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Sylvia

I was relieved for all of two seconds before wings started beating behind me. Not all of the fairies had given chase, perhaps fawning to Marcellus’ wound.But enough were at my heels to make my flight panicky.

A woman screamed an incantation—a familiar one I’d heard from Mother many times. Flames grew at her fingertips. Swerving, I sent a burst of frost behind me to deter them. One of my errant spells hit a jar of flowers on a balcony, causing fragments of pottery to rain down on my pursuers.

I set my gaze back ahead, pushing myself harder as I recognized the curve of the dark stone around me. Almost there.

The music was growing louder, siren and fairy song piercing the air.The water churned below, a frothing mass of activity as sirens swam toward the village entrance. The guilt threatened to suffocate me.

My thoughts were a jumbled mess of questions and self-reproach, but there was no time to make sense of it now.I flew faster, the weight of the gemstone pressed to my stomach as I careened around sharp corners in the cave, narrowly avoiding collisions with other fairies who were flying in the same direction, ornate flowers woven in their hair and baskets of food in their arms. The eager expressions on their faces made my dread claw deeper.

My heart nearly stopped when I finally reached the entry landing.

Jon and Cliff were there, but not how I had left them. They were seated on the ground, bound back to back against a gnarled vine that jutted out of the rock—crafted by magic for this very purpose. Oppressive weight crushed on my lungs as I drank in the flowered vines that coiled around them, pulsing and moving slowly like living snakes. The flowers were elaborate and beautiful. Some crowned their heads, while others blossomed on the vines that coiled around them and kept their hands bound behind their back. The blossoms glowed gently in the dim light—clearly the work of a talented earth affinity—each dazzling color battling the blueish bioluminescence reflected on the walls around us.

I did a double-take at the jagged ceiling, startled to see a dozen constellations glowing like white-hot runes on the stone above us.

This wasn’t just a display. It was a ceremonial offering.

A blood sacrifice.

I could have retched at the violent realization, if not for the battling relief that they were still alive.

The hunters’ jackets lay discarded in a heap near the water’s edge, leaving the bindings to dig in painfully against their bare arms under their t-shirts. Not that they appeared to be in pain—or at least, not aware of it.

I drifted closer. Jon and Cliff’s eyes were half-lidded and glazed over, their heads lolled forward and to the side as though they couldn’t muster the strength to sit upright. My stomach twisted. They’d been drugged—my brutal warriors now as helpless as rabbits encircled by a snake.

Fairies and sirens crowded near them, singing in the air and in the water. Fairies set food and flowers down around the pyre as they passed, before taking a perch alongside their peers. I froze in midair as I saw one of the fairies break off toward Cliff, dutifully hoisting a bowl of wine. It was dark, a sickly sweet smell wafting from it. She pushed it toward his parted lips, saying something to him. I heard Cliff groan in his throat, his deep voice hoarse. But he was too weak to resist, did not so much as flinch as the fairy tipped the bowl forward.

Panic flared through me, white-hot and desperate. Before the bowl could tip fully, I threw my hand out and shouted a spell. Ice shot across the cavern, shattering the bowl and sending shards of frozen wine scattering over the ground. The fairy jerked back, startled alongside many in the dozens around us.

“Get away from him,” I snarled, my voice low and dangerous.

The other fairy’s face twisted with such personal, biting hatred that I questioned how I ever could have believed these people were sane. As the fairy charged, lightning crackling between her hands to electrocute me, I shot a spear of ice through her stomach.

Numbness trickled down my spine as she fell to the cavern floor. I had killed monsters—the stuff of nightmares—but never a fairy. As several others darted down to gather around her in worry, I had little time to wonder if there was a healer in their midst to save her.

“Jon, wake up!” I shouted, my voice breaking. He didn’t stir as I hovered before him. Hours’ worth of enchanted food and wine were pumping through his body, but my dread deepened as I touched the stubble on his slack face. It appeared as though he’d been days without a razor, not hours.

The ground rumbled. Several fairies hovered in formation, their hands aimed at the stone floor to make it sink toward the water—to feed the sirens. I thrust my palms out, whispering a spell to send a thick ribbon of frost to the water that splashed against the stone. Ice crackled and took hold, pausing the platform’s descent in frozen waves. Sirens clawed to reach over the ice, but they were just out of reach. Still, it would only be a matter of time before their desperation overpowered my magic.

I shot a volley of icicles at the earth fairies, scattering them. The stone floor beneath Jon and Cliff ground to a halt at an unsettling angle, but the descent had been steadied for now. They were safe.

Other fairies approached me from the gathered masses, casting their floral garlands aside to summon defensive magic. I threw spell after spell to keep them at bay. At first, I couldn’t believe that they weren’t killing me outright. They certainly had the power to slaughter me, but I caught a murmur— the girl must be kept alive . And with a sickening lurch, I knew how precious my body was to them.

I needed more time. I couldn’t free the hunters while battling an entire village—and Marcellus couldn't be far behind. When he arrived, we’d be fucked.

I set my gaze on one earth affinity hovering near the ceiling, who was recovering quicker than the others around her. I shaped another frozen javelin in the air before me, ensuring the point was sharp before hurling it upward with all the force I could muster. The ice grazed the fairy’s shoulder and tore directly through her right wing. I turned my gaze away the moment I saw her plummet. The cries of fury and shock from the two others made my ears ring.

This was enough to startle the others, who now gave me a wide berth. I flew to Jon, my heart pounding like a war drum. The sight of him made me freeze for a moment. His handsome face was pale, devoid of its usual flush of sun-kissed color. His brow was slightly furrowed, dark lashes fluttering, and lips slightly parted as though lost in an unreachable dream. The crown of flowers placed on his head made him look almost sacred, like a piece of artistry rather than a warrior.

I had never seen him look so fragile .

Closing the distance to him, I screamed his name again and again, shoving his cheek until his eyelids fluttered open .

“Hi, Sylv,” Jon mumbled drunkenly, struggling to focus on me before his eyes fell shut again.

“Wake up!” Even a blast of frost to the chest couldn’t seem to jolt him. “I can’t leave you behind, please ! I need you both!”

It wasn’t enough. I needed more .

In my desperation, my hand slid into the satchel, fingertips grazing the gemstone. Without a thought, only will and focus, I placed my other hand on Jon’s forehead. I had seen healers rouse unconscious fairies before, but I had never been skilled enough to master the incantation. Nonetheless, I pictured it—the magic pulsing into Jon to counteract what he was fed.

The magic roared in my ears, every hair standing on end. This was more than my own; I was a conduit for something far more powerful. The light pulsed into Jon’s skin, webbing out—

He awoke with a violent gasp that made me dart back in alarm.

I laughed shakily, tears trickling from my eyes and relief coursing through me even as panic still clawed for dominance. Alertness saturated Jon’s gaze, snapping to the restraints wound around him. I froze the thickest vines around him, turning them brittle and black from the stark cold. With a sudden jerk, Jon tore one arm free, sending frozen shrapnel across the stone.

I hurriedly wheeled around in the air to revive Cliff. My heart clenched at the sight of him, too—soft blossoms trailed over his cropped gold hair, giving him a regal look even in his daze. Anyone might have mistaken him for a fallen prince rather than the brutal fighter he was. The stillness of his body felt so wrong. As I pressed my palm to his cheek and brushed the gemstone with the other, I hoped he would forgive me.

Cliff roused with the same sharpness, his body jerking immediately against the binds.

“What the fuck ?” Cliff groaned. His voice was hoarse and raw as he struggled against the bonds and squinted to make sense of his surroundings. His green eyes rested on me, breathing heavily as recognition set in. “Wasn't sure you were coming back.”

“Me neither,” I confessed. I cupped my hands—a well-aimed slice of frost broke through the bindings laced over his chest with a sharp crack. Several of the thinner vines withered and recoiled from the impact, as though fleeing from the taste of winter. From there, Cliff was able to break free. He clawed every flowering vine from his body, letting them fall in a heap.

I backed away as Jon and Cliff both rose to their feet, their movements sluggish at first, disoriented as though fighting through a haze. I watched their posture shift into honed instincts as the frozen waves began to crack under their weight—the one thing separating them from the wailing sirens on the other side.

“Move back!” I shouted.

Jon and Cliff wrenched off the remaining vines and scrambled onto solid ground just in time to avoid plunging into the water as my spell gave way, along with the section of stone they had been offered upon.

The boys dove for their weapons. Handguns, knives, and blades had all been laid in an indent in the stone, scattered with tinder to be set ablaze.

“I’m going to tear that commander fuck in half,” Cliff muttered, tossing a silver-hilted knife to Jon, who caught it smoothly.

Their enraged expressions filled me with equal measures of fear and hope—we would fight our way out of this, and fucking stars , I was glad we were on the same side.

“Aureline!” I cried over the din. She was toward the front of the pack of sirens savagely trying to climb over each other to reach the hunters. “Please—I told you, these hunters are mine! Tell your sisters to stand down! ”

The young siren, hauntingly innocent as ever, didn’t relent. “I have yearned all my life for this moment. Tales say human flesh which fights back tastes even more divine!”

Fairies were circling us again. Perhaps they didn’t want to kill me , but Jon and Cliff were vast targets. One well-aimed hit could send either of them into the water, and nothing would save them.

While they armed themselves, I countered a blaze of fire and a pair of shooting vines that attempted to restrain the hunters again. When anyone came too close, I drove them back with blasts of frost—but I was quickly becoming overwhelmed by a trio of fairies who were attempting to bind me instead. I could pull from the gemstone again—but it was a finite store. If I were too reckless, I would have nothing left.

“Get back, Sylv!” Cliff grunted, stepping in front of me.

I did as he said, watching with wide eyes as he dove for a finely woven net from the scattered belongings and hurled it at the incoming attackers. The fairies hit the ground hard, pinned beneath the fine mesh. Cliff readily tossed iron knives onto either side of the trap to subdue their attempts to break free with spellwork.

“Karma, bitch,” he remarked, and I realized one of the struggling earth fairies was the one who’d viciously taunted him upon our arrival.

My breath stuttered. I hadn’t seen this mode of attack before from the hunters. Inspiration could only have come from their battle outside of Elysia.

Surrounded, we were forced to move with measured precision. The hunters wielded their iron blades to ward off the bolder fairies who tried to get too close while I took out attackers from afar. Jon and Cliff both held guns in their other hands, but I could tell they were being conservative with spent bullets, taking out only the sirens that managed to throw themselves within grabbing distance.

“We came in through there!” Jon shouted behind us.

As we approached the sealed door, a larger chorus of buzzing wings closed in. Cliff turned and took aim, firing off a single shot. A fairy howled in pain and plummeted, a ragged hole missing from his upper wing. An impossible shot—but not for Cliff. The bullet sent the others fleeing in fear, at least for the moment.

I pulled to a hover and gaped at the fallen, writhing fairy. My breath shuddered, numbness creeping over my senses like poison. Cliff had to shout my name twice before I snapped out of it long enough for us to reach the solid curve of stone.

Jon smoothed his hands over the rock, searching for an opening—for anything .

“ Fuck , there’s no getting through,” Cliff growled. He raised his blade, ready to slice the back of his hand for a blood offering.

“Don’t!” I blurted. “They have control over the sacrificial path—even if it opened, they’d be able to seal us inside.” Regardless, I doubted they could survive a second round of blood loss.

We were cornered against the wall—there had been nowhere else for the hunters to run, anyway.

“Any ideas, Sylv?” Jon asked.

Shame flooded through me. The hunters had taught me to always know my exit points when casing an unfamiliar place. That should have been at the top of my mind, but I had been too busy memorizing my path to the gemstone. My mind may have been clouded by Marcellus’ gift then, but I was clear now.

“I don't want to use it, but I’ve got this ,” I said, patting the satchel.

Jon studied me for a moment—then it dawned, and his eyes went wide. "It's—you have a gemstone ?"

I nodded. “But I think he may kill me for it, fertile or not.”

Jon looked fairly confused by that assessment, but his mind was still at work as he considered our surroundings. “There was an opening under the water—the sirens were coming through it. ”

“There—I see it!” Cliff said.

Cliff grabbed Jon’s shoulder and pointed him toward a faint outline of a tunnel passage underwater several meters away.

“We’ll need to swim out,” Jon breathed.

“Fat fucking chance of that with the sirens,” Cliff said. “We don’t have enough bronze to take them all out.”

“Maybe we won’t need to take them all out.” I considered the pulse of the gemstone, wondering if I could use the sirens’ environmental advantage against them. The thought of being submerged already made me feel like I was drowning, but what choice did we have? “If I can spread the ice further, maybe I can—”

Before I could piece together what to do, a fairy burst from the crowd surrounding us—Marcellus. The others that followed were clearly his reinforcements. The attackers we’d been fending off were mere civilians—a community who perhaps hadn’t seen a fight in decades, even centuries. Marcellus was the one who brought control to the chaos. Where the attacks had been emotionally driven and messy before, his warriors approached with precision.

Bursts of lightning, fire, and ice drove Jon and Cliff away from the wall, trying to force them directly into the siren’s frothing waters. The boys staggered, and even when Cliff fired off a shot to try scaring the warriors off, they merely shifted formation and continued relentlessly.

“Let us out!” I screamed, surging forward to put myself between the warriors and the hunters. My fingertips brushed the gemstone, and a blast of ice briefly nullified the attacks in the air. I worried over spending the magic within—how fast would this gemstone drain and leave me defenseless?

In the next instant, one siren gripped Cliff’s ankle, viciously crawling her hands up his leg to make him stagger. A scream stuck in my throat—it happened so fast. As he fell to his knees, she grabbed either side of his face and pulled him into a fierce kiss, which softened into chilling tenderness as he relaxed.

“Cliff!” I raised my hands and prepared to send an icicle through her skull–unsure if even that would be enough, unsure if I was too late.

But in her fervor to claim him, the siren didn’t notice Cliff’s eyes were squeezed shut.

With unforgiving speed, he slashed her throat open. Picking himself up, he kicked her back into the water and side-stepped the vengeful hands of the siren’s sisters.

Jon swung his iron blade at another approaching formation of warriors to drive them back and make their magic falter. More earth affinities conjured black, twisting vines from the stone. Tendrils laced around his waist and up his leg, forcing his back against the stone.

In my race to free him, I didn’t see an assailant beelining toward me until it was too late. He slammed into me at full speed, nearly knocking me from the air. His heavy, muscled body pressed behind mine, wrapping around me.

“Sylv!” Jon bellowed. He reached for me, but the vines renewed their hold on him, forcing him down to his knees while I was dragged higher—far from his grasp.

The fairy restraining me took me roughly by the shoulder and tried to wrench the satchel away. I twisted to face him, my shout of fury dying on my tongue.

Marcellus.

His handsome face was contorted with disgust, wrestling my arms down and pinning my wings against his front. I started to shout an incantation, but his free hand clamped itself over my mouth to silence the spell.

“Words have power,” he panted in my ear as I squirmed. “As does their absence.”

One of his rings glinted before my eyes. The air shimmered with magic, and agony tore through my mouth as his wordless spellwork took hold. A scream stayed trapped behind my lips, drowning and gurgling beneath the hot liquid filling my mouth.

With a chuckle I could barely hear, Marcellus removed his hand. Noise erupted from me like a dying animal. As I opened my mouth, blood spilled onto my chin, running down my neck until it gathered over the front of my gown. Each rapid pulse of my heart released more and more from the deep laceration that ran along my tongue.

Even as I sagged in his arms, Marcellus wouldn’t let me go. My vision turned spotty, his words slipping in and out of focus as he growled in my ear.

“Who are you?” he demanded. “A mere, impulsive child.” Agony and unconsciousness writhed within me, battling to hold my attention. He shook me. “You would go against your own people, Sylvia? The will of the very stars that have protected you from your foolish choices—for what?”

I moaned low in my throat, and even that sent a wave of pain so cutting that I forced myself to keep a sob at bay lest I torture myself further. I caught Jon's gaze—so far below on the cave floor now. He was still tracking me, fighting a fruitless battle as he hacked at vines with an iron blade, only for them to regrow and ensnare him once again.

“I certainly hope you aren’t begging for death because you will not find it here.” His voice was becoming calm again—certain of himself. “You are home , child. You will submit eventually when you realize the truth. No one out there will miss you. No one is coming for you. You are nothing more than a pathetic, friendless failed nomad without a family to notice your absence. Without us, you are alone .”

Tears streamed down my face as his words stabbed. My heart burned with the memory of my friends and family in Elysia—the people I loved so dearly that I’d lost or had left me, willingly or not. For a moment, the idea of caving into defeat felt like a reprieve.

Alone. I was so alone.

Then, new memories flickered through my mind’s eye.

Singing off-key to Elton John in the car, the changing landscape blurring outside the windows. The way Jon doubled over laughing, deep and loud, when I’d pranked Cliff by freezing his beer bottle to his hand. The feel of Jon’s skin against me when we were entwined in the spectral plane. Watching Survivor with Cliff in the motel room over whiskey.

I strained, slipping a shaking hand into my pocket to reach my stashed dagger.

I do have a family . The thought struck through me like lightning, setting a blaze in my heart. A new strength surged in me as my knuckles whitened on the cool metal hilt. I glimpsed Jon far below—fighting his way to stay close to me, his familiar gaze feverish.

I wouldn’t let Marcellus take away the people I loved. We wouldn’t die at his hands.

With every ounce of strength left in me, I unsheathed the dagger and stabbed Marcellus in the stomach.

No words needed for that, asshole.

His grip grew lax around me, a gasp of agony at my ear. Something savage took hold of me as I twisted, wrapping my legs around his waist and letting my flightless weight rest on him as I plunged my dagger into him again and again. Between the leather plates on his chest, a second incision to his abdomen, his thigh.

The smell of blood choked me as I snagged the satchel back into my arms. I leaned back, letting him see the animal in my eyes. Sorrow and betrayal flickered beneath the outrage in his stare, a sight that gave me pause.

But it was for only a moment. Roaring past the agony in my mouth, I carved the blade across his throat, fresh blood splattering the front of my dress as I watched the light leave his eyes. My stomach churned, but the vicious beast in my chest roared in approval.

He plummeted toward the cavern floor. I started to fall with him until I remembered to snap my wings open and redirect my flight.

Wails echoed off the cavern walls, rising above the chaos as the nearest fairies dove for Marcellus. I glimpsed the glow of healing spellwork from his loyal disciples, but I knew they were surrounding a fallen corpse beyond saving.

The wails swiftly became bloodcurdling screams.

Above it all, Jon’s voice boomed. “Sylvia!” He managed to tear free of the binds as the fairies were distracted by the death of their leader. Our eyes locked, and for the briefest second, Jon gaped like he didn’t recognize me.

He lunged to reunite with me, but several fairies turned their mourning onto him, forcing him to stagger against the wall as whips of fire lashed in his direction, singeing his skin. Others were darting for me, but they couldn’t reach me in time as I dove for Jon. My fingers slipped into the satchel and touched the gemstone— my gemstone. Without a single word, I conjured an ice shield to protect us both.

A strange, electric taste entered my mouth as the raw magic surged through me like a conduit. When I opened my mouth, I realized my tongue had been healed through the surge of magic.

“We need to go. Now! ” I screamed over my shoulder to Jon.

His gaze flooded with astonishment once more at the sight of me. He uttered my name as though he were already in mourning. I couldn’t blame him, given how nightmarish I must have looked, blood painting half my face, my neck, and the front of my dress. For all he knew, my throat had been torn as wide open as Marcellus’.

But there was no time to assure him. As enraged fairies began to close in on us, I knew I had to be the one to clear our path. If I didn’t act now, we would die.

I placed my hand fully on the gemstone. Power still churned within. Less than before but nonetheless dizzying. The pulse of its force grew to a roar as I readily connected with the magic. I shut my eyes, imagining what I wanted to happen, and all at once, my vision flooded into the reality in time with my wordless scream.

A crystalline serpent erupted from my hands; sparkling fangs bared as it curled and kicked through all the fairies in its path. I wavered for a moment, remembering how I’d witnessed this enchantment on my last day of training in the caverns—just before the night my life changed forever.

The serpent exploded into a shockwave of frosty air, but I took control of the remnants before they could fade, turning my attention to the water. Ice leached into the lapping waves, curving and taking solid shape to herd the sirens away from the hunters. The sirens clawed and shrieked in their fury, denied their promised meal. The wall wouldn’t hold forever—especially when fae magic began pummeling it.

Though they were recuperating, the boys still stood at the ready, weapons raised. Their stunned silence made my ears ring.

“The tunnel—it’s there.” I pointed at what was now an empty pool surrounded by ice—no sirens to speak of.

As they moved toward the edge of the path to survey the water, my courage wavered, and I eased back slightly. I hugged the satchel close, wishing I had any talent with earth magic so I could use the gemstone to burst through the walls themselves.

“What’s wrong?” Cliff demanded, noticing my uncertainty.

“I can’t swim,” I reminded him in a small voice .

Jon stowed his weapons and held his hands out. “I’ve got you—come on.”

The ice was beginning to crack.

“Deep breath,” Jon cautioned just before he closed his hands around me.

I squeezed my eyes shut, huddling against him. My stomach dropped as he dived. One moment, I was weightless. The next, freezing water burst around me.