A Faerie's Revenge

Chapter 5

Five

I step tentatively along the edge of the swamp, careful not to slip into the murky water. Insects hover lazily above its still surface, and trees reach over from either side, their drooping limbs tangling with one another. A blueish green haze settles over the scene as daylight disappears bit by bit.

The assignment details were minimal: a swamp, two tourists, a dangerous dare, and a wolf-like creature that neither of them expects. I have to save them, of course. If the creature disappears, that’s great. If it fights back … well, then I hope to be able to restrain it and bring it back to the Guild.

Humidity clings to me, sticking my hair to the back of my neck. I reach for my jacket pocket for something to tie my hair up with, before remembering I left the jacket in Olive’s office. After seeing the location of this assignment, I figured I wouldn’t need it. I pull a twig from a nearby branch and transform it into a stretchy band. After a quick glance up and down the swamp to make sure I’m still alone, I scoop my hair up and secure it with the make-shift hair accessory.

Much better. I crouch down beside a tree and wait, watching the insects, the misty haze, the occasional ripple across the water’s surface. The smell of decaying vegetation fills my nose. How pleasant …

Above the high-pitched singing of insects, I slowly become aware of voices. I tense, readying myself to reach for a weapon. After another minute or so, they come into view on the other side of the swamp: two women who appear to be in their early twenties. They push noisily through the brush, laughing loudly, completely unaware of the danger that lurks within this swampy jungle.

“No way,” one says to the other amidst her laughter. “That’s got to be the stupidest legend of all. Where did you hear that one?”

“That guy at the restaurant last night. He’s a local. He knows these things.”

“Yeah, he knows how to tell stories while trying to pick up girls.” The two of them lean in to each other as giggles overtake them.

“Fine,” the second one says after she’s recovered. “I assume you’ll touch the water then, since you aren’t afraid of the big bad Swamp Monster.”

“Of course I’ll touch the water. I might die of some horrible swampy disease, but it won’t be the Swamp Monster that kills me.”

I suppress a groan, hoping her words haven’t sealed her fate. She won’t die, she won’t die, she won’t die, I chant to myself as the woman leans down and trails her fingers through the dirty water. I picture my bow and arrow—not focusing too hard on the idea—and raise my hands to the space where I imagine them to be. The weapon appears, fitting perfectly into my grip. Chase was right about that: it takes only a brief thought, an expectation that the weapon is already there, rather than a deep focus.

Don’t think of him now.

My weapon is brilliant and sparkling, filling the area with its light. The women won’t be able to see it, though. My weapons and I are both hidden by glamour magic. The wolf creature, however … Well, if he’s anywhere nearby, he won’t miss this brightly lit weapon. Perhaps I should have gone for stealth, rather than revealing myself too soon, but I’m hoping he’ll come for me instead of the humans.

A shriek pierces the air. I jump to my feet, ready to attack. But I realize a second later that it was only one of the women pretending to push the other into the swamp. The two of them dissolve into giggles once more as I release a sigh of relief. I scan the banks, the trees, the clumps of soggy vegetation growing in the water. Where will he come from? Is he watching already? Is he on my side of the bank?

I throw a glance over my shoulder as a shiver crawls up my back despite the smothering warmth of the air. Am I being watched? Or is it simply my imagination, like last night at the old—

Noise erupts behind me. I whip my head back around in time to see a black shape explode from the water. The wolf, his shaggy, dripping fur flinging water everywhere, collides with both women. Their screams chill my blood.

I don’t waste a second. My arrow zooms across the water and finds its mark in the wolf’s side before he’s finished rearing his head back. With a roaring snarl, he leaps off his prey and swings around to face my side of the bank. Wild, gleaming eyes stare hungrily at me through the hazy air. I discard my bow. It disappears, its glow vanishing in an instant. In the near dark-ness, I can see little more than those fiery eyes on the other side of the swamp.

The moment he jumps, so do I. With a single bound, he’s across the water, but the muddy earth I was standing on is now bare. Those glowing eyes turn upward. He sees me above him, balancing on the branch I launched myself onto. He lets loose a vicious growl. Then his head morphs and shifts and becomes something almost human. “Dinner time,” he snarls.

Fear ripples through me, raising the hairs on my arms. I don’t show it, though. Instead I reach swiftly for my bow and point an arrow directly at his head. “Try it,” I say, hoping he doesn’t.

But he readies himself to spring. He’s an enormous beast, after all, so of course he thinks he can take down the pesky guardian trainee trying to rob him of his dinner. I get ready to flip backwards out of his way the moment he launches at the tree. He tenses. He leaps—

And from a doorway in the air, a man steps out, knocks the wolf back onto the ground with a mere sweep of his hand, and brings slender branches slithering across the ground to bind the wolf’s limbs.

“Who the hell are you?” the wolf demands in rough, grunting tones as he morphs into a shape that looks far more like a hairy man than a four-legged beast. The newcomer sends a stunner spell straight at the wolf’s chest, knocking him unconscious.

Good question, I think to myself. Whoever this is, he’s interfering with my assignment, and I doubt Olive will be pleased with that.

I drop to the ground, bending to absorb the impact before I straighten. “I’d like to know the answer to that,” I say.

The man turns—

—and I feel the air punched from my lungs. “You,” I manage to gasp.

“Calla?” He seems as startled to see me here as I am to see him. He can’t be feeling what I’m feeling, though. Never in a million years could he understand the way my heart just split. “Calla, what are you—”

“Stay back!” I say as Chase moves toward me. I hold a hand up between us, as though that might keep him away. As though I might possibly stand a chance against the most powerful being our world has ever known. The heavy air seems hard to breathe. The sheen of sweat coating my skin turns icy. “Is it true?” I manage to whisper. I already know it is, but I want to hear him say it. I want him to admit it.

Chase’s expression is indefinable as he says, “It is.”

I’m shaking, partly in anger and partly in fear. After all, it is Draven standing before me. Powerful, dangerous, a killer. What’s wrong with me that I couldn’t see that in him? How did I miss it? “You lied,” I whisper.

Stupid, stupid. Why are you still here? Why aren’t you running?

“I didn’t,” he says.

“I trusted you,” I yell. “I told you things I’ve never told anyone else.”

“I know, and I—”

“And then you made a fool of me!”

“No! That was never my intention. I was going to tell you everything.”

I choke out a laugh. “Everything? You were going to tell me everything?” I shake my head. “You were never going to tell me who you really are. Why would you do that? This is the only reaction you could possibly have expected.”

“I was going to start at the beginning.” He takes a step closer. “Tell you about the person I used to be. The guy I was before I discovered this world and its magic.”

“Is that guy supposed to be different from the guy who caused The Destruction? The guy who killed so many people?”

“Yes.”

“How? That guy is you!”

“No! Not anymore.”

I find myself shaking my head again. “I don’t believe you. I can never believe you again after all the lies you—”

“I did not lie to you.” His voice is fierce as he takes another step closer. “I kept things from you, but you knew that. You knew all along that I wasn’t telling you everything, and you agreed with me that it was better to say nothing than to lie.”

I know I said that, but this … who he really is … it’s so much more than any normal secret. “You led me to believe that you were someone else,” I say, trying to keep the tremble from my voice, “and that’s just as bad as lying.”

He looks as though he may want to say something else, but he turns his head away instead, looking out across the murky water.

Leave, that voice inside my head tells me. Leave now.

So I do. I ignore that tiny, stupid part of me that still thinks of him as Chase—that still misses him—and focus on what my brain tells me: He’s a killer. Get. Away. Now.

He doesn’t come after me, but I run into the faerie paths anyway. My breath catches, my hands shake, and I stumble out the other side onto the old Guild ruins. A cool breeze curls along my bare arms, sending another shiver through me. I wrap my arms around my body as I pace the ruins. Why, why, why did he show up tonight? Why is he still entangled in my life? Why can’t I rewind time and pick a different house to break into and never find myself involved with him in the first place?

I press my hands against my face—and then I remember the assignment race. “Shoot,” I mutter out loud, dropping my hands to my sides. I’m supposed to be back at the Guild now. I’m supposed to have successfully completed my assignment. And while I did manage to keep the women from becoming the wolf-man’s dinner, I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do when Olive puts my tracker band into the replay device and sees another person arriving at the scene, capturing the wolf-man, and then having a tense conversation with me. Replay devices haven’t yet advanced to the level where sound can be replayed, but the scene is suspicious enough without our exact words. Olive will want to know who the man is. And I can’t tell her that.

Some tiny part of my wonders why. Why can’t I tell her? Why can’t I tell everyone at the Guild what I know? Then they can hunt Draven down, capture him, and hand out whatever sentence he deserves for all the terrible things he’s done.

He isn’t just Draven. He’s Chase. You care for him. You don’t want that kind of fate for him.

“Shut up,” I whisper to myself. I should want him to be captured, but I don’t, and that disturbs me. So I push the thought aside, refusing to examine it more closely. With shaking fingers, I remove my tracker band. I place it on the ground. I pick up a rock and bring it down again and again until the strip of leather is battered and perforated. Then I light a fire with a snap of my fingers and watch it burn. It takes a while—probably because of the protective enchantments embedded in the leather—but the flames are magical too, and eventually the tracker band disintegrates.

Then I pull my knife from my boot—the knife from Dad, the one Saber stabbed me with—grit my teeth, and cut a shallow wound into my arm. I spread the blood around a bit, wipe some of it onto my clothes, then wait for the wound to heal.

When I get back to Olive’s office—not in last position, she tells me, but close enough—I explain that the wolf bit my arm and tore the tracker band off. She crosses her arms, her expression telling me she doesn’t quite believe me. “How fortunate the wolf didn’t rip your entire hand off along with the tracker band.”

“Yes. It was definitely fortunate that he didn’t get his teeth right around my wrist.”

“How do you expect me to award you any points if I can’t see how you performed on this assignment?”

“I don’t know. The two women got away safely, if that counts for anything. But I suppose you’ll have to take my word for it.”

“Your word,” Olive says with a humorless laugh. She shakes her head. “Zero,” she snaps. “And be grateful I’m not giving you negative points.”

Grateful? I’m grateful I didn’t have to kill the wolf-man. I’m grateful Olive didn’t see my tracker band. And I’m grateful she knows nothing about Chase. Because despite the fact that it makes me no better than a traitor, I can’t escape the feeling that I don’t ever want him to wind up in the clutches of the Guild.