Page 104 of Faerie Fate
He was right, even though the prospect of hiding left me feeling carved out and awful. We had the flower. If it weren’t for my powers and the pressing need to unlock them, then we could get out of here right now and let the fight run its course the way it was meant to.
Mike’s eyes bored into mine and I eventually nodded.
“Right. Then follow me. I’ll find a way through the fight.” His fingers tangled with mine and he lifted my hand to his mouth, brushing a kiss over the curve of my knuckles. My heart beat faster.
I cast my gaze at Bronwen and found her pale and shaking. She leaned against Noren for support and the direwolf blinked at me, acknowledging our plan of attack.
The pixies were fast and lethal in their defense. So we had to be faster.
Instead of going back the way we’d come, we ran through the fight, heading into the palace itself. Two pixies, white glows overhead, fired off their weapons while the fae moved in formation and met the blast with one of their own.
We raced out of the massive opening foyer and beyond the graceful curve of the staircase. The hallway narrowed into a funnel, with the end obscured by black smoke.
The fight trickled out of the foyer with us. We passed room after room, and no matter what turn we took, there were more soldiers. More bodies blocking our path.
We were going to be discovered. How could we not be, in the thick of things? The screams burrowed into my head and set my teeth on edge.
“Don’t kill anyone! You’ll change history!” Mike shouted.
He asked for the impossible.
Noren jogged ahead with a flick of his tail and only once did he glance over his shoulder, his yellow eyes meeting mine. He huffed out a breath like a punctuation to Mike’s warning. Or maybe it was one last warning to tread carefully.
The blistering heat belching from the burning morsana fields scalded every inch of available skin. How long beforeweburned along with everything else?
A wave of pixies rushed us. They crashed against the oncoming fae at our backs, meeting the armored warriors with their wings beating and their cries savage. Despite their small size, the pixies did not shrink away. They wielded weapons much larger than their bodies with a ferocity I’d never seen matched.
My wolf ached to get free as Noren leaped forward and took down one of the warriors cutting past us, stopping the soldier before he drew his sword. Not like I thought I’d change the tide or anything so silly but I’d feel stronger as a wolf. As a halfling. But it would give us away immediately.
Mike grabbed the sword from the fallen warrior, now grunting under Noren’s weight, and swung it in the air. “Stay back! No one come any closer.”
A pixie drove straight for his throat and I leaped in front of him at the last second, pushing him to the ground. “We’re not your enemy! Don’t touch him!”
Noren pounced on the pixie before they fired off another round of morsana-fueled fury.
How on earth did we convince the pixies we told the truth? Did it matter?
The pixie went down but another tide rose beyond it, their earth magic rippling the floor. The marble buckled underneath us and we went down. The back of my skull cracked against the floor hard enough for a universe to bloom to life in front of my eyes.
Oh, god. The pain was excruciating, unbearable.
Noren nudged me with his nose as I struggled to get up, Mike’s hand falling from mine.
“Tavi, we have to get out of the palace. They’ll bring EverRose down around us,” Bronwen screeched.
She grabbed my shirt and hauled me to my feet. Mike followed, slower and sluggish, until the clash of the fae swords faded.
Several of the older pixies we’d arrived with found us, and Noren growled.
Bronwen drew up short with her palms held out. “Hold on! It’s us!”
“We’re not here to hurt you,” I added.
The fae soldier called Grant stepped beside us and swiped his sword at the pixies. One of them went down with a scream and magic burned through my veins.
“Don’t touch them.” I grabbed Grant by the back of his armor.
He dodged my fist and jerked me by the leg, the world spinning as he slammed me onto my back again. The impact, the throbbing in my skull, drove the air right out of my lungs.
