Silver Hollow (57 page)

Faye used her dagger to nervously pick away at the dried blood beneath her nails. “So maybe I should check out what’s going on up there? I’ll try to contact Ben and see what’s up before we come get you. Maybe you can find some pants for lizard man over here.” She smirked when Dearg growled low.

His voice sounded as if he had gargled with marbles, it was so hoarse from breathing fire. “I do be a better sight than that furry friend of yours.”

“Shut up
,
Eddie!” Faye protested, dragging Amie out of his arms and into her own. “You think you can manage him on your own?”

Squeezing back tightly, Amie nodded and flashed a
weak smile
. “I’ll see y’all on the other side,” she said, pulling away.

Faye pointed to her narrowed orbs with two fingers and directed them at Dearg. “Remember, we’re always watching.”

…

Amie watched while Dearg tugged on a pair of boots, wondering how long this set of clothes would last before they were shredded with his lesser skin. She also couldn’t help sm
iling fondly at his ginger hair,
still coated in a fine layer of golden dust.

Dragon’
s skin, Faye called it.

Reaching past the shelter of his cottage, Amie searched for Faye and found relief knowing she
had
made it past the stables. Reaching Ginuog’s position atop the towers of Wenderdowne was another matter entirely. She could only hope her friend’s recently revealed superpowers included scaling walls.

The house sensed her presence nearby and welcomed it, urged her to come quickly to a specific secret location. Amie didn’t understand why it wanted her there so much, but she could feel the dire urgency in the summons. The longer they waited for Faye in Dearg’s cottage, the more anxious she felt.

A well of endless power lay untapped inside of her, which drew its source from everything within Silver Hollow. To swallow
this
power whole was a very real temptation for Amie, who wanted so desperately to forget her fears and human emotions.

The
Freargde
hissed when he straightened in his seat, shutting his eyes tightly while clutching his chest.

Above all
,
she needed to make sure Dearg survived this
scheme
of hers. She couldn’t afford to lose anyone else important to her.
She rose from her chair and crossed the
short distance between them
, then
leaned forward to cover his hand with hers. He snatched her hand so quickly it stole her breath. Without opening his eyes again, he simply focused on the texture of her skin and breathed. Though she couldn’t explain the reasons why,
that
desperate touch struck her down to her core, lit her body in a thousand thrills. Breathlessly she waited, uncertain if the moment had sparked from pain or passion.

“I’m not strong like him
,
Amie,” he said in the darkness, “not the way you need me to be. Emrys was called to guard you. For whatever
krumplekined
reasons, he loves you. And…and he can
touch
you…without causing you harm
.
” He ghosted his rough palm over her bare arm, only close enough to graze her light hair with his calluses. The breath he drew in was a ragged effort.

For all the passion Amie had written about, for the lust she had read in Emrys’s eyes, nothing would move her so strongly as this. “I can’t believe you’re comparing yourself to him
,
”
s
he finally hissed, garnering his attention. Uncertainty and hope flickered in his flame
-
tinted gaze and
,
determined to prove it
,
she lowered her lips to his for a brief yet purposeful kiss. “I choose
you
over him any day. You’ve been my only true friend
,
Dearg
,
and I swear I’ve never loved anyone like I love you now.” She smothered his gasp with more kisses.

With surprising deftness he pushed himself up with one arm and pulled her into his lap. And the initial pain she felt because of his touch, because of what he had done to her months before, subsided. When she sighed into him his tongue grazed her lips and parted them, dragged against hers as if to memorize her every crevice. He turned her insides out with so little effort Amie shivered to think of all the other things he could evoke in her.

Neither of them noticed how the flames and her silvery blue energy threaded together and fanned out a network of streams across the cavern, or that every sleeping dragon’s eye awakened.

…

Amie was the one to insist they scout out from the stables next. Faye’s warnings kept playing back on her conscience
.
“I’ve got this
, Wentworth! So please don’t do anything stupid like trying to follow me.”
Trouble was, they had been waiting for an hour at least and the house only increased its summons, imbuing her with irrational fear.

Dearg followed her without question and Amie thought he must be feeling just as impatient to finish it. He paused before the door separating the sta
b
le and cave. “Prepare yourself, lass. No matter what happens never stray from my sight. We shall have victory this night.”

Amie sighed, nodded to herself
,
for it was now or never
.
“Are you ready?” Resting his forehead against her shoulder and giving one lingering breath, he moved to stand beside her, never releasing her hand. Their eyes locked. She attempted to smile but did little to disguise her fear. No amount of experience trapped within her ring could reassure her no one was going to die today.

Or that no one already has.

A
s the tears began to collect in her
eyes
he smiled and his true Freargde nature shone through as he whispered, “I did nay understand this human emotion before your return, Amie. Now I love because of you. Remember, whatever comes, our love shall nay fail.”

The door creaked and opened. The stables were dark and silent. Not even the animals made a sound in the darkness, but a thick metallic stench filled their noses and made her cringe. “What is that?” Thoughtlessly she attempted to light their way with a
nixy
orb, until he snatched her hand and buried it between their chests.

“Do nay stop, whatever you smell or hear,” he seethed, eyes glowing burnt orange in the shelter of shadows. She bit her lip, terror prickling up her spine and the hairs of her neck. Again she recalled how she couldn’t hear or sense the animals in their stalls.

Those sick freaks!
She imagined terrible scenarios, each worse than the last.

Dearg led her further, not stopping until they were at the opposite end of the structure, facing the rising hill and castle towers beyond. Lights danced across the night sky, traces of the fallen
Sidhe
and their energies unleashed to fall like ash or the dusty dragon’s skin. Had she not known their source she might have called them beautiful. Instead of the cries of the dying, they heard something even worse and more chilling. Instead of the sounds of war all they heard was silence.

The outline of overturned carriages and motionless figures trapped within dotted the grounds beyond the stables. It looked like a graveyard.

“Henry
.
” Amie choked on a sob before lurching from their hiding place. Now that her eyes were upon the castle, she gave into the call for its true mistress.

“Amie!” Dearg struggled to maintain his grip on her hand when she jerked them forward. “Stop!” he roared. His voice was the only one that could have kept her from searching for her father.

“Where is everyone?” she whispered
,
afraid the answer was plain to see. “Why isn’t anyone still fighting? Where’s Slaine?” She stuck her boot in a thick filmy substance, tucked her chin and stared at the blood sprawling over the path. Torn
-
off wings and misshapen forms had been left to rot in a massacre that stretched from field to hedgerow. Decorations from the night before lay a trashed wreckage over the sweet
-
smelling roses. The contrast was sickening, sugar sweet rose overshadowed by rot. She rolled the ring on her finger in furious circles with her thumb as they passed the tattered vestiges of a gryphon’s wing.

I shouldn’t have left.

“Come,” Dearg soothed, leading her by the hand again. Ashes fell from the dark cloud, composed of brimstone and precious metals. The cannon
-
like pounding of the earth increased in volume the nearer they drew to the house itself. Still there was no sign of Faye and their companions, or the dark army laying siege.

Keeping her attention away from the recently dead around them, Amie kept her focus on the towers over the hedge and she and Dearg’s shared heartbeat. Past the hedge was the hill
where Henry taught her how to make things grow. Even with winter’s approach it had still been fresh and beautiful as early autumn. They were nearing the garden, almost to the kitchen entrance at the base of the castle, when it happened.

Halfway through the massacre they saw too late and Amie hissed, “Dearg!” Not three feet before them a doubled-over creature crouched over a centaur’s rump, its grotesque features smeared in its blood. She held her breath the instant its solid black eyes locked with hers.

“No sudden moves
,
lass
,
” Dearg warned, contain
ing
the flames in his fist so his flesh reflected the trapped building heat.

She nodded.
“Yeah, I’m all over that idea.” She gasped to feel his strength rush through her veins and realized they had one advantage her ancestors had been too afraid to consider.

Against her ear he whispered, “These
golem
are not like Ginuog. They can shift into other forms after living so long in darkness. Do nay let go of me or hesitate to slay them.” He brushed her hair with his lips in case it was the last time.

The
golem
watching them had stood and began to lope at them with a decreasing limp. Its arms hung low towards the ground, dragging against its former victims. Amie thought of Feather as she reached her hand towards it, closed her eyes and saw her first confidant and friend in the Hollow. She saw the countless hours she had spent in the library speaking to a stuffed eagle’s head on the wall and their laughter once she discovered he really had been listening.

Then a different presence, something rooted and deeper
she hadn’t been looking for
,
brushed against her
nixy
. She felt the wounded earth beneath them. The forest was filled with evil creatures like this one and it was very angry. Even as the soil began to tremble beneath them the
golem
stayed its course, a keening wail on its tongue.

“Wait,” Dearg murmured.

She began to shake when the forest’s nixy flooded into her veins. “I can’t!”
s
he gasped, cried out
,
and then the deep roots burst in a shower of dirt clods and filth, reaching and grasping for anything in its path. The creature still reached for her even as it was ensnared, slashed at the air before her face. As the roots dragged it back into the earth it had desecrated, it shrieked with fury.

Amie watched on with cold eyes, feeling the remaining darkness run to escape the trees of the forest. And then she could feel the entire grounds, called upon it to take its revenge for this
desecration. Few escaped unscathed and those who
did
moaned in pain. As the last
golem
fought for breath, she neglected to remember one very important fact.

“Get out of the way, Wentworth!” Faye screeched far to the right. Amie lifted her head to see her friend diving through the air in a perfectly suspended twirl. For a moment time seemed to slow and sound literally blurred to her ears.

Just like the movies after all,
Amie thought. Dearg was shouting, trying to tug her along. And then Faye rammed into her, knocking the air from her lungs and setting off a reflexive
nixy
charge, covering
the three of them in a tangled web.

Faye shrieked, “Amie! Stop, you’re hurting me!”

Amie gasped and stared at the sky as flashes of red light passed over where they had been standing.

The Unseelie! How could I have forgotten?

Realizing her friend was in pain, she tried to stop drawing on the ring, but
th
at
was when she heard the growling of the oncoming hord
e
Faye had been running from. Fear filled her, froze her up so she couldn’t breathe again. Through her new connection to the house, Amie felt its defenses rise up and its added power pulse through her.

“Amie
,
let go or we’re all dead!” Faye urged.