creepy hollow 05 - a faerie's revenge (39 page)
Read creepy hollow 05 - a faerie's revenge Online
Authors: rachel morgan
“But …” I keep my eyes fixed firmly on the floor as I admit what I’ve done. “I saw him when he was escaping the Guild, and I didn’t stop him.”
“He’s
that
man?” Ryn says. “The one who escaped the detainment area recently?”
I nod. “He’s also the one who killed Saskia and spread the dragon disease, but I doubt we can ever prove that. Or catch him.” I risk looking up. “You said the guardians didn’t find anyone in the forest near your home?”
“No.” Ryn sits on the edge of the bed. I lower myself to sit beside him. “He sounds incredibly dangerous, Cal. I know you’re feeling guilty that you didn’t alert anyone when you saw him. You’re expecting me to be angry with you. But my guess is that you couldn’t have stopped him if you tried. He would have made sure he had a way to get out.”
“I guess so. It seems he had everything else planned out.”
Ryn places his hand over mine. “Do you want to talk about … the rest of last night?”
“Only if you’ve heard something.”
“Not a word. If the Seelie Court has custody of a man they believe to be Draven, they haven’t told anyone yet. Normally he’d be at Velazar by now, but we haven’t heard from them either. There are other prisons he may have been sent to, but Velazar makes the most sense. It’s the most secure. And then, of course, there are the rumors about a hidden prison controlled by the Seelie Queen for personal enemies of hers who never end up anywhere near the official Guild system. But that’s completely illegal, so of course there’s no proof that it’s true.”
“He could be anywhere,” I murmur. “He could even be … dead.”
After a long pause, Ryn says, “He could be.”
I shut my eyes and say, “Please don’t tell me he’s getting what he deserves.”
“Calla—”
“I know you don’t like him, and I know he’s done terrible things in the past, but I happen to care a great deal about him. You don’t know how my heart aches to think of what they’re doing to him. To think that I’ll never see him again.”
“Calla.” Ryn tightens the hand that’s clasped over mine. I open my eyes and look at him. “I was only going to say how sorry I am for how this all turned out. I wish there was a way I could fix it for you.”
I hear Mom’s voice out in the passageway as she speaks with a healer. I stand, whisper goodbye to Ryn, and slip between the curtains before Mom and the healer reach the cubicle. I carry Ryn’s words with me all the way back to the mountain, not because I want him to find a way to fix this, but because if a way does somehow exist,
I will find it
.
* * *
I dream of our kiss. I dream of him being so near that no space exists between us. His arms, my heartbeat, his lips, my breath. Magic radiates from my body, causing fountains of golden water to arc through the air all around us. In one moment I’m joyfully happy—and in the next my heart breaks, because I know what’s about to happen. The whirlpool begins. It sucks all the water away, leaving me standing alone on dry earth watching a carriage disappearing in the distance.
“Calla!”
I press my hands against my ears because I can’t bear to hear his desperate cries.
“Calla!”
I shake my head, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Miss Goldilocks.”
* * *
I jerk awake, leaving the dream world behind. I rub a hand across my eyes and sit up. I stare at the bedcover, feeling the thud of my heart and trying to forget that horrible feeling of loss that pervaded my dream, blotting out everything else. Perhaps I should have taken something to help me sleep, but—
Calla?
I gasp out loud and clap a hand over my mouth.
Calla?
It’s his voice, inside my head. I look down at my left hand where the telepathy ring encircles my forefinger.
Chase?
You got the ring back
, he says.
You’re alive!
Unimaginable relief explodes inside me.
Of course. Didn’t I tell you it would take a lot to finish me off?
Questions stream through my head too fast for me to stop them.
What happened? Where are you? Are you okay? Did they hurt you?
Are
you
okay?
he asks.
You just vanished. I was so worried.
When he mentions worry, it’s almost as though I feel it. And then a great weariness and a sense of defeat. I know it’s difficult to hide emotion when communicating like this, but fatigue seems to make it even harder for him to conceal what he’s really feeling.
I’m fine, I promise
, I say.
Tell me about you first.
It was an ambush
.
A whole lot of Angelica’s faeries. I was so stupid to trust her. So, so stupid. As I fought them, they steered me toward the final whirlpool. When I arrived back at the surface, Angelica was there with dozens of guardians and a morioraith. I ran, but the smoke caught up to me. It paralyzed me, giving the guardians a chance to pin me down and get the chains around me. Angelica was there to control the creature. She let it scratch me, just once, just enough to keep me weak with hallucinations of the past.
I feel a ripple of the horror he’s remembering.
I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I should have got to you sooner—
I’m glad you didn’t. They might have taken you too.
Where are you now?
Turns out the Seelie Palace conceals a world of darkness beneath its polished marble floors. There are prison cells and torture chambers down here that I never knew existed, not even when I thought I had control of this place.
So you’re at the Seelie Court? A place impossible to find unless you’re shown the way by someone who knows where it is?
That’s the one. Most well-hidden place in the entire fae world.
And now I understand his dejection. How will we ever find him if he’s concealed in a place that barely anyone knows how to get to? He truly is beyond our reach. My fingers dig into the mattress as my hope begins to slip away.
What do they plan to do with you?
I don’t know. For now I’m chained in a cell with no access to my magic. They haven’t come too close to me, which is why I still have the ring.
I draw my knees up and press my forehead against them. There are so many important things I could say or ask, but the words that swim to the surface are,
I miss you so much already.
I don’t try to hide the thought. There are no secrets left between us now.
Nowhere near as much as I miss you.
My aching heart reaches out for his. I wonder if he can feel it, my longing for him. I suck in a deep breath and tell myself not to cry. I’ve done enough of that already. And I’ve had enough of the hopelessness, defeat and darkness.
Bright colors
, I say, telling myself as much as I’m telling him.
We’re painting with bright colors now, not dark ones. We can fix this. We can find a way.
I don’t know if it’s me or him or both of us, but I sense a change. A lift in the mood. I curl up beneath the covers and lie awake for another few hours, speaking with him—thinking, planning, plotting—until I fall asleep with the sound of his voice in my mind.
When I wake in the morning, I’m tired but energized. I’m focused. I have purpose. It’s later than I thought it was, so I dress quickly and hurry to Gaius’s study. He isn’t there. A quick look in the greenhouse tells me he isn’t there either. I run down the stairs, and then down again, below the entrance hall, to the door Chase opened by holding his hand against it. I hesitate. Gaius said he would add my handprint to the door’s access enchantment just before we left for the Wishbone Rivers, but I haven’t tried it yet. I haven’t wanted to come down here since then.
I raise my hand and place it against the door.
Click
, and the door vanishes. A tiny thrill runs through me. I really do belong here now. After more stairs, I turn into the wide corridor and head for the meeting room with the oval table. I wasn’t sure anyone would be there, but I hear voices coming from the open door. As I reach it, Gaius comes out of the room next door with a scroll in his hand. He greets me and nods for me to walk in ahead of him.
Lumethon, Kobe and Darius are sitting around a diagram of a building. “So we’re still going ahead with this?” Darius asks.
“Of course,” Lumethon tells him. “We can’t abandon all operations simply because Chase isn’t here.”
“I’m not saying abandon
everything
, but this one was his. It’s complex. He’s the only one who’s been there before.”
Gaius steps around me and hands the scroll to Lumethon. “For the Seers.”
“Thanks,” she says.
Ana walks in then, with flushed cheeks and a towel around her neck. “Did I miss anything?” she asks. “Anyone figure out where Chase is yet?”
“Yes,” I say, moving to stand at the head of the table as everyone looks up in surprise. “And I have our next mission. It’s close to impossible, but Chase tells me that’s usually the best kind.” I twist the telepathy ring around my finger and smile at my team. “We’re breaking into the Seelie Court.”
Calla’s story continues in
Creepy Hollow, Book 6
, coming in 2016!
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you, thank you, thank you …
To God, for stirring up stories in my imagination and helping me get to the end of another book.
To Cherie Reich, for being my editing eyes, and for talking me down from near panic as my deadlines soared past me!
To Dani Snell from Refracted Light Reviews, who organized the fantastic review team for
A Faerie’s Revenge
.
To the early readers, who take the time to hang out in Creepy Hollow with all my characters and then write reviews about them.
To all the Creepy Hollow fans, for loving Calla just as much as you loved Violet, and for being desperate to know what would happen after that final (shocking) word of
A Faerie’s Secret
.
And to Kyle, for putting up with the many, many hours I spent shut away in my study getting this book finished.
BOOKS BY RACHEL MORGAN
Bestselling YA fantasy series
Kick-butt faerie Violet is about to graduate as the top guardian of her class, but when an assignment goes wrong and the human boy she’s meant to be protecting follows her back into the fae realm, a dangerous plot is set in motion.
Magic, mystery, danger, action, romance … This series has it all!
An A to Z of Creepy Hollow Fae (Prequel Short Stories)
Swoon-worthy guys, comical moments, witty dialogue, and hot kisses ...
This sweet contemporary romance series will sweep you off your feet!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rachel Morgan is a South African author who spent a large portion of her childhood living in a fantasy land of her own making. After completing a degree in genetics, she decided science wasn’t for her—after all, they didn’t approve of made-up facts. These days she spends much of her time immersed in fantasy land once more, writing fiction for young adults and those young at heart.
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