Page 41 of Faerie Fate (Fae Academy for Halflings #7)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I ’d always thought eagle feathers were water resistant.

Bald eagles dove into water for fish to eat, didn’t they? I guess it didn’t count when you were fully submerged for too long. With adrenaline surging through my veins and my lungs burning, I reached for my magic.

Come on!

I couldn’t drown now. Not when there was so much more to lose this time.

My power slipped away from me, funneled against my will into keeping me from sinking. I needed to change, shift into something able to breathe underwater. Otherwise it was all for nothing.

My beak opened, the cry lost in the bubbling rapids, then Mike was there. He grabbed me roughly by the neck, his fingers sinking through my feathers to my spine as he pulled me up to the surface.

The pixies had already cut one of the longboats from its moorings, sending it into motion away from the shore with a blast from their morsana-infused tools. The second longboat was filling rapidly.

“Come aboard! Everyone, aboard!” The last calls for departure screamed out from their tiny lungs.

“We go!” Elfhame flew above the rest and her glow was a beacon in the dark.

So tired . When would I not be tired? When would my lungs stop burning and I take a step without suffering?

Mike dragged me underneath his arm, my head directly beside his and my wings all but useless. I let him.

“You are not going to die on me.” He grunted, cutting through the rapids against the currents. “No one is going to fucking die today.”

His voice sounded beside my ear and his strong legs kicked, his free arm slicing through little white-capped whirlpools. But right then, I had to admit, dying didn’t seem so bad.

Mike managed to get us to the boat and dropped me over the side. I hit the bottom hard just as he pulled up behind me, rolling to avoid my claws. Water jetted up my throat.

“Damn it, Tavi, breathe!”

Bronwen and Poppy rushed forward to help, Bronwen back in her human form and me stuck as a sodden bird.

Why was I so bad at this? Why could I not manage the simplest things, especially without the excuse of the gypsy curse? Here in the past, I was free from that ailment, and I still couldn’t manage to shift.

Was unlocking my witch powers even going to do anything?

Adrenaline continued to rush through me, dragging every terrible feeling I’d ever had about myself up to the surface.

“Can you change?” Bronwen asked.

I blinked at her, incapable of speech.

“What’s the matter with her?” Mike loomed over me. “Why isn’t she turning back into a human?”

“She saved your life. Took a toll,” Poppy barked out. She forced me to look at her, holding my face in her hands, and her magic brushed against me. “She still hasn’t completely recovered from the gun thing. The pieces of her soul are together but it’s like any cut. You move too much, it reopens.”

Was I really weak because of what happened with the gun? Fuck . I’d made a huge and horrible mistake there and I was still paying for it. No matter how hard I worked on this or how often I practiced, I couldn’t learn enough to be good enough.

The boat sluiced down the river, nature carrying us away. I lay on my back, chest rising and falling and my feathers fluttering slightly with the movement. A tremor racked through me.

“Here. This will help her.” Elfhame fluttered closer and held out a hard cake. “Go on. Eat.”

I managed to take the cake in my beak and crunch down. It tasted like morsana flowers, the same sweetness as the brownie. Elfhame perched on Poppy’s shoulder and watched as I gulped down several bites of the cake before letting the rest drop away.

The morsana worked fast. Where adrenaline raged in me before, the morsana smoothed over those sensations, like fresh snow over a well-worn trail.

“This will get her nervous system under control,” Elfhame told the others. “It should have a rapid effect.”

My eyes fluttered closed. My breathing evened out and my heart returned to normal before I was able to shift back to human. My body lengthened, taloned claws turning back into legs and wings shrinking until my arms lay flung out at my sides.

“Just let me die now,” I garbled out. “Please.”

“No one is letting you do anything anymore,” Bronwen assured me. She crouched beside me and took my hand in hers. “I thought we’d lost you.”

“Was it…was it hard for you, too?” Or was it just me? I gulped over the rock in my throat and turned to look at her.

Her eyes widened. “Yeah, I wouldn’t wish that flight on anyone.”

The pixies somehow manipulated the earth under the river to force the boat to jettison over the rapids, faster than I’d ever seen a boat move. Several of them clustered at the rear and some at the helm, guiding us, keeping us from crashing.

River water splashed and soaked everyone through. But we’d already left the fae way behind. We were safe. For now .

I knew from experience it was only a matter of time before things went wrong again.

I curled on my side, drawing Bronwen with me, her warmth against my back as Mike settled at my front.

The two boats sailed side by side into the night.

Several of the older pixies handled the navigation.

Once I’d gotten warmth into my body, once the shivering stopped, Mike helped me into a cross-legged position and we shared our meager rations.

The food didn’t go far, but pixies also didn’t eat much.

Noren lay at my knee, several of the pixie kids curled up in the fur behind his ear, and fell asleep. Exhaustion knocked me in the back of the head insistently, begging me to give in and sleep. Not yet .

Elfhame had already shoved two more hard morsana cakes into my mouth but after the initial one, the others didn’t really help more. I hurt everywhere. My throat burned too, which was one of my least favorite things, and probably came from coughing brown water out of my lungs.

It was just one more thing to suffer through. I kept those thoughts to myself. The others didn’t need me to be whiny and pessimistic. It wouldn’t help the general morale and it definitely wouldn’t help Mike, who watched me cautiously.

I would save him again and again, no matter how I felt when we were done. Hopefully he knew that.

I toyed with the knobby scar around my neck but caught myself, shoving my hand underneath my thigh to stop.

Mike coughed. By the time I met his eyes, he forced his lips into a smile.

His hair had curled awkwardly around his ears and across his forehead.

Brown streaks that might have been silt or dried blood decorated his cheeks.

“Hey, stop.” His fingers caught me in the middle of rubbing the scar again. “It’s okay.”

I glanced down, too guilty to read his expression. An apology bubbled up but I wasn’t sure what it was for. I had no reason for rubbing the scar but I kept worrying about the scar as if the mate bond tugged at me.

Here, Kendrick was nothing but a bad memory. There was no deepening in my consciousness, no expansion in my head like I’d felt when he and I were in the same room.

The unpleasant sensation shifted and grew when Mike dropped my hand. “Try to rest, Tavi. You need it.”

He rolled on his side, his shoulders curved forward and his knees drawn up to his chest.

“I’m not breakable,” I whispered. To myself, to him, I didn’t know.

His shoulders stiffened but he kept quiet.

The longboats were expansive but there wasn’t enough room for anyone to stretch out or feel comfortable. If he managed to steal some sleep, then who was I to keep him awake and make him talk to me? To ask him to explain exactly how he felt when he saw the scar from the mate bond?

I lay on my back for a long moment until most everyone took their rest. Except for Poppy.

The young witch with the old soul only waited for me to glance her way before she huffed out something between a grunt and a chuckle. “What’s the matter with you? Something wrong?”

Oh yeah, a whole bunch of things.

“I made a mistake,” I started after a gulping pause.

“Just one?” She offered me a mocking smile.

With half her face in shadow and half in light, her hair knotted at the top of her head and her dress soaked through, Poppy was just a young woman. The fabric clung to her body and the river water turned the color dark. She wasn’t Mike’s grandmother. She was someone who might understand.

I held my palms open. “A lot of mistakes. I’m used to screwing up, but turning myself into the gun, losing pieces of my soul… And then with the eagle form. I almost killed the crown prince of the Seelie court. And I couldn’t change back.”

Poppy grabbed up a stray piece of tinder—who knew where she’d gotten it, or if she carried such things in her bag—and took the edge of her blade to it. A few quick swipes peeled off curls of bark.

“You didn’t,” she replied. “Kill him. He’s alive and well. My grandson.” Her lips rounded in surprise. “And as for the rest, well, shit happens.”

“That’s it?” I asked. “That’s all you have to say? Shit happens? I messed up .” I enunciated each word clearly.

“Everyone messes up.” Poppy stared at me before shrugging. “Okay, fine, so you mess up a lot. Things don’t come easily for you. It’s part of your path, I suppose.”

“I’m less than useless with my powers, no matter how you try to hype me up.” My stomach knotted under her keen eye.

“And I’m not super great at being a hype woman,” Poppy admitted. She bumped me with her knuckles. “There.”

“There what?”

She shot me a sideways look. “That’s what I would have gotten from my mother. Nothing but a bump. A reminder to maintain a stiff upper lip, a small pat on the shoulder. I still hear her voice in my head. Telling me to buck up. It was always buck up . She never had the time to listen.”

“Your daughter is much better with the whole sympathy bit.” I sagged forward with a sigh. “She always knows exactly what to say.”

“Can you tell me about her? I know what I see when I look at Michael, but I know nothing about my daughter.” Poppy’s voice took on a pleading note I’d never heard before.

I understood why she’d want to pry into the future. I’d already caused enough chaos, though. If I told her about Laina?—

“I’m sorry. I can’t tell you anything,” I replied regretfully. “I’m not sure what it would do if you knew.”

Poppy’s lips tweaked. “I understand.”

“She’s great, though.” Great seemed harmless enough. “A really good person.”

Poppy paused, then nodded.

We were just two people trapped in anomalous circumstances. She handled it with much more aplomb than I did. Maybe Poppy was made of sterner stuff, and whether she knew it or not, that grit and determination passed down to Mike.

He had his emotional swells—didn’t we all?—but he dealt with them. He was still here with me through it all.

“Let me tell you this.” Poppy shuffled closer.

“For my childhood, my parents were as tough as nails. They believed in what they saw right in front of them and knew life was hard. They taught me to be hard as well. They taught me to constantly watch out for my own safety. I’m not sure where I went wrong, either. Like I said. Shit happens.”

Whether she meant for it to happen or not, the small glimpse into Poppy’s childhood did the trick: It showed me that she trusted me.

I caught a glimpse of the silver bangles on her wrist before she shifted, a slight adjustment in her posture, and her dress sleeves covered them again.

“What about the man who enslaved you? How did it happen?” I pitched my voice lower in case any of the others were caught between sleep and wakefulness.

Poppy cleared her throat and resumed her carving.

“Ah, well. Rebellion can really get you into trouble. I was so dead set to prove my mother wrong that I trusted the wrong person. Out of spite. Out of ego. Kit is Faerie scum. Hell, I wish I could say he put a spell on me and fae magic had something to do with the choices I made. But no, I have to take the blame.”

I slicked my tongue over my lips, parched despite my nearly drowning. “It helps a little. Knowing I’m not the only fuck-up.”

“Girl, no. You aren’t the only fuck-up by a long shot. We all have our fair share of mistakes in our past. It just seems like yours affect more people,” Poppy replied.

Yeah, the story of my life. I spent the majority of my years up until eighteen keeping a low profile without knowing it. Now life made up for that with constant adventure and the wrong kind of surprises.

Finally, Poppy stopped her carving and rolled over against the side of the boat. I felt a little better after our talk. Well enough to shut my eyes and float off into some kind of half asleep, half awake state. It was better than nothing.

The doze eventually took me under and when my heavy eyes opened again, the air was thick with smoke and fog. Struggling rays of light cut through the dim early morning but the sun hid behind heavy cloud cover.

Between the clouds and the heavy fog, my senses reeled. My head spun and the sickly sweet stench of smoke scalded my nostrils.

“The palace is less than a mile downriver,” Elfhame said.

I sucked in a breath, glancing over at the pixie perched at the helm of the boat. “What’s happening?” My mouth tasted like the bottom of the river.

“The smell is the morsana fields burning.” Her sorrow penetrated through the last dregs of sleep. “We’ve finally reached EverRose. So my guess is that the fae arrived before us.”