We rush down the stairs, around and around, and almost fall into the sparsely furnished room at the base of the tower. Together we slam the door shut and take a few hasty steps backward. My heel catches on the edge of a rug, and I land on my butt, accidentally pulling Dash down with me. “Are you sure it’s safe here?” he asks, his chest rising and falling rapidly.
I nod, only knowing for sure because I’ve been in this room before. “That thing,” I whisper, “was so cold.” Dash leans closer and bundles me into his arms, and now that I’m finally still and not running for my life, I realize my whole body is shaking. I wrap my arms tightly around him and don’t let go, even when my heart slows and my breathing returns to normal. I finally stop shaking, but still I hold onto his warmth. That creature was so damn cold. I don’t ever want to be that cold again.
Eventually, just as I’m telling myself I should probably let go of Dash, he asks, “Are you all right?”
I detach myself from him and shift a few inches away. “Yes. I think so. It only got me for a few seconds, right? I felt so cold, so tired, but it was only for a little bit.”
Dash nods. “Good. I also meant … about your mother.”
Roarke’s shocking revelation drops onto my shoulders again. I look away from Dash as I shake my head. I press my hands against my face and rub my eyes. “It feels like I’ve been on this crazy see-saw of emotion since I discovered magic and the fae world. She wasn’t my mother, and then she was my mother, and now she isn’t my mother again.” I lower my hands. “I suppose I just have to remember all the things I told myself last time. That it doesn’t matter how we’re related. I still love her the same way. I would still do anything to help her get better. And—Oh! Bandit!” A sudden wriggling against my hip reminds me that I haven’t seen him since we escaped the prison. I’ve hit the ground numerous times, and I haven’t heard a squeak from him. What if he’s hurt? I gently lift the edge of my pocket and peer inside—and tiny lizard eyes stare back at me. “Bandit,” I breathe. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“Wow, he survived a lot,” Dash says. “I wonder if he was in your pocket the whole time.”
“Yeah, I wonder,” I say, my thoughts turning back to Mom again.
“Anyway, we should get back to the oasis. Hey, look at that.” He brightens. “I can say the word. Oasis.”
The oasis. Surrounded by all these muted tones, I long for the color and warmth of the oasis. Hopefully everyone in charge there will forgive me for whatever trouble I’ve put them through and allow me to return. “We must be truly alone if we can talk about the oasis. Well, aside from Zed, but I guess he isn’t close enough to hear us.” I push myself to my feet. “Do you think he made it inside?”
Dash nods as he stands. “Yes. I saw him cross the drawbridge just before we reached the tower.”
“If he’s found any candles, he’s probably gone by now. I wouldn’t hang around if I were him.”
“Yeah. I’m sure he’s got his own life to get back to. I’ll have to see if I can find out anything about him once I’m back at work—if I still have a job, that is. It’s strange that he still has his markings if he’s not working for the Guild anymore. Usually they deactivate those if a guardian leaves the Guild’s service.”
“Do you know how he ended up locked in an Unseelie prison?”
“No. He kept saying he’d tell me about it when we were less drugged. And we never really got to the point where that was the case.” Dash looks around. “So where are these traveling candles you mentioned?”
“Wait. What about Roarke?” I move to the window and look outside, but we’re too far from the spot where the portal was for me to be able to see Roarke. “I need him.”
“You need him?” I look back and see Dash watching me with raised eyebrows.
“You know what I mean. He can heal my mother. Or—you know—the woman I think of as my mother.”
“We’re not taking him with us, Em. Even if I wanted to, the protective enchantment around the oasis would forbid it. Once we’re near him, we won’t remember where we’re supposed to go.”
“Yes, I know. So the only other thing to do,” I continue slowly, knowing that Dash won’t like this, “is to bring Mom here.”
“You realize that’s crazy, right? Your mother is safe right now. If we bring her here, she won’t be. And neither will we.”
“Are you talking about the ink-shades? Because I can command them not to attack any faerie ever again. We only need to wait until tonight for my Griffin Ability to become useful again.”
“Not just the—what did you call them? Ink-shades? I mean what about all the people aside from Roarke who know about this world? His sister, his personal guards, his father. Em, the Unseelie King himself could show up here at any second.”
I lean back against the windowsill and fold my arms over my chest. “The Unseelie King probably thinks we’re still hiding in his palace somewhere.”
“And when he figures out that we’re not? He’ll discover that Roarke is missing too, and where is he going to look first?”
“Honestly, I don’t think it will be here. He doesn’t know Roarke showed me this world. And he won’t see the portal because it isn’t there anymore. Even if the king does think that I somehow overpowered Roarke with the help of my two prisoner friends, he has no reason to suspect we’d bring him here.”
Dash frowns and purses his lips in thought. “I suppose not. So your plan is for us to bring your mother back here, wait until later to command the shadow creatures to leave us alone, then take her to Roarke. I assume you’re planning to still have some power in your voice to command him to wake her and heal her?”
“Yes. And we don’t necessarily have to wait until we can command the ink-shades. We can look for the underground passages that lead back to the hedges out there near where the portal was. We can get to Roarke that way.”
Dash’s frown doesn’t leave his face. “I’m not sure there’s any point in doing that if your Griffin Ability won’t be ready to command him.”
“Right. That’s true.” I let my arms fall back to my sides. “Then yes, we’ll do as you said: fetch Mom, command the ink-shades, command Roarke. And once he’s healed Mom, we’ll leave immediately and go straight back to the oasis.”
“Where we’ll all live happily ever after,” Dash finishes.
“Well …” I look away. “Things never work out that simply, so I assume something will go wrong along the way. Someone unexpected will appear out of the blue and try to screw up our plans, and we’ll have to fight them off, and then we can live happily ever after.”
“There’s my cynical Em.” Dash grins. “I’ve missed you.”
I give him a withering look. “You know I have good reason to be cynical.”
“Yes.” He moves closer and places his hand on my arm. “But sometimes, Em, things do work out. Hopefully this is your time.”
I cover his hand with mine, wishing I could believe him. “Hopefully you’re right.”
“I am.” He rocks forward a little, and for one insane moment I think he means to kiss me. But his hand slides away from my arm and he turns, looking around the room once more. “The candles?” he asks. “Are they around here somewhere?”
“Uh, in the top drawer.” I point to the sideboard. It’s the only other piece of furniture in this room. Apparently Aurora spent days constructing it while teaching herself the relevant spells. Roarke then added his own personal touch by creating a solid gold snake holding a dagger in its mouth for the top of the sideboard.
Dash crosses the room. “I can’t help feeling like this snake is going to come alive and stab me in the hand,” he comments.
“Don’t worry. I don’t think Roarke had time to add delightful enchantments like that to the decorative items in his castle. He was still too busy with the actual architecture.”
Dash takes two candles from the top drawer and leaves another few lying on top of the sideboard beside the snake. “In case Zed hasn’t
found any yet and he comes through here while we’re gone.” He joins me by the window. “So this is the same way the witch candles work? You light them, think of your destination, and you’re taken immediately there?”
“Yes. I think that’s how Roarke and Aurora brought us here the first time.”
He hesitates. “Perhaps one of us should stay here. Keep watch. Just in case someone unwelcome arrives while we’re gone. We don’t want any unpleasant surprises when we get back here with your mom.”
“Mm. Maybe you’re—”
The handle of the door leading to the next room twists. Dash drops the candles. Without thinking, I launch across the room, bring myself to a halt against the sideboard, and yank the dagger free from the snake’s mouth. The door swings open.
“Whoa.” Zed holds his hands up the moment he sees me brandishing the dagger. “It’s just me.”
“Sorry.” I lower the weapon I would have had no idea what to do with if it hadn’t been Zed who walked in. “I assumed you would have found a candle by now and left.”
He nods as he heaves a sigh. “I did find some candles. I could have left. I could have vanished and never seen the two of you ever again. But …” One fist clenches and unclenches as he stares at the ground by my feet. “I owe you, Em.”
I focus on that fist for a moment, then again on his face. “You owe me?” My laugh sounds forced. “Because I freed you? I think we’re even, Zed. You threw yourself between me and a stunner spell, remember?”
“I wish that made us even. I wish that could come close to making up for the mess of a life you ended up with.”
My grip tightens around the dagger’s hilt, and from the edge of my vision, I make out something bright and golden blazing in Dash’s hands. “Who the hell are you?” I whisper.
“I don’t know if this is the best place to talk,” Zed says, his gaze shifting back and forth between Dash and me. “Those shadowy creatures are everywhere, and Roarke is still—”
“We’re staying exactly where we are,” Dash says, his voice low and threatening as he raises a glittering crossbow and points it at Zed.
“How do you know me?” I demand, louder this time.
Zed raises his hands once more. “Almost eighteen years ago,” he says slowly, “I was supposed to kill you.”
My breathing becomes shallower. My heart pounds harder. But I swallow, steady my voice, and ask, “Why?”
“The people I worked with wanted to hurt your parents.”
“Why? Who were my parents? What did they do wrong?”
“It’s what they didn’t do that was the problem. It wasn’t their fault, but their inaction led to the pain and suffering of many people—myself included. Years later, those of us who survived couldn’t get past it. Some wanted revenge. Some of us …” He shakes his head. “Well, some of us got caught up in finally belonging somewhere and having a purpose again.”
I have no words to answer him with. All I can do is stare in horror.
“I was told to kill you,” Zed continues, his voice wavering ever so slightly, “but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill a faerie baby. Especially not a faerie baby who was related to someone who used to be a friend of mine long ago. So I did something else. Something that might be considered even worse.”
My heart thunders as I wait for him to continue. “What did you do?” I whisper.
“A changeling spell.”
Thirty-Two
“Ho-lee shovel,” Dash whispers.
My gaze snaps toward him, then back to Zed. “What? What is that? What’s a changeling spell?”
“Witch magic,” Dash says darkly. “Swapping a faerie baby and a human baby. I thought the witches stopped doing that kind of thing more than a century ago.”
“The spell changes the appearance of both the human and the faerie,” Zed explains, “so that they look like each other. Over time, that part of the magic fades away, leaving the faerie child looking the way he or she would have without the changeling spell. The faerie’s magic remains blocked, though, and he or she will grow up as a human in the non-magic realm, knowing nothing of the world they truly belong to. Usually, the faerie’s magic remains blocked for the rest of his or her human-length life. But sometimes, the magic breaks out.”
“Which is what happened to me,” I murmur. It doesn’t seem real. It sounds like the story of someone else’s life. The kind of thing I might watch in a movie, sitting side by side with Val and munching on popcorn.
“You forgot to mention,” Dash growls, “what happens to the human baby. It doesn’t live long. With magic running through its tiny human body, it barely survives a few days.”
I’m gripping the dagger so tightly now that my hand begins to hurt. “So you couldn’t kill me,” I say to Zed, “but you could kill a human baby? You’re despicable.”
“I know,” he says. “But somehow I felt less despicable than if I’d killed you.”
This is insanity. This is barely believable. I was born in one world and stolen away to another, and—
“Wait.” I point the dagger at him. “If you took a human baby away from its mother and replaced it with me, then why isn’t my mother—the woman who raised me, Daniela Clarke—human?”
Zed shuts his eyes and releases a long breath before speaking. “That is where things get a lot more complicated.”
“More complicated?”
“You’d better start explaining,” Dash says, the crossbow still aimed at Zed’s chest, “because we’re not going anywhere until Em gets every single answer she’s looking for.”
Zed looks between the two of us. “Can I sit?”
“No,” Dash and I say at the same time.
“Okay then.” He nods. “I guess I should start with the fact that I’m Griffin Gifted. Don’t worry,” he adds as I inch back slightly. “I won’t be using it on either of you. The effects are just as unpleasant for me as they would be for you.”
“Forgive me if I don’t take you at your word,” Dash says. “This crossbow will be staying right where it is.”
“I guess I don’t blame you.” His eyes move to Dash’s empty hand, where magic has begun to gather. Then he focuses on me again. “Almost two decades ago, a group of fae formed based on a common interest: getting revenge on the Guild for leaving us at the mercy of a former Unseelie Prince. You might think I should have felt some loyalty toward the Guild, seeing as I was a guardian for years, but I didn’t. I hated them for allowing innocent people to suffer. For their imperfect system that essentially allows them to choose who to save.” His gaze flicks back to Dash for a moment. “You know I’m right. So we attempted to take down the entire Guild system. But we failed. Then we decided to target specific people instead. That’s when I was tasked with killing the child of two guardians. And, as far as the leaders of our group knew, I succeeded. This spurred them on to go after others, but that changeling spell disturbed me more than I wanted to admit. I began to lose faith in our cause. It didn’t seem like justice anymore. It just seemed like … murder.
“So I ran, and one of my Griffin Gifted friends—Daniela—ran with me. She’d also lost all interest in getting revenge. She no longer cared whether we killed all the guardians. She didn’t care if we made people suffer by murdering their children. She was tired of it all. So in the end, because Dani was the only one I trusted, I confided in her and told her what I’d done. I told her about the changeling spell, and that I hadn’t actually killed the faerie child. She was glad. She said I’d done the right thing by not killing an innocent baby.”
“You did, though,” I remind him. “You killed an innocent human baby. Does human life mean less to you than faerie life?”
“It shouldn’t,” he says, so quietly I can barely hear him. “Years ago, I pledged my life to protect both fae and humans. But by the time I was told to murder a baby, I’d been away from the Guild for so many years that I managed to convince myself that one human life didn’t matter.”
“That’s—”
br /> “I know. All the terrible words you can think of, that’s what I am. But just like me, Dani didn’t seem to mind too much about that part. So the two of us were on the run. We traveled for a while, and then one day, she asked me to show her the changeling. She said we should check that all was well, and that the human mother hadn’t noticed anything strange. We should make sure the child’s magic was properly blocked. If it revealed itself, she cautioned, and the Guild ended up getting involved, they might trace it back to us. I didn’t believe her, but I took her anyway. The whole changeling concept seemed to fascinate her, and I knew she wouldn’t let it go until she’d seen one with her own eyes.
“So we watched them. We watched Macy Clarke and her changeling child Emerson. And they were both completely fine. Dani, though …” Zed shakes his head. “She wasn’t fine. She saw this simple human life, and she wanted it.”
“She wanted to be human?” I confirm.
“Yes. Not just human, though. She wanted Macy’s life. She wanted the changeling child, and the lovely little house, and Macy’s job, and … everything.”
“But that’s … just …” I shake my head. “Aside from being totally wrong, that just doesn’t make sense. Why would she want to give up her magic, her friends, her own world?”
“If you knew about her past …” Zed says. “It wasn’t good. Her life was horrible. She thought getting revenge on the Guild would make her happy, but it left her feeling even more desolate. She wanted a chance to start over. A new world, a new life. New everything. So she asked me to perform a changeling spell on her. I’d never heard of it being done on an adult, but she was so desperate, so miserable, and she was convinced this would make her happy. I had to figure it out.”
“You didn’t have to help her commit murder and steal someone else’s life,” Dash interjects. The mass of magic swirling above his raised hand flickers.
“I began working on adjusting the spell,” Zed continues, ignoring Dash. “Normally, it binds magic forever but changes the baby’s appearance for only a short while—about a year or so—before slowly wearing off. In that time, a baby would grow and change anyway, so the difference isn’t too noticeable then. But with an adult … well, I couldn’t have her look like Macy for only a year and then slowly return to her normal appearance, so I had to figure out how to make it last longer. For the rest of her life.”