Shadow Faerie

Chapter 11

Eleven

My feet stumble to a halt. An odd combination of joy and horror rockets through me. Dash’s hair is completely different, as I noticed earlier, and several days’ worth of well-groomed stubble adds to his disguise. But it’s definitely him.

“Don’t stop dancing,” he says, forcing me to jerkily step back in time with the music. Then, after giving the dancers around him a pleasant and entirely fake smile, he hisses, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Another shocked second passes before I find my voice. “Me? What is wrong with you? How did you even—what did you—do you know what Roarke and Aurora will do if they recognize you?”

“They saw me for all of five seconds that day. They’re not about to recognize me now.”

“But how did you even—”

“What are you doing here, Em? Why are you playing along with this stupid union charade? I expected to find a prisoner, and instead—”

“We are not having this discussion here,” I tell him through clenched teeth, my smile completely forgotten now. “Meet me outside.” I tug free of his grip and twist around. The man I bump into looks startled. He and the woman he’s dancing with almost stumble. But fortunately, after two or three fumbling seconds, everyone switches partners, and for anyone watching, it probably appears that the almost-princess accidentally tried to switch a few seconds early. I gladly step into the confused man’s arms and continue dancing, trying to keep a serene smile in place while my heart thunders in my chest.

I can still barely believe it. Dash is here. Through my anger and terror—because this is exactly the kind of thing I was trying to avoid when I chose to come here, and now he’s messing it all up—I’m heart-achingly glad to see him.

“Was it awful growing up in the non-magic realm?” my dance partner asks.

“Uh, well, I didn’t know any better, so I didn’t know what I was missing out on.”

“How thrilling to have discovered you actually belong to this world instead.”

“Yes. Magic is … so wonderful.” I’m distracted as I catch a glimpse of Dash with another partner.

When the dance ends, I manage to politely decline the woman who was hoping to be my next partner. I slip past her and weave my way off the dance floor, between the tables and chairs, and toward the arched doorway that leads to the gardens. It’s odd looking out and seeing a glittering snow-white landscape while feeling so warm I’m almost sweating. There must be a spell across the open doorway that keeps the freezing winter air outside.

Looking back, I see at least two women making their way toward me with bright eyes and wide smiles, probably hoping to engage me in conversation. Wonderful. Now that everyone knows who I am, I’ll never get out of this ballroom unnoticed. I search about for a distraction, and on the nearest table, I spot one of the popping rainbow candies. I discreetly drop it onto the floor, lift my skirt, and kick it to the side. It spins away from me and into the crowd, whizzing and popping and shooting tiny star-shaped candies everywhere. In the commotion, I meet Dash’s eyes for a second. Then I turn and slip out into the night.

The cold hits me the moment I pass beneath the archway, but after all that dancing, the icy air is a welcome relief. After hurrying down the stairs, I turn right, step off the path, and wait in the shadow of a tree with silver, snow-dusted apples hanging from its branches. I breathe out long and slow, but my anxiety only increases as the seconds tick by and I wait for Dash.

I tense as hurried footsteps move down the stairs. Dash looks around, catches sight of me, and in a few quick strides he’s standing in front of me. “What is wrong with you?” he demands immediately. “Waltzing around like you belong here. Playing along with this union idiocy. You can’t possibly be planning to—”

“You want to talk about idiocy?” I snap right back. “You are an i***t. Why did you come here? These people are your enemies. Do you know what they’ll do to you if they find out what you are and who you work for?”

“They’re your enemies too, Em, but somehow you’ve let them manipulate you into marrying one of them—”

“I haven’t been manipulated into anything,” I counter, still trying to keep my voice to nothing louder than an angry whisper. “I chose to be here. Roarke presented an arrangement—marriage in return for healing my mother—gave me time to think about it, and I decided to accept his offer. The only person who wants to force me into anything is the king, but Roarke won’t let him. He wants a willing wife. He isn’t going to manipulate me into doing anything against my will, despite what you’re thinking.”

Dash looks like he’s about to be sick. “You … you voluntarily came here? Nobody forced you into this?”

“Yes. He offered something I want, and I decided the price was worth it.”

“The price is marriage, Em! A union! Have you stopped to think how serious that is? We’re talking about the rest of your life. Unions in this world aren’t like the ones in your world. It’s a magical bond that isn’t easily broken. And royal unions? I’ve never heard of one of those being broken. If you go through with this, it’s forever.”

I roll my eyes, even as the weight of his words pierce through to my core and leave my skin colder than it was a moment ago. “Now you’re being an i***t again. I don’t actually intend to go through with this union. I have a Griffin Ability, for goodness’ sake. An extremely powerful one. When the moment is right, and when I’ve learned enough control, I’ll get Roarke to tell me everything I need to know to heal my mother, and then I’ll escape.”

Dash still looks somewhat ill. “Seriously? That’s your plan? You really think after all that in there—” he waves in the general direction of the ballroom again “—they’re going to let you escape?”

“Okay, first of all, ‘escape’ implies that I’m not going to ask permission. I’m just going to leave. So it doesn’t matter whether they let me or not. And secondly …” I slowly suck in a deep breath because I have to admit I’m feeling as sick as Dash looks. “Secondly, I realize that an escape might not be possible. They might catch me and force me to go through with this—”

“You think?”

“—despite everything Roarke says about wanting a willing wife,” I continue, speaking over Dash. “And if that’s the way it ends up, then so be it. At least I’ll get the information I need, and then—”

“That’s if Roarke actually follows through with his side of the bargain and tells you what he knows—which is probably nothing, by the way. How can he possibly know any more about your mother than the rest of us? But by the time you figure that out, it’ll be too late for you.” He throws his hands up and looks away as he shakes his head. “This whole plan of yours is utterly pointless.”

A chill runs through me. My body has cooled down quickly, and the winter air feels as though it’s seeping into my very bones. I run my hands vigorously up and down my arms. “It isn’t pointless. Dark magic has trapped my mother in a permanent coma, and Roarke, as a member of the court that uses that kind of magic, knows how to wake her. And, more importantly, he knows what caused her mental illness. It was something magical, and he knows how to fix it.”

“He’s lying, Em,” Dash says in the kind of tone he would use if talking to a naive child. Absently, he moves his hand in a quick circular motion above my head, and I immediately begin to feel warmer. “Do you really think a pampered prince knows anything about magical mental illnesses? He’d tell you anything to get you to stay and give him full access to your Griffin Ability. Why can’t you see that?”

“He isn’t lying. He knows far more about my past than anyone else I’ve come across in this world. He’s already proved it to me. He’s my best chance for saving Mom.”

“But … this is just …” Dash struggles for a moment. He tugs at his hair, which I realize is a wig when it comes away in his hand, revealing his own messy hair underneath. “I know you want your mother to be better,” he says, his eyes returning to mine, “but why does her health and happiness have to be solely your responsibility? Is she really—” He cuts himself off, breathing heavily. “I know this is going to make me sound like the bad guy. I don’t want to ask you if she’s worth it, because of course she’s—”

“How can you even think that?” I gasp.

“I’m not! That’s what I’m saying. Of course she’s worth it. She’s your mother, and clearly you love her more than anything else in either world, but …” His eyes plead with me. “Would she want you to do this? Would she want you to throw away your entire life in what is probably a futile attempt to save hers?”

“I’m not throwing away my entire life!” I shout. Then I remember myself. I remember Aurora’s words—My father has eyes and ears everywhere—and I lower my voice again. It’s barely a whisper now. My lips hardly move as I speak. “They might force me into a marriage, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be here forever. My Griffin Ability makes me more powerful than most people in this world. Mom and I will escape one day.”

“Even if that’s possible,” Dash says, “how much evil will they force you to commit before then?”

“I … I …” I don’t have an answer for that.

“Why do you think they want you, Em? You can make their dirty work easier, that’s why.” He takes hold of my shoulders and gives me a small shake. “These people are not good. Surely you know the kinds of things they’re going to make you do?”

I pull myself free of his grasp. “You’re wrong. Roarke isn’t like that, and neither is Aurora.” But the king is, a silent voice reminds me. That scene in the king’s office—the scene I keep pushing out of my thoughts—appears abruptly at the front of my mind. The king with his hand clenching around the air, and that man’s head ripping right off his—

I blink and wince and look away.

“Really?” Dash says. “They’re not like that?”

I can tell without meeting his eyes that he knows I’m lying. I breathe in a shuddering breath. “I saw … something.” I blink again and shake my head, trying to force the memory away. I focus on Dash’s green eyes again, knowing there’s no point in trying to convince him with lies I barely believe myself. There’s no point in anything but the truth. “What other choice did I have, Dash?” My voice is a desperate whisper now, having lost its defensive edge. “These are the only people who can help me.”

“You could have trusted us! Me and everyone else at the oasis. We want to help you, Em. We’ve done nothing except try to help you since you got to this world, and that wasn’t about to change. I don’t understand why you’d just turn your back on all of that and—”

“That’s the point, Dash! That’s why I had to leave.”

He pauses, his eyebrows climbing higher. “Is that supposed to make sense?”

“You and your friends have done nothing but try to help me, and it almost got you killed. You were a glass statue. Remember that? You and Violet came so close to dying. Dying, Dash!” My voice rises as my chest tightens at the memory of that terrifying day.

“Yeah, but we didn’t. It wasn’t such a big deal.”

“Of course it was a big deal! You almost died because you tried to help me. And Chelsea and Georgia actually were dead, and they would have stayed that way if my Griffin Ability hadn’t made a convenient appearance. So after all that, I decided I didn’t want anyone else to be put at risk because of me and my mother.”

“Em—”

“Yes, I had everything I could have wanted at the oasis. It’s beautiful, it’s safe, the people are amazing. But if I’d stayed there, someone would have ended up hurt or dead because they tried to help me. This is my problem. She’s my mother. If there’s a price involved in returning her to normal, I’m the one who should pay it. No one else.”

Dash is silent for too long before he says, “It’s too late for that.”

I blink, feeling cold again despite Dash’s warmth-producing spell still surrounding me. “What do you mean?”

He shakes his head and looks away. “This … this isn’t the way I wanted to tell you. I wanted to get you far away from here first. Back to the oasis.”

“Before you tell me what?” I step closer and wrap one cold hand around his arm. “Tell me what, Dash? What happened?”

“Chelsea and Georgia …” He closes his eyes and presses his lips together before continuing. “They both … died.”

I drop my hand from his arm as quickly as if his skin just burned me. “What?”

“It happened about two days after the glass incident with Ada.”

“But … they can’t be dead. My Griffin Ability brought them back to life.”

“They were human, Em,” he says gently. “Your Griffin Ability may have worked on them, but their bodies couldn’t handle the magic. In the end, it killed them.”

“But … are you sure they were human? I mean, she’s my mother’s sister, and my mother’s a faerie. And what about all the herbal remedies Chelsea makes? I thought maybe … maybe those were actually magical.”

Dash offers no explanations; he merely shakes his head. “I’m so sorry, Em.”

“They … they’re really dead?” I whisper. “My magic killed them. I thought it saved them, but it killed them.”

“Em—”

“I killed my own family.”

“It wasn’t you who killed them,” Dash says, his voice suddenly fierce. “Ada did, with her horrible glass magic. She shattered them into thousands of pieces. You did what you could to save them, but it wasn’t enough. They were doomed from the moment she first touched them.”

My legs can’t hold me up. I crumple onto the ground, not giving a second’s thought to the expensive dress I’m probably ruining. Quick, shallow breaths consume me as I stare unseeingly into the garden. Dash is still speaking, but I can’t hear him anymore. I don’t know how I’m supposed to react to this. Chelsea and Georgia didn’t love me, and I didn’t love them; I can’t suddenly pretend otherwise just because they’re dead. But they were family. They took me in, even though they constantly made it clear what a burden I was to them. And now they’re dead, and I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to feel aside from guilty.

“I never wanted any of this,” I manage to whisper. I cover my face with my hands, wishing I could blot out this other world and its magic that’s sent my life spinning so completely out of my control. “Can’t someone just take it all away? Please. I don’t want this magic. I don’t want a Griffin Ability. I don’t want to marry a prince. I just want to go back to that simple life Mom and I had before magic made her crazy and everything started to fall apart.”

I feel Dash’s arm on my shoulder and sense him crouching beside me. “I wish I could—”

“Emerson?”

I suck in a breath at the sound of Roarke’s voice. Slowly, I lower my hands and watch him descend the stairs.

“What’s going on? Why are you on the ground?”

Dash rises to face him.

“You,” Roarke says slowly, recognition in his eyes. “Well now.” His gaze moves to me as his expression becomes unreadable. “Isn’t this an interesting situation.”