The Faerie War (29 page)

“I didn’t. I had to wait till I got to the base. Uri gave me some kind of enchanted salve to put on it. He said the blade leaves magic in the wound that counters the body’s healing magic. So your body keeps trying to heal the wound, but the wound keeps fighting back.”

“Well, that sucks. I’m guessing you don’t have any of that salve with you?”

“No, sorry.” His hand slides away from my leg, and I have this insane urge to tell him to put it back. Only because his hand is cool, of course, and my skin is so hot and uncomfortable. No other reason. No reason for my heart to start pumping extra fast. Ugh, I think this wound might be making me delirious.

“So . . .” he says without getting up, “that was quite a way to be woken up back there at the Unseelie Court.”

For a moment I don’t know what he’s talking about. Then I remember the kiss. “Oh. That. I was just trying to shock the stunner magic out of your system.”

“It certainly worked.”

“I know. Thank goodness.”

He shifts a little, and I feel his shoulder brush mine. I’m suddenly very aware of his hand
right there
and his arm
right there
and his leg
right there
. Does he have to sit so close? Seriously. He obviously has no idea about personal space, because he is definitely invading mine. And I am not cool with it. At all. Which is why I should slide myself away from him. Now. Right now. I’m going to do it—

“Okay, so, we’re going to tell Tilly everything tomorrow,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“I should probably get back to bed.”

“Yeah.”

“So, I guess, good night?”

“Uh huh.”

He chuckles and gives me a knowing smile, although I have no idea what he thinks he
knows
. I wrap the bandage hastily around my leg before lying down. I pull the blanket over me, turn to face the wall, and pretend nothing weird just happened.

The light goes out.

*

After breakfast the next morning, Tilly offers to give us a tour of her floating island. Ryn exchanges a look with me, then says, “Actually, we need to talk to you about something. Something really important and . . . life-changing.”

“Oh, okay. Sure.” She looks between the two of us, as if trying to figure out what’s going on, then says, “Let’s go sit on the deck.” She leads us out the back of her house and onto a wooden platform with no railing. We sit down and hang our legs over the edge. It’s so peaceful here in the shade with birds twittering nearby and sprites with umbrella-shaped wings floating around. I hate to have to ruin it with what we’re about to tell her. “So?” She swings her legs back and forth. “What’s this big deal stuff you want to tell me about?”

Ryn sighs and launches into his story. He gives her the history first, about Tharros and the fact that even though he was killed, his power was never destroyed. Then he tells her about Zell, the Unseelie Prince who hunted down the chest of power, and Draven, the guy who eventually killed Zell and took the power for himself. Lastly, he tells her about the prophecy, the sword, and the Order of the Guard—and how our journey to find the Star led us to her.

When Ryn finishes, Tilly’s legs are no longer swinging back and forth. “Okay,” she says, staring at nothing. “Mind. Officially. Blown.”

My eyes meet Ryn’s over Tilly’s head. He gives me a helpless look that says,
now what?
I touch Tilly’s shoulder and say, “What do you think about all that?”

“I think . . . I mean . . .” She takes a deep breath. “Are you sure it’s me? It just seems really unlikely that a fifteen-year-old girl who’s never fought anyone before is supposed to save the whole world from the powerful, evil guy who’s bent on controlling everything.”

I don’t tell her that that’s exactly what we were thinking.

“Your name means ‘star,’ doesn’t it?” Ryn asks. “And you live on the ‘high ground.’ The sword glows when you touch it. It’s never done that before. And when Vi searched for you, we landed up across the world so close to you that you watched us being captured by the bounty hunters. I don’t think it can be anyone else but you, Tilly.”

She nods slowly, biting her lip and staring through the branches. “Just, uh, give me a minute.” She stands, pulls herself up onto a branch leaning over the deck, and climbs onto the roof of her house. She disappears out of view.

I turn back to Ryn. “I’m guessing she’s going to need more than a minute.”

He pulls his knees up and rests his folded arms atop them. “I don’t want to have to force her to do this.”

I twirl a piece of hair around my finger and watch umbrella sprites jumping from the tree top. They spin in slow circles as they float to the ground. “I don’t think it’ll come to that. It’s a lot for her to take in, but I don’t think she’s going to refuse.”

We sit quietly, watching the world tick slowly by. I try not to think of how time might be speeding along outside this place.

“Vi? Ryn?” I look up at the sound of Tilly’s voice. She hops down from her roof and stands behind us. “We’re not safe here, are we? I mean, everyone thinks we are. They think we’re hidden from Draven. But he’s going to find us eventually, isn’t he?”

I nod as I stand. “Draven will find everyone eventually.”

She looks at her shoes. “I thought so. It isn’t just the world out there I’d be saving. It’s the world in here too.”

“So, you’ll do it?” Ryn stands up beside me.

“Well, duh. I mean, it’s to save the whole world, right? I can’t say no to that. I didn’t even think I had a choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” I say quietly.

She frowns. “You do
want
me to do this, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course,” I say. “We just . . . want to make sure you understand what you’re getting into. Understand that you might . . .”

“Die?” She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I figured that one out. But everyone has to die at some point, right? I may as well do it while saving the world. I mean, not that I
want
to die, but if it has to happen now, then at least it’ll be while I’m doing something worthwhile.” She smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes this time. I hate that we’ve done that to her. That we’ve dimmed the light that seemed to shine perpetually in her eyes.

“We’re not going to let you die, Tilly,” Ryn says.

Her smiles stretches a little wider, and a hint of the light returns to her eyes. “As comforting as that sounds to me, I doubt it’ll make my parents feel any better when I tell them where I’m going. I’m pretty sure they’re going to freak out.”

Her parents. Right. They’ll almost certainly tell her she can’t do this.

“When do you want to talk to them?” Ryn asks.

“Now.” She swivels around and faces the door. “I’m going to talk to them right now. I mean, this is urgent. It can’t wait till later. We have no idea what time is doing out there. And if we wait too long, I might get scared and change my mind.” She takes a deep breath, then hurries into the house.

I take slow steps toward the doorway. I lean against the frame and listen to the muffled voices behind the closed door of Tilly’s parents’ bedroom. After several minutes, the voices become raised. Ryn joins me in the doorway.

“Doesn’t sound good,” he says.

The bedroom door flies open, and Tilly’s father storms out. “Where are they? They’d  better—ah, there they are.” He spins around and heads toward us. “You two need to take your things and leave right now. How dare you come into our home and fill Tilly’s head with these ridiculous stories?”

Ryn holds his hands up. “Please, just let me show you the—”

“No! Tilly will have no part in this. She’s just a child.”

“Dad, I’m—”

“Quiet, Estelle. These people will only get you killed. There is absolutely no way I’m letting you go with them.”

I bite my lip. His words could very well be true; we may indeed be leading her to her death.

“Well?” he says. “I asked you to leave!”

I hurry down the passage to the spare bedroom and lift my bag off the bed. Ryn slings the sword strap over his head and places Arthur on his shoulder. “Come on,” he mutters. “We’re not helping by being here.”

We head back to the lake where Arthur first landed. As soon as we reach the overhanging trees and gently lapping water, Arthur leaps off Ryn’s shoulder and starts expanding. He flies out over the lake as he grows, and by the time he lands in the middle with a loud splash, he’s reached his full size.

“Now what?” I dump my bag on the ground. “We can’t leave without her.”

Ryn shakes his head. “We have to figure something out. If we go back to the base without her, they’ll send a team here to take her by force.”

“You think Oliver would do that?”

“He wouldn’t want to, but, in the end, I think he would. This is the fate of the
whole world
we’re talking about, V. We can’t end Draven’s rule without her.”

I sit down on an oversized tree root and lean my head back against the trunk. “Okay, let’s wait a few hours and see if she manages to convince her parents.”

Ryn sits down and lies back on the grass. “I don’t see that happening.”

“Well, there isn’t much else we can do right now.”

We watch the cotton puffs of cloud through the branches as the sun moves across the sky. After a lot of pacing, sitting, lying down, and playing with Arthur, the sky begins to cycle through the colors of sunset. Night approaches. The stars pop out. After watching their slow trail across the heavens for several hours, I say, “I gather we’re spending the night out here?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Ryn adds a few more lines to the picture he’s drawing in the air with my stylus. “Could be worse, though. It could be Draven’s winter instead of a balmy spring on a floating island.”

I smile. If we have to be sleeping outside somewhere, this is certainly the place to be.

“How’s your leg feeling?”

“Still pretty bad.” Like someone is stabbing the throwing star into my leg over and over, but Ryn doesn’t need to know that.

He sits up and leans on one hand. “Want me to try a numbing spell?”

“Thanks, but I tried that already.” I push myself up and stretch my painful leg out straight in front of me and bend the other. “I don’t enjoy how it makes my leg feel like it’s fallen asleep.”

“A leg that’s fallen asleep probably isn’t the easiest thing to walk on.”

“No.”

He looks down at his hand on the ground, and I realize it’s almost touching mine. “I just . . . hate knowing that you’re in pain.” His words make me feel warm inside. His gaze catches hold of mine, and I give him a small smile. “When we were about nine years old, not too long before Reed had his accident, you and I were climbing up the gargan tree. Remember I told you about it? The tree we always used to hang out in?”

I nod, still unable to look away. It was one of the many things Ryn told me about when we were in the bounty hunters’ prison.

“We hadn’t climbed too far when you slipped and fell. You broke your leg. You couldn’t walk, so I needed to fetch someone to heal you. We knew some basic magic by then, but we weren’t old enough to use the faerie paths. It would have taken me over an hour to run home and try to contact my parents—who were working that night—and explain to them where you were. The sun was setting. Dangerous creatures could have appeared at any moment. I didn’t want to leave you alone.

“Being the stubborn girl you’ve always been, you told me you’d be fine. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave you there like that. I could feel . . . well, not your pain exactly, because that’s a physical feeling, but I could feel your distress. And your fear. And I could see on your face how much pain you were in. I wanted so badly to make it better, so . . . I tried. I put my hands around your leg. I didn’t have the first clue how to use healing magic, but it just . . . kind of . . . happened. Maybe I was so desperate to give you my magic that it all just ran out of me. Your pain disappeared, and I was left feeling exhausted. We both stumbled home, and we never told anyone what happened.”

“I . . . thank you.” I don’t know what else to say.

He shrugs, looking away. “I’m not sure why I thought of that. Probably because I still feel kind of . . . protective around you. Like if you’re hurting, I should make it better.”

His eyes find mine once more. It’s hard to tell in the moonlight, but I think his cheeks have more color in them than usual. I should really lean away from him or something because he’s definitely invading my space again. And I’m not supposed to be cool with that, right? Except . . . I know I was lying to myself last night, and I know I’m lying to myself again now. I
like
the fact that his skin is only inches away from mine. I
like
the shiver that zings up my spine and along my arms.

“V . . .” he whispers. “I really . . . just . . .”

Dear Seelie Queen, is he leaning closer to me? Is he about to . . .
An insane thought enters my mind that he might be about to kiss me—followed by the even more insane thought that I might actually let him.

A
whoosh
in the air beside us makes me jerk away. The picture Ryn was drawing in the air—which looks like it might be a floating island—bursts into bright orange flames.

“What? How did that—”

“Hey, guys! I thought you’d be here.” Running footsteps and the sound of Tilly’s voice make me pull even further away from Ryn.

“Tilly?” Ryn swats away the last of the flames and stands. “What happened? Did your parents let you go?”

“Uh, not exactly.” Her bag slips off her shoulder, and she pushes the strap back up. “My brother helped me sneak out. I don’t know how long it’ll be before my parents find out I’m gone, so we should probably leave right away.” She heads straight over to Arthur and starts climbing onto his leg.

“Tilly, wait.” I stand up and limp after her. “Are you sure this is the way you want to leave? You might . . . you might never see them again.”

Her eyes slide away from mine as she nods. “I know. I said goodbye to them in my own way. They just . . . didn’t know I was saying goodbye.”

“Tilly,” Ryn says. “Are you sure about this?”