Page 9 of Faerie Fate (Fae Academy for Halflings #7)

Chapter Six

U ncle Will didn’t know about the laws of fae magic, or the decrees King Tywin worked into the power around the keys. Will didn’t know that only the person who used the key could open the door without it killing them.

Tywin made it impossible to steal someone’s key and use it.

Will’s first step beyond the threshold stole the soul from behind his eyes. Life left him not in increments but all at once, alive and then not. I reached for him desperately, awful gut-wrenching grief tangling in my mouth.

Too late.

His hand slowly slipped from the key and his lifeless body tipped forward, crashing to the sunlit ground beyond the portal door, the golden glow a mockery. He lay still and the world held its breath.

My hands flew automatically to cover my mouth. I didn’t feel them.

What—

No. No , that wasn’t… He couldn’t…

It happened so fast, so brutally. There and gone. He’d come to save me and he’d paid with his life. What was worse? Watching the person you love die a horrible, slow death or having it be over in a blink, something that absolutely had not needed to happen? Something preventable?

Devastation sucked the air out of my lungs, and I stared at him, shocked and horrified. Uncle Will died. In a heartbeat. Faster than the pulse of a hummingbird wing.

For the briefest moment, I’d gotten my uncle back, the man who raised me, the man he’d been before he started drinking himself to oblivion when I was little.

He rested, sprawled on his stomach, a slight breeze tickling the auburn hair away from his neck. He’d never move again. All because he wanted to get me out.

Because of King Tywin’s fucking horrible rules. The king’s genocidal desire to keep anyone not fae, and not invited, out of his realm did this.

Uncle Will died because of Tywin.

The scream I’d leashed inside broke free and I reached for him, barely noticing the way the edge of the door dissolved.

Will hadn’t been allowed to use the key, so it killed him, and now the magic was destroying the doorway too.

I stepped back and watched the magic melt and take the key with it. The portal disappeared, with me on one side and my uncle’s body on the other.

A new, seething hatred for the king filled me. I had no way to get back to Faerie unless I found the others. And if they were already there?—

Then I was trapped.

Oh, god. Oh, god.

My hands dragged through my hair, knocking the glasses askew in the process. Enraged, heartbroken, I tore them off my face and sent them flying against the wall that had held a doorway just a moment ago.

The plastic shattered on impact. I howled at the wall, at the glasses, at the way my uncle was ripped away from me.

How could this have happened? Why didn’t I say anything to him sooner? I should have stopped him. I hadn’t known he’d try to take the key from me. Why would he use it?

But I knew why.

The back of my neck burned where he’d torn the key necklace free. My muscles ached and the rest of me went hot and tight, feverish. Cold immediately took the place of all that heat and my skin erupted into goosebumps.

My bottom lip trembled and I bit down on it, my control leaching away into terrible fury. I listed into my first step and sagged to my knees, cracking my bones. My head spun in useless circles.

Uncle Will was dead. Repeating it didn’t make it feel real, not yet.

This world was weak, dead, lacking in something vital that Faerie had in spades. But it wasn’t only the dead sensation of the mortal world that got to me. My shifter was always strong here.

The mate bond drained me of the last bits of resistance and vibrancy. What the bond didn’t take, the zombie curse from Madam Muerte’s bite did. I spiraled low, my head filled with droning and my stomach sicker than I’d ever been before.

Behind me and down the hall, Kendrick lay unconscious in the room. If I couldn’t make my body move, then I’d never be able to distance myself. I’d never be able to crawl away on my belly like the bitch he told me I was.

I barely managed to get myself upright and stand, much less leave. My fingers shook as I clawed them into the mortar between stones, hauling my ass up, leaning heavily when my balance disappeared. Every part of me shook.

I’d fought pretty damn hard with my powers against Kendrick before he subdued me. And all while being sick. Now it finally caught up to me and my mouth filled with the acrid taste of bile.

Barbara’s witch fix down in the dungeons had been temporary. She’d warned me of it so long ago. Her fix wasn’t going to be enough to help me here, not when I pushed myself to the limits.

Tears broke free.

“None of it matters,” I told myself out loud, pressing my hands flat against the wall until I was steady enough to take a step.

Then two.

“You’ve got this.”

Did I believe myself? No, one hundred percent no. Did it help to hear my voice? Yes. I had to move forward and I had to get going. There were other people out there who didn’t have their uncle here to save them. They only had me.

The tears turned the world into a salty blur. Uncle Will tried . He’d come for me in an attempt to make up for the mistakes of his past, to right what he’d considered his wrongs with me. Look where we ended up.

My neck burned where he’d yanked off the key on its chain. Why hadn’t I said something? Why hadn’t I anticipated what he’d do in order to cut a hasty retreat?

There were a lot of things I should have done differently, like fought harder, like made sure that Kendrick never caught me in the first place.

Fuck . Another death on my shoulders.

I certainly racked them up. Once I’d thought finding dead bodies was my super power as though I was some kind of walking and talking drug-sensing dog for corpses. Now I halfway wondered if death didn’t trail me like the most loyal companion.

People I loved tended to die. And I was always involved.

I made it to the end of the hallway and took a right where it branched off, heading down the stairs for Nurse Julie’s office. It made sense to start there, anyway. Or at least search for her on my way down to the lower level.

She’d gone off to attend to the injured. They were the ones who took priority. They’d get the help they needed in Faerie.

How are you going to do it without a key?

A sob broke loose. I’d messed up big time.

My hand on the wall, I went one step at a time, and the further I walked from Kendrick…the more I felt him. The mate bond stretched like a physical tether between us. Like chains, and no saw was going to cut through the links ever again.

The bond kept me leashed, kept me prisoner to him. And when he woke up, he’d be furious, ready to take his pound of flesh out on me.

The things he’d do to me when he regained consciousness… Images of blood and torture and sex flashed through my head and I cringed away from them. The shuddering sob burned the inside of my chest.

There would be no escaping him now. No matter how far I went, or how fast—which, facing the truth, I would never be fast enough like this—he’d come for me. He’d punish me.

I clenched the banister and skipped down the steps two at a time before landing hard on the floor below. The ache in my muscles focused me and I clenched down, my jaw jutted.

Julie’s office . Then you go from there .

Livvy and Mike were here. I’d find them eventually. They still had their keys.

What would Livvy say when I told her that Uncle Will was dead?

I passed more empty classrooms, dragging my feet behind me so each step forward announced itself with a shuffle and a squeak of rubber on stone. I had to move. Shit, I had to hustle as quickly as my tired limbs and bone-deep exhaustion allowed.

My head spun crazily and I took a beat in the nearest doorway. Movement flashed from the corner of my vision and when I glanced up sharply, shadows separated from inside the classroom.

A pair of blank eyes met mine and the young girl sucked in a breath.

Don’t touch your neck . Don’t draw attention to it .

My scar throbbed and my fingers twitched against the urge. The smell of potions and old ink grew as I stepped into the room. “How many of you are there?”

The first-year glanced unerringly at my scar and her eyes widened, sending my gut roiling. Julie wasn't there but others were. More first-years who cowered behind the desks and stared apprehensively at me.

“How many?” I repeated.

The girl who made eye contact shook her head, and her pointed ears poked through her hair.

My mate bond pulled tighter with every step forward. Awareness trickled, slowly at first, growing heavier with every passing heartbeat. Kendrick was waking up.

Devastation turned my head hot. I didn’t have a key to save these people now. If I left them, would Kendrick kill them all?

“Stay where you are,” I warned in a whisper. “Someone is going to come help you. Make sure you hide.”

My heart snapped into several pieces. I wasn’t the only one devastated. Two even smaller girls crowded closer to the first, their delicate little bodies trembling. How could I leave them behind?

They needed help, and I?—

My stomach twisted and the heat in my head jettisoned down to the base of my spine and pushed forward into my hip bones. Who was I kidding? I wouldn’t be any help if Kendrick decided to come for me. And he would. And if he found me with these first-years, then he’d have a field day with them.

I had no way to fight back effectively. He’d kick my ass and torment me in front of these kids simply because he could. Because I’d made him look bad.

I turned to go and the girl grabbed my cloak to keep me there. “Please don’t leave us.”

Her voice broke, and a fresh wave of tears broke past my walls. “I’m sorry.” I couldn’t promise them I’d be back.

I spared one last look at the kids and bit down on my tongue before I promised them anything . Empty words seemed worse somehow. I had no way to know if I’d be back in time for them or if maybe we’d get lucky and Livvy would find them first.

I had to keep looking.

Had to find Julie and see if she knew of a way to slap another temporary bandage on me, to cover the frayed edges of Barbara’s fix. Something to get me back to fighting shape and maybe lessen the fucking horrendous pull of this bond?—

It peeled something off of me with every step I took away from the first-years. If I’d been stronger, I might have been able to find a way to get them to safety.

If I’d been stronger, I wouldn’t have let Uncle Will take my key and kill himself.

Focus!

Grief was more than an anchor. It hardened like cement and made every step tougher than it should have been.

I didn’t find Julie in any of the other classrooms, and by the time I made it down to the first floor, skidding on the last couple of steps, the corridors were empty.

Kendrick must have sent his wolves far away or kept them confined to the outer lawn with a command because they sure as hell weren’t here. I couldn’t scent them, either, as I took off for the nurse’s office.

The Fae Academy for Halflings had become a ghost town haunted by the living and terrorized by the evil who wanted to destroy whatever it touched.

I made it down an empty corridor when a crack sounded way too close to me. My ears pricked, heart hammering immediately into my throat. My neck wound gave a throb.

They found me .

The mate bond thrummed tighter yet and the awareness grew until I swore I caught Kendrick's deep inhale as he woke. Oh, fuck.

I took off running, pumping my arms, terror pushing me on. Kendrick, through the bond, would be able to find me anywhere. I’d never be safe again. No matter where I went. Hiding? No. The deepest, darkest pit of the earth wouldn’t be able to hide me.

Sprinting, I took a corner quickly and slammed into the opposite wall, pain lighting through me. Oh, god, I was never going to make it. Not like this.

Not when my strength immediately flagged. Fear wasn’t enough to keep me sustained or get me out of this place. My muscles throbbed, the ache in my joints growing steadily stronger until my legs gave out on me entirely.

I collapsed at the end of the hall.

Pain spread where my knees cracked. The person behind me was running, too, the footsteps coming closer, getting louder.

Kendrick was coming for me.

But what he’d do when he caught me would make my nightmares look tame.