Windswept (The Airborne Saga) (30 page)

             
Inside, a man waited but he said nothing. Adalyn slipped them into a back room without a word. Her idea of a hiding place was an empty and barren pantry. At one point it had been filled, but now only dust and dirt left hints of existence. The room was small and there was nothing to hide them as there’d been in the cellar.  The lack of protection made Adalyn’s nerves stand on edge.

             
“Don’t give me that look. It’s clear that if we didn’t come out, they would have burned us out or killed that family.”

             
Avery reluctantly agreed. A host finally greeted them in an hour with few words and a long, twisted look Avery’s way. It even made Adalyn laugh. Not everyone was so sure about following Avery.

             
“Here,” Avery said after another hour ticked by. They’d sat down in separate corners and had mainly been lost in their own thoughts and fears. But Adalyn was looking paler and Avery grabbed her attention.

             
“What is this?” She looked skeptically at the food Avery held out, but snatched it out of her hands without any more hesitation. She swallowed it almost without chewing, just as hungry as Avery had guessed. Their energy had been running low and the water the new hosts provided truly did little to sate them.

             
“I still hate you, you know,” Adalyn said as a passing remark.

             
“I figured it’d take more than bread to win you over,” Avery spoke in a hushed tone, but it was still a nice change of subject. If she’d have to focus on the door any longer, she’d have broken into tears.

             
“No, I can never like you. It doesn’t matter what you do.” Adalyn sounded so nonchalant. At Avery’s stare, she did go on. “I’m obligated to hate you because you’re with my ex. It’s not particularly personal. But why try to fight it? That’d just make it more awkward, us trying to butter up to each other.”

             
“Um. Okay.” It sounded so simple. Maybe even true. She got along with Nate and Leela, but she had never been engaged to Nate either. And before she had Mason, she did feel resentment there too.

             
“And I hate myself for saying this but treat him better than I did. He needs someone in light of all this chaos when we throw these rebels out and life goes back to normal. But unlike you, I’m hitting the east coast for once. Putting this behind me.”

             
“But—” Avery tried to protest. Adalyn’s vision of the world was wrong for so many reasons.

             
“If you’re worried about the press hating you after all this, you’ll be painted as a hero. That’s the key, dumbie. I’ve been a royal’s fiancé longer than you have. And I’ve learned. Paint on yourself the image you want to the world to believe. You tell people that you are hero. That you are worthy. They’ll believe it.

“See
, you’re waiting for them to form an opinion about you. Trying to suck up. That’s moronic at its best. If you’re nice to them, it indicates they have the power. And I mean that for everyone. You can’t give them any power when it comes to you. Hold your head up high. Only Mason is your Prince and you otherwise answer to no one. People won’t spread rumors about you if you can look them straight in the eye and deny it with a confidence. People only talk when they can talk.”

It took a moment for Avery to pick her jaw up
off the floor. She believed Adalyn’s logic absolutely. But she didn’t quite believe that Adalyn was saying it. She took a long look at the blue eyes that relentlessly stared back.

“Thank you. It seems there’s a lot I still don’t know about you.”

Adalyn snorted.

“Hopefully human, you never will. But you must promise to take care of him for me. Take care of him so when I leave, I never have to be concerned with coming back.”

The world grew blurry. Avery didn’t even realize why until she noticed that her own eyes burned with wetness.

“Where are you going?” Avery asked. Adalyn only answered with her silence. But Avery could tell it was somewhere far away from harpie society. When she’d spent her whole life in it, why Adalyn had suddenly decided to leave it was a more than curious question. Avery didn’t have the strength or desire to ask it just yet. And Adalyn piped in to finish the conversation.

“That better be a yes.” It was still the most sincere Avery had ever seen the harpie and she was suddenly reminded of Samuel. Before he died, he’d begged Avery to make a similar promise. His wish never went fulfilled, his dying words lost before they could be spoken.

For the first time since it happened, Avery really wanted to tell Adalyn something. Make something up
, but it seemed impossible to make the situation even better. Adalyn had lost her father and her fiancé. And yet she just wanted peace of mind to get out of there. Avery could truly see it for the first time. Why Mason had loved her.

“It is. A yes I mean...”

A scream tore through the building. Avery and Adalyn sprung to their feet. Adalyn’s knife was out and she readied for the door. The screaming continued. That’s when Avery heard it. She grabbed the knob and threw the door aside to the screeching protest of Adalyn. The kitchen was empty. The screaming had slipped in through the open windows. Avery headed for the exit blindly. Harpies blocked the door, backs to her, and she bulldozed through them.

After a few nights inside, the sunlight outside was blinding. It took a moment for her to see clearly that the center of attention was on a hut twenty some feet away. Rebels had created a crowd around a house and the occupants were being dragged out. The people who hit the dirt first were irrelevant. They were screaming, acting as body shields.

Avery’s intuition had been correct, but it was a horrifying notion. The rebels had found Mason first.

Twenty Three

              The amount of stimuli left her head buzzing. There were only a few things of which Avery was completely aware. The sun beat down hard, and the white sand was scolding hot and blinding. The area had been swarmed with people whose tensions ran so high the adrenaline was palpable as a heaviness in the air. People screamed and cried out, but words were lost in a mass of incoherent buzz. Yet no one crossed the invisible line that made the circle around the scene. And Avery knew one last, single thing for sure. The rebels had pulled Mason from a house and raised weapons to end his life.

             
She didn’t think, she just ran and met the first rebel ten feet away from the circle. The rebel sprung back, clearly fearful of the Willow magic, but his spear came out instead. She ducked the first blow and slid into the dirt. She managed to snatch his wrist and wrench it backwards, but the rebel was still stronger than her. He dropped the spear but broke free and readied his claws. That’s when it happened. The bystander harpies suddenly sprung into motion. Several dove on the rebel that had confronted Avery. Adalyn appeared on scene and led the massacre against the rest.

             
“Go!” Adalyn commanded Avery, but she didn’t need to. The second Avery was free of her obstacle, Avery ran for Mason. That’s when the center of the rebel army rapidly became her problem.  They stood in front of Mason who’d freed himself but had created a line of sharp-ended weapons. But then the entire group was also being distracted by the sudden uprising she had led.

             
Desperately reaching for some sense of the Willow in her chest, she pulled on the sensation in her chest. Some spastic electric wave resulted and the rebels dove aside. She hit her knees just as a rebel hit her from behind. The world swirled but the blow from her head hadn’t been the reason. The magic came as uncontrolled and free-flowing as ever, but with the electric wave she forced upon the attacking rebels, went her breath and energy.

             
Blackness collected at the edges of her vision. The confusing world only got worse when it threatened to plunge into darkness. She’d be smacked again and hit the ground but no deadly spear had been plunged through her torso. People kept screaming. Feathers floated in the air and erratic shadows blocked out the sun. In the state of blurriness her mind had come to, she managed to find a wobbly way to her feet. The next rebel in her way went down with a blood curdling screech. She saw Mason and her hand went out to reach for him. The pain in her chest echoed throughout the rest of her skeleton. Her hand hovered oddly in the air. And then the world went black.

             
She awoke in phases, each time a little bit more aware of the world around her. She’d wished she had been comfortable when the last layer of sleep lifted from her, but the aching in her chest still remained in a dull tantrum. She had felt softness beneath her but didn’t recognize it as blankets until she truly shifted. Around her was golden grass and dark blue skies. She couldn’t pinpoint the area, but she knew she wasn’t home. Perfectly warm already, she moved to throw the blankets off of her.

             
“Stop that,” Mason ordered but his voice was in a whisper.

             
Remembering he was there for the first time, she jolted to sit up and spun to see him.

             
“Stop that,” he insisted at her oddly rough movements.

             
She brushed off the comment. The exhilaration that followed actually seeing him had flooded her veins and distracted her from discomfort. She sized him up immediately. His hair had grown out since she’d seen him last, splayed and messy, as the day she’d initially met him. One wing had been bandaged but no blood showed through so it didn’t seem too bad. His face had been dirty once and the resulting smears were his attempts to clean it. If any bruises hid there, they hid well.

             
“Are you okay?” she asked him secondly. He made a face.

             
“I should be asking you that.” His eyes dropped and she followed them. The Willow tattoo glowed a near blood red and reminded her how much it wanted to hurt. She let her eyes continue traveling, not wishing to truly stare, and scouted out where they were. It appeared to be a mountain range, classic of California, but with no signs of civilization, it was impossible to pinpoint where. She didn’t ask Mason where he’d gotten the blankets to drape her in but only knew that he stayed out of them and sat in the grass.

             
“Cheerful.”

             
“It’s the magic isn’t it?” he asked more pointedly than a question deserved. She knew where his mind went—to the doctor’s warnings.

             
“Yeah. Probably.” It was getting worse. She remembered what he’d said. It’d start with pain.
The inability to walk is when your body begins diverting energy from your muscles. Confusion, vision loss, selective deafness. Your organs may begin shutting down. Your body will no longer be able to maintain itself and support the magic that has been growing within it.
It was a death sentence that was coming true. She felt the pain. The inability to move as she wanted. She was near constant confusion and though her vision had returned, it had left her once.

Oddly she wasn’t scared. She didn’t want to die
, but she didn’t feel like she would either. Nothing about fear quite felt real here. The world where danger resided seemed so far away. The only thing she really felt and thought about was her and Mason alone.