KARIS

We kept the strange woods in sight as we took the meadows far to the east, until the dried grasses shortened and thinned. The air turned heavy, thick with moisture and brine. The ocean was close, but how close? My senses were so much keener here. Too keen. They were deceptive. It could still be miles away.

“We’re going too far away from Iric,” I stated wistfully.

“Damn it, Karis. I want to find him, too. I want to take you north, but this is the only way we can go if you can’t pass through the forest because of the Shades.”

I was taken aback.

“Look,” he growled, hands on his hips. “The Eastern Forest is the smallest of the four. If we skirt along the sea, we can enter at the border of the Northern Forest, where the Court of Spring meets the Court of Winter. The Shades were in the Spring Court. We can double back and catch up with Iric’s scent and hopefully find him, but I can’t risk taking you back into those woods. If you get dragged into the Underworld, even I can’t save you. No one can. There’s no coming back from death.”

I nodded, swallowing the knot forming in my throat.

How could I see Shades when Loftin couldn’t? Even though he investigated the area all around us, he never saw any of them, and they were surrounding us – purposefully, if I wasn’t mistaken. If I’d somehow managed to go after Iric on my own and made it this far without being eaten by something, they could have dragged me to the Underworld with them. I would have disappeared without a trace. Like Gregoire.

Was that what happened to him?

“We’re close to the sea,” Loftin explained. “Trust me. We’ll run like hell once we get to the border. We will find him.”

A great shadow stretched across the land, much like the one I sensed last night, but larger. It covered whole hills and valleys. “Get down,” Loftin gritted, dragging me off the path into the tallest of the closest grasses and boulders.

Between his chest and a rock, I covered my head with my hands. “What… is that?” I quaked.

* * *

LOFTIN

To the south, toward the sea, a darker shadow stretched across the sky. It appeared like a flock of birds, coming together and then flying apart, only to fly toward one another again.

The beating of wings, hundreds of wings, maybe thousands, was all I could hear. “It’s a flock of Caora!” I screamed. “We need to find cover, now!”

We ran like hell, but the Caora were fast and hungry and there was nowhere to hide. Black feathers rained down from above us as they flew in, circling us, diving at our heads and clawing at our backs as we fled.

“Their teeth are huge!” Karis screamed, glancing over her shoulder. “How long are their wings?”

I drew my sword. “Six feet,” I gritted, slashing at the wing of one of the creatures as it gnashed its teeth at my legs.

One knocked me to the ground, its claws digging into my back. I cried out before rolling over and thrusting my blade into its abdomen.

“Loftin!” Karis screamed.

“Run!” I shouted, but she was already running back toward me as another Caora dove toward us.

“Go away!” she screamed. She thrust out her hand, and from it sent a burst of wind toward the beasts swirling around. They tumbled into one another and began dropping from the sky.

Her eyes glazed over.

I threw the dead Caora off me and crawled to her. Wind poured off her and blasted out of her outstretched palms. I shielded my eyes and pressed forward.

KARIS

The door squeaks and then slams. Two sets of footsteps enter the room. “Iric?” I call out.

The fabric of their pant legs swish as they walk toward me. The boards under their feet groan and creak.

“Mage, this isn’t funny.”

“Mage isn’t here,” one of them affirms. I don’t recognize his voice.

“Who are you?”

“Everyone knows Iric takes you with him on night watch. Everyone but our captain. He would be dismissed from the Border Grays if the captain somehow found out.”

I swallow, reaching for the small blade I keep beneath my cot. “It doesn’t hurt anything for me to go with him.”

“Doesn’t it? You’re a distraction. The rest of us aren’t allowed to take girls into the towers with us.”

“It’s not like that.”

A new voice joins the conversation. Deeper, familiar. “Isn’t it?”

“Cade?” I ask.

The two become still.

A meaty hand grabs my arm and wrenches me up. I pull away from him, wishing I’d found the knife’s handle. My heart races, but I face them down, hoping they can’t smell or see the fear radiating off me. “Leave now, Cade, and I won’t tell Iric you were here.”

“You won’t tell him anyway,” he answers.

They shove me onto my cot, my body bouncing off the straw mattress. I smell liquor-soaked breath and feel fumbling hands…

And wind.

And rage.

It feels like our house is being torn apart by the storm.

And then all of it goes away. Everything is quiet. Still as death. My hands shake as I reach out. They come up empty. I reach under the cot and my hand finally finds the knife’s bone handle. I hold it in front of me.

Did they leave?

Minutes stretch into what seems like an eternity until Iric comes home. He walks in and stops. “What happened in here?”

“What do you mean?”

I’m afraid to tell him anything. Afraid they’ll come back when he’s gone again.

“K, the entire floor is coated in ash.”

My heart thunders.

“K, why are you holding a knife?”

Hands were on me. On my shoulders. Someone was yelling. “Don’t touch me!” I screamed.

“Karis, it’s Loftin. You’re safe. It’s me. It’s Loftin.” My vision cleared. I blinked and he was there. Loftin was standing in front of me. “You can stop!” he shouted.

“Stop what?”

My hands were extended and wind was pouring out of them. There were enormous bird-like reptiles falling from the sky. Caora, he’d called them. “If I stop, they’ll come back.”

“It’s okay. We’re going to run. It will take them a while to recover. Most of their wings are broken. Stop the wind and run with me.”

I made the wind stop, grabbed Loftin’s hand, and ran. “Don’t look back,” he instructed. Thuds and thumps of the falling beasts, the cracks and pops of breaking bones, and the screeches they loosed lay behind us.

There was a Caora beside us. Its wing was broken and it was pulling itself across the ground, flapping and fluttering a few inches before repeating the movements. Like a moth with a torn wing, like one of Gregoire’s moths.

A pair of fingertips trail over satin wings. “Don’t touch it!” a woman roars. She stomps toward a girl. “Don’t you ever touch it again!” she screams, raining down blow after blow on the girl, who tries in vain to shield her head and face. “That’s all I have left of him and you almost ruined it!”

Above the wall, above the woman who beat the girl as the girl apologizes and promises never to do it again, hangs a small, hand-made shadow box. In the box is a tiny faery, its wings tacked into place.

I gasped. “They weren’t moths.”

“What?” Loftin asked.

The vision—memory—only lasted a few seconds, but it was like I was there. The Caora writhed on the ground, baring its teeth, still trying to get to me. “How long do we have until they heal?”

“Hard to tell, but we should have some time.” The Caora’s wing began to straighten, the broken pieces mending before our eyes. “Or not.”

My fingers itched. “I think I can get rid of them, Loftin.” There was a darkness swirling through me, calling to me to end them. Will it and it will be so, the voice said. Turn them to nothing. Turn them to ash…

“Either you have to try, or we have to run,” he urged.

I closed my eyes and let the darkness in. I felt it running through my veins, swirling in dark clouds around my body. And then in my mind, I touched the same broken Caora and imagined it turning to ash, just like the darkness said.

Loftin’s hand touched my shoulder. “Karis,” he breathed. “You ended them all.”

I looked from his warm, orange eyes to the forest around us. There was nothing but trees.

“How did you do that?” he gasped.

It wasn’t something I could explain. I just knew. The voice was mine. I just knew I could end them, make them nothing, make them ash. Just like I knew to breathe, it had been natural. “Instinct.”

He winced at the word.

“We should go,” I urged. I knew he wanted more of an explanation, but I didn’t have one. I just knew. And now that I’d scared the hell out of my guide… for some reason, he stuck with me.

We stepped through the thick ashes of the Caora closest to us and left that place behind physically, although I was sure it would haunt my dreams for a long time to come. Everything in this place would.

Loftin was quiet as we walked. I stayed quiet, too. Afraid to say or do anything else. What if I accidently hurt him or turned him to ash? How could I control it? I didn’t feel those dark tendrils now. They were gone as quickly as they came. As soon as the danger was gone, they receded. But what if they came back and I unintentionally hurt someone?

“We have to be very careful as we get close to the ocean,” Loftin started. “There are dangerous creatures in the sand, water, and beyond, so I need you to listen and do as I say. There are also physical dangers,” he warned.

Of course there were. “What do you mean by ‘physical dangers’?”

“Pits, quicksand that can swallow you before you could even scream, lakes with worse creatures than the Puca ever dreamed of being, beasts that live in hills and in the cliffs along the rocky shore,−” His eyes rolled up to think of more, but I’d heard enough.

“I’ll listen and stay close.” I didn’t want to put him in danger again, or risk my life and not be able to find Iric. I didn’t want Loftin to have to kill again, especially for me. And I’d keep my knife and staff handy. He hadn’t verbally complained about the wooden stick yet, but he’d given it the side eye a few times.

I took a gulp of water, the canteen now half empty, and though we were rationing it, my mouth was parched and felt like cotton.

“We can refill it. I know of a safe place.” His eyes caught on the shimmering snake that coiled up and around my forearm, his lips thinning before he looked away.

Finean. The second deadliest creature in Faery gave me the Asper—for protection, or so he said. He told me to will it to life.

I thought it was ridiculous. It didn’t make sense, and it didn’t work when I tried to show it to the Puca beneath the water, wiggling my muscles to make it undulate. But after willing the Caora to ash, I decided maybe I could will the Asper to life, after all.

Like the bubble that formed in the middle of the lake, just when I needed it, when all the oxygen in my lungs had burnt to nothing and they blistered for air... maybe I could bring it to life. I just had to remember what I’d done to make it form, and draw on that. Loftin had powers. It seemed I did, too.

When Loftin was sure it was safe and the shadow had passed, we stood. I was dusting the grit and dirt off my hands when the air turned frigid and a familiar shriek sliced through the air. “We’re too exposed. We have to run!”

“Unless we go into the woods, there is no other option!” I yelled. And we both knew the woods were too far away. We’d never make it before the Banshee reached us. Loftin yelled a curse as we rushed down a slope, searching for something, anything to hide or shield us, and coming up empty.

“We need to face her,” I shouted. Loftin was beyond deadly to the creatures, and though he hated to kill, it was clear that it would either be us or them. These monsters weren’t going to stop, and there appeared to be a never-ending supply of them.

“Okay,” Loftin assented, gritting his teeth and jogging to a stop. He pulled his sword from its sheath, wiped his brow, and gazed at me. “We have no other options. Running won’t help us here. You should arm yourself—in case something happens to me.”

Happens to him? No.

A strange feeling came over me. The wind began to whip in every direction. Thunder rumbled across the sky as clouds formed and gathered in a sphere overhead. My palms burned. I held them out to see a white energy collecting within them. It grew with every breath I took, and as the Banshee approached, claws extended and ready to shred Loftin to pieces, I hurled the energy at her without a cohesive thought urging me to do so.

It exploded upon impact, enshrouding her with silvery ribbons of light, and she fell hard to the ground, the earth shaking with her impact.

And then she was gone. The earth opened beneath her and swallowed her whole.

Loftin’s mouth gaped open, his accusing eyes scrutinizing me. “What was that?”

My chest heaved. “Quicksand?”

He let out an exasperated noise. “I know it was quicksand that swallowed her, but what did you do to her?”

My lips parted. I didn’t know what to say, because I had no idea what I did. “I just felt my palms heat up and spark, and the next thing I know, I had a glowing ball of white... energy in my hands. So I threw it at her.”

“You protected me,” he acknowledged.

Blinking, I realized he was right. I killed her to save him. But he’d already saved me from a Puca and beheaded a Banshee for me. “I guess we’re even, then.”

Loftin pointed his finger at me, wagging it as though I were a child. “Your power is terrifying, Karis. You have to learn to control yourself, or you’ll kill us all,” he uttered, his words filled with anger and disgust.

But I didn’t even know I had such power until just a moment ago! “How?”

“How, what?” He turned his eyes from the spot in the earth where the Banshee had disappeared.

“How do I know what my powers are, and how do I control them?”

He tapped his temple. “It starts here. You have to control your emotions and thoughts. You have to think rationally. Survive, not obliterate.”

I didn’t understand his anger. “Why are you so upset? I did it to protect you! To protect us. What I did was no different than when you incinerated those…things on the hill. How dare you say I’d ever hurt you! I never once thought you’d burn me with your flames.”

His jaw ticked in anger and he approached slowly. I slid my knife from its sheath. “I will protect myself, Loftin, even from you.”

He didn’t stop, didn’t care that my blade was in my hand. No, Loftin just strode up to me, stood toe-to-toe, and leaned down, putting his face directly in front of mine.

He loosed a growl, his lips peeling back from his teeth.

I inhaled as deeply as I could and roared back at him.

And then he kissed me. His lips pressed hard against mine, pouring all his frustration into it. I stared, wide eyed as he deepened it, his tongue brushing my lips. In a flash he was gone, and I gasped when he shot me an accusing glare, as if I were the one who had kissed him, before stalking away like the infuriating male he was.

* * *

LOFTIN

I lost control.

Hell, I wondered if I’d ever really had any since I met her.

Like a fool, I kissed her. She was so sweet, and those fucking lips had me tied in knots for so long… it was her fault. I decided to put some distance between me and her; not enough that I couldn’t protect her, but just enough for me to breathe without smelling her scent and wanting to go back and kiss her again.

Burn me alive, I already did.

But we had real problems now. Problems she created for us with… What the hell was that?

Did Nemain see the great light show her daughter created? I sheathed my sword, wondering if the tremor would have reached the Court of Ash. Did it shake the foundations of the crumbling castle her mother lived in? It sure as hell shook the ground under our feet.

I’d never seen anything like it. Even my father, King of Autumn and master wielder of fire, didn’t have what she did. Energy, she called it. Bright white, glittering ribbons she balled up and hurled at the Banshee, wrapping around it like fast-moving constrictors. Like a thousand glowing Aspers. She didn’t even need the serpent coiled around her arm. That meant Finean didn’t know about her power or how much she already had stored within her. But he knew her. Now I had a good idea of who had hidden Karis away.

She caught up with me and gave me a little huff of frustration. Well, honey, I feel the same way times a million. We walked side by side for a while, each lost in our own thoughts.

“Could you do that again?” I asked when I was finally calm.

“Probably, if I was scared enough.”

I considered the sky above us. There were no clouds. The sky was blue again. Did she collect lightning from a storm she created? I placed my hands on my hips. “I understand that you were frightened, but in the future, I’d rather handle the beasts myself in case your power spirals out of control.”

“I don’t understand why you’re so upset!” she argued.

“Because unlike you, I can control my flares. I can protect you, incinerate beasts, and still know exactly where my power will strike and when to use it. You know nothing!”

Karis ignored the jab, knowing I spoke the truth. She took the bag off her back and brought out the canteen, tipping it up. Not even a drop fell onto her tongue. With a sigh, she capped it and started to put it back in the bag.

“Leave it out,” I offered. “There’s a river not far from here. The water was clean the last time I came through.”

She thanked me and we walked in silence across the hills toward the trees. The closer to the forest we came, the quieter she got. “We aren’t going in the woods. You can relax.”

How was it that a girl who could hurl energy balls and acted like she was going to clobber a Banshee with her stick was terrified of the dead? Karis could keep up with me every step of the way when many others—male and female alike—would have crumbled. The terrain and our pace had been punishing and unforgiving.

She was a paradox of unsure ferocity, and I didn’t know what the hell to do with her. The sun was falling low in the sky. “We get water and then we make tracks. Fast,” I told her.

She simply nodded and walked alongside me until the sound of rushing water came closer. “Loftin?” she asked.

“Yeah?”

“Are there Puca in the water here?”

I smiled. At least she learned something.

“No, there’s nothing in this river that will harm you. Most of the fae you’ll find in water like to have a lot of room to move around in. You’ll find them in lakes, sometimes in larger ponds. The ocean is a vast and deadly place.” And we’d be seeing that firsthand soon enough.

I stopped and pointed in the direction of the river bank. “If you want to wash up, I can stay here. You’ll have some privacy and I’ll keep watch so you’ll be safe. Just… hurry.”

She gave me a small smile of thanks and walked in the direction I pointed. I exhaled, releasing all the pent-up tension, rolling my shoulders and letting them relax. As twilight descended, I searched my mind for a place we could shelter for the night. This wasn’t an ideal location. If we could cut across the sand without being noticed...

I listened to Karis at the river bank, sipping the cool water and splashing it over her face and arms. If Finean tried to reach her again, I was close enough to stop it. Finding a palm-sized rock, I waited to do just that, tumbling it between my fingers. Disturbing the surface would erase his image from the water.

She declared that she hadn’t told him I was with her, but if he found out, he would tell her why I was helping and ruin everything.

I understood why Nemain wanted her daughter back. If that was the first manifestation of her power, what lay beneath the surface was great and powerful. If Nemain took it from her, the power would be hers, and this world and everyone still in it would be damned.

I wasn’t sure what to do. If I didn’t return her, my father would remain dead, his soul withering in the Underworld. And if I did return her, everyone in Faery and in the human cities would die. There was no way to win.

But one thing was certain – she didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve to be taken to Nemain.