“Yes. Just taking extra precautions.” She peers around the edge of the car.
I rub my fingers against my temples, still trying to clear my head, and ask, “Who is it?”
“Human armed forces,” she answers. “Loads of them.”
“Not good,” Chase mutters. “They have no idea what they’re facing.”
“Kind of expected, though,” I say. “Obviously humans are gonna fight back. And they don’t mind making a mess if it means getting rid of the enemy. They’ll probably blow up the whole park if they have to.”
“Let’s hope they evacuate their own kind from the park before resorting to such extreme measures,” Calla says, twisting around and raising her stylus against the taxi’s front door. “I’m opening a doorway. We need to get away from—”
Bright light pulses outward, and a shudder ripples through the ground. I throw my hands out to steady myself and squeeze my eyes shut against the blinding light. The air is filled with shouts and the sounds of heavy thumps against the road. As the light dims, I lower my hand. Chase is climbing to his feet, and Calla is grabbing onto my arm. “Are you okay?” she asks Chase. “What was that?”
“Timed magic,” he says. “Must have been. They all released magic at the same moment and those armed forces went flying.”
Groans and more shouting reach my ears. “We’re leaving,” Calla says immediately. She raises her stylus again, and this time, nothing interrupts her doorway spell.
“I’m staying a little longer,” Chase says. “Just keeping an eye on this situation. Get Em away from here. I’ll meet you and Elizabeth at the lake house within the next half hour.”
Calla nods as she pulls me into the faerie paths. Darkness surrounds us, and I blink into it, my thoughts still stumbling to catch up with everything that’s happened.
Seventeen
Moments later, we’re back on the hilltop with Aurora and Imperia, surrounded on all sides by peaceful blue scenery. It’s almost surreal compared to the cracked and broken city we just ran from.
Aurora climbs quickly to her feet and asks, “What happened there?”
“Em took down the forest,” Calla tells her. “Or some of it, at least.” She turns to me and asks, “Are you okay now?”
“Yes. My legs are a little weak, but I’m fine. It’s just …” I look over my shoulder, as if I could see through the disappearing doorway and back to the scene we left behind. “All those people who were just attacked—the soldiers—we just left them there. What if Roarke’s army is about to kill them all?”
“Chase is still there. He won’t let that happen.”
“But how could he possibly stop them all?”
Calla walks to the tablets and mirror and pulls them from the air. “With a storm.”
“But—”
“A storm like you’ve never seen.” She looks back at me. “Trust me, Em. He can handle it.”
I shut my eyes for a moment, then say, “Okay. I’m sure you’re right.”
“We need to pack up,” Calla continues. “I know it’s still night here, and you still have time, but I’d prefer to move you both to a new location and restart the countdown before I go to the summit. You’ll probably need to move again before I return, though. Possibly more than once.”
“Do you think the summit will take that long?” Aurora asks.
“I doubt the summit itself will last more than a day—and if it does, I’ll have to leave early in case any guardians are still tracking the spell that’s stuck on me—but it’s the traveling that will take some time. It’s in a region inaccessible through the faerie paths, so it’ll take us hours to get there instead of seconds.”
“Wow, that must be frustrating for a faerie,” I say as I crouch down at the foot of my sleeping bag and start rolling it up.
“Yes. Not a limitation we have to deal with often.”
“How will you find us when you return?” Aurora asks. “Em, do you have an amber? I didn’t have mine on me when I fled the palace.”
“Oh yes, I do have one. We bought it the other day. It should be in the backpack.”
Bandit hops out the end of my sleeping bag before I finish rolling it. Aurora crouches down and rolls hers up while I move on to Calla’s. Then I add the pillows to the pile, shrink everything, and drop it all into the backpack.
“Okay, I think that’s all our stuff,” Calla says, her eyes scanning the area. “Aurora, do you want to open an extra-large doorway so your dragon can fit through?”
We make it through the faerie paths together, each of us holding on to some part of Imperia’s body. I head out of the darkness and find that we’re on another hill, though this one is a lot rockier and it’s already morning here. Ahead of us, I see more hills and more rocks. Behind us, not too far away, a sheer cliff face reaches ridiculously high into the sky. “Not as pretty as the last spot, but it’ll do just fine,” Calla says. “There’s a little town just over that hill.” She points to the right. “You can buy food there if you need it. Just—”
“Be careful,” I say. “We know.”
Calla smiles. “I was actually going to say, ‘Just make sure to leave Imperia here when you go into town so no one sees her.’”
“Oh. Of course,” Aurora says. “I guess it would raise suspicion if she showed up in a town not normally frequented by dragons.”
“Indeed,” Calla answers. “That’s the case for most towns, even in a world of magic.”
Aurora takes the backpack from me and asks, “Do you mind if I hide between the rocks and use a shower spell? I, uh, usually like to bathe when I wake up in the morning, so if there’s nothing else urgent to be done …”
“Oh, sure, go ahead,” I tell her. “Enjoy.” As she walks away, I turn to Calla. “I know you said I shouldn’t go with you to the summit—”
“You’re definitely not coming.”
“Just listen to me please. You guys don’t want to live in hiding forever, do you? And you want the Guild to let you help them. Well, my Griffin Ability can make that possible. I could tell the entire gathering of guardians, Seelies and Unseelies not to be afraid of Griffin Gifted. I can tell them they don’t see us as a threat anymore. I can make them believe they should work with Griffin Gifted instead of locking us up, and they won’t have a choice but to obey me. It’s the perfect opportunity, with so many leaders gathered together.”
“Em,” Calla says slowly, “you can’t take away their free will. That isn’t right.”
“But I’d be making them do the right thing!”
“But that isn’t—” she sighs. “If that’s not what they truly believe, then it isn’t right to force them into it. Surely you understand that?”
I shut my eyes for a moment, breathing out slowly. “Yes. I guess I do. It’s just … I have a chance to make a real difference. Some good could actually come out of this situation.”
“I know. But we can’t change people who don’t want to be changed. At least, not like this. This isn’t the way we get things done. This is who the Guild thinks we are, but we have to prove them wrong.”
“What if they don’t even know? What if I make them believe that they came to this decision themselves?”
She shakes her head. “It would never remain a secret, Em. The truth about how you forced non-Griffin Gifted fae into doing something against their will would eventually get out. In the end, it would probably have more of a negative impact than a positive one.”
I stuff my hands into my pockets and look away. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”
After several moments of silence, Calla says, “Okay, so …” She looks around. “You should be fine, right? You’ve got the backpack. You can keep the mirror and the tablets. Don’t act on any of the visions you might see, even if they look important and no one from the Guild has been assigned to prevent them.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I answer. “Don’t do anything dangerous. Got it.”
“If you need to keep busy,” Calla adds, “you’re welco
me to continue practicing all the things we’ve been working on together. Especially—Oh, that’s what I was forgetting.” She walks to the backpack and digs through the contents. “You should take a look at this.” She hands me a thick scroll of papers. “Chase left it with me when he came to tell me about Central Park. It’s everything Perry’s dug up on a place called Reinhold Research Station. Turns out it’s real. Lots of reading, which I don’t have time for at the moment. You can give me a summary when I get back.”
“Oh, cool.” I take the scroll from her. “I thought Perry said he’d never heard of this place. And that he has, like, zero time at the moment to privately investigate anything extra.”
Calla smiles. “That’s one of the great things about Perry. He always comes through for us, no matter how busy he is.” After hugging me tightly, she opens a doorway and waves as she steps into the faerie paths. I try to convince myself, as the darkness closes around her, that everything’s going to be fine while she’s gone.
After Calla leaves, I set aside the Reinhold scroll to look at later and start practicing some of the things I’ve learned in recent days. What I really want to do is practice using my Griffin Ability for fighting, but it won’t be replenished for another few hours. Instead, Aurora and I come up with various commands I could use during a battle, if I ever find myself in the midst of one.
All guardians, drop your weapons.
Fall down and slide to the edge of the room.
Arrow, strike the Unseelie guard’s shoulder.
Sword, chop off everyone’s hands.
That last one was Aurora’s suggestion. Apparently mine were getting too boring.
When we’re tired of commands, we try throwing our own magic around. Plain old sparks are the easiest and quickest, of course, so we stretch ourselves by trying to shape our magic into different forms. Sand, hail, wind, bats, razor blades. It takes me far too long before I can hurl anything interesting at Aurora, but it’s fun to try.
Then, after doing a quick spell to draw water from the ground so we’re no longer panting with thirst, we set up makeshift targets and move back to real weapons. Aurora goes straight for the bow, since archery is her favorite. I practice throwing knives and various star-shaped pieces of metal—which I mostly still suck at without the use of magic. When I pick up two training swords and try to hand one to Aurora, she refuses. Apparently a princess has to draw the line somewhere. So I practice some of the footwork and different strikes Calla showed me, ignoring Aurora when she tells me how stupid I look doing a slow-motion dance around a non-existent opponent while swinging a wooden stick.
Eventually I’m too tired for further practice, so we sit against Imperia’s side and, despite Aurora’s complaints about the lack of flavor, we each eat a dinner pop. My Griffin Ability replenishes as I finish chewing, filling my body with an invigorating rush of power. I focus on holding onto it, but it doesn’t take too much effort anymore.
I tilt my head back against Imperia’s slippery scales, and for a little while, I let myself enjoy a conversation that includes entirely random topics unrelated to the world ending or half the people I care about being imprisoned. Like the fact that Aurora likes to sing in the bathroom—“Hell, no. I don’t sing at all if I can help it”—and the story of how she came to be adopted by the Unseelie royal family—“So that witch just left you there? And they never found her?”—and the strange admission that she’s always envied human teenagers.
“Now that can’t possibly be true,” I say when we reach the teenager topic. “Surely nobody has ever envied human teens? It’s such an awkward phase of life. I still feel super awkward half the time, and I’m nearing the end of my teenage years.”
“Faerie teens are awkward too,” Aurora assures me, “but at least human teens don’t have to deal with all that embarrassing magic. If a girl likes a boy, the whole world doesn’t have to know about it.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You know, like when you’re attracted to someone and magic escapes you and does weird, random things, and everyone knows why.”
“Um … nope?” But as I say this, I think back to the night Dash and I sat on the floor inside the shadow world castle, waiting for the changeling spell on Dani and Ada to begin working. Sparks and flames appeared from nowhere, and Dash told me it was his magic. Then he said he thought he’d outgrown something. Something he didn’t particularly want to explain to me … “Oh,” I say. “Oh. Never mind. I think I do know what you’re talking about.”
“You see? You’ve been embarrassing yourself and you didn’t even know it.”
“Actually, it was Dash’s magic that escaped, not mine.”
A slow smile lights up Aurora’s face. “I told you,” she crows. “I told you he loves you!”
“Whoa, hey, nobody said anything about love.” I look around, searching for a change in topic, and see Imperia’s back leg beside me. “Hey, uh … how safe do you think it would be for us to take Imperia for a ride?” I run my hand across her smooth, shimmering scales. “I seriously miss dragon riding.”
“I’m guessing dragon riding is on Calla’s ‘Definitely Don’t Do That’ list.”
I let out a groan. “I think you’re right. We probably don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.” I stretch my legs out in front of me as Bandit wanders closer in cat form. He sits neatly in front of me, then shifts into a small version of Imperia.
Aurora laughs and claps her hands. “So clever, Bandit!”
“Does he know what we’re saying?” I ask her. “I’ve often wondered how much he understands, but I’ve never actually asked anyone.”
“I’ve heard that formattra are quite intelligent,” she says. “I’m sure he doesn’t understand everything, but I guess he understands enough to know we’re talking about dragons.”
I lean forward and pat Bandit’s scaled snout. “Calla says it won’t be easy for him to transform into a dragon for much longer. Something about him getting bigger and it requiring a lot of magic.”
Aurora nods. “I think I’ve heard something like that.”
I tilt my head as an idea begins to form. “My Griffin Ability is super powerful, right?”
Aurora looks at me as if that might be a trick question. “Uh, yes?”
“When I say things, they usually happen.”
“Again, that would be a ‘yes.’”
“So …” I lean forward and focus on my shapeshifting pet. My magical voice echoes around us as I say, “Bandit, you have enough power to transform into a dragon the size of Imperia whenever you want to, no matter how old you are.”
I sit back as all my Griffin power drains from my body in one go. I’m left feeling dizzy, but not as light-headed as I did at Central Park. I blink a few times and watch Bandit. Beside me, Aurora leans forward. A shiver courses through Bandit’s body. His eyes widen a little, looking for all the world as if he’s startled.
Then he begins to grow. I stare in open-mouthed amazement as his body becomes larger and larger, filling the space in front of us. “Oh crap,” I mutter, realizing the problem we’re about to have at the same time Aurora figures it out. We both jump to our feet, and Aurora smacks Imperia’s side.
“Move, move, move,” she shouts. Imperia rises as quickly as she can for a creature of her size, lurching a few giant steps away and saving us from being squished between her and Bandit. Finally, when he’s about the same size as Imperia, he stops growing. He looks down at me with gigantic fiery orange eyes, and all I can says is, “Wow.”
Then, as we watch, he lumbers a few steps backward and begins to change again. Not into a smaller form, but into a different dragon, just as enormous. Black scales line his body, and the forked tongue that darts out of his mouth is bright red.
“That. Is. Awesome,” Aurora says.
I walk closer, run my hand along Bandit’s leg, and gaze up at him. “You are seriously the coolest pet ever.”
It isn’t yet
evening in this part of the world, but since we didn’t sleep much last night, and we need to move to our next location in just over eight hours, I suggest we pretend it’s nighttime and go to bed. “And we need to take turns keeping watch, remember?”
As I expected, Aurora’s not impressed with this idea. “Is that really necessary when we have Imperia? And Bandit? They’ll wake us if something goes wrong.”
“And what if Imperia and Bandit fall asleep too? Don’t tell me haven’t heard Imperia snoring. She was really loud last night.”
Aurora rolls her eyes. “Fine. We can do the keeping watch thing. But can I sleep first? I’m super exhausted after using so much magic earlier.”
“Sure thing, princess. Whatever you want. Hey! Was that a training sword you just threw at me?”
“More like a pencil,” she says with a snort. “It doesn’t deserve to be called a sword when it’s shorter than my finger.
I return the miniature sword to the backpack and say, “In case you were wondering, your four hours have already started.”
“Ugh, that is so not enough sleep for me. And don’t give me another ‘princess’ comment,” she adds as I open my mouth. “Four hours isn’t enough for anyone.”
“Actually, Calla told me faeries can last longer without sleep than humans can,” I tell her. “That’s why I haven’t been as tired as I thought I’d be.”
“Yeah, well … whatever.” Aurora climbs into her sleeping bag. “I’d prefer a lot more.”
As she shuffles further down into her sleeping bag, I retrieve the scroll containing all the information Perry found regarding Reinhold Research Station. I settle against Imperia’s front leg and start scanning through the pages. It starts with some boring details about all the people involved in designing and building the station, which I quickly move on from once I realize none of the names mean anything to me.
But the details on the next page get straight to the point of Reinhold: to experiment on Griffin Gifted fae. My stomach turns as I read about the various Griffin Abilities the researchers at Reinhold have tried to extract and make use of. Most of these experiments have failed, but this report mentions two that have been successful. One is a healing ability that’s so quick it’s almost instant. The healing magic has been mixed with other factors to form a liquid that’s currently—at least, current at the time this report was written—in the final phase of testing.