Rebel Faerie

Chapter 2

Two

We’re already running as a glimmer of light appears ahead of us. I expect hot sand and a blinding sun, but the light is dim and the air that drifts across my skin is almost icy. “Quickly,” Calla says, pulling me across the sand beneath a night sky bright with a million stars. Our feet sink with every step, slowing us as we try to run toward the dome of magic that conceals the Griffin rebels’ hideout. Calla mutters something, and magic shoves us the final distance, launching us clear through the dome layer. I stumble and run forward a few steps as my feet hit the grass inside the oasis.

The lush landscape is filled with giant trees, bushes laden with flowers, and a river tumbling over rocks in the distance. The breeze is just the right temperature, and a fresh floral scent fills my nose. It’s a piece of paradise hidden in the middle of a desert.

The last time I was here, creeping away with Dani’s sleeping body, I thought I’d never see this place again. I figured the Griffin rebels would never allow my mother and me back in when they discovered she and Ada—a faerie fond of killing people by turning them into glass—actually belonged inside the same body. Returning here—knowing that I belong here, that my family already lives here—is surreal.

“Em, come on,” Calla calls back. She’s already hurrying ahead of me. I run to catch up with her, looking up at one of the enormous trees with a stairway spiraling around its trunk and houses built onto the enormous upper branches. A few days ago, Dani was in one of those tiny houses. I picked her up with magic and walked right out of here. Guilt fills me every time I think of how I failed her. Instead of waking her and giving her a happy life, she ended up trapped inside a body that Ada controlled, and then pushed off the side of Velazar.

As we run past the tree, I sense my Griffin Ability—the special magic that lends my voice incredible power—has almost replenished itself. Out of habit, I look down at my wrist to check the level of the ruby’s color. But my bracelet is gone, of course. Calla told me to throw it away after we escaped the shadow world. Having been commissioned by a controlling Unseelie prince, she was worried it might have some kind of tracking enchantment on it. “They shouldn’t be able to detect it once you’re beneath the oasis dome,” she said, “but it’s better to be careful.”

We continue running. Past the hammocks, past the house they call ‘the mountain’ where meetings are held, and past the orchard. When we finally stop outside one of four little houses in a row, I bend over to catch my breath. Calla walks up the porch steps and knocks. Without waiting, she opens the door and walks inside.

At that moment, my Griffin Ability’s magic floods through my body. I concentrate fiercely for several moments, pushing it down so I can use it at another time instead of losing it all in whatever I say next. When I’m confident I’ve got it under control, I straighten and hurry into the house after Calla.

“Gaius?” she’s busy calling. “Gaius, are you awake?”

I try to remember whether I’ve heard that name before. Thinking back to the many things Vi and Ryn’s son Jack—my brother, I remind myself with a startling jolt—told me the day I first got here, I remember he mentioned someone named Gaius. Uncle Gaius, he called him. He said Uncle Gaius was one of the people in charge here, but because he’s sick he doesn’t come out of his house much.

I follow Calla into a room that’s part study, part living room, with plants crawling across almost every surface. A skinny man with hair pointing in every direction turns away from the window to face us. My mind has conjured up an image of someone old and frail, but of course, he looks about the same age as every other adult faerie I’ve met in this world—thirty-something at most.

“Calla!” he exclaims. “Thank goodness. And—it’s Em, right?” he asks, looking at me.

“Have you heard?” Calla asks before I can say anything. “Do you know what’s happened?”

“Yes.” His expression becomes somber. “Vi and Ryn were captured. We’re doing everything we can to—”

“Everyone who went to rescue them has been caught.”

Gaius freezes with his mouth half open. His eyes widen further. Then he reaches with a shaky hand for the chair behind his desk. Slowly, he lowers himself into it.

“Who did you send?” Calla asks. “Was Chase there?”

“No. He hasn’t returned from Lunar Mountain yet.”

Calla breathes out heavily as she nods. “So who are the eight people then?”

“Everyone mission-approved who wasn’t already out working on something.” Gaius reaches for a scroll of paper and pushes it across the desk toward Calla. “Here’s the list.”

She takes the paper while I fold my arms over my chest and hover nearby. “Darius, Lumethon, Orange …” Calla murmurs several other names, none of which I recognize. “Crap, even Ana?” she adds. “Ana hates leaving the oasis.”

“Yes, and once we get her back, I doubt she’ll ever leave again.”

Lowering the page, Calla asks, “Why did she go along in the first place?”

Gaius leans forward. “We had a meeting as soon as I received the news from Perry that Vi and Ryn were being taken to The Noxsom Facility. Rather than spend more time planning, we collectively decided the sooner we carried out the rescue the better. From what we know, The Noxsom Facility has several levels of security and it takes some time for prisoners to be processed completely and placed within the torture simulation. So—”

“Torture?” I interrupt, a sick feeling twisting in my stomach.

“Yes, unfortunately,” Gaius says, turning his serious expression toward me. “That’s the way the Guild has chosen to operate these days when it comes to certain crimes. But as I was saying, the team assumed if they got there as soon as possible, they’d only need to break into the first level. Or, even better, they might arrive at the same time as Vi and Ryn. This was never going to be a mission of stealth. They planned to cause as much havoc as possible and get Vi and Ryn out of there while all the Noxsom employees tried to figure out what was going on. It would seem, unfortunately, that this might have been a trap.”

Calla shakes her head. “They should have waited for me. My skills are invaluable in this kind of mission. You know that. I could have concealed everyone.”

And I could have commanded all the guards with my ability, I think to myself. But it’s pointless to mention that now when it’s too late.

“How long were they supposed to wait for you, Calla?” Gaius asks. “Of course they wanted you with them, but we had no idea where you were or when you’d return. Darius said you followed the Unseelies away from Velazar, and that was the last he saw of you. And even though the team didn’t have your skills, they did have others. They took some of the abilities from the vault.”

“What?” Calla’s voice is almost a screech. “You’re the one who’s always told us what a bad idea that is. That we shouldn’t touch those abilities unless—”

“Unless in extreme circumstances. Everyone voted, and they determined this situation to be extreme. It’s not just about getting Vi and Ryn back. It’s about everything they know. An entire community is at risk if our magical fail-safes don’t hold.”

Calla pushes her hands through her hair and begins pacing the small section of the room not covered by plants, books, scrolls or furniture. “I know that, Gaius. I’m only repeating what you’ve always told us. And now, not only have we lost all those abilities—”

“What abilities?” I ask, too curious now to remain silent.

“—we’ve lost almost everyone who can fight,” Calla finishes, either not hearing me or choosing not to answer.

“We haven’t lost everyone,” Gaius counters, pushing away from the desk and standing. “Those out on other missions will return soon.”

“And how many is that? Four people, right? Chase, Kobe and the Millingjays?”

“Yes. And we can contact others. Elizabeth and Tilly.”

“Good luck finding either of them without Vi. And even if we do manage to find them, that makes only seven of us in total.”

“Eight,” I say, putting my hand up. “What?” I add when they both look at me with doubt. “I have a Griffin Ability. I can help. From the sounds of it, you’ll need all the people you can get.”

Calla moves a few steps closer to me. “Em, we need people who’ve done this kind of thing before. The Noxsom guards will be expecting us, so we need to be ready to fight back. As long as Chase and I go, that’s more than enough power to get our people out.” Her eyebrows pinch together as she looks back at Gaius. “Assuming Chase returns soon. Have you heard anything from him? I sent him a message saying we needed help at Velazar, but he hadn’t got back to me yet by the time I lost my amber.”

Gaius shakes his head as he moves around to the front of his desk. “No, I’ve heard nothing. I’m sure he’s fine, though. You know he goes silent sometimes in the middle of a mission. And this thing with the Argenti elves at Lunar Mountain is complicated.”

Calla sighs. “Yes. I’m sure you’re right. He’s fine.”

“Wait.” I catch hold of her arm before she can start pacing again. “Your amber fell out of your pocket back at Roarke’s castle. Doesn’t that mean he’ll be able to read all the messages people send to you before they realize you don’t have that amber anymore. Roarke could learn valuable information we don’t want him to know.”

“Don’t worry,” she says. “He won’t learn enough for it to be useful to him. We have code names for places, and we don’t sign our names on messages. And Roarke will probably suspect that we might try to deceive him by sending false information, so I doubt he’ll believe everything he reads anyway.”

“But what if he replies to someone pretending he’s you? What if he manages to trick someone into revealing something important?”

Calla answers my question with a frown. “How would he do that? He can’t mimic my handwriting.”

“Oh yes. Handwriting. I forgot about that part.” I fold my arms over my chest again. “So what do we do now?” I ask, moving swiftly past the part where I tried to sound clever and instead made an i***t of myself.

“We do what Calla isn’t particularly good at,” Gaius says with a wry smile. “We wait. Once everyone’s back—including Chase—we plan properly. Failure is not an option.”

“Failure is definitely not an option,” Calla murmurs, staring at the floor.

“Okay. So we wait.” I bite my lip and stare at the carpet. “And we try not to imagine all the horrible things that are happening to the people we care about. And we try not to worry about what Roarke is planning next, and we try not to think about whether Ada survived that fall from the edge of the island or if … if maybe I killed her.” I breathe in deeply, look around for an item of furniture that isn’t already occupied by something else, and end up sitting on the edge of an armchair.

Calla pushes a pile of scrolls onto the floor and takes a seat opposite me. “It’s hard to kill a faerie, Em, so I’m almost certain she survived. And if she did die … well, you were fighting her in self-defense. You never intended to kill her.”

“Yes, but—” I want to explain that it’s not just about whether it was an accident or not. It’s about the fact that Dani was trapped inside that body with Ada. The woman who raised me for the first twelve years of my life also went off the edge of that cliff. That’s what I feel terrible about. But I don’t want to get into the whole Ada-Dani explanation right now, so I just shake my head.

“As for the other things we should be trying not to worry about,” Calla continues. “Yes, I’m sure Roarke is planning something else since he failed to significantly enlarge his world. He was shouting at a guard about the rituals involved in claiming a territory, but he must be planning more than just that.” She returns her gaze to Gaius and tells him about the shadow world and how the two of us escaped. As she finishes, I notice movement near the door and look over to see a tray with two glasses gliding into the room. “Oh, thank you,” Calla says, reaching for one of the glasses. “I didn’t realize how thirsty I was until now.”

Neither she nor Gaius seem surprised by the tray’s arrival, so I decide not to ask about it. I suppose this kind of thing is normal in faerie homes. Kitchens that automatically know when thirsty guests have arrived … or something like that. I reach over and take the second glass. Gold flecks float in clear liquid. It tastes like plain water, but I assume it contains magical properties of some sort. Before I can ask, Gaius says to Calla, “You mentioned seeing a witch with Prince Roarke in this shadow world?”

“Yes. I only glimpsed her briefly when we were hiding in one of the castle rooms, but she was definitely a witch.”

Gaius turns his attention to me. “Do you know anything about the work she was doing for Prince Roarke? That might give us a clue as to what he’s planning next.”

I take another sip of my drink before shaking my head. “The witch’s work didn’t have anything to do with helping him extend his territory.” I wrap both hands around the glass and prepare myself for the detailed explanation I knew I’d have to give at some point. “She was helping him figure out how to reverse a changeling spell. For Ada. And Daniela. The woman who was staying here before I … well, snuck back in and took her. It was Roarke’s back-up bargaining chip in case I wouldn’t agree to marry him.”

Calla holds up a hand. “Okay wait. I am totally lost now. Daniela Clarke was a changeling? Like you?”

“Like Em?” Gaius repeats. “Since when is Emerson a changeling?”

“Hang on, we’ll get back to that,” Calla says, waving away his question. “What’s this about Daniela and Ada?”

I press one hand over my face. “I wish Zed had explained this entire thing to you before you knocked him out. That would have saved me having to do it.”

Calla tilts her head to the side. “Zed knows the woman you thought was your mother?”

“Thought was your … she isn’t really your mother?” Gaius asks.

“Ugh.” I lower my hand, sit back, and explain from the beginning. I start with telling them about Zed’s friend Dani who was Griffin Gifted. She could become two separate people: Dani and an identical person named Ada. I continue all the way through the story until the night Zed forced Ada and Dani to rejoin into one body so he could perform the changeling reversal spell. “It was seriously weird to watch,” I tell Calla and Gaius. “First the part where the two of them were pulled together into one body, and then the part where she began to look different as the changeling spell slowly reversed.” I turn to Calla. “The woman you must have thought was Ada—the blonde woman controlling all that glass on Velazar II—that was Ada and Dani together. That’s what they really look like.”

Calla’s mouth hangs open slightly, and she blinks several times before replying. “I—that’s just—”

“Almost too strange to believe?”

“Yes. I’ve never heard of a changeling spell being done on an adult before. And on Velazar … well, I’d never seen Ada without a mask until then, so I didn’t think anything of the fact that I didn’t recognize her face. And obviously I had no idea she was the same person as Daniela.”

“Yeah.” I look down at my hands twisting together in my lap. “And then my magic pushed her off the edge of that island, and now she might be dead.” I swallow as I try to maintain control of my emotions. “I know Dani isn’t the person I always believed she was, but she isn’t as bad as Ada. She just wanted to live a simple life with me. What she did in order to get that life was wrong, but she was still my mother for all those years. And I might have killed her.”

Calla reaches across the space between us and places her hand over mine. “I doubt it. Faeries are tough, Em. And if Roarke was working with her, he would have ordered someone to retrieve her after she fell. He wouldn’t have wanted to lose her Griffin Ability.”

Gaius slowly raises his hand, for all the world as if he’s requesting permission to ask a question. “This is all extremely complicated and fascinating,” he says, “but can I ask again about Em being a changeling? Because that would imply she was stolen from a faerie family as a baby, and I’m just … wondering …” He pushes away from his desk and moves closer to me. He bends a little and squints as he scrutinizes my face. “I don’t want to say it, in case I’m wrong, but is it possible … that maybe …”

“It’s more than possible,” Calla says, a smile spreading across her face for the first time since we walked in here. “It’s true. I finally located the one person who could confirm it for me yesterday.”

“This … this is …” Gaius looks across his shoulder at her.

She stands and gestures toward me. “Gaius, meet Victoria Larkenwood.”

His mouth drops open. He stares at me. Then at Calla. When he finally finds his voice, he says, “That should have been the first thing you said when you ran in here! This is amazing!” He hugs Calla, then leans down to hug me. I’m not a fan of strangers getting in my personal space, but I have a feeling I’m going to like this guy, so I gingerly pat his back before he pulls away. “I can’t believe you ended up here,” he adds. “With your family. And no one knew.”

“Well of course she ended up with us,” Calla says. “She has a powerful Griffin Ability and was unable to hide it, so she only ever had two options really: caught by the Guild or caught by us. If she didn’t have a Griffin Ability … well, I’d rather not think about how we’d probably never have known she existed.”

“My goodness.” Gaius beams at me. “This is all just … beyond belief. How immensely unfortunate that we now have to plan a massive rescue operation instead of planning a celebration.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll have that celebration,” Calla says. “Just gotta do the rescue thing first.”

“Of course, of course.” Gaius nods vigorously. “Well, uh, can I get you some food? I know it’s late, but you’re probably hungry. We can have a small celebratory meal, if you’d like?”

“Um, actually …” I hesitate, hoping it isn’t terribly rude to refuse a meal. “I’m not that hungry.”

“Ah, yes, the drink.” Gaius gestures to the glass I placed on the floor during my long story about Ada and Dani. “It contains nourishment of some sort.”

“Oh. Cool.” I open my mouth to ask what the gold flecks are, but I find myself yawning instead.

“I think a bath and a sleep are in order,” Calla says. “For both of us.”

The word ‘sleep’ is all it takes for my eyelids to feel as if a weight has been lowered onto them. I don’t know how long I was passed out in that underground cell in the shadow world, but it doesn’t feel like it was nearly long enough to make up for all the activity that came before it. “Well, if we’re not about to rush off somewhere right now …”

“We’re not,” Calla says. “However much I might wish we could.”

I squint at the darkness through the window. “What time is it here anyway? Traveling instantly between time zones is so confusing.”

Gaius looks across his desk at a contraption with numbers spinning slowly around miniature planets and pinpricks of light that might be stars. I don’t have the first clue how to read it, but with just a glance, Gaius says, “It’s a little before midnight.”

I blink a few times. “Yeah. Okay. I could definitely sleep.”

Gaius accompanies us as we walk to the front door. I push both hands into my hoodie pocket, startled for a moment to find that Bandit is gone. I remind myself not to worry, though. He probably crawled out unnoticed in Gaius’s study so he could explore. And with his knack of following me wherever I go, I’m sure he’ll find his way back to me.

“Sleep well,” Gaius tells us as we head down the porch steps.

“Thanks, I hope so,” I answer, my attention already turning inward to the thoughts buzzing around my mind.

“You don’t need to hope,” Calla says as we walk away. “You’re more tired than you think. I’m sure you’ll be asleep before you know it.”

“Even with everything to worry about?”

“Hey.” She reaches for my arm and pulls me to a stop. “This is all going to work out. Sure, the rescue probably won’t go exactly according to plan, but it will be a success. I’ve broken into plenty of places before, including Velazar Prison and both faerie palaces.”

“Both? You’ve been inside the Unseelie Palace?”

“Yes, I was there several days ago. I was too late, though. You’d already escaped. My point,” she says as we continue walking, “is that it’s not impossible to break into Noxsom and free Ryn and Vi and the others. And that’s if they don’t free themselves before we get there. Your parents are pretty good at kicking butt when they get the chance.”

“And when I’m not distracting them and allowing them to get caught,” I mutter.

“Yes.” Calla nods, her tone serious. “I’m sure it was entirely your fault the Guild managed to apprehend them. It can’t possibly have had anything to do with the fact that they were fighting glass soldiers they had to be careful not to touch in case they turned to glass themselves. Or that we were completely outnumbered because we didn’t expect an Unseelie army as well as all the guardians—or the reinforcements that arrived in transporter pods. And that’s all on top of the fact that we only ever planned to observe, not get involved in a small battle. None of that could possibly have had anything to do with them being captured.”

I cross my arms. “Your sarcasm isn’t helping.”

“Blaming yourself doesn’t help either.” She looks up through the nearly transparent dome layer at the stars as she lets out a long sigh. “You know what, Em? Everyone makes mistakes. And trust me on this: the mistakes you’ve made don’t come close to some of the terrible things the other members of your family have done—including me. But you can’t dwell on the things you’ve done wrong.” She places her arm around my shoulders and pulls me against her side as we keep walking. “If you can fix them, then you fix them. If you can’t, then you move on.”

I watch my feet as my tired legs move me step by step toward one of the giant trees, and I decide then that I will do whatever it takes to fix the things I’ve done wrong.