Page 42 of Faerie Fate (Fae Academy for Halflings #7)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

F or that last mile downriver, we inhaled smoke, our lungs burning, and the pixies lapsed into silence. One final bend in the river brought us to our destination but an eerie silence greeted us at the docks.

Water lapped against the pilings and the creak of wood against wood made a dull thud as we moored the boats.

“This is wrong,” Elfhame whispered. “There are no palace staff waiting for us, as they should be. Did the fae do more than breach the field?”

Her concern spread through the group faster than wildfire. No one had an answer for her.

The adult pixies spoke among themselves in murmured tones, and my attention landed on the mist churning at the end of the dock, obscuring the landscape beyond.

“Right.” Poppy wiped her hands together and rose, jumping from the boat to the dock without wobbling. “I know how to skin this pig. You three, over here. We’ve got business.”

Surprise and alarm mingled. Mike went next and reached back to help me onto the dock. Bronwen and Noren were right behind.

The quiet thickened the longer we stood, and in the silence the beating of my heart sounded awkward and overly loud.

Poppy gathered us in front of her and stared at us with her hands on her hips. I thought she might be disappointed but it was impossible to read her face. “Right. Well, here goes nothing.”

Poppy took one of the morsana daggers from a pixie and drew it across her palm, ignoring Mike’s gasp of surprise.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

Poppy gave him a narrow glance and hardly flinched, only handed the dagger to Mike to return to its owner.

“Blood magic.” She said it like she hated stating the obvious. “It’s irreversible magic and it should keep you alive, no matter what happens. It's a powerful protection. Right now, it’s the only thing I have to offer you, because who the hell knows what waits beyond these hills.”

Poppy shut her eyes, murmuring the words of the spell under her breath in a dialect of fae I’d never heard before. The words sounded half familiar, like something I might have heard once upon a time in one of my classes at the Elite Academy.

She lifted her bleeding palm in the air, sketching out the outlines of wards.

“I feel your skepticism, Tavi,” Poppy said without opening her eyes.

“Trust me. This is going to serve you well no matter where life takes you. It’s my personal protection.

You’ll be safe even from spells of my own making.

It should be enough to keep you from dying if we face what I believe we’re about to face. ”

I swallowed over a groan, the knot in my throat more pronounced. Was this why I’d been able to walk through Barbara’s spells in the future? Even though the protection wasn’t on me then, Barbara’s magic must have still recognized me, even though Barbara didn’t.

The strange connection between future and past spun my mind and left me with a headache. The rest of the pixies came off their boats and moved quickly and quietly up the dock toward the bank beyond the mist.

Poppy ended her spell, and a sense of heaviness settled in my bones. She wiped her wounded palm on the front of her thigh without care for the bloodstain.

“It’s fine,” she told Mike when he tried to offer her a piece of cloth. “A little bleeding never hurt anyone. At least the spell will hold.”

Bronwen shivered. “Thanks, Poppy.”

Poppy bobbed her head once in curt acknowledgment before joining the pixies. She disappeared through the mist and I turned to Mike, catching his eye.

“How could they have gotten here before us?” I asked in a voice low enough for only him to hear. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

His lips thinned. “We’ll be out of here soon. Get the flower and leave. Hopefully her protection won’t be necessary.”

I had a bad feeling our plans were about to go to shit, but what did I know?

Bronwen grabbed my hand and squeezed hard before she stepped purposely through the mist and disappeared as well.

With no choice, I left the wooden dock and followed the gravel path beyond.

It gently curved up the rise of the bank, the hills steep before the slope dropped.

I pumped my arms for speed and the mist dissolved, the smoke whisked away on a breeze.

And at the rise of the mountain, we had our first glimpse of EverRose.

The palace loomed out of the fog with beautiful spires like the first shoots of plants after a long winter. The delicate lines of twin towers jutted against a cloudless sky, lit from behind.

The glow unnerved me. The fields beyond the palace were burning.

A small garden space separated the base of the hill from the palace’s foundation.

We caught up to the rest of our group at the top of the rise.

EverRose looked like a stone sentinel lit by a backdrop of devastation.

All around it, flames wreathed the ground.

A flash of gold from the inside of the palace heralded the presence of the fae.

The closer we got, the louder the clang of weapons, the shouts of people, all ringing inside the walls. The sounds of battle.

“No.” Mike stopped behind me. “No, this isn’t right. The battle started an entire day earlier than history said it did!”

His nostrils flared and his unease set my teeth on edge. Nothing was going according to plan.

“I’m starting to think time is more fluid than we believed,” I replied.

I wanted to be shocked by the revelation, by the fighting. The best I mustered was a vague sense of doom settling inside me.

Elfhame belted out directions to her sons, ordering one of the older brothers to lead the children to a safe place nearby.

The pixies were raring to go and join the fight already happening inside the palace. Our group split off, the elderly and the young led into the surrounding mountains by the oldest son.

“I need to go, too,” I told Bronwen. “I have to see if there’s a flower to be saved in the field.”

“ You are staying here. I’ll be back,” Poppy said, already jogging ahead. “You three, don’t let her go anywhere.”

She wasn’t taking a chance with me. Not with my bad luck.

“Try not to die!” I yelled to her.

The sinking sensation turned my insides to lead. The fae got here before us. How?

Questions and answers didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. They weren’t going to put out the flames turning the morsana fields to ash.

We knew it had happened. We knew the plants that hadn’t been used to extinction were burned at the Battle of EverRose.

Bronwen and Noren kept close to my side, Mike a constant presence watching me.

I wanted to help the pixies but it wasn’t a good idea. Poppy had to stay safe. She was the only one who’d be able to unlock my powers before we went back to our correct time.

We weren’t the kind of people to sit on the sidelines, though. Not when the crackle of hungry fire and gut-wrenching screams grew louder. The same feelings strung the four of us together.

“It’s a bad idea,” Mike said.

Bronwen blanched. “We can’t just stay here, can we?”

Noren huffed and, his steps light, jogged ahead of us. He checked the path and reappeared in front of me with a slight yip.

“Coast clear.” A horrible laugh made it past my lips.

We broke into a jog, then a sprint, rushing through the smoke toward the palace.

My muscles protested with every step along the rocky incline until I reached the bottom of the rock face and slapped into a wall of heat. The fields were aflame and every last acre of them merrily burning. The wind pushed the heat toward us, hotter than anything I’d ever felt before.

Bronwen pinched my elbow. “We’ll find a way around it.”

The roar of the flames obliterated her words, forcing me to read her lips. I bobbed my head and Noren took off, forcing his way along the slender path leading to the palace.

The pixies’ palace was only a quarter of the size of the grand structure King Tywin commanded in his city but no less intricate. Twin spires rose on either side of the main building, twisting like delicate vines.

Then the fire pulsed and everything went blurry with heat.

Bronwen took off after Noren, and Mike waited for me to fall in line on the trail before he once again took up the rear position. We tread carefully down toward the base of the field.

This close to the fire made it impossible to see anything. My skin broke out in sweat, every pore releasing. The unpleasant sensation accompanied the reek of burning hair and foliage. The tip of my nose singed, the ends of my hair curling up like it would somehow find refuge inside my skull.

Bronwen tripped, her arms going wild, and I grabbed the back of her shirt to keep her on the path.

The fire was worse at the base of the field. The neat lines of growing things no longer existed. Noren broke into a run. I hurried after him.

The heat was unbearable for me so I could only imagine what it felt like underneath his thick layer of fur. My lungs constricted, the fire taking up every last molecule of air and leaving nothing behind. Mike coughed and his fist pressed to his mouth.

We couldn’t stay here for long. There were acres and acres to look through. What could we do? How were we going to survive?

We stumbled along the edge of the field closer to the palace. The fire turned the world into a hellscape and the tears in my eyes dried. Each blink sent agonizing pain through my skull like someone stabbing me through the eye with a screwdriver.

Then Noren stopped and let out a baying howl.

I stumbled into Bronwen as Noren dropped, digging his nose into the soil to turn it over.

It was difficult to make out the contours of the bright blue bloom, the last of its kind, but there .

Growing outside of the neat lines of the field was a single small flower.

The stem was twisted away from the heat and the leaves were desiccated and brown but the bloom survived against all odds.

Hardly daring to breathe, I grabbed the flower before the flames devoured it, stuffing it into my bra for safekeeping.

Noren let out a triumphant bark, the sound devolving into a whine, and nudged Bronwen back the way we came.

“Did you get one?” Mike asked. He squinted at me.

I patted my chest. “Yeah.” If I had moisture in my body, I’d cry again. “Yeah, I did.”

Mike pointed over his shoulder. “Then let’s get back to the boats and wait out the battle.”

He was right. We had no business being here and the less impact we made, the better for everyone involved.

A lot of fae and pixies would die today. We couldn’t be part of that wave of death.

“Shouldn’t we wait for Poppy?” I asked.

He grunted and pushed me toward the hill. “She can take care of herself. You can’t.”

I wanted to argue but he was right again. It hurt, predictably.

Scrambling back up the hillside took more effort. My hands searched automatically for holds in the rock as heat pressed at our backs, reluctant to let us escape.

Finally we mounted the ridge and into the coolness of the mist rolling off the river. It was too soon to give in to the relief tapping insistently and waiting for me to acknowledge it.

“I see something.” Bronwen craned forward, squinting through the mist. “Movement up ahead.”

“The pixies?” Mike didn’t sound sure.

We jogged toward the boats, greeted by more flames. The boats were on fire, and the fae burning them caught us in their sights.

Oh, shit . My lips rounded before proper horror crashed over me and lurched my stomach to my shoes. Our way out just disappeared.

Trapped .

“What’s this?” The nearest soldier turned to us, his weapon drawn.

Bronwen was the first to recover, the first to speak. “Looking for stragglers.” She puffed out her chest and pushed her hair behind her ears. Revealing their points. We’re fae . “We’re making sure to round up the last of the pixies before they have a chance to escape.”

“You’re a raider group?”

The fae’s skepticism was palpable but there were five of them and four of us. Not exactly an uneven match but one I really didn’t want to engage in, if possible.

“Don’t we look like a raider group?” Bronwen dared him to argue, to call her bluff.

“We tried to round up a group of pixies but they got away from us,” Mike said. Helping.

The others didn’t believe him until Noren stepped up and growled, his hackles raised.

“You have a direwolf!” The main soldier sounded surprised. “You Unseelie?”

“No. Just lucky enough to have one.” I rested my hand on Noren’s head and waited, daring the soldiers to say something against us now.

A second soldier held out his hand and flame bubbled up above his palm, the same amber-tinted hue as the flames engulfing the boats.

“Let them join,” he said, sounding hungry. “The more fae we have, the quicker this fight ends and those scum are wiped away.”

My mouth filled with the taste of something sour. They were talking about pixies like lower lifeforms who didn’t deserve to live.

Magic bubbled up inside of me in answer to the flame, to the discriminatory remarks. If I’d had my full strength, I’d gut them. I’d tear them apart with my claws and make them pay for their hatred. But then I’d be no better than them. My scar throbbed in time with my heartbeat.

“Let’s get started, then. We’ve cut off their access to the river.” The man gestured to the boats and the flame in his palm grew. “Now we’ll herd them toward the palace. They won’t stand a chance.”

“You planning on lighting the stones on fire, Grant?” one of the men joked.

The soldier, Grant, barked out a laugh and gathered us toward the hill leading to the palace. “Damn right. Whatever it takes.”

One of the soldiers slapped Mike on the arm. “You’ll love this,” the man assured Mike. “Although it will go easier for you if you have armor. Did you lose yours?”

There was no good way to distract them and break off.

They herded us right into the worst of the battle.