Page 30 of Faerie Fate (Fae Academy for Halflings #7)

There was nothing miraculous about this situation. My gut sank lower than the Titanic. One step after the other wasn’t cutting it for me anymore.

Battered, drained, chained to a mate against my will… I needed it to stop. And I would have given anything for a get out of jail free card.

“Where do we go from here?” Bronwen sagged forward, swiping her hand underneath her nose again. The dried blood caked on her skin. “I mean…what should we do?”

“Now we get the flower.” Poppy shrugged Mike off in a very Barbara-like gesture. Like it would cut her off at the knees if he kept holding her upright. “There’s a morsana farm a few towns over. I know the pixies who own it,” she said.

“Not where the smoke is, though, right?” Mike stared in that direction and a fist knotted in my chest.

Poppy looked him dead in the eye and replied, “We’re walking right into it.”

Dread settled. Hope hadn’t lived inside me for a long time and yet somehow I kept going even without it. I kept on spitting into the wind and being surprised when it spat right back at me.

I reached down into me for even a scrap of my usual magic and found nothing left. Why keep fighting? Why keep struggling? I was an empty vessel, ready to be filled with Kendrick’s pups.

It was just about the worst image I could have conjured. It robbed the soul from my body and halved the rest of me, threatening to turn my bones to ash.

Exhaustion rattled and begged me to stop, to rest rather than trek through the woods. Smoke from the burning cabin settled in my lungs and the trees pressed in close.

It hurt too much to think about what I’d seen in Poppy’s prophecy. The vision of the mudslides and the hurricanes.

It hurt because if I believed her—and what choice did I have?—then the consequences all crashed down on my shoulders. Every life lost would be something for me to remember and try to live with.

But why should I live when so many others died, when it wasn’t their fault?

Noren remained in constant contact with me as we walked. No one spoke. No one had anything decent to say so it was better to stay quiet. There was only the sun, a steady presence overhead, watching us struggle. And Faerie, our goddess, wherever she was.

The sun was her magnifying glass. We were her ants.

Mike remained beside Poppy, only a few inches away in case she keeled over. But his grandmother was determined to make it on her own. A fighter. She’d have to be, wouldn’t she? As a bounty hunter?

My mind twisted back around to those silver binding cords around her wrists. Her dress covered the area now, the same way the one I’d borrowed came to my knuckles.

The hike wasn’t easy by any means but we were all in the same frame of mind. None of us were strong enough to use magic right now. And Poppy certainly wasn’t in any shape to transport us the way she had before.

“Tavi, I don’t feel good.” Bronwen swallowed compulsively. “I’ve never been this slow to heal before.”

“You will. We all will.”

My limp hadn’t improved. I’d just gotten used to the sharp bites of pain when I put weight on the leg.

Finally, we hit the outskirts of the first village near Poppy’s woods.

The streets were packed with bodies in wild motion, traveling between the ruins of the outer buildings with arms laden with supplies.

The air reeked with the combination of stale burning and magic.

Rogue spells rebounded everywhere, rebuilding chimneys and fixing the locks on front doors.

This wasn’t normal damage.

My eyes narrowed, assessing what I saw and unable to make sense of the scene.

Poppy strode forward and grabbed a woman by the back of her dress, stopping her mid-stride. “What’s happening?”

The woman yelped in surprise and Poppy released her hold.

“The first move in the pixie war has been made,” she blurted out. “The fae launched an attack on the pixies’ greatest source of magic. Earth. Their element.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “We’ve got nothing but casualties.”

Her voice broke off on a sob and she dropped her head, hurrying away and shaking as though she’d said too much.

Poppy remained standing, her hands slowly fluttering to her hips. “Earth,” she muttered. “Dammit.”

“No, this can’t be right.” Ice lodged in my gut and perforated every organ.

What kind of attack could the fae launch that would impact the entire earth?

“We’re a whole week early for the pixie war,” Mike said. “It started on the fourteenth of September. I made sure to bring us before the start date. I calculated everything perfectly.”

Poppy chuckled but there was no mirth in the sound. “I hate to break it to you, kid, but that’s today. September 14th. You must have miscalculated your dates when you time traveled. Sloppy of you.”

Mike bristled, taking automatic offense. “There was no miscalculation. I know better than to be sloppy.”

But he’d done the same kind of sloppy job when he pulled me from the academy. He wasn’t as strong or as capable as he should be. Just like me. We were two misshapen pieces in a world where we couldn’t fit.

“We have to go into pixie lands to get the morsana flower,” Poppy said. “No other choice. The fae probably won’t launch another attack so soon. We’ll be?—”

“Don’t say fine ,” Mike interrupted.

“We should stay and help these people,” Bronwen said with a groan. “More hands make for less work?—”

“They don’t need your assistance,” Poppy stated. She stared sideways at Bronwen. “Not to mention anything you do could lead to dire consequences in the future. We’ll have a hard enough time avoiding this war.”

She strode through the chaos and left us behind to follow or flounder. Probably both.

Mike and I shared a look over Bronwen’s head. We were walking right into an active war and there was nowhere to go but forward.