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CHAPTER TWO

FRANKIE

White light flashed again but this time it was faster than the blink of an eye—and then we were back in Eden. I spotted Headquarters for a brief moment before Silas pressed me against his chest, tucked his wings around us, and slid across the green grass. When we finally stopped sliding and he dropped his wings, we were clear across the massive courtyard between the school and Headquarters. Actually, we were almost to the forest line on the other side. For a second, I just breathed and braced for another attack.

No one moved around me, as if they, too, were afraid to trust that the Unseelies and demons hadn’t slipped through Tegan’s portal alongside us.

And then it was mayhem. Everyone was shouting and their auras were freaked the hell out. My ears were ringing in a high-pitched tone that was actually painful. Tenn shot up into the air, a bright white and gold contrast to the velvety black sky painted with twinkling stars. Michael’s sword crackled and popped like it wanted back into the fight.

He cursed then let out a deep sigh. “Tegan, give us clouds.”

There was a flash of rainbow and then thick, puffy white clouds blocked my view of the moon and stars. I frowned. It was a weird request. Eden had a magical boundary that prevented us from being seen and kept our enemies out—at least until Lilith’s magic got involved. Just as my confusion was turning into concern for our safety, three dragons shot into the sky like rockets, then disappeared into the clouds. I hadn’t seen that dark, charcoal-gray dragon in Avolire. In fact, I could only see him now because the green and ivory dragons made his scales stand out from the darkness.

A huge brown dragon with bright-orange eyes leaned over me and snorted, white puffs of smoke billowing from his nostrils. He nodded his head, growled, then lifted into the air like he was going to fly away, only to spin in wild circles like a dog with zoomies. Except his aura was wild with panic. I frowned and wondered why a dragon I’d never met would be this worried about me—I gasped.

“SILAS!” I rolled to my side, then slid over his shoulders and landed on my feet right next to his huge head. His eyes were closed and there was a ton of blood spilling from his face. I put my hand on the spike on top of his head. “Silas, grunt if you can hear me.”

He grunted.

Which only made the brown dragon whimper.

The air pulsed and burned. It was so hot that sweat instantly covered my arms and neck. The ground shook. I sucked in a deep breath and looked up—and flinched. The gigantic black dragon, the one that had to be twice the size of the others, stood beside Silas with little flames billowing from his mouth and nose. His scales trembled. He stomped his massive feet and shook his body. Silas grunted again, this time a little louder, and the black dragon’s purple eyes blazed with panic and rage.

“The Unseelie sliced his face on this side.” I gestured to the wound. “I don’t know if his eye was damaged or not?—”

“Let me see,” a familiar male voice came from out of nowhere. Prince Thorne crouched beside Silas’s head and cursed in a strange language. He pressed his pale hands to Silas’s light-gray scales and magic sparkled between his fingers. “Just breathe for me.”

The black dragon growled.

Thorne peeked over his shoulder and arched an eyebrow. “Can you not shift?”

The black dragon huffed and shook himself like a wet dog.

Thorne grumbled what sounded like another curse and looked back to Silas, then lifted his hands. The gray scales were still sliced straight down the side of his face through his left eye, but the bleeding had stopped.

Tenn landed beside the black dragon, and the second he pressed his hand to the black scales, the tremble eased. But Tenn’s mismatched gaze was locked on Silas and Thorne. “Did he lose his eye?” His voice was low and rough like sandpaper.

“Let us hope not.” Thorne grimaced. “Okay, Silas, can you open your eyes for us?”

I felt the air around me whoosh toward him, then he slowly opened his eyes. The golden color was a little duller than it had been before but there wasn’t a wound on his actual eye. His eye moved around like he was checking to see if it worked.

Tenn hovered above Silas’s head, then held two fingers up. “How many fingers?”

Silas grunted twice.

Tenn nodded. “Good. Thorne?”

“I protected the wound on his scales so they’d stop bleeding and put a protective layer over his actual eye. But . . .” Thorne scrubbed his face, but not before I saw that look, the same one Esther’s parents had worn when I checked on her. The face that told me he was hiding something. Thorne gently put his hand on Silas’s head. “Elan will know how to help you both further. For now.”

Tenn landed back beside the black dragon. “Okay, get back to Issale. Please. And let us know when you’re safe. I . . . don’t like the situation we’re in and I’ll breathe better knowing you’re safe. Okay?”

The black dragon nodded. He bent down and nudged Silas’s side with a grunt.

Thorne took my elbow and gently dragged me back so Silas had room to flip onto his feet. He took a couple hard breaths and then rolled his shoulders, which looked funny on a huge dragon. Then Silas looked to the black dragon and nodded.

Tenn pressed his hand to his own chest. “Thank you for saving our asses again. Please get to safety as fast as possible. Don’t worry about the humans.”

Both of them shot into the sky, and as I craned my neck back to watch them fly away, I realized that the brown dragon with the spiked tail and the smaller navy-blue dragon had been waiting. Together all four of them rushed into the dark cover of clouds and vanished.

“Thorne—”

“None of us are fine, Haven.” Thorne shook his head. White angel wings popped from his back. “Try to stay in Eden until I return to the realm.”

Then he was gone.

I frowned. “Return to the realm . . . Did he go to Seelie?”

“I think he was going to Heaven, and no, that’s not a comforting thought to me either.” Tenn smirked and nodded his head toward the house. “C’mon, Tegan got everyone else inside. Let’s catch up.”

When we crossed the threshold into the house, all I heard was shouting.

“All right! Enough!” Tenn barked.

Instantly, everyone quieted and settled into a seat. I took that moment to do an inventory check on everyone and wanted to cry when I didn’t see any other new injuries. We’d somehow managed to get out of Avolire without anyone getting hurt.

“Why are you smiling? ” Warner pointed to me, then to his own face. “That’s kind of creepy . . .”

I grimaced. “I was just relieved no one had gotten hurt in Avolire just now?—”

“Cooper was beheaded!” Easton shouted so loud we all flinched.

Savannah gagged and covered her mouth with her hand. Hunter, Kessler, and Bentley all shuddered. Emersyn glared at Tegan, who actually looked rocked by her own shenanigans.

A tense silence filled the room.

Then Cooper shuddered dramatically and made a sound similar to a horse neighing. “I don’t know how to recover from the out-of-body experience of watching myself get beheaded.”

Savannah wretched and waved her arms.

Hunter cringed. “I agree with Savannah. Can we please stop talking about . . . just maybe stop verbalizing the . . . Fuck, I need a lobotomy now.” He scrubbed his face with his hands.

Tenn bent over and put his hands on his knees, then shook his head. “I’d actually managed to forget about that horrifying moment, so thanks, Easton.”

Easton grimaced as he adjusted the sling holding his broken arm. “Sorry, I just keep seeing it over and over. I mean, Tegan, was that you? Or Willow?”

Tegan walked over to Cooper and wrapped her arms around him. “That was not me. I mean, yeah, I had Willow make the duplicate of him, but I was just rolling with my gut. I did not . . . God, even I would never have done that to us. It will haunt me, no matter how much he gives me shit for my PDA with Tenn.”

Everyone turned to Willow with questions in their eyes.

Her brown eyes were wide like a deer in headlights. The blood in her strawberry blonde curls made my stomach turn. She licked her lips. “What?”

“Did you plan that with Everest?”

“OH, yeah, maybe that wasn’t really him either?”

Easton snapped his fingers on his good hand, “That makes sense. Because why would Everest do that?”

I sighed and felt the hollowness in my chest, which made everyone turn to me.

“Wait a second,” Lennox said sharply, lifting her head off Warner’s shoulder. “Your soulmate marks are gone.”

“They’re not soulmates.” Lily gestured between me and Cooper with her swollen fingers in braces. “We were in that throne room looking for the missing page when Everest just emerged from the shadows, which is the single creepiest thing I’ve ever seen, and he just lost his shit. He grabbed Frankie and then slammed her and Cooper with magic and their soulmate marks vanished. Then he got all caveman possessive and was like, Cooper is not your soulmate. ”

“Then he bit her on the throat and said, you’re mine, not his. Mine. ” Bentley nodded. “It was kinda hot. Won’t lie.”

Royce threw his hands up in the air but said nothing.

“Yeah, it definitely was hot.” Lily smirked. “But more importantly, Everest is Frankie’s soulmate, and apparently seeing someone else pretend to be hers is something dear old Everest could not handle.”

Easton cackled. Everyone stared at him, but he just shrugged. “Yeah, I knew they weren’t really soulmates, but I figured crazy was up to something, so I was rolling with it.”

Tim rolled his eyes. “Trouble, what did you do?”

“I saw a way to protect Frankie from Sweyn and took it.” Tegan shrugged one shoulder. “It worked . . . until Everest lost it.”

“Yeah, babe, I think I wouldn’t have handled it much better.” Tenn arched one eyebrow at his soulmate.

“I didn’t know Everest was her soulmate or I wouldn’t have done that.” She raised her hands. “I wouldn’t have knowingly put Everest on blast like that.”

Easton tapped on his own chest. “If you’re Everest’s soulmate, then where’s the mark? The glyph?”

“Sam used magic to conceal it. She said it was too soon to have Everest’s loyalty revealed.” I rubbed my hand on my neck. “I don’t know how to make it come out?”

Tegan shrugged. “Just blast it with some magic.”

I frowned and did as she said, blasting my own neck with my own magic. There was a flash of neon-blue and pink and then everyone gasped. Their eyes were wide. I looked down and my own jaw dropped. It looked different than it did in Avolire. Sure, the black lines still covered my throat, but now in the center of my chest was a heart-shaped crystal the color of red wine.

My pulse quickened. “Doesn’t red mean danger? Is he okay?—”

“That’s not the danger shade of red.” Tegan pursed her lips and stared at me. “But I do believe the meaning of this dark-red indicates the overall danger in your lives. Besides, there’s no way to contact him to check on him.”

Tenn shook his head. “All right, cover that back up. The last thing we want to do is reveal the truth to Sweyn or Lilith before he’s ready.”

I nodded and blasted my magic at myself again, figuring it worked the same way, and sure enough It disappeared once again. “He needs to be ready soon or I might lose my mind.”

The soulmate couples in the room all grimaced and nodded.

“Cooper isn’t your soulmate.” Thiago scoffed. “Cooper isn’t dead. What a night. Damn.”

Cooper scowled and cocked his head to the side, his green eyes sharpening. “Your soulmate chopped my head off . . . Should I be worried for my safety?”

Easton rolled his blue eyes. “C’mon, Cooper, the dude just brought a soul back to life. I think he can tell when one is right in front of him.”

Like the flip of a switch, the energy in the room turned ice-cold.

“Brought a soul back to life . . .” Kessler pinched the bridge of his nose. “Is that what happened? Is . . . is Libby . . . alive?”

Tenn groaned and plopped down on the brick ledge in front of the fireplace. “I don’t know. I don’t understand.”

I raised my hand. “Libby was The Devil Card at some point, right?”

“Right before Deacon.” Emersyn spoke softly, her golden gaze locked on the flames in the hearth. “She died . . . and that brought us Deacon.”

“Babe . . . what the fuck just happened?”

Tegan stared at the ground. “I . . . I honestly don’t know. Promise. I was as shocked as y’all. We will have to wait to get answers from Everest on that. Among other things.”

Kessler cleared his throat. “He pulled her . . . she came out of . . . was that tar?”

Lennox shuddered and hissed. “That was unsettling. Maybe black magic?”

Everyone turned to Savannah.

Her eyes were bloodshot as she gnawed on her fingernails. She shook her head. “ I don’t know, ” she whispered.

I glanced up to Cooper and then away before anyone else noticed why Savannah was so shaken. Or if they did notice, they were pretending they didn’t. I loved that about my Coven-mates: they knew how to read a room and how to handle it.

Thiago licked his lips and rubbed his hands together like he was nervous to speak his thoughts. “I did not know her, but is it possible . . . maybe . . . has she returned as a demon or something of Lilith’s creation?”

Tenn groaned. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

I narrowed my eyes on him. “What was that whole thing with the dragon holding you?”

Tenn shrugged one shoulder. “Oh, I was putting on a show so they’d focus on me instead of trying to kill y’all.”

“It was brilliant, babe.” Tegan’s smirk fell. “Until it got real.”

“Yeah, could’ve done without that part.” Tenn’s smile faltered.

“Haven, why’d you try the water again?” Tim asked from where he sat at the table. “We were told tricks couldn’t be repeated.”

“I repeated the same trick because I wanted to see what they’d do, you know?” He twirled the silver rings on his fingers. “And I didn’t want to use any new tricks yet, knowing the dragons were coming.”

My eyebrows rose. “Oh, you knew they were coming?”

“Tegan and I both called for them at basically the same time.”

She smiled and ran her fingers through his unruly black hair. “They came in hot because of that. We owe them so much for their help. Again. At some point, whenever we’re able to catch our breath, this Coven is going to repay the favor. We will be their allies in destroying whatever hellish monster Lilith created with the Duenill.”

Everyone nodded without hesitation.

Constance blew out a deep breath and pressed her hand to her stomach. “Aside from Silas, was anyone else hurt while there?”

Willow raised her hand. When everyone looked to her with scowls, she pointed to her ears. “I can’t hear a thing,” she said a bit too loud for a quiet room.

Tenn’s face fell. “But you could before we went?”

Willow narrowed her brown eyes at him. “I don’t know what you said. I haven’t caught most of what you’ve all said since we got back.”

Tegan put her hand on Willow’s shoulder, then crouched down to get on her eye level. “Can you read lips?” she asked slowly.

Willow nodded. “A little bit, yeah.”

Tegan pursed her lips. “ Can you hear me speak telepathically? ”

Willow’s eyes sparkled. “YES!” she shouted.

“ Okay, I’ll fill you in on what you missed, but can you go down to Myrtle and Katherine and see if they can heal you? ” Tegan asked straight into her mind, which she was saying to all of us probably to make Willow feel less weird.

Willow nodded, then hurried down the steps.

Tegan cursed. “I don’t like that.”

Royce snapped his fingers and mouthed that’s my line really slowly. No noise came out.

Thiago cursed in Portuguese. “What happened to your voice?”

Royce pretended to choke himself and shrugged. I haven’t been able since, he mouthed.

Thiago pulled Royce into his side and held him tight. “Maybe we should go see Katherine too?”

Tegan nodded. Once they were gone, she turned to the rest of us. “I have a bad feeling about that as well.”

We all shuddered.

Tim cleared his throat. “What about the missing page?”

I cursed violently, which made Tenn give me a smirk. “It wasn’t there, but Bentley got a new prophecy. Go ahead, show them.”

Tegan flicked her wrist and Bentley’s sleeve slid up to his elbow, then she read the words, “Remember where thy forsaken, a ruse we now must awaken. To play with rules that can’t be broken, for only one can claim the spoken. But drop thy sword, flee the scene, this quest becomes evergreen. For upon the dawn my word shall come, The Angel of Tides must ring his drum.”

Cooper covered his face with his hands and grumbled.

“Great, so tonight was a necessary evil.” Tenn’s legs bounced with his anxiety.

“Okay, go to bed, guys. We’ve seen enough for tonight. There’s nothing we can do right now.” Tegan walked back over to Tenn and squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll wake everyone when Valathame’s word comes.”