Page 28 of Veil of Shadows (Fae of Woodlands & Wild #2)

CHAPTER 28

“Bastian!” Jax crouched and shook his brother by his shoulders. But Bastian continued to sit against the cell’s wall, unmoving. His eyes were open, his chest rising with each breath, but he made no move to rise.

Large antlers rose from Bastian’s head, and they swayed every time Jax shook him, but unlike when Jax’s antlers appeared, Bastian’s couldn’t be magically whisked away.

“Jax!” Lander barked. “They’ll be here in seconds!”

Jax growled. “Dammit, Bastian, get up!”

But his brother still didn’t move.

My eyes flashed wide just as the first shout hit my ears.

“Cell six’s door is open. There are siltenites here!”

Jax whipped away from his brother and plastered me to the wall in the same breath. Before I could so much as squeak, he was flying through Bastian’s cell door as the sound of steel meeting steel met my ears.

Clanging weapons clashed, and shrieks of fear followed.

“My eyes!” someone wailed. “I can’t see!”

Another screamed. “I’m blind!”

“Get Bastian,” Jax snarled.

Phillen was suddenly through the door, Lars at his side. The two of them wrestled Bastian up and off the floor, but Jax’s brother remained completely unresponsive.

I plastered myself to the wall to stay out of the way.

Bastian appeared lifeless. Comatose in a way, and I recalled what the semelees had initially told me. Something isn’t right. It matched what Bowan had seen of Bastian in the Wood this morning as well, but at least then he’d been walking.

Now, he was entirely lethargic.

“We’ll have to carry him,” Phillen grunted. He heaved Jax’s brother over his shoulder and looked at me with wild eyes. “Go, Newole. I’ll follow you.”

It registered that he just called me by the same nickname as he had one time earlier, and a brief moment of hysteria wanted to rise in me that he hadn’t called me Gorgeous as Alec had teased on the ship, but I locked down my response and leaped through the door.

My footsteps nearly planted to the cavern’s floor when I beheld the scene outside Bastian’s cell.

A dozen guards lay dead on the floor. Blood pooled around them, and I had a feeling this wasn’t an illusion.

Jax and his friends’ eyes were all filled with wild, manic energy. Nobody uttered a word.

Before I could blink, Jax’s hand was encircling my arm. Everyone else connected hands.

But when Jax gripped the portal key and said the magical words, nothing happened. Only an answering pulse of magic emanated from the walls.

Jax seethed and shoved the key back into his pocket. “The walls are spelled. The magic surrounding this place must be suppressing the key’s ability to transport us. We’ll have to go out on foot.”

“Go,” Phillen rasped. Bastian’s dangling body was still draped over his shoulder. “I got him.”

Jax’s grip on me tightened, and then we were flying back through the tunnels, toward the way we’d originally come.

All the while, the alarm continued to wail.

More bootsteps came from the distance. Yells sounded too, but they were farther away and deeper within this rocky labyrinth, as though the other guards stationed within this terrifying enclosure were too far away to reach us in quick succession.

None of us stopped to find out.

Jax lifted me at one point, carrying me as fast as the wind. The others moved just as quickly and silently behind us, even if Bastian’s antlers scraped along the walls the entire way, and it struck me just how formidable this group was and why they were so feared.

They functioned as one. Stealthy. Silent. Deadly. And with Jax’s potent magic rendering anyone they encountered obsolete, it was no wonder they’d remained uncaught as a band of raiders.

We reached the stairwell to the Wood only minutes later. Phillen grunted when Bastian’s antlers caught alongside the narrow passage, catching in the rocky indents.

I quickly worked them free, and Phillen nodded his thanks.

We all hurtled upward on the remaining steps and out of the trap door, then the musky damp air from the caverns fell away, and the Wood’s fresh breeze swirled around us.

Nighttime had fully set in, the three moons appearing in the sky.

Once free of the stairwell, Lars slammed the trap door closed, and I hastily whispered a spell to lock it.

“Join hands!” Jax barked.

Everyone gathered around, linking together physically, and in a flurry of whispered words, the realm disappeared from around us as the portal key whisked us away.