Seconds later, I stumble to a halt in the Underground tunnel outside Chase’s old house. I spin around quickly, but there’s no one else here. It’s empty, dim, and quiet except for the sound of my gasping breaths. I sit down immediately and pull up the bottom of my right pant leg. I’m not sure exactly where the line is that Councilor Merrydale drew around my ankle, so I hold the tiny key just above my skin, hoping that will help. When nothing happens, I move it around a bit. Slowly, the thick line becomes visible. I find the point where the two ends of the line overlap. Feeling stupid, I place the end of the key on my skin and turn it, just as Councilor Merrydale did. The ends of the line spring apart, like an animated tattoo, before the entire line quickly fades away.
I drop the key and stand. I can’t bare to keep still, so I pace the paved tunnel floor, walking back and forth past the front door that once belonged to Chase.
I don’t know what to do.
I don’t know where to go.
I press my hands to my face as tears well up. This is such a mess. Almost every guardian in Creepy Hollow thinks I’m an enemy now when all I’ve ever wanted is to be one of them. How did everything go wrong so quickly?
Somewhere behind me, in a nearby tunnel, I hear footsteps. Lots of them. I drop my hands and turn around, listening carefully. “… must be here somewhere,” a voice says. “Split up and find her.”
Oh crap. Oh CRAP! How did they find me?
My amber.
I don’t have the best anti-tracking spells on it. It’s not as though being tracked is something I’ve had to worry about since Draven’s reign ended. I slip my hand into my back pocket and pull out the amber. I toss it onto the tunnel floor, and then, just in case there’s anything on it that might give away how much my family knows about me, I bring my heel down on it, smashing it in half.
Then I run.
Blindly, from one tunnel to the next, with no thought for which direction I’m going in. The tunnels must be teeming with guardians, though, because no matter where I turn, I still hear their voices, their footsteps. And if these tunnels are all connected, then pretty soon I’m bound to run right into a group of them.
“Oh!” I turn a corner and slam into somebody. I push backward against him, slashing the air with a knife the moment there’s space between us.
“It’s me!” a familiar voice says, backing up with raised hands. “It’s just me,” Chase says.
My shoulders droop with relief, although I can’t help wondering if I might be safer locked up at the Guild than in the company of the man once known as Lord Draven.
“Why haven’t you opened a doorway instead of running mindlessly around the tunnels?” he asks.
“I didn’t think I had time to stop and—”
“Come on.” He takes my hand in one of his while writing a doorway spell onto the tunnel wall.
“No.” I pull my hand away and step back as a doorway to the faerie paths materializes. “I … I don’t want to go anywhere with you.”
“Are you serious? You don’t have time to stop and open a doorway, but you have time to stop and consider whether it’s safer to come with me or wait here until whoever’s chasing you catches up?”
“I don’t trust you,” I whisper fiercely as footsteps grow louder and then softer; a group of guardians running along a nearby tunnel. “I know who you are and what you’ve done. I’d be crazy to go anywhere with you.”
“Did I ever hurt you when you didn’t know who I was? No. How many times have I saved your life?”
“Um …”
“Exactly. You know I’m not that guy anymore. If you thought I was, you’d have set the Guild on my trail the day you found out who I am. Or you’d have told your mentor after I turned up at your assignment, or shouted it out at the Liberation Day Ball. But you’ve kept quiet. You’re angry with me—and I don’t deny that you have the right to be—but you can’t honestly tell me you think I’m a danger to you.”
“Stop telling me what I should and shouldn’t be thinking and where I should be going!” I whisper-yell. I swipe at the moisture beneath my eyes, looking behind me as footsteps and shouts grow louder once more. As mad as I am at Chase, I have to admit that he’s right. There’s a reason I’ve kept quiet every time I could have told the Guild about him, and he knows exactly what it is: I don’t believe he’s that person anymore. But he was that person, and he did kill countless people, and just because I choose to go with him now doesn’t mean I can ever forget that.
I see the first guardian run around the corner and I make my decision. “Fine. Let’s go.” I put my hand into Chase’s and hurry through the doorway with him. As darkness fills the space around us, I keep my mind blank. Dim light appears ahead: another Underground tunnel, but, judging from the silence that greets us as we step into it, it’s far from the one we were just in.
“Are you sure they have no other way of tracking you?” Chase asks, walking out of the paths and turning to face me.
“I’m sure.”
“Okay.” He turns and opens another doorway. “Let’s get—”
“There!” comes a shout from nearby. Noise fills the tunnel suddenly, as though every guardian chasing me has just arrived. Arrows whizz past us. I flatten myself against the tunnel wall as Chase holds his hand up, raising an invisible shield. “How are they tracking you?” he demands.
“I don’t know!”
“You’d better figure it out quickly,” he says, his voice strained. “I may have a lot of power, but I can’t hold off this many people forever. And if we jump through the paths they’ll simply keep following us. They shouldn’t be able to track you once you’re inside the mountain, but I’d rather not risk—”
“Oh.” My hand flies to my neck. “My trainee pendant. They must be tracking that.” My fingers feel for the chain. I lift it over my head, my heart clenching as I silently whisper goodbye to this one last part of my guardian life. Then I throw it down the tunnel.
My hand is in Chase’s and we’re in utter darkness once more. Then another tunnel, silent again. “Give it a minute,” Chase says, holding his hand up and listening carefully. A quiet pair of footsteps moves toward us, but it turns out to be a reptiscillan girl wandering along with her nose in a book. She looks startled when she glances up and realizes she isn’t alone. Her gaze turns suspicious as she passes us, quickening her pace.
Chase lifts his hand and his stylus moves quickly across the wall, writing the words for yet another doorway. I follow him, forcing my mind back to that blessedly blank state where all I think of is the darkness of the faerie paths surrounding me. But the blank state can’t last, and the moment we step into the quiet living room of the lakeside house, every weight of the past few days drops on top of me again. All the people who’ve died, my biggest secret out in the open, my guardian future ripped away from me, losing my friends, leaving my family to be interrogated by the Guild.
With a barely stifled sob, I walk to the front door, unlock it, and step out onto the porch. The moon is higher now than when we ran through this house earlier. Wisps of cloud drift slowly across it, growing blurry as tears gather in my eyes. I wonder if my guardian weapons are gone, or if I still have access to that one piece of the life I’ve now lost. The weapons are tied to guardian markings, but I don’t have those yet, which means they’re probably linked to my pendant in some way. So if the Guild destroys my pendant … I reach slowly into the air and try to grasp a knife.
Nothing.
I tilt my head back and squeeze more tears from my eyes. “Gone,” I whisper.
Exhaustion adds itself to the weight I’m carrying. Where I couldn’t bear to keep still earlier, now even standing feels like too much of an effort. I move to the side of the porch and sit down, pulling my knees up to my chest and leaning against the railing.
Chase walks onto the porch and stares at the lake. “Those were guardians who were after you,” he says quietly. “What happened?”
I press my lips together as hot tears trav
el down my cheeks. “They know about my Griffin Ability,” I murmur. “They expelled me.”
I sense Chase turning to look at me, but I keep my eyes pointed at the floor in front of my feet. “Calla, I’m—”
“Don’t.” I don’t want to hear anyone say they’re sorry. It makes no difference. It doesn’t fix anything.
He walks to the other side of the porch and back. He rubs his neck. He looks at me again, but says nothing. I guess he can’t figure out what to say. I don’t ask him to leave. I don’t ask him to stay. I want both. Neither. I want him to fix this unfixable mess so I can go back to the life I’ve always wanted. The life I came so close to getting. No one can fix this, though. Not even him.
Finally Chase lowers himself to the floor. He leans back against the wall beside the front door. He stares at the lake, and I stare at the floor, and the only sound is the occasional whisper of leaves rustling against each other in the nearby trees. I run my tongue along the cut on the inside of my lip as silent tears continue to wet my cheeks. I feel brittle and alone, and all I want is someone’s arms around me, promising me that everything will be okay. But it seems I’ll never have anything I truly want.
More silence. More tears. The moon climbs a little higher.
“I really liked you,” I whisper after an indeterminate amount of time has passed. “Why did you have to turn out to be … him?”
He rubs a hand over his face and says, “I’m sorry. I wish every day that I wasn’t. I wish I could go back and choose a different path.”
I wipe my tears away and wrap my arms around my legs. Quietly I ask, “How can you live with what you’ve done?”
His jaw tenses. He takes a shuddering breath. “With great difficulty.” He presses his trembling lips together, and when he turns his head the other way, I wonder if it’s to hide tears. “There is blood on my hands that can never be washed off,” he says in a raspy voice. “I will spend the rest of my life trying to make up for what I’ve done, and it will never be enough.”
No, I think to myself. It won’t be. How can one person ever make up for that much wrong?
Appearing to have his emotions under control, he looks back out at the lake again. There are so many things I want to ask him. So many things I want to understand. And talking about him is easier than talking about me. “You’re a halfling,” I say. “Why do you look like a faerie?”
He turns his gaze to me and says, “It’s simple. The pale color in my hair is a result of bleach. The pale color in my eyes is due to contact lenses. I could never find quite the right color to match my hair, but this seemed close enough.”
“Contact lenses? Those things humans put in their eyes to help them see better?”
“Yes. They aren’t only to correct vision. Some are colored. It’s a simple camouflage faeries wouldn’t expect.”
I watch him for a moment, then say, “I want to see your real eyes.”
Without a word, he stands and goes back into the house. He walks out a minute later and, instead of returning to his spot against the wall, he sits in front of me, close enough that I can properly see his face, but leaving a comfortable amount of space between us. He looks into my eyes, and I look into his. They’re a warm, rich brown. These are the eyes I saw behind the panther mask at the Liberation Ball. These are his eyes.
“No more deception,” he says.
I nod. “No more deception.” I hug my knees closer and say, “Tell me the truth. All of it.”
“All of it? We may be here for some time.”
I shrug and try to push my sadness aside. “It doesn’t matter. I have nowhere else to go.”
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
My name is Nathaniel Aaron Chase. I was born in the human realm twenty-eight years ago to a faerie mother and a human father. Her name was Angelica, and she disappeared not too long after I was born. After my dad recovered from his broken heart, he met and married the woman who became my real mother.
I lived a sheltered life. I had no siblings, and my parents provided me with pretty much anything I wanted. I wouldn’t say I turned out to be a spoiled brat, but I certainly knew nothing about suffering. I was innocent, naive, and I’d never had to make a difficult choice in my life. Then one night a faerie girl showed up in my bedroom, and everything changed.
I was totally unprepared for the world I discovered. This world of magic where almost anything I’d thought impossible suddenly became possible. I thought it was amazing at first, the forest and the colors and the creatures and the spells. And the faerie girl—Violet—was even more incredible. I fell for her quickly. I even thought I loved her.
But things went wrong almost immediately. There was a prince, an Unseelie prince, and he wanted things he shouldn’t want. He wanted his mother’s throne, he wanted an army of Gifted fae—along with the guardian whose special ability allowed her to find them—and he wanted the power that once belonged to the infamous halfling, Tharros Mizreth. This power was locked in a chest, and only Angelica knew where the chest was. She also knew how to unlock it.
So how did I end up entangled in this Unseelie prince’s plot? Well, I had a connection to Angelica and to the Guild. I could help Prince Zell get everything he wanted. And once it turned out that I had magic of my own—and not only magic, but a Griffin Ability too—Zell used that as his bargaining chip. I had no hope of controlling this power that had suddenly awoken within me, but Zell introduced me to someone who could help. A girl who called herself Scarlett. A girl who was half siren and had no problem using her enticing powers on me or anyone else. I learned to protect myself from her influence eventually, but back then, lost as I was in this new and dangerous world of magic, I found her powers hard to resist.
I wound up stuck in the middle then, with the girl I loved on one side and the guy who threatened my family and promised to teach me about my magic on the other. It was a dangerous game to play, trying to keep both sides happy. Zell watched my every move, so I couldn’t tell Violet about him. And I didn’t tell Zell that Violet was the guardian he was looking for. Instead I hoped to find my own way out of this mess before he could get his hands on her. But it wasn’t long, of course, before Zell found out that I’d been lying to him and that she was the one who could find people. After punishing me, he told me I had to deliver her to him. He threatened my parents so that I’d have no choice but to comply. But I loved Vi, and I didn’t want to simply hand her over.
I came up with a plan. It was stupid, barely a plan at all, but I thought it would be enough to keep everyone safe. In the end, it did, but Vi hated me after that. I knew she’d never trust me again. Zell refused to let me go—he wanted to use me for my power over the weather—and even if he had allowed me to leave, where would I have gone? He was right when he said I’d never belong in the human world again. Not with all that power waiting to erupt from me at any moment. There was no one in my old life who could possibly understand what I had been through and what I was still going through. I watched my parents from a distance, hurt and confused and heartbroken with no idea as to why their son had simply disappeared one day. But at least they were safe.
I was forced to watch Zell’s plan coming together. I was even forced to help bring in some of the Gifted people he was hunting down. Not you, though I remember seeing you there. I remember looking into that dungeon and hating it. Hating myself for being part of it and doing nothing to stop it. When I could take it no longer, I ran. I had no plan at all. I simply left. I cast some protective spells around my parents’ house, and then I fled into Creepy Hollow, looking for Vi. She was my last hope. I knew she hated me, but I had nowhere else to turn, and I hoped she would hear me out and somehow forgive me.
She didn’t. She told me she never wanted to see me again, and it hurt more than I expected. The decision I made then changed the course of history: I went back to Zell. I shouldn’t have. I should have gone off on my own. I probably could have made it work. I could have found some community of kind people willing to
help out a halfling still learning about his terrifyingly destructive power over the weather.
Or perhaps not. I’ll never know.
I didn’t believe I could do it on my own. I thought Zell and Scarlett were the only ones left who could help me. So I returned to the Unseelie Court, hoping Zell hadn’t noticed my brief disappearance. He had, though. He dragged me off to the human realm, to my parents’ house, where he easily broke through the protection I’d put around them. Then he murdered my parents while I was forced to watch.
Something inside me broke that day. I had nothing left to fight for. On the one hand, I had my unbearable grief, and on the other, my boiling hatred for Zell—and for Violet, who could have prevented this by forgiving me and taking me back into her life. It seemed to me I had a choice: death or revenge. Unfortunately for the entire fae realm, I chose revenge. I kept my mouth shut and did everything Zell told me to. In order to gain his trust once more, I finally told him where Angelica was hiding, in the center of a labyrinth she’d built to keep the chest of power hidden. Then I helped Zell find the last griffin disc. To him, I seemed like a loyal servant.
But in the end, when we opened the chest, I killed him and took all of that power into myself. And the plan that I’d carefully and secretly been putting into place, the plan that only Angelica knew about, began to unfold. The Creepy Hollow Guild exploded because of a device Violet had unknowingly planted there for me. The Gifted army was now mine to control—with an enchanted mark I placed on everyone’s palm—and one of them started the enchanted fire. The powerful winds I set in motion helped to spread the fire quickly. We attacked the Unseelie Palace, the Seelie Palace, all the Guilds across the realm. By morning, our world had changed completely. Everyone knew of The Destruction and Lord Draven.
There was so much power contained within me. Everything was so easy. I could do anything. But there was something else that was different aside from the increase in power. I didn’t quite feel like the same person. As time passed, there seemed to be less of me and more of … him. Tharros. His ideals and his desires. In the beginning, my plan had been about destroying Zell’s world. Destroying Violet’s world. Pain and the desire for revenge had led me there. But once that ancient power was within me, influencing me, taking over, I wanted more. I wanted our entire realm to kneel at my feet. I wanted the human realm to kneel at my feet. And that didn’t come from me—it came from him.