“Did it work?”
Laurel was so confident she lowered her finger right into the solution.
The toxin didn’t stand a chance.
“It worked. It worked, oh, Chelsea it worked!” Laurel felt light-headed with relief. “Please,” she said, turning to Fiona, “I need vials. Right now!”
She had to get to Tamani.
When Laurel burst through the tree line the dimly lit circle was so still she wasn’t completely sure anyone was alive.
Tamani’s head was propped on David’s leg. “I think he’s still breathing,” David said when Laurel hopped over the trench and fell to her knees beside Tamani’s body. “But he stopped opening his eyes about five minutes ago.”
Tamani was still shirtless, his chest and shoulders swathed in black. Laurel held his face in her hands, feeling the toxin within him try to attack her, but the viridefaeco Chelsea had insisted she swallow before leaving the Academy repelled it with ease.
“Come back . . . to say . . . goodbye?” Klea asked, wheezing with laughter. Even swollen with infection, lingering on the brink of death, she was a bitter witch.
“Please live,” Laurel begged under her breath as she poured the potion into Tamani’s mouth and closed his lips over it.
She waited as the seconds dragged by, her eyes filling with tears as she gripped Tamani’s arm, willing him to wake. The viridefaeco had started curing her almost instantaneously – why wasn’t it working now? A minute passed. Two.
David touched her arm. “Laurel, I don’t—”
“No!” she shouted, pushing his hand away. “It’s going to work. It has to work. Tamani, please!” She bent over him, pressing her face to his chest, hiding her tears, wishing faeries had something like a heartbeat to assure her that he was alive. He had to be alive. She wasn’t sure she could live another moment if he wasn’t with her. What did any of this matter if, in the end, she was too late to save Tamani? She straightened, searching his face for some sign of consciousness. A lock of his hair hung partway over one eye and she reached out to push it back off his forehead, her hand heavy with despair.
Halfway through the motion, she stopped. The tiny black tendrils that had begun to reach across Tamani’s face were retreating. She squinted at them; had she imagined it? Was it a trick of the darkness? No, that line had been all the way across his eyebrow; now it was only halfway. She held her breath, hardly daring to move as she watched it lighten and disappear. His chest rose – ever so slightly – and fell again.
“Breathe again,” Laurel commanded in a barely audible whisper.
Nothing moved.
“Again!” Laurel demanded.
His chest rose once more. This time he choked and sputtered against the viridefaeco caught in his throat and swallowed hard.
Laurel let out a shout of exhilaration and threw her arms around his neck, pulling him against her with glee. His breathing was still shallow, but it was even, and a few seconds later, he opened his eyes – those beautiful green eyes she’d feared would never look at her again.
“Laurel,” he said, his voice cracking.
Tears fell on her cheeks, but this time it was tears of joy and she laughed, her voice echoing through the woods as if the very trees were rejoicing with her.
Tamani smiled weakly. “You did it.”
“I had help.”
“Still.”
Laurel nodded and ran her fingers through his hair as he closed his eyes with a contented sigh.
But Laurel wasn’t done yet.
Releasing Tamani, she stood and walked over to Klea. Her face was black and swollen, but her pale green eyes blazed with malice. She had to have heard everything – known her plan had failed for good.
“Viridefaeco,” Klea whispered. Her breathing was ragged and she was still on her back – the same position she’d been in for an hour. Laurel wondered if she could even move anymore. “Well, aren’t you . . . aren’t you something. Bet you think you’re pretty . . . smart.”
“I think you’re smart,” Laurel said calmly. It was a strange truth to voice. “Open your mouth,” she said, holding out the second vial.
“No!” Klea snarled, more fervently than Laurel would have thought possible from the dying faerie.
“What do you mean, no?” Laurel asked. “The toxin’s about to kill you.”
Klea rolled her eyes up to Laurel. “I would rather . . . die . . . than live in your perfect world.”
Laurel felt her jaw tighten. “This isn’t a contest – take the potion!” When Klea turned her head and pressed her lips shut, Laurel decided to just splash the potion in Klea’s face – it was probably potent enough.
With lightning reflexes, Klea’s hand closed over Laurel’s wrist. Her grip was like iron as she forced herself into a sitting position, and Laurel struggled to tear herself away. Where had Klea found the strength?
“Laurel!” David took one hesitant step toward them, then stopped, giving his magic sword an exasperated frown.
“I will have . . . this . . . victory!” Klea said, every word a hiss through clenched teeth. With a mighty shove, she smashed Laurel’s fist against the ground, shattering the sugar-glass vial, spilling the sticky serum into the blackened grass. Contemptuously, Klea shoved Laurel’s captive arm away, collapsing back onto the ground. “Rot . . .”
Laurel was frozen with shock.
“. . . in . . .”
The viridefaeco dripping off Laurel’s hand might be enough. If she could just—
“. . . hell.”
The expression that froze on Klea’s blackened, swollen face was not one of anger or contempt. It was pure, malignant disgust.
Numbly, Laurel staggered back over to Tamani, dropping to the ground beside him. David joined them, planting Excalibur in the ground and sitting, cross-legged, at Laurel’s other side. Tamani’s eyes fluttered open again, and he lifted one hand to grip David’s. “Thanks for staying with me, mate.”
“Had nowhere else to be,” David said softly, smiling.
Laurel let her head fall on to David’s shoulder and twined her fingers through Tamani’s. There was work ahead of them, recovery, viridefaeco serum to make, friends to mourn, and the Academy to rebuild. But for tonight it was over. Avalon was safe, David was a hero, and Tamani was alive.
And Klea could never hurt her again.
“Laurel?”
Laurel’s eyes fluttered open in the murky predawn light. Her head lay on Tamani’s chest, and David’s arm was draped over her stomach. She wasn’t sure just how much time had passed – snuggled in the cocoon of her friends’ arms, she had let the world swirl around her unheeded, a tiny respite from the horrors of the last twenty-four hours – but with dusk only beginning to herald the sun’s arrival, it couldn’t have been too long.
“Laurel?”
It took her a few moments to focus through the dim morning light to find where the voice was coming from. “Jamison,” she breathed. Raising Tamani’s hand to her face, Laurel met his eyes and brushed her lips against his knuckles before leaving his side to crawl wearily over to Jamison.
Despite David’s careful tending, Laurel was concerned that Jamison had remained unconscious for so long. He was outside of David’s circle and appeared to have been spared from the toxin, but still, Laurel tenderly probed his head where the log had hit him, then gripped his hands, feeling his skin for any sign that the poison had reached his cells.
“I fear I failed you,” he said, his voice laced with disappointment.
“No,” Laurel said, letting herself smile when she couldn’t sense even a trace of the poison. “Everything is fine.” As fine as it can possibly be, at the end of a war.
“Yuki . . . ?”
Laurel hung her head. “I didn’t get back in time,” she whispered, and was unsurprised to see tears glittering in Jamison’s eyes.
“Callista too?”
Laurel nodded silently, the helplessness she’d felt during Klea’s last moments filling her with sadness a
ll over again.
“But Avalon is safe,” he pronounced, not a hint of question in his voice.
Laurel didn’t feel victorious.
“What happened?”
Laurel told the story as quickly as she could, trying not to overwhelm the weary Winter, wishing it had a happier ending.
“I’m proud of you,” Jamison said when she was done, but his voice sounded as defeated as Laurel felt. Yes, the trolls were gone and yes, Klea and her toxin had been stopped, but the cost was almost incomprehensible. Hundreds of Spring and Summer faeries killed – perhaps more than a thousand. And the Autumn faeries? It was painful to even think about. The Academy’s population had been cut down to fewer than a hundred. It would take decades to restore their numbers. So many dead, and for what? For Avalon to return to its broken status quo.
Laurel heard a shout and the clatter of footfalls, and she and Jamison both turned towards the noise.
“I will not wait!” The Queen’s voice sounded clearly above the arguments of her Am Fear-faire as she made her way down the path, Yasmine following more serenely a short distance behind.
Jamison’s hands stiffened beneath Laurel’s at seeing his monarch approach, but a small smile touched his lips when Yasmine caught sight of him and broke into a run.
“Wait!” All eyes turned away from the Queen and her entourage as Chelsea and Fiona burst through the trees in a scatter of leaves.
“Don’t. Touch. Anything,” Fiona said, gasping for breath, her arms cradling a large glass vial.
“Thank goodness!” Chelsea said, stepping round Fiona to sweep Laurel and Jamison into an exuberant embrace. “Doesn’t that Queen listen to anyone?” Chelsea whispered and Jamison chuckled silently. “We saw them coming down the path just as we were finishing up another batch of the potion and we ran as fast as we could.”
“At least the sentries were able to keep her back this long,” Laurel said, one eyebrow raised.
“Wait, Yasmine, please!” Fiona called, trying to stop the young Winter faerie from approaching Jamison.
“It’s OK,” Laurel said. “Jamison’s clean.”
Reluctantly, Fiona let her pass.
Queen Marion stopped at the edge of David’s trench and glowered, her hands crossed over her chest. Laurel ignored her stormy countenance and took Chelsea’s hand, pulling her friend over the shallow trench, leading her to where David knelt, hand clenched around Excalibur, beside Tamani, who had managed to pull himself up to a half recline. His chest was still a smoky grey that looked like extensive bruising, but even that was fading.
“No matter what happens,” Laurel whispered, “we do this together.” She met each of her friends” eyes for several seconds and they all nodded. “And David, don’t you let go of that sword.” She glanced at the Queen. “I’m not sure we’re through fighting the enemy yet,” she finished grimly.
“Come over here, all of you,” Marion commanded.
“Let me neutralise them first,” Fiona said, and Laurel turned to see her duck in front of the Queen, holding the glass vial. She’d attached a spray nozzle to the top. “Just to be safe,” she added, her eyes darting to the shadows that still lingered at Tamani’s chest.
Laurel nodded and Fiona hopped over the moat.
“Hold your breath.” Fiona misted them with a very fine spray of the viridefaeco. “I apologise that you will be a touch damp.”
Laurel waved her concerns away and turned to help Tamani to his feet. “Can you walk?” she whispered.
His jaw flexed several times, but he shook his head. “Not without help,” he admitted.
“Here,” Laurel said. She laid his arm across her shoulders and Chelsea was quick to join her on the other side.
Though the Queen stood only metres away, Laurel and Chelsea took Tamani across to the opposite side of the circle, where Jamison and Yasmine were, and David straddled the gap and carefully helped Tamani over so they could all sit together.
“We’ll talk over here,” Laurel called to the Queen.
Marion pursed her lips and for a moment Laurel thought she would refuse to come. But she must have realised there was nothing more she could do. Flanked by her Am Fear-faire, she picked her way round the circular trench and stood over them, looking down on what might otherwise have appeared to be a cosy group.
The Queen made a show of counting them once, and then twice. “Well, Jamison, two humans and two faeries; an Autumn and a Spring. Where is the Winter faerie you told me about?” Marion asked. “Or did she turn out to be a figment of a certain sentry’s overactive imagination?” Her eyes rested accusatorily on Tamani.
“She’s the younger one you see dead in the circle,” Jamison said, pointing.
Marion looked over and her eyes grew large, realising for the first time that the grotesquely shrivelled black forms in the circle of dead grass were, in fact, fae. “You killed her,” she said softly.
“I did not,” Jamison said. “Yuki betrayed Callista when it was revealed that Yuki was nothing more than a pawn in the Mixer’s plans. Callista killed her.”
“A pawn?” the Queen asked, scoffing, clearly unable to take seriously the idea of a Winter faerie as anyone’s pawn.
“Just like the trolls,” Jamison said, slowly, deliberately.
Momentarily, Queen Marion looked like someone had slapped her in the face – as though she took the comparison as a personal affront. Her expression slowly settled into uncertainty. “I think you had better start from the beginning.”
Slowly, and with many interruptions, Laurel shared with everyone the story of what they had done. When she got to the part about how she had discovered the final ingredient to the viridefaeco potion, Jamison beamed with pride and the Queen looked rather ill.
When Laurel finished, the clearing descended into tense silence. Marion looked over the circle where Klea and Yuki had died. The grass was blackened beyond recovery, but Fiona and two other soot-covered Autumns were spraying the viridefaeco serum, putting a final stop to the poison’s spread.
“Jamison,” Marion spoke at last, sounding tired, “you obviously need to rest. I suggest you retire to the palace and show these two humans to their quarters as well.”
“I agree. I think it would be best if David returns the sword before we reward him for his valour and escort him and his friends out of Avalon. I imagine they are all anxious to get home.”
“Don’t be foolish,” said the Queen, rejecting Jamison’s twisting of her command. “The humans cannot possibly be permitted to leave.”
Chelsea made a small noise in her throat; Tamani reached out and grabbed her hand reassuringly.
“You know as well as I that the rule is not absolute.”
“He has wielded the sword, Jamison.”
“Just because it was done before does not mean it has to be done now. The circumstances were very different,” Jamison said, his voice calm.
“I don’t see how.”
“Arthur had nothing to go back to. His life and kingdom were destroyed. This boy has a future ahead of him. I will not be part of trapping him here.”
“What do you mean, trapping me here?” David said.
Jamison looked up at David. “King Arthur never left Avalon. Ever. And it may not have been entirely of his own volition.”
“An unbeatable sword is too great a secret,” the Queen said, her tone patronising, but tinged with pity. “Surely you understand that.”
“I can keep a secret,” said David. “I’m real good at secrets.”
“Not like this.”
“I’ve kept Laurel’s true nature a secret for over two years now. Not to mention the location of the gate.”
The Queen didn’t look impressed. “That makes two things that should have been wiped from your memory, if Laurel d’Avalon’s Fear-gleidhidh had been doing his duty. Please do not think us ungrateful. It is a matter of expedience. The leaders of your world – human or otherwise – would slaughter a great many to obtain this weapon.”
&n
bsp; “I know that.”
“Then you understand that it is for your own safety that you remain here.”
“I have a family. Chelsea too. We won’t leave them.”
“It is not your choice,” the Queen said sternly. “We aren’t monsters; you will be well cared for. But you cannot leave.”
“It isn’t your choice,” David countered, before anyone else could speak up. “You can’t keep me here.”
The Queen’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t see why not.”
“I have Excalibur.”
“And you can carry it round Avalon till you die, for all I care,” she said, her tone declaring an end to this conversation.
“What do you want to bet this sword would cut through the bars of those gates?” David said, his voice quiet, but piercing.
Laurel’s breath caught in her throat; surely David didn’t intend to destroy Avalon’s most important defence – did he?
“Arthur never cut the gates,” the Queen retorted, but there was uncertainty in her eyes.
“Maybe he didn’t really want to leave.”
“Perhaps not,” Marion replied. “Or perhaps he realised the danger such rash action would pose to Avalon. Perhaps he was too noble for that.”
David responded with a glare, which Queen Marion returned, measure for measure.
“I will not assist you in trapping them,” Jamison said, interrupting their power struggle. “If they ask me to open the gate for them, I will.”
“Then you will be executed for treason,” Marion said without hesitation. “We may be one Council, but I am still the Queen.”
“No!” Yasmine shouted, clutching Jamison’s arm, her young voice sounding strangely out of place in the midst of this particular conversation.
“Yasmine, the same fate for you,” Marion said, not meeting her eyes.
“That’s not fair!” Chelsea said, rising to her feet, her fists clenched. “She hasn’t done anything.”
“The choice belongs to the human,” Marion said, staring steadfastly at David. “It would be a shame if, after all the work you’ve done, you decided to expose Avalon to even greater danger.”