Shadow Faerie

Chapter 18

Eighteen

Roarke hurries into his bedroom and returns with a necklace in his hands, which he places over my head without hesitation. He steps back and lets out a long breath. “You already know what that was. Or at least, you’ve seen one before.”

I swallow, looking down at the pendant resting against my chest. It’s the same as the one I’ve seen Aurora wearing often. Silver with a black stone at its center. “Some kind of shadow creature,” I say in a shaky voice as I look up at Roarke. “From that place you and Aurora took me to.”

He nods. “You haven’t asked me anything about that day.”

“I didn’t think of it until … until very recently. There’s been so much going on. So many new things to occupy my thoughts.”

“That creature,” Roarke says as he takes his place beside me on the couch again, “is the same kind of creature that killed a man out in the gardens a couple of weeks ago. It sucked the life out of him. Not just his life, but his magic and his youth as well.”

“And it would have done the same to us now,” I whisper.

“Not to me. I was protected.” He reaches for a chain at his neck, a chain hidden beneath his clothing, and pulls it free. At the end of the chain hangs a pendant very similar to mine. “And now you’re protected too,” he adds. “The magic embedded in the amulet wards off the ink-shades. I asked Yokshin to make one for you, and he finished it earlier today. I should have given it to you the moment we first walked into this room, but I forgot. I’m so, so sorry, my—”

“You forgot? And what about everyone else inside this palace? They should all be wearing these amulets.”

“It’s fine, Em. The creatures aren’t supposed to be in the palace. What happened a few minutes ago—and what happened to the guard—isn’t normal and won’t happen again. Whoever let this one slip through will be in a great deal of trouble when I find out who—”

“But what if it happens again?”

“It won’t.”

“And how are they getting here? What are they? What was that shadowed place? Why couldn’t Dash and I open faerie paths doorways, and why did everything disappear behind us when we found our way back into the magical world—”

Roarke holds one hand up. “Just listen and I’ll tell you everything. I’ve wanted to tell you everything since the day I first took you there, but I had to know I could trust you.”

My chest continues to rise and fall with shallow breaths. “How do you know you can trust me now?”

“I don’t. Not entirely. But I’m hoping desperately that you’re on my side, because I so badly want to show you everything and explain it all to you. Because you and I, Emerson …” He grips both my hands in his as a smile stretches across his face. “You and I are going to rule that world. I will be its king and you will be my queen. Not just a princess, but a queen.”

“I … I don’t understand.” I try to remember exactly what I overheard while I was hiding in his bedroom, but my memory doesn’t include much more than the words ‘claim’ and ‘territory.’ “There are already two rulers. Seelie and Unseelie. Are you saying that the shadow place doesn’t belong to either court?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s a different world entirely. A world that didn’t even exist two decades ago.” Roarke shifts closer, and I reach for a cushion and hug it tightly. Bandit squirms against my hip, and it’s oddly comforting to remember that he’s there. “Do you know what happened back then, Emerson?” Roarke asks. “About eighteen years ago?”

“I’ve probably been told, but I don’t remember.”

“Powerful magic ripped through the veil that separates the magic world from the non-magic world. But after the gash appeared in the sky, it didn’t stay that way. It wasn’t simply an enormous doorway between two worlds. It split further, and the two worlds began to consume one another. An ancient monument managed to stop it, but you know what, Emerson? I always wondered where the pieces of each world ended up. They couldn’t have just disappeared, could they?”

I swallow and shake my head. “I don’t know. Things stopped making sense the moment I discovered magic.”

He tilts his head to the side, watching me for several moments. “You know about the faerie paths, don’t you? You know that they’re the dark space in between this world and the one you grew up in?”

“Yes.”

“Did anyone ever tell you that with the right amount of effort, by refusing to think of anything at all, you can stay inside them for a while?”

“Um … maybe?” Dash might have mentioned something like that, but with all the other revelations bombarding me when I first got here, it’s hard to remember exactly.

“Aurora and I did that. Near the monument where the veil was torn over Velazar II—that’s the part of the island where the gap is. The Guild split the island in half years ago, so the prison could remain on Velazar I.” Roarke stands. “Anyway, I was always so curious about that gap in the air,” he continues as he begins pacing from one side of the couch to the other. “I asked so many questions about it during my lessons when I was growing up. And no one ever seemed to have enough answers. So Aurora and I decided to investigate it ourselves. We went back and forth through the tear from the magic world to the non-magic world. We tried to remain concealed, of course, but the guardians stationed by the monument eventually saw us. They tried to come after us, and one of them caught hold of Aurora, so we couldn’t simply drop out of the paths into safety. She managed to kick him off while we were inside the paths, but by then they were close enough that they might have been able to follow the trail of our magic.

“So we hid. We focused furiously on nothing, and the guardians soon disappeared. We could no longer hear their voices through the darkness. Aurora said we should leave in case we got stuck inside the paths forever, but that’s when I saw it in the distance: grayish light and wisps of smoke as black as shadow. And the edge of two worlds.”

If I hadn’t seen it myself, and if magic hadn’t become an ordinary part of my daily life, I’d be convinced Roarke belonged in the same facility my mother’s spent the past five years in. “The edge of two worlds?” I whisper.

“That’s what we saw as we moved toward the light. Grassy ground the same as the ground we’d walked across on Velazar Island. Then it ended abruptly and became a field of tall grass surrounded on three sides by a fence. These were two distinctly different pieces of earth, from two entirely different worlds—co-existing in a brand new world. They were muted versions of the originals, as if most of the color had been leeched from them, but they were real. I even bent down and ran my fingers through the grass so I’d know it wasn’t an illusion.” Roarke ceases his pacing and looks at me. “I finally had my answer, Emerson. I finally knew what had happened to those parts of each world that disappeared. They didn’t cease to exist; they were forced into a new world altogether.”

“So what did you do?”

Roarke sits on the edge of the couch and stares across the room. “Aurora was afraid. She said we needed to leave. She tried to open a doorway to the faerie paths, but it was no use. That was when she began to think we must be dead. She believed the guardians had killed us, and this was whatever came afterward. Some kind of afterlife. But I didn’t believe it. My mind was already rushing to make sense of that world, to piece together how it worked. It seemed to me that the shadow world existed in the same space as the faerie paths. Technically, we were still inside the faerie paths, so that’s why Aurora couldn’t open a doorway.”

“How did you get out? When Dash and I were there, we ran until we saw the tear in the veil, and we kept going until we ended up on Velazar Island. We couldn’t get out any other way.”

“Ah, but there is another way. More than one way, actually.” He looks at me. “How would you normally get out of the faerie paths?”

“You focus on where you want to end up, right? It’s your thoughts that take you there.”

“Yes. And you can leave the shadow world in the same way, but you have to really focus. I think it’s as if you’re so deep inside the faerie paths that it takes concerted effort and intense concentration to get out. An almost meditation-like state.”

My thumb runs up and down the edge of the cushion as I process his explanation. “That doesn’t seem practical.”

“No. It isn’t. That’s why we linked a faerie paths doorway spell to a traveling candle. It was Aurora’s idea. She remembered that that’s the way the witches travel. They don’t use faerie paths. Instead, they add a traveling spell to a candle. When the candle is lit, the person who holds it can travel to certain places by picturing that place. Very similar to the way faerie paths work.”

“Okay, so you would just light one of these special candles, but what about the intense mediation-like concentration part?”

“Oh, the intense concentration is still there. It just has to be employed while creating and applying the spell to the candle.” Roarke waves a hand dismissively. “Higher grade magic. You’ll get there at some point. Anyway, the candles aren’t the easiest method of travel either. They run out, of course, and new candles have to be made. So I went one step further.” He stands once more and reaches for my hand. “I created a portal. Right here in my suite, for continual, easy access.”

My mind races back to the swirling circle of magic I saw on Roarke’s bathroom wall. Without a word, I let him pull me to my feet. He leads me through his bedroom and pushes open the door to his bathroom. I don’t have to feign surprise when I see the portal; the fear on my face probably does a good enough job of concealing the fact that I’ve been here before. “So that’s how the shadow creatures are getting through to this world,” I say.

“Yes. I have men on the other side guarding the portal from the creatures, although they clearly need to be reminded how to do their jobs properly. We’re not sure what the creatures are, but we’ve been calling them ink-shades. Most of the time, they move slowly, like black ink spreading through water. At other times they blend in so completely with the shadows that it seems they become shadows themselves.”

I shudder as I recall hiding alone in here. An ink-shade could have come through at any moment and sucked the life out of me. “So it will happen again,” I say in a shaky voice. “Another ink-shade will get through, and if you don’t see it and kill it, it will hurt someone.”

Roarke rubs my arm, as if that could possibly comfort me. “It won’t happen again. I’m going to station guards on this side as well. If an ink-shade does slip into this world, it will be killed before it can get to anyone.” He takes a step toward the portal before turning back and holding his hand out to me. “Shall we?”

I shake my head vigorously. “No, thank you. I don’t need to go back there.”

“But you’re safe now. You have an amulet. They can’t hurt you.”

I frown as I realize something. “I wasn’t safe the first time. Neither was Dash. You told us to hide when you heard your father coming, which meant we were on our own in that strange world. Ink-shades could have killed us. One almost did.”

Roarke looks down, his expression becoming suitably contrite. “I’m so sorry. We’d had our amulets for a while by then. We’d forgotten there was any need to be afraid.”

“You forgot? You went on and on about how powerful and valuable my Griffin Ability is, and then you left me alone in a strange world with dangerous creatures that could have sucked my magic and life right out of me?”

“You were supposed to hide, not run away. I pointed you in the right direction. If you’d gone that way, you would have seen the door in the hedge that led down into the underground passages.”

“We did go the way you pointed. I didn’t see any—”

“Emerson.” He grabs my shoulders and gives me a small shake. “Just stop. I’m sorry, okay? I never meant for any creature to go after you. And now that you’re properly protected, you’ll be completely fine. You can see this amazing world for what it is.”

“Amazing? What is so amazing about shadow creatures and a wispy colorless world?”

“Please,” Roarke says. “Please come with me and I’ll show you. This is everything I’ve wanted you to see since we first met. I promise there is nothing scary about this world now that you’re wearing that amulet. The ink-shades will simply float right past you.”

I wonder if I should refuse, just to see if he’ll force me. To see if Dash was right about him. But I’m too afraid to make him angry. So I nod and take his hand, and he leads me into the spiraling magic.