Page 27 of Faerie Fate
Mike shifted his arm around me, underneath my opposite arm to support me before I fell. “Easy. She’s been through a lot.”
He sounded sick. Didn’t he? Sick to his stomach at having to help support me.
Melia leaped forward to take my other side. “What did you do?” she threw out.
Mike scoffed. “Seriously, Mel?”
“Force of habit. Sorry, Your Highness. Girl, you look awful. Why are you covered in blood?”
The second Melia made contact, the tears sprang free again. And fuck them because now was not the time for me to lose it. Not with all those people watching. But speeding forward in time only increased the pressure in my head from the mate bond. A world might separate me and Kendrick but he was awake and he was furious.
I lost the plot entirely when Noren cut through the crowd of students with a whine. The direwolf’s fur lifted on the back of his neck, his ears pricking high before they flattened on his skull. He pressed closer and sniffed at the scar on my neck, licking the edges and clearing off some of the blood.
“I know you’re worried, buddy, I know.” I pulled away from Mike and Melia to hug Noren. “I’m sorry to scare you.”
He was beside himself, barking and whining and acting more like a nervous dog with separation anxiety than a big bad Unseelie direwolf. I couldn’t blame him, though, and I couldn’t tell him things would be okay. It was just another one of those empty promises I had no way of making sure would come true.
“It’s good you’re back,” Melia said. Steel infused her tone. “Something has closed the barrier between the fae realm and the human realm. We got everyone back to the academy but we can’t open any more doors. Our keys don’t work.”
Mike pulled up sharply. “What do you mean?”
“She means that nobody else has come through,” Coral clarified. Somehow she managed to sound pissed off and put out at the same time. She glanced over her shoulder at the sobbing from the rescued students like they were to blame. “Every time Melia attempts to use her key, nothing,” she finished.
Bronwen gnawed her lower lip and said, “We thought for sure you guys were stuck over there.”
Mike and I shared a look. “We didn’t exactly come fromnow,” I explained. “Mike?”
Rather than answer, he took his key back out and thrust it into the open air across from our rescue victims. Nothing happened. There was no hazy golden portal outline. Nothing except a blond guy waving a key around.
“The same thing happened to me,” Melia added, her hands on her hips. “We’ve been cut off.”
“No one else is going in or out,” Coral said unnecessarily.
We’d been cut off from the human realm. How? Why?
“Who has the power to do something like that?” Bronwen slid her hands into her pockets and nudged closer to one of the crying first-years I’d found upstairs. Not touching but definitely adding her strength. “Could it be Dorian Jade?”
“Kendrick and Dorian are working together,” I replied. “I saw it.”
It was easier to talk to Melia than to Mike. His presence beside me felt the same but things had altered.
Mike shook his head and glared at his key as though it had betrayed him. “The spells for transport between realms have always been governed by the king and the Elder Council. Dorian Jade would have no control over them.”
Shock fused my spine. Kendrick definitely had a mole on the inside, then. Someone with the power to accomplish something absolutely monumental.
As if in confirmation, a flicker of triumph filtered down the mate bond to me.
Chapter Eight
Isearched the crowd for a glimpse of Mom but Livvy wasn’t there. Kendrick’s presence shifted inside of me, flexing his claws, trying to watch this world through my eyes. I pushed him back violently.
Livvy must have been trapped on the other side with the boundary between us more solid than ever. Had I finally found my mother only to lose her again?
Nurse Julie, however, had made it through. She stepped away from Professor Marsh with a flicker of her iridescent blue wings. She stared at me for a moment before forcing a faded smile and breaking the silence. “Tavi? Let me have a look at your neck.” Her competence, her reputation, had students shifting aside to give her berth to reach me.
The tears continued to pour whether I wanted them to or not. Would they ever stop? Not damn likely. Would the horror of everything that happened over the last few hours ever feel manageable?
I stepped into Julie’s waiting arms and hugged her through the tears. “You’re safe? You’re not stuck in the human realm? I tried to look for you.”
