My head ached, and my ears were ringing, and my brain still wasn’t quite working at peak capacity. For a moment, I just sat there, staring, coughing as each breath brought more smoke and dust into my lungs.
Everywhere around me, people were screaming. The servant who had been pulling on the princess’s chair lay crumpled in a bloody heap against the wall, and it looked like a couple of the other servants who’d been nearby had been hurt as well.
I glanced frantically around, looking for my dad and my friends. Ethan was just staggering to his feet across the table from me, helping Kimber up as he did. Neither of them seemed badly hurt, thank God. Beside me, looking almost as dazed as I felt, Keane pulled a wooden splinter the size of a steak knife out of his shoulder.
“Are you all right?” I yelled at him, probably talking too loud because my ears were ringing.
He coughed and nodded. And then my dad jumped over the flaming table—no doubt assisted by magic. There was blood on his face, and it looked like his suit had been singed, but otherwise he looked okay. He bent and put his arm around me, hauling me to my feet.
“Come on,” he said.
Instinctively, I grabbed my backpack, just barely getting a grip on it before my dad shoved me toward the nearest door and beckoned for Keane to follow. A couple of the Fae servants were trying to put out the fire by beating it with their jackets, but that didn’t seem likely to work. They needed fire extinguishers, but there weren’t any available in Faerie.
“Ethan! Kimber!” my dad shouted over the noise of the flames and the frantic servants. “Come on. Hurry!”
They had to take the long way around the table—I guess Ethan’s magic wasn’t up to carrying him and Kimber over without them being French fried—and by the time they reached my side, Dad was practically sprinting out the door, still holding my arm.
I stumbled to keep up as my friends followed close behind.
“Where are we going?” I asked. My throat was raw, and I had to cough before I could find my voice again. “People need help in there!”
I tried to slow down, but Dad was having none of it. And Keane pushed on my back, just in case I didn’t get the hint.
“A bomb just went off in that room,” my dad said to me as we continued to run. “There are no bombs in Faerie.”
I coughed again, then checked over my shoulder to make sure Ethan and Kimber were still there. They were. Ethan’s face was a study of determination, and Kimber looked pale and shaky, leaning on him a bit as they ran. I hoped she wasn’t hurt.
There are no bombs in Faerie. Of course there weren’t, not naturally. But with a Faeriewalker in the vicinity …
Oh, shit.
I started shaking my head as we ran. We were beginning to pass others who were running the other way, investigating the blast. A couple of them tried to stop us to ask what was going on, but Dad kept forcing us to run.
“They won’t think…” I started, but I didn’t finish the sentence, because oh, yes, they would think! I was the only Faeriewalker in the world, and a bomb could only work if it was in a Faeriewalker’s presence—and had been for the entire time since that Faeriewalker had crossed the border from Avalon to Faerie. Anyone would assume I was the one who’d brought the bomb.
“Oh my God,” I breathed as we pounded down the hallway then burst out of a door into the courtyard. The imposing stone walls and turrets loomed over us menacingly, making me feel even smaller and more scared than I already was. Torches lit the courtyard brightly, but their light didn’t reach the tops of the walls, which disappeared into the darkness.
There weren’t a whole lot of people around at this time of night, but those who were there didn’t seem particularly alarmed. I wondered if they’d been able to hear the blast out here with all those layers of stone to muffle it. Maybe even if they had, they wouldn’t know what it was, might think it was just thunder.
Dad looked at me with wild, frightened eyes. “You have to keep running,” he said to me, pointing toward the gate that we’d passed through earlier today. “Get back to Avalon.” He turned to Ethan. “If you have any concealment magic, I suggest you use it. They’re confused by the blast right now, but they’ll quickly regroup and come after you. I know you’re good at magic, but don’t risk the standing stones. Take the long way around.” Then he turned to Keane. “Keep her safe!” he ordered.
“Wait a minute!” I cried, but Dad wasn’t listening to me. I felt magic building around us, and I didn’t know whose it was.
“Run,” my dad said, giving me a shove.
I was too confused to do more than stumble forward. Okay, I knew things probably looked kind of bad right now, but surely once things settled down, people would realize that I couldn’t be the one responsible for the bomb. Right? After all, I wasn’t guilty.
Only, it sort of had to be me. During the Bogle attack, I’d been carried miles away from the rest of our caravan, so if someone there had brought a bomb with them, meaning to stick close to me until they had a chance to set it off, then their plan would have been foiled. But I’d had nothing with me but my backpack when Phaedra had run away, and I was damn sure there hadn’t been a bomb in it.
“Come on,” Keane said urgently, grabbing my arm.
“Dad?” I asked, realizing that he was telling us to run but wasn’t running himself.
“I’ll hold them off as long as I can,” he said grimly, then looked back and forth between Keane and Ethan. “Get her out of here before it’s too late.”
“Wait! No!” I cried, but Ethan grabbed hold of my other arm, and he and Keane started dragging me toward the gate, Kimber limping along behind us.
“We can’t leave my dad here alone,” I protested, turning a pleading gaze on Keane. “Or yours!”
I had a strong suspicion that if I wasn’t around to take the blame, my dad and Finn—wherever he was—would pay the price for me. And if I wasn’t around, it would be pretty damn hard to prove my innocence.
“We have to,” Keane said, still pulling me. His eyes were glassy, as if he were on the verge of crying, although he was too much of a manly man to allow that to happen.
I still didn’t want to go, didn’t want to leave my dad and Finn to face the wrath of the Seelie Court. But Ethan, Keane, and Kimber weren’t going anywhere without me, and even if I wanted to stay and defend myself, I couldn’t in good conscience drag them down with me. Maybe Titania would hold them blameless, maybe she would figure the blame belonged entirely on me and my dad, but I didn’t dare take the chance. Dad was telling me to run for a reason, and it wasn’t because he expected things to go well when the members of the Court figured out what had happened and decided I had to be responsible.
With a sound somewhere between a sob and another hacking cough, I allowed my friends to drag me away. I looked over my shoulder as we passed through the gate. The last thing I saw before I turned and ran was my father, standing there alone, with those prison-like walls all around him as he prepared for a battle he knew he couldn’t win.
We managed to make it through the gate without anyone chasing us, though we weren’t exactly inconspicuous, running at top speed as we were. At least we would have the cover of darkness once we got away from the torches that lit the gate area.
“We have to get off the road ASAP,” Keane panted, then coughed. It worried me that he was out of breath, seeing as he could usually spar for like an hour without being even slightly winded. How much smoke had we all inhaled?
“No shit, Einstein,” Ethan responded, and I couldn’t believe he was wasting breath on his feud with Keane at a time like this.
Keane gave him a dirty look, but otherwise didn’t respond, which I thought showed admirable restraint. Magic prickled in the air around me, and Ethan pulled me close enough to put his arm around me. “Stay close,” he told me. “I’ve been working on my invisibility spell, and I can cover us with it, at least for a while.”
Of course, I had the ability to make myself invisible without Ethan’s help. I almost opened my big mouth to tell everyone about the Erlking’s brooch, but decided at the last minute not to. Not because I wasn’t willing to face their anger at my long deceit—well, yeah, maybe a little because of that—but because I was afraid that if they knew about the brooch, they’d make me use it to run off without them.
There was only so long Ethan’s little spell was going to last, and once he ran out of juice, we were probably going to be sitting ducks. I could already see the strain on his face, and I could only imagine how much power it was taking for him to extend his invisibility shield over all of us while running at top speed. And still coughing from the smoke inhalation, to boot. If I knew my friends at all, if they knew about my brooch, then once Ethan’s spell gave out, they’d want me to use the brooch and go on without them. I supposed I’d be safer without them if I could be invisible and they couldn’t, but there was no way in hell I was going to abandon them, no matter how practical it might be. I wouldn’t have run in the first place if my father and the boys hadn’t bullied me into it, and I still felt terrible for leaving my dad and Finn to face the music.
We ran down the road until we rounded a bend that hid us from the view of anyone hanging around the gate, and then Keane directed us off the road and into the trees. Personally, I didn’t have high hopes that we were going to evade anyone. It might take a little while for the folks at the palace to figure out what had happened, pin the blame on me, and organize a pursuit, but we were on foot, and we didn’t know our way around. Surely we’d have to stick close to the road so we wouldn’t get completely lost, and that would make us pretty damn easy to find. At least the heavily forested town gave us some cover.
Ethan slowed down as we crashed through the underbrush, and because he had his arm around me, I was forced to slow down, too. Keane and Kimber both kept going full speed for a moment, then stopped and looked back at us with wide eyes.
“What are you doing?” Keane cried. “We’ve got to haul ass.”
Ethan shook his head. “You can bet they have a tracker who can follow the trail we’re leaving.” He pointed at a couple of bushes we’d just plowed through. It was dark out here under the trees, although the moon was bright and close to full. I had to be practically on top of the bush to see what Ethan was pointing at, but then I saw a couple of broken branches. If I could see our trail, then someone with superior tracking skills would have no trouble picking it up.
“Shite,” Keane muttered, and I couldn’t have agreed more.
“Well, we can’t just stand here!” Kimber said, and she was right, too.
Ethan’s brow furrowed. “I can create an illusion to hide our trail if we move slowly enough.”
“And by the time we’ve gotten a hundred yards, they’ll be on top of us,” Keane argued. “Trail or no trail, we’ve got to move.”
“No point in moving if they’re just going to catch up with us immediately,” Ethan countered. “We need to hide. They’re going to assume we’re running like hell for the Avalon border, just like Seamus told us to. If we can hide ourselves, we can let the pursuit go straight past us. Once they’re gone, then we can get moving again.”
“So you want us to just sit here and cower,” Keane growled, and there was that curl of his lip again.
I knew the boys were going to keep arguing if I didn’t intervene, and we didn’t have time for it.
“If you can hide us, do,” I said to Ethan, then turned to Keane. “We’re not cowering. We’re trying to be smart about this, and Ethan’s right. Leaving a trail anyone and their brother can follow is going to get us caught real fast.”
Keane didn’t like it one bit, and I thought he was going to waste more time arguing with me. But I guess it was easier for him to concede the argument to me than to Ethan, because he nodded tightly.
“This had better work,” he warned Ethan, giving him a narrow-eyed stare that would have been more intimidating if we weren’t running for our lives. If this didn’t work, Keane was going to be the least of Ethan’s worries.
“It will,” Ethan said, though I wondered if that was confidence, or arrogance. “I’ll run back to the road and do what I can to hide the evidence of where we veered off.” He looked back and forth between the three of us. “If I get caught, I’ll holler.” His eyes landed on Keane. “If that happens, it’ll be up to you to protect the girls.”
Kimber punched Ethan in the shoulder. “We’re not helpless damsels in distress. We don’t need protecting.”
Even in the darkness, I could see Ethan rolling his eyes. “Fine, you two protect Keane. Just don’t try to play hero if I get caught.”
“Don’t worry,” Keane muttered, “we won’t.”
Ethan pretended not to hear him, slipping away from us and heading back toward the road. Leaving the three of us alone and strung out on adrenaline in the darkness of the forest.
At first, I could hear the rustle of Ethan’s footsteps as he moved away. Then there was nothing but the sound of crickets and the occasional hoot of an owl.
My heart was still thudding in my throat, and I still felt like my lungs were coated with soot. I didn’t dare cough, not when the road was so close by, but the very fact that I didn’t dare cough made the urge even stronger.
Keane had taken a couple steps toward the bushes through which Ethan had disappeared, putting himself between Kimber and me and the road. He probably thought he was being subtle, but you could bet that if Ethan shouted an alarm, Keane would stand there to cover our retreat while ordering Kimber and me to run. What he could do to protect us when he was apparently unarmed, I didn’t know.
And that was when I remembered the gun my father had given me before we’d set out. Like every other mortal artifact I’d brought with me, it was in my backpack. I wasn’t sure I could shoot anyone, even in self-defense, and I doubted killing our pursuers would make my situation any better, but at least I didn’t have to feel completely helpless.
Moving as quietly as possible, I slid the backpack off my shoulders and lowered it to the ground. Keane jerked at even the small noise I made, turning to me and putting his finger to his lips. I ignored his furious look, digging through the backpack until I found the case at the very bottom.
When I pulled out the small silver gun, Keane gaped at me. I hadn’t told anyone I had it. Kimber looked at me with a raised eyebrow, but she seemed less shocked and more amused by my possession of a firearm. I stood up slowly, keeping the gun pointed at the ground and the safety on.
“Do you know how to use that thing?” Keane asked in a whisper so quiet you could almost mistake it for the wind.
I put my finger to my lips, happy to be able to return his gesture, then nodded. Hey, he only asked me if I knew how to use it, not if I was any good at using it. I think he read between the lines, based on the look of pure skepticism he gave me.
“Just don’t shoot me in the back,” he said, and this time both Kimber and I put our fingers to our lips. He shook his head and turned back to face the remnants of our trail.
We were quickly back to the oppressive silence, although soon an unfamiliar, high-pitched whine added to the cricket-and-owl chorus. I hoped it was just some harmless kind of Fae insect or frog rather than some terrifying night-stalking monster. I comforted myself that neither Kimber nor Keane seemed alarmed by it.
The quiet of the night made it easier to hear the pounding sound of horses’ hooves on the road, nowhere near far enough away for my tastes. Kimber reached over and took my hand, squeezing my fingers and biting her lip. I squeezed right back, my heart racing once more as the sound of hooves got closer.
Had Ethan had enough time to cast his illusion spell? It seemed like he’d been gone forever, but time tends to get sort of wonky when you’re in danger, so I wasn’t sure. I flicked the safety off my gun, though I was careful to keep it pointed at the ground and to keep my finger off the trigger. It would be ready for use if worse came to worst, but it would be my absolute last resort.
I couldn’t tell from the sound how many horses there were in the pursuit, but it sure sounded like a lot. I heard at least four distinct voices as the Fae search party called to each other. They were moving pretty fast by the sound of it. I hoped that meant they were moving too fast and wouldn’t notice any telltale signs of our passage even if Ethan hadn’t had enough time to cover us.
I held my breath and squeezed Kimber’s hand more tightly as the sounds moved ever closer … And then moved past, without stopping. The relief made me practically dizzy, and I could see Keane’s shoulders relax as some of the tension drained out of him.
We all listened intently as the search party continued down the road, but there were no shouts of alarm, and no indications that they were turning back. As the sound of the horses faded into the distance, I heard the rustle of undergrowth, and then Ethan appeared before us seemingly out of nowhere.
Keane jumped, and it was probably a good thing he didn’t have the gun, or Ethan would have gotten shot for the second time since I’d met him. Ethan smirked at his nemesis, and though it was too dark to see, I’d have bet anything Keane’s face was turning a uniquely angry shade of red.
“It’s just me,” Ethan said unnecessarily.
“You’re lucky I’m not armed,” Keane said, echoing my sentiments.
“I guess it worked?” I asked, hoping to head the two of them off at the pass.
Ethan made a face, but nodded. “It will keep them off our tail for the time being. I made sure the illusion covered any tracks we might have made near the road, but it only reaches about ten yards into the forest. It’ll hold during the night, but when daylight hits, it’s likely someone will start combing the woods and see around the illusion.”
Ethan’s face looked pale in the moonlight, and he swayed ever so slightly on his feet. He’d probably expended more energy than was wise creating his illusion, especially after inhaling a ton of smoke and then running like hell. Not that he was going to admit it.
“So we need to put as much distance as possible between us and the palace before the sun rises,” Keane said, stating the obvious.
“Without getting ourselves hopelessly lost,” Kimber muttered.
“Or getting eaten by Bogles,” I added, because hey, if we were going to be so cheerful and optimistic, we might as well go all out. “Who has the best sense of direction? I know it isn’t me.”
All three of my friends stifled laughs at that. I’d have been offended if I’d been the least bit sensitive about my ability to get lost in a closet.
“Um, that would probably be me,” Kimber said, surprising me—and Keane, by the look on his face.
Ethan nodded. “No doubt about it,” he agreed, then grinned at Keane. “Unless you’ve got bloodhound in your family tree we don’t know about.”
“The only hound here is you,” Keane retorted.
Kimber and I gave stereo groans, and both the boys shut up, though not without giving each other macho glares.
“Lead the way,” I prompted Kimber, then flicked the safety back on my gun and stuck it in my pocket. Ethan noticed it for the first time, but though he gave me an inquiring look, I didn’t comment, and he didn’t ask any questions.
Trusting Kimber to keep us from straying too far from the road, we all fell into step behind her and started making our way through the darkened forest toward the impossibly distant Avalon border.