Page 100 of Faerie Fate
I sucked in a breath, glancing over at the pixie perched at the helm of the boat. “What’s happening?” My mouth tasted like the bottom of the river.
“The smell is the morsana fields burning.” Her sorrow penetrated through the last dregs of sleep. “We’ve finally reached EverRose. So my guess is that the fae arrived before us.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
For that last mile downriver, we inhaled smoke, our lungs burning, and the pixies lapsed into silence. One final bend in the river brought us to our destination but an eerie silence greeted us at the docks.
Water lapped against the pilings and the creak of wood against wood made a dull thud as we moored the boats.
“This is wrong,” Elfhame whispered. “There are no palace staff waiting for us, as they should be. Did the fae do more than breach the field?”
Her concern spread through the group faster than wildfire. No one had an answer for her.
The adult pixies spoke among themselves in murmured tones, and my attention landed on the mist churning at the end of the dock, obscuring the landscape beyond.
“Right.” Poppy wiped her hands together and rose, jumping from the boat to the dock without wobbling. “I know how to skin this pig. You three, over here. We’ve got business.”
Surprise and alarm mingled. Mike went next and reached back to help me onto the dock. Bronwen and Noren were right behind.
The quiet thickened the longer we stood, and in the silence the beating of my heart sounded awkward and overly loud.
Poppy gathered us in front of her and stared at us with her hands on her hips. I thought she might be disappointed but it was impossible to read her face. “Right. Well, here goes nothing.”
Poppy took one of the morsana daggers from a pixie and drew it across her palm, ignoring Mike’s gasp of surprise.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
Poppy gave him a narrow glance and hardly flinched, only handed the dagger to Mike to return to its owner.
“Blood magic.” She said it like she hated stating the obvious. “It’s irreversible magic and it should keep you alive, no matter what happens. It's a powerful protection. Right now, it’s the only thing I have to offer you, because who the hell knows what waits beyond these hills.”
Poppy shut her eyes, murmuring the words of the spell under her breath in a dialect of fae I’d never heard before. The words sounded half familiar, like something I might have heard once upon a time in one of my classes at the Elite Academy.
She lifted her bleeding palm in the air, sketching out the outlines of wards. “I feel your skepticism, Tavi,” Poppy said without opening her eyes. “Trust me. This is going to serve you well no matter where life takes you. It’s my personal protection. You’ll be safe even from spells of my own making. It should be enough to keep you from dying if we face what I believe we’re about to face.”
I swallowed over a groan, the knot in my throat more pronounced. Was this why I’d been able to walk through Barbara’s spells in the future? Even though the protection wasn’ton me then, Barbara’s magic must have still recognized me, even though Barbara didn’t.
The strange connection between future and past spun my mind and left me with a headache. The rest of the pixies came off their boats and moved quickly and quietly up the dock toward the bank beyond the mist.
Poppy ended her spell, and a sense of heaviness settled in my bones. She wiped her wounded palm on the front of her thigh without care for the bloodstain.
“It’s fine,” she told Mike when he tried to offer her a piece of cloth. “A little bleeding never hurt anyone. At least the spell will hold.”
Bronwen shivered. “Thanks, Poppy.”
Poppy bobbed her head once in curt acknowledgment before joining the pixies. She disappeared through the mist and I turned to Mike, catching his eye.
“How could they have gotten here before us?” I asked in a voice low enough for only him to hear. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
His lips thinned. “We’ll be out of here soon. Get the flower and leave. Hopefully her protection won’t be necessary.”
I had a bad feeling our plans were about to go to shit, but what did I know?
Bronwen grabbed my hand and squeezed hard before she stepped purposely through the mist and disappeared as well.
With no choice, I left the wooden dock and followed the gravel path beyond. It gently curved up the rise of the bank, the hills steep before the slope dropped. I pumped my arms for speed and the mist dissolved, the smoke whisked away on a breeze. And at the rise of the mountain, we had our first glimpse of EverRose.
The palace loomed out of the fog with beautiful spires like the first shoots of plants after a long winter. The delicate lines of twin towers jutted against a cloudless sky, lit from behind.
