“Shoot him and we’ll shoot you,” the girl behind him says.
“And then I will shoot you,” Jamon says, walking out the shadows and taking his position beside me. “Or stab you.” From the corner of my eye I see light glinting off a blade.
“No!” The guardian in front of me raises his arms as if to hold his companions back. “There won’t be any shooting or stabbing.” He leans forward, distress plain on his face. “V, do you honestly not recognize me? Are . . . are you marked?”
“No. But you are.”
“I’m not—”
“Show me your palms,” I snap.
He slowly turns his hands so that his palms face forward. I can clearly see the black circle marking his skin. “It isn’t real,” he says. “It’s our disguise so we can go unnoticed among Draven’s followers.”
“Oh really? Well, isn’t that convenient?”
He slowly moves his left hand in front of his face and blows into it.
“What are you doing?” I demand. “Stop that!”
He lowers his cupped hand, and I see water glistening in it. He lets the water trickle onto his right palm, then takes his thumb and rubs across the mark. Black ink smudges his skin.
“See? It isn’t real.” His blue gaze moves across my face. “Come on, it’s me. Ryn. Please tell me you remember me.”
Ryn. The mention of his name sends another shiver across my skin. “What . . . what did you say your name is?”
I see a flicker of hope in his eyes. “Ryn. Oryn.”
It can’t be. This is the guy who wrote the note I’ve been carrying around with me? The guy I must have cared about in my previous life? But . . . nothing about him seems even remotely familiar. I slowly loosen my grip on my bow. It disappears. “I . . . I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are.”
He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t even move until one of the other two guys says, “Ryn? You okay, man?”
He blinks, then steps back, looking around at his companions. “Yeah. Lose the weapons, okay? V, you’re coming with us. You’re welcome to bring your friend.”
“Excuse me? I’m not going anywhere with you.” Sure, I have a lot of questions to ask him, but he doesn’t get to push me around just because he used to know me.
He frowns. “Where exactly do you plan to go?”
“With my friend. There are a whole lot of us in hiding, and I don’t plan to abandon them. Why don’t you come with us?”
Ryn’s eyes move to Jamon. “There are more of you? I mean, more free reptiscillas?”
“Yes. Are there more of you?”
The girl behind Ryn laughs and walks forward. “There are a lot of us. And we have a massive hidden base where everyone who’s willing to fight Draven is gathering.”
Jamon turns to me, lowers his voice, and says, “I think we should go with them.”
I start nodding as I process this new information. A whole base of guardians. I probably know some of them. Maybe I have family members there. They can help me remember the life I’ve lost. But Jamon . . . “Are you sure?” I ask him. “You hate guardians.”
“Yeah, I know, but they can’t all be that bad. I mean, you turned out to be a decent person. And besides, I don’t have to like them. The point is that we need allies, and they’re just as willing to fight Draven as we are.”
“Okay. You can send a message to your father once we’re there.” I turn back to the group of guardians. Ryn is facing the darkness, his arms crossed and hands clenched into fists. From the way his shoulders rise and fall, I can tell his breathing is faster than it should be.
I push my hood back and say, “Okay, we’ll come with you.”
“Cool,” the girl says.
“Um, am I supposed to remember any of you?” I can imagine myself asking this question many times if I’m about to meet a whole lot of guardians.
“No.” She laughs and sticks her hand out. “I’m Em.”
I reach forward and grasp her hand. “Violet.”
“Violet, huh?” Her eyes skim over my hair. “Looks like your parents had the same idea mine had.” She points to her head—blonde with green streaks—and adds, “My full name’s Emerald. Emerald, for crying in a magic well. No one calls me that.”
“Not if they want to live to see another day,” one of the two guys says. He’s the shorter and broader of the two, with curly black-and-blonde hair. He smiles as he steps forward to introduce himself. “I’m Max. I’m from the London Guild, like Em.”
The other guy, who doesn’t seem as friendly as Max, introduces himself as Fin, from the Estra Guild. He’s so pale he’s almost transparent. White skin, white hair, white eyes. He looks like he’s never met the sun.
“So, this base of yours,” Jamon says as Ryn leads the way through the trees without another glance at me. “Is it far from here?”
“Yes, but we have transport,” Em says with a wink. “Some teams still travel by foot, but we’re lucky.”
“Or stupid,” Fin mutters.
“You guys are a team?” Jamon asks.
“Yup,” Em answers. “We’re Team Troll’s Butt.”
I find myself choking on unexpected laughter while Fin gives Em a look that says, what is wrong with you?
“What?” she asks. “I’m not going to apologize for myself. Every team needs some comic relief, and I feel it’s my duty to provide that for this team.”
Fin shakes his head while Max tries to smother a laugh. Ryn is ahead of us, so I can’t see his reaction.
“Come on, Fin,” Em says. “What happened to your sense of humor? People tell me you used to have one.”
With a dead straight face, Fin says, “I guess it disappeared along with The Destruction.”
I wonder if Fin lost people he loves or if he’s just taking life seriously now because nothing since The Destrucion seems to be worth joking about. I’m pretty sure I agree with him, but Em continues as if nothing’s wrong. “Nonsense. I saw you laughing your butt off when Max got too close to the backside of a pegasus and found himself kicked clear across the room.”
“So?”
“So I guess The Destruction spat your sense of humor right back at you after you tried to ditch it and get all serious.”
“Um, where did the team name come from?” I ask, hoping to dispel a possible argument.
Max grins and says, “When Ryn told Oliver, ‘I don’t give a troll’s butt what anyone else thinks about magic carpets. We’re using one.’”
“Magic carpets?” I ask.
“Yes.” Ryn stops and turns to face us. “We travel by magic carpet.” He looks up at the sky and makes a chirping sound. The same chirp I heard earlier when a shadow flew over us. Moments later something dark and flat swoops down from the sky, spins around a tree, and comes to rest in front of us, hovering a few inches above the ground.
A carpet. Big enough for at least ten people to sit on.
“Wow,” Jamon says. “I thought magic carpets didn’t exist. Just one of those spells no one could ever get right.”
“Yeah, that’s what everyone thought,” Em says as she climbs on, “which is why we were the only team happy to use it.”
“And it’s safe?” Jamon asks.
“Of course.” Ryn sounds a little annoyed. “We made some adjustments. Put a domed shield over the top so we can travel at high speeds without anyone falling off.”
I climb onto the slowly rippling fabric and sit down before anything embarrassing can happen. “Cool. I’ve never ridden on one before.”
Ryn coughs and gives me a pained look.
“What?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing. Let’s just get out of here.”
I thought the egg-shaped reptiscillan transporters were fast, but they were nothing compared to the speed Ryn manages to make the magic carpet fly at. If he hadn’t put a shield over it, the wind would have swept us away long ago. Ryn sits up front, neither looking back nor speaking to anyone. The other three members of his team chat quietly to each
other, and Jamon—biggest guardian-hater of all time—joins in, telling them about the mountain we’ve taken refuge in.
Not long after the sun rises, we’re zooming high above grassy fields and shooting toward a valley in the distance. We slow down as we reach it. Just as we sail over the rim, a bright orange light flashes and fizzles around us, then disappears.
“What was that?” I ask in alarm, getting onto my knees and looking over the edge of the carpet. “Is someone attacking us?”
“No, no, don’t worry,” Max says. “There’s a giant dome of protection over the entire valley. It only lets unmarked people through.”
“Oh. Cool.” I sit back down.
The magic carpet zips between trees and rocks on its descent into the valley. Then, before I have time to gasp, shout, or even point, the carpet dives straight into the river. For a second, I expect to find myself submerged in foaming bubbles, but then I remember the shield covering the carpet. I take a deep breath and watch water, stones, plants and underwater life shoot past us. Up ahead, the water foams white. Bubbles surround the carpet and its dome, gurgling and churning. Seconds later, we shoot out into a high-ceilinged room long enough and wide enough to be a landing strip. Closed doors line the empty strip.
Ryn brings the carpet to a halt, and a popping sound indicates the shield is gone. We climb off. Em stretches her arms out above her head while Max and Fin roll the carpet up with a flick of their hands in the air. Ryn opens one of the doors leading off the landing strip, and the other two guys send the carpet flying into it.
Ryn closes the door and turns to Jamon. “Hey, um, would it be okay if Max, Fin and Em show you around? I need to talk to Vi.”
After a glance at me, Jamon shrugs and says, “Yeah, okay. I just need to send a message to my father to let him know we’re here.”
“Sure,” Em says.
A space between two doors houses a wide flight of stairs. I follow Ryn up them. Then up another flight of stairs, and another and another. When I’ve lost count, he turns right and heads along a corridor. He walks so quickly I can’t get a good look at where I am. He reaches a door, pushes it open, and steps back to allow me in. It’s a bedroom, and I assume it belongs to Ryn. Other than the basics—bed, table and chair against a wall, small chest of drawers beside the bed, armchair in one corner—it’s quite bare. The only personal touch is a stack of books and a small wooden box on the table.
Ryn closes the door behind him, leans against it, and lets out a long sigh. I imagine he’s been holding that sigh in the entire journey back here. He raises his eyes and looks at me. It makes me uncomfortable, being watched like that by someone I barely know. I don’t look away, though. Maybe if I stare long enough I’ll remember something about him. The silence stretches between us, making the room feel bigger than it is. I don’t know what to say. It’s ridiculous, actually. There are so many things I want to ask about who am I, but words seem to flee as I try to take in everything about him. The deep blue in his hair that matches his eyes. The shape of his face. The way he leans against the door. The ring of pale skin around his wrist that—shockingly—seems to match the scar on my own wrist.
And still I remember nothing.
“I don’t get it,” he says eventually, shaking his head in small motions. “You just vanished. What happened to you, V? Why can’t you remember anything?”
Something in the way he’s looking at me, his eyebrows pinched together, puts me on the defensive. “Are you blaming me for this?” I demand, my tongue suddenly finding the words that have escaped me till now. “I have no idea what happened. I woke up Underground with the reptiscillas, and I’ve been with them ever since. I don’t remember Creepy Hollow. I don’t remember guardians. I don’t remember The Destruction. And I don’t remember you.”
The look on his face tells me I may as well have slapped him. “Not at all?” he whispers. “Nothing? Not even from when you hated me?”
That part throws me. “Hated you? But . . . well, I got the impression that you I were, you know, more than friends.”
“We are. Were.” He steps away from the door, shaking his head. “I don’t—”
“Then why did I hate you?”
He starts pacing. “It was a misunderstanding. About my brother. I—he died. A long time ago. And I blamed you because I was stupid and hurting. And . . .” He stops and runs both hands through his hair. “None of this matters now. I just . . . I don’t understand what happened. What do you remember?”
It’s my turn to look away. “Random, fuzzy things. Nothing important. No one who means anything to me.”
He stares at me, his mouth slightly open but with no words coming out.
I take a deep breath and ask the question I’m almost afraid to know the answer to. “Do I have any family here? Or were they . . .” I don’t want to say it. Brainwashed. Killed.
He sits on the edge of the bed and stares at his feet. He seems resigned, as though he’s starting to accept my lack of memory. “No. You don’t have any family here. You have no siblings. Your mother died on a Guild assignment when you were three. Your father . . . well, he was also a guardian. Everyone thought he was killed a number of years ago, but you and I discovered recently that he’s alive. His faked death was part of a major undercover assignment.”
“So I have a father?”
“Yes, but he isn’t here. He works for the Seelie Queen.”
I take a step back and lean against the table. So I really am alone. Well, except for the guy across the room from me. “Um, you wrote me a letter before you left Creepy Hollow.”
“Yes.” He sits up a little straighter. “You got it?”
I nod. “I found it in my pocket after I woke up.” I’m quiet for a while, but he doesn’t say anything else. He waits for me to ask my questions. “Where did you go? What was so important that you couldn’t tell me anything about it?”
“I . . .” He hesitates, and I can see him trying to figure out if he should tell me. “Your father sent me to find a weapon that can destroy Draven’s power.”
“Oh.” I’m not sure what I expected him to say, but it wasn’t that. “That’s a big deal. A really big deal. Did you find it?”
He nods. His eyes catch hold of mine and don’t let go. “But only one person in the world can use it, and we don’t know where that person is.” He shakes his head once more. “I wish I’d never gone, V. I wish I’d been there to protect you from whatever happened that night.”
I want to look away, but I can’t. I want to ask him if I loved him, but that would be awkward. I want to ask him if he loves me, but that would be even more awkward.
A desperate squealing sound interrupts the silence. I jerk away from the table in fright. Ryn turns to the source of the sound, which seems to be coming from one of his pillows. The pillow shuffles, and out from beneath it comes a mouse. The mouse scurries across the bed faster than any mouse should be able to move and leaps off. By the time it hits the ground, the mouse is gone, leaving a grey cat in its place. The cat streaks toward me, changes into a squirrel, starts clawing its way up my pants, and becomes a bird. I swat at the black shape with blue wings as it flaps around my neck.
“What is—why is this—”
It swoops beneath my hand, lands on my shoulder, and becomes a mouse once more. A mouse that seems to be nuzzling its tiny, cold nose into my neck.
“Ryn, what the freak is going on?” I yell, trying to get the animal off me.
The mouse freezes, then scurries down my clothes. It reaches Ryn’s leg in monkey form, wraps an arm around his ankle, and stares up at me with an expression of uncertainty and confusion. I know it’s just a shapeshifting animal, but I swear I can see hurt in its eyes.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Ryn says, reaching down to pat the monkey’s head. “She just doesn’t remember you, that’s all. Once she gets her memory back, everything will be fine.”
Wait, I’m supposed to remember this creature? “What—who—is that?”
Ry
n bends to pick up the shapeshifter, which transforms into a purple-haired bunny. “This is Filigree. You’ve had him since your mom died. Your dad didn’t want you to be lonely while he was at work.”
For some inexplicable reason, I suddenly feel like crying. I blink a few times and say, “And . . . he can understand what we’re saying?”
Ryn shrugs. “Mostly, I think. He’s definitely smarter than the average animal.”
I step closer to Ryn and run my finger over Filigree’s soft, purple fur, from his ears all the way down his back. “I—I’m sorry. I don’t hate you. I just got a fright with all the . . . flapping and stuff.” Large black eyes stare up at me. The only response I get is a blink.
Ryn places Filigree on the bed, then walks to the door. “We need to fix you. Now.”
Once again I find myself following him along corridors. The floors are tiled and the walls are wood-paneled; it’s a whole lot smarter than the reptiscillan hideout. We turn a corner into another corridor, and Ryn almost walks into a ginger-haired faerie reading something on a piece of amber.
“Oh, Ryn, you’re back. How was the—oh, is this someone new?” A smile spreads across his face when he sees me, lighting up his gingery eyes. “Did you find more survivors?”
Ryn seems reluctant to stop and chat, but he answers the man’s question. “Uh, yes. Oliver, this is Violet. I was going to come and tell you we found her, but I—”
“Violet?” The smile slowly slips from Oliver’s face, and he leans closer to the two of us. “Violet? The finder?”
Ryn nods.
My gaze swings back and forth between the two of them as I try to figure out what I’ve missed here. “Finder? Finder of what?”
Ryn shakes his head. “It’s . . . not something . . .” Then he grabs Oliver’s arm and pulls him to the side of the corridor. “Look, she doesn’t remember anything.” His voice is low, but it’s not like they’re standing far away; I can hear everything he’s saying. “I still have to explain a lot of things to her. I mean, like, everything. Her whole life.”
“What?” Oliver looks over his shoulder at me, then back at Ryn. “She doesn’t remember anything? Not even about Tora? I mean, it happened right there by her home. I was hoping—”