His face grew dark. “If they are trying to trap me while I sleep, then that will only put him in more danger. He is safe as long as they need him to control me. I am sorry, but you will have to leave any of your belongings behind. We must leave at once.”
“I don’t have any belongings,” I said, walking towards him. I didn’t have anything that mattered as much as getting out of here, at least. I had earned different small trinkets for good behavior while I was here, but there was nothing I wanted to hold onto.
I didn’t take his hand. I wanted to take it so badly to feel my skin slide against his, but I didn't. Instead, I clasped my hands in front of me, and he let his own fall back down to his side.
He gave me a nod, then turned into the stone hallway.
It was one of the narrow ones, leading to the living quarters.
He led the way to the larger connecting hallway that could fit at least six people shoulder to shoulder, with an arching ceiling that a shifted lycan could stand up in comfortably.
“There is enough space here,” Rí Túath Crystallo murmured. He lifted a hand and focused, runes appearing in midair on the far side of the hallway, rimming a small alcove on the far wall. I gasped as I recognized what he was doing. There had been a brief segment on portals in one of my classes.
“I thought we couldn’t portal within school grounds!” I said. “I thought they would be blocked!”
“This fort is on the edge of the area they have shielded against portals,” he said. “Didn’t you wonder why students weren’t allowed to roam these halls?”
I hadn’t wondered.
I just assumed they wouldn’t let us in the fort because we might sneak through it and out to the other side of the caldera. None of the mundanes knew how to cast a portal, nor were any of us strong enough, as far as I was aware.
We were used as batteries.
I braced myself, waiting for Rí Túath Crystallo to reach out and start to drain me.
Different monsters did it in different ways.
The Seelie Aos sí, the higher fae that were born ‘right’, with the ‘right’ hair color and the ‘right’ abilities that didn’t include shapeshifting, would demand that I channel energy to them as I had been trained, making me focus on sending it out so that they could grab hold and use it.
Refusal would be met with torture or death.
The other monsters… it depended on whether they were unbound or not. The late headmistress had been unbound, and I’d learned her preferred method for feeding on magical energy during Orientation.
I shuddered at the thought.
I waited, but Rí Túath Crystallo said nothing, just continued focusing on the runes as they glowed into place, activating one by one from his own power.
The steady thud of boots on stone caught my attention, and I turned to look down the hallway towards the sound.
The next sound that came out of my own mouth was garbled, a product of shock and fear, of not understanding how or what or why. What I was seeing was not possible, at least, it was another thing that shouldn’t be possible.
“Orcs,” I forced the word out.
Tusks gleamed in the light of the hallway, leather and metal armor creaking and clinking, their breaths harsh in the absence of any words. They were as quiet as they could be for a destructive force in a place where they shouldn’t be… where they couldn’t be.
There was no way for them to get here.
There was only one entrance or exit from the Dungeon where they lived onto the campus, and it was on the exact far side of the Caldera as this fort.
This squadron of Orcs would have had to fight through the Order Army blockade and then through the ‘Proper Students’ who had been using them as training fodder for centuries.
There was no way they could be here, and yet, here they were.
My heart caught in my chest as it fluttered and struggled, my breath coming sharp and sudden with dread built from Blood Moon after Blood Moon.
The first one was the worst. I could still hear the screams from the front lines down below as I stood up on the risers, my bow clenched in my trembling hands as I watched the young men who had been in that first year class go down, cut down by axes and swords, their blood spraying across green skin and leather armor.
The worst part about it wasn’t watching them die, it was clenching the bow in my hands and feeling a sick rage twisting around in my chest, wishing I was down there with them. Every time I was up on those risers, holding a bow, there was a part of my heart singing a song of violence.
Now those monsters were here, rushing down a narrow hallway towards me.
I didn’t have a bow. I didn’t have a weapon.
The fort around me was silent, unaware of the danger slinking through its halls.
This was my chance to escape, but there was no escaping the monsters that slaughtered so many of my fellow students.
The soldiers who would stop me from getting away were the same ones who would protect me from the Orcs.
I opened my mouth to scream.
Pristine white feathers blocked my view of the Orcs as Rí Túath Crystallo stepped in between me and the approaching squadron.
“I will protect you,” he murmured.
The panic in my heart stilled, flashbacks of bloodshed brushed away as I stared at his back, where the wings connected with his shoulders, muscles thick and knotted. He couldn’t even fly in this indoor space. He didn’t have a weapon.
And yet he stepped in between me and the approaching danger.
I stepped around him so that I stood beside him. I clenched my fists, my fear shifting into determination. I felt the brush of his feathers against my back as he spread his wings wider.
“I’m with you,” I told him.
Then the Orcs were there, their front line two yards away from us. The one in front, an orc with black hair pulled back in a braid, the sides of his head shaved, lifted his sword as he strode forward.
“May Chaos lead you towards the blood that must be spilled,” Crystallo said, his voice holding the timbre of ceremony.
The orc stopped.
“Do you fight for the next world to come?” the Orc asked, his sword still lifted.
“Chaos sings me to the air,” Crystallo replied. “With wings of fury, my people will ride to the call of his song.”
“Where is the blood to be spilled?” the Orc asked.
Crystallo pointed down the hall. “Seelie Ard Rí Adoivencal Terithni’i Unlar Starflower can be found in the fort’s throne room, or in the main suites that connect to a small door behind the throne.”
The Orc’s gaze fell on me. The skin around his eyes tightened as he spread his lips, baring his teeth.
“Come with us and kill the King, halfling,” he growled. He pulled out a long dagger from his belt and flipped it, holding out the hilt towards me. “Your place isn’t in the sky.”
I sucked in a breath. What did he call me?
Crystallo’s hand fell on my shoulder. “She is mine.”
The word mine slashed through me like lightning, igniting that smouldering fire between my legs even as a part of my heart rebelled, snarling in the darkness with its refusal to bend. I glanced at his hand, and he lifted it off my shoulder as if it had burned me.
“You cannot own an Orc,” the Orc spat out.
“I’m not an Orc,” I said. “I’m not a monster.”
“Orcs aren’t monsters anymore than I am one,” Crystallo said, his voice soft. “Anyone who looks at you can tell you have Orc blood in your veins.”
“Come with us,” the Orc said. “Join the clan of Morgra Mossbinder, follow the lead of Killian Moonchaser, and bathe in the blood of your enemies. We will teach you what you need to find vengeance.”
I couldn’t deny it appealed to me. The thought of finally learning to swing a sword and fight was something that rang in my very bones, but at the same time, there were other things that called to me. There was a part of me that wanted softness.
“Come with me,” Crystallo said, his voice soft.
The Aetheriani will take care of you , Zeph said. Life will be good there. If you go with the Orcs, all you will find is death over and over again.
That was all I needed. Zeph had been by my side for so many years, and his advice had never failed me. Plus, my body was reacting to Crystallo. His lightest touches were fire to my skin, and I couldn’t deny that I wanted to see where that would go… even the rumors were true about his people.
“I’m going with him,” I said, nodding my head towards Crystallo.
The orc nodded once and shoved his dagger back in his belt.
“We will see you at the end,” he said.
“The end is the beginning,” Crystallo replied, his tone taking on that same air of ceremony.
The Orcs moved past us, and Crystallo turned back towards the portal.
Within moments, the portal flashed into light.
I didn’t hesitate, I didn’t wait for Rí Túath Crystallo to order me around or tell me what to do. There was one thing that had kept me alive at this school for years past most of the other mundanes in my first-year class, and that was my heightened sense of self-preservation.
I dove past the Rí Túath like a speed swimmer anticipating the starting bell, plunging through the portal and into my future.