This was freedom.
Noren sensed it and gave a small, sharp bark of exuberance. Overcome, my eyes stinging, I dropped down and grabbed him in a hug, forcing the direwolf to suffer through my affection.
“Oh, Noren,” I breathed. “All the symptoms of the zombie curse are gone.”
Every last one of them. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to live outside the force of my symptoms. I’d been given a second chance.
“Nothing?” Mike questioned. “That’s crazy.”
“It’s not crazy.” Bronwen sat back on her haunches, digging the heels of her hands into her teary eyes. “It makes sense when you think about it.”
Mike sniffed, his gaze bouncing between us before he smiled. “Madam Muerte hasn’t been born yet. We’ve traveled back before her time. So maybe the curse is suspended. That’s the only thing I can think of that makes sense.”
I jumped to my feet, actually jumped, pumping my fists into the air.
Then Mike’s gaze dropped to my neck and my smile faltered. He glanced away from my scar, his green eyes narrowed, and I paled. My symptoms might be gone but the scar remained.
“We still have to find the flower, though. Because I’ve got to go back to our time eventually. I’ll be sick again once we do.” I kept one hand on Noren’s head and forced my voice to stay strong.
“I’m not willing to take a risk,” Mike muttered. He shrugged and the fabric of his cloak bunched. “So what do we do now?”
“Now we actually have to find this great witch.” Bronwen struggled to stand, gulping great mouthfuls of air into her body. I reached out to steady her. “Damn it, Mike, how do you manage to travel this way without hurling every single time?”
He bent at the waist, his elbows on his legs and his lips thinned. “You get used to it.” His voice broke and he paused. “This is the farthest back I’ve ever gone.”
A groan came out as an irritated hiss before Mike straightened his hands at the small of his back like it was everything he could do to keep himself from collapsing. His skin had the bloodless fragility of glass.
He’d said it was harder to go back this far, and he did look a little ragged around the edges. Something leached the vitality out of him and left him a husk of his normal fae self.
“Hey.” I crossed to him immediately, before I could second guess myself, and pressed my hand to his cheek. “How about we get you some food first? Then we can worry about Oxana the Sightless.”
Much to my surprise, he didn’t push me away. He leaned slightly into the contact before he seemed to come out of his stupor.
He took a step away, trembling slightly. “I’m fine, Tavi. Worry about yourself.”
Goddess, he still didn’t want me to touch him. My hands fluttered down to my sides and I hid their slight quaking in the pockets of my cloak.
Sensing the tension, Bronwen cleared her throat. “So, we know Oxana was here but we’re not sure exactly where. Eahsea might not be as massive as it is in our time but it’s big enough,” she said. Her voice grew steadier the longer she spoke. “We can’t blunder around. It will look suspicious.”
“At least she’s here,” Mike replied. “But you’re right. We need a plan.”
I stared across the field, then at Noren, who held me in his unblinking gaze.
We’d done it.
We were back in the time of the Red Dawn. I’d always wondered why historians called it that, but it made a sickening kind of sense. They always said that a red sky in the morning heralded a storm, and the upheaval of the Great Pixie War would have been an enormous upheaval in Faerie.
Whoever Oxana the Sightless was, I understood why she’d want to go into hiding. Her gifts were too great to share, especially if somehow the magic that allowed her to see pushed her to share her prophecies.
I set my shoulders. We’re back in time . And with the return of my health and sanity, I had to be smart about this.
Movement flashed over my shoulder. I reached out in time to catch Mike before he lost his balance, the bulk of his weight careening into me.
“Whoa!” Nerves prickled and strain caused a dim ache in my jaw. “Okay. Food.”
“His magic suffered a massive loss by taking us all with him.” Bronwen automatically moved to his other side. “Let me help.”
Mike moaned in answer.
I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him to me. “Absolutely.”
Our second year at the Fae Academy for Halflings, Mike had to use an ancient artifact to bolster his power. He’d given the thing to me, and of course Dorian Jade stole it for himself when he brought me over the wall.
Without it, Mike was flying solo, relying on his own powers which I’d never considered to be the strongest even with the royalty in his blood.
He’d proven me wrong. And I’d never underestimate him again.
If we ever managed to get on the same page. Right now, it was a big if .
The gears clicked in my head as we shuffled Mike between us, setting off at a brisk walk along the line of trees. There was nothing ahead but a line of hedgerows and a clear sky above the undulating landscape. The path curved into a dirt lane and fell down the slope of a hillside.
This was a different valley than the one where Eahsea rested. None of the progress I’d gotten used to in Faerie existed yet.
I swallowed my surprise. Soon the field was behind us and the ruts in the road deepened. We rounded a corner, the road split into two distinct paths, and wordlessly Bronwen and I headed left, away from the forest.
A stone hut with a blistering forge inside turned the interior molten. A small cluster of houses centered around a meadow with a stacked stick fence and several grazing horses inside.
“This is fucked up,” Bronwen whispered.
Noren crouched in front of us, his head swiveling left to right in protector mode.
“Am I the only one who feels like we’ve been thrown into a Medieval Times?” she added with an exhale.
“What the hell is a Medieval Times?” Mike grunted, his voice slurring.
“It’s this giant arena where people go to eat and see a show. There are knights on horseback, jousting, all kinds of things,” I explained. Poorly, of course. But Bronwen had a point.
Hoofbeats sounded behind us before a voice called out, “On your right!”
The rider passed us, gawking, and spurred his horse to a faster trot.
A woman called out a greeting as he passed her, then cut off in fear when her gaze landed on us. Noren growled and the woman disappeared into her house with a swish of her dress and a slammed door.
Mike’s strides grew steadier the longer we walked, and sweat beaded along my brow and between my shoulder blades. Without the benefit of clouds in the sky, we had uninterrupted glare, and the heat and exertion warmed my muscles.
Another woman, dirt smudging her face, called out to her neighbor while she cast a spell to beat her rug with a poker. She stopped when she saw us, her features twisting into shock. These people were fae without a doubt.
“Did you know about this?” Bronwen asked Mike, supporting his weight. “The, ah?—”
“Homesteading?” I tried to supply it with false cheer.
“The mass poverty,” Bronwen corrected bitterly. “These people aren’t rich. They look like they’re starving.”
“I guess,” he replied. His gaze fixed on the rider disappearing in a cloud of dust on the road ahead of us. “The general consensus by palace historians was that every other territory in Faerie suffered. Not ours. The king’s city, from what I’ve heard, has always been wealthy.”
“Maybe your father, but clearly not his people.”
And we stood out in our modern clothing. Our cloaks stood out in the worst way. The more we walked, the more strange looks we garnered from the locals.