changeling chronicles 03 - faerie realm (24 page)

I raised Irene, even as magic whispered a warning in my ear. She’d burn my skin from my bones if we touched.

I couldn’t back away. The ground sloped, forcing me to move towards her or fall. I gritted my teeth, pulled on all the magic I could gather, and jumped.

If not for her magic, I’d have tackled her into the bank and knocked the sword from her hands. As it was, my magic-wielding hand locked around her blade wrist, squeezing hard. My other held Irene, pushing it against the body of her sword.

Smoke steamed from the iron. My hand burned.

Oh god. Oh god.

Panic lapped against me, mingling with the anger searing my veins. Panic. Pain. Rage. I needed all of it, needed the pain of a thousand screaming spirits trapped here. I’d force her to give up that sword or die trying.

Magic flared from my hand, as bright as her own. Her grip faltered. The blade dropped an inch. Two.
Come on.
My body hummed all over, the world shrinking into a bubble of pure power, a struggle of Winter against Summer. Human against fey.

The Lady’s wrist broke. Her scream added to the racket in my head.

But her sword remained suspended. Magic itself drove the blade, pushing mine down. One-handedly, I pushed back. The iron continued to smoke, blurring. Irene. Crap. It wasn’t strong enough. Whatever magic she’d unleashed overwhelmed even iron. I needed to beat it with my own magic.

Except her talisman fed on my magic. Streams of blue flowed from my hands, right into her blade. The glow burned brighter. The Lady bared her teeth more in a grimace than a smile.

I tried to back away. Tried to pull my sword free. But as though my body had turned into a statue, I couldn’t move. Not even as the iron melted, the sword’s exterior dissolving in my hand.

I screamed as my hand burned. Magic healed it, only to be snatched away as the Lady’s blade fed its insatiable hunger for power.

Irene shattered into fragments.

My hand remained in place, shock freezing me as intensely as magic did.

The Lady was back on her feet. My power bled into hers, glowing brighter, a twisted combination of blue and green.

She needs us both.
Waking the god required the power of both Summer and Winter. If she had my power, it’d be the final catalyst. The veil would break open, Faerie would overwhelm Earth, and nobody would remain to stand in her way.

I let my hands drop. I wouldn’t be giving her any more of my power.

“You win,” I said. “You got some of my magic. That was our deal.”

As the humming noise faded, her voice came through. “That wasn’t our vow.”

“Actually, it was,” I said. “You win, you get my power. You should have specified how much. You’re not the only one who can fuck around with words. The vow we made never said we had to kill one another.”

The Lady screamed.

I fell back under another torrent of magic from her outstretched hands, thrown against the slope as the ground flattened again. But she couldn’t steal my magic from me without killing me. I’d ruined her little game.

Her blade remained poised in mid-air. She hadn’t touched it.

“Too hot to handle?” I enquired. My heart beat erratically. Even without using the blade, she could kill me in any one of a thousand ways. My own weapon was gone. But I wasn’t out of tricks yet.

I moved, light on my feet, jumped and tackled her. She hadn’t expected the direct assault, and we both crashed to the ground. I gave into blind rage, punching every inch of her I could reach. My knuckles broke against her jaw, healing instantly. She might have the sword, but I was physically stronger.

Dull pain pierced my back. So faint, it didn’t hit me that I’d been stabbed until the point of Velkas’s blade came out of my chest.

I froze.

The blade withdrew. I screamed aloud as my chest caught fire and blood spurted out. Sharp needles dug into my ankle, dragging me off her. A branch covered in thorns jerked me around to face a sudden wall of sharpened tree roots.

I coughed. Blood dampened my throat. My thoughts slipped over one another, reality distorting before my eyes. The path was no longer a path, but a familiar pit. A pit containing a cage of thorns.

No. Not here. God, no.

It’s a trick.

Here, in Faerie, the impossible could become real. A trick could rip out your still-beating heart.

Blood soaked the front of my chest. The walls of the cage closed in. Thorns waited on the outside, a hundred spiked branches poised to strike me. A breeze stirred, the cage walls already dropping. When the Thorn Princess had done this, she’d wanted the torture to last as long as possible. This time, the thorns were poised so they’d pierce my throat and sever every artery they could reach.

I gathered magic in my hands, but it felt weak, insubstantial. She’d taken too much from me. Maybe even all of it.

So much for my bravado.

I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t close my eyes. I’d stare death in the face, not look desperately at the second cage above the pit, nor hear the faint roaring of an enraged part-shifter. No—I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

A wall of solid air slammed into the thorns, and into me. I fell flat on my front, already weakened, as the cage walls came down. The world blurred around me, my head spinning.

Next thing I knew, I lay on the bank. Bright blue magic ignited the air and I gasped as the pain in my chest disappeared. Tears ran down my cheeks, even as my breaths came easier, light-headedness now from shock rather than pain. Thoughts chased each other around my head, none of them making sense. I’d been in the pit, and then I wasn’t, and I—

A cage. I was in a cage of branches. No. Tree roots.
Huh?

The truth hit me. Magic shot from my hands before I was consciously aware of it, shattering the cage’s bars.

The cage Vance had been trapped in.

No. He didn’t. Please tell me he didn’t—

I lurched to my feet. I stood at the top of the slope leading into the pit. Inside, the thorns converged on a single point, where the other cage had once been. Where I’d been standing, ready to die.

Oh, god. He didn’t.

I screamed, like I was the one who’d been stabbed, and leaped into the pit. Magic held me, steadied my fall, and burst from my palms in a sun-bright explosion of energy.

The thorns stood no chance. I crashed down on top of them, not caring when the skin of my hands tore and repaired itself as quickly. This trap was made to kill. The Lady thought I was dead. She must have disappeared. But it was Vance who’d pulled the real disappearing act. The idiot had saved my life and displaced both of us at once so he’d take the hit.

Adrenaline fuelled my movements. I tore my way through layers of thorn, screaming his name over and over. Already, blood that wasn’t mine stained the layers of thorny plant.
No. Vance.

But even as my own magic burst from my hands, I knew it was too late. The thorns tossed Vance aside, and the Mage Lord collapsed onto me. Unconscious or dead, I didn’t know. Didn’t dare imagine.

“Vance.”

I lay on my back, gasping, trying to push him off me so I could check on the damage. He’d thrown his arms over his head to protect himself, but the thorns were lodged in his chest like darts. My hands gripped the front of Vance’s blood-soaked coat, scrabbling to find a heartbeat. It was there—unsteady, but there. I bit my lip to keep from collapsing into relieved sobs. His wrist was slick with blood, but I found a pulse. Surely, the wounds weren’t too deep for him to bleed to death… but there were too many of them.

I’d joked that I’d rescue him next time. Didn’t seem quite so funny now. It was impossible for me to single-handedly haul Vance’s dead weight out of the pit, not to mention I wasn’t the one with a teleporting ability. And the blood soaking into his shirt sent urgency flooding my veins. If we stayed too long, he’d die. If I used my magic to get us out, he might die, too.

“Vance.” I shook him. “Don’t do this to me. God, Vance. No. Please.”

Magic danced around me, thick, agitated.

“You don’t get to feed on him, you fucker,” I hissed at it. “He’s
not dead.
You can heal me. Help me fix him.”

No effect. My magic could only heal me, not others.

I dug frantically in my pockets. Healing spell. The one I kept in my inside pocket, safe from the water from the giant toad’s spell. I shook it out, activated it. Blue light mingled with the magic flowing from my hands.

“Heal him. Come on. Please—”

Blue light formed a film over my vision, blurring with my tears. We weren’t out yet, and the only way to leave this realm was to pass through Death.

Better hope Frank was in a generous mood.

I gritted my teeth, held onto Vance, and imagined myself falling.

Magic swirled around me, forming a thickening layer of grey smoke. Faces appeared. My bodily sensations disappeared, and I could no longer feel Vance in my arms.

“Frank,” I said. “Please.”

“Ivy Lane,” bellowed a voice. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

I hadn’t been yelled at like that—in a schoolteacher disciplinary way—since my parents had been alive. I stared at Frank as he waved a hand and sent all the lingering nearby spirits scurrying out of sight.

“What do I think I’m doing? An evil faerie dragged me across the veil. I’m trying to get home.”

Frank’s transparent form flickered in anger. “You brought a mortal with you.”

“Vance.” I looked around into grey fog. “Where is he? Please—I didn’t mean to bring him. The Lady of the Tree tricked me with a faerie vow.”

“The Lady of the Tree?”

Hell. This wasn’t any time for explanations. If Vance hung around in Death for too long, he wouldn’t make it home.

“She’s an evil bitch who can’t be trusted. She’s behind a scheme to open the veil. Please. I’m the only one who can stop her. My friend—the Mage Lord—he’s dying. I need to get home.”

Frank sighed. “Someday, the necromancers are going to notice all the transgressions I’ve overlooked on your part.”

I bristled. “I didn’t
choose
this. If you don’t let us through, I’m gonna haunt you for the rest of your unearthly existence, and trust me, it’ll be a damn long time.”

The necromancer’s almost transparent face twisted in a scowl. “You’re violating the guild’s guide so thoroughly, you’ll be locked up for the rest of
your
earthly existence if the necromancers find out what you did.”

“Guess you’ll have to keep your mouth shut, then,” I retaliated. “Who knows, maybe this time they’ll send me flowers and cake when I save all their asses.”

A reluctant smile touched his mouth. “You can go back. Just remember not all of us choose our paths.”

As he faded, so did I.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Ten minutes. That’s how long it took the mages to reach Vance and me. I counted the seconds, between phone calls. Firstly, I was forced to call the Mage Lord’s number, because he didn’t have his own phone with him. Luckily, Drake picked up. Apparently Vance often left his phone lying in the manor’s office. What he didn’t often do, however, was disappear for a full day without contact. The council was up in arms, ready to storm into the manor.

I didn’t care. If it meant more people to save Vance’s life, I’d reveal my faerie magic to the whole council, even tell them I let the enemy get away.

We’d landed on the same hill we’d left on, except the sky had darkened to indigo, tinged with pink from the newly set sun. Isabel had set me straight when I called her. Apparently, Vance and I had been gone eight hours in human time. With George to babysit, Isabel couldn’t leave the flat.

“I’m sorry,” I’d said. “I failed. The Lady’s still alive. I don’t want her to come after you.”

“Don’t worry about me,” said Isabel. “Really. I’m freaked out, but you’re okay and that’s what matters. Take care of him.”

“I will.” I’d taken to obsessively checking his pulse every thirty seconds or so. He’d lost so much blood, his face was pale as death by this point. He was breathing, but erratically. Not just the blood loss—he’d burned himself out transplanting himself into my place. I wished I’d asked the necromancer if he’d be okay. He’d have been able to tell if Vance was close to death. I’d relied on healing spells for too long to know if he’d make it. Faerie had outwitted both of us.

And thanks to me, the Lady of the Tree was alive with twice the power and twice the grudge to go with it.

My teeth chattered as I slowly pulled Vance downhill, to bring us closer to the park’s exit. I had no weapon. Irene’s loss was another ache I didn’t want to confront. The sword I’d carried ever since I’d returned from Faerie had broken in my hand, and I hadn’t been able to do a thing. Ten years we’d fought together and I’d lost her to a faerie.

Headlights appeared on the road. Seconds later, several cloaked figures ran towards us. Mages. I sagged with relief, giving Vance a shake.

“They’re here. C’mon. We’re going home.”

His eyes opened a little. “Ivy.”

“You okay?” Stupid question. The grass was dark with blood, and my arms were numb from dragging him downhill.

“You—Ivy.” His head dropped forward.

“Yeah?” My heart thumped. “Don’t die on me now, Vance. We’re almost there. Hey!” I waved frantically at the mages.

Drake reached us first. Vance groaned when his second-in-command pulled him upright, draping Vance’s arm over his shoulder.

“We’ll sort you out,” said the fire mage, his own face as pale as Vance’s. “Damned faeries. They did this to him?”

I nodded once, not daring to speak in case I broke down.

The car ride lasted an eternity. Two mages I’d never spoken to sat in the back with Vance, applying healing spells. I was forced to sit in the front next to Drake. His driving was more dangerous than ever, and when a tree blocked our path, he raised a hand and reduced it to cinders. The second time he did so, people shouted after us. I felt so damned useless, but I wouldn’t go home with Vance in this state.