Page 12 of Wrath of the Fae Queen
She is not real, Aldrin.
I ignore the voice, rushing for my sister. Confusion hits me, because I don’t remember where she went or why she left.
“Big brother,” Lorrella says. “Follow the path that leads to your throne, but be wary of vipers in the snow.” Her voice becomes distant, her form fading.
I reach for her, but my arms pass through the air where she had been. “No. No. No! Lorrella! Come back.” I find myself yelling at nothing and no one as tears prickle the corners of my eyes.
Icy rain trickles over me as I make the sky cry the torment building in my chest. It builds into a storm, one that only crashes over me and leaves the rest of the platform dry. Rivulets run down my face, washing more of the toxins from my skin. When I open my eyes, I find tiny white flowers crushed beneath my boots.
I take a step into that plain as soul-deep fatigue washes through me. Then I freeze. I blink and focus. That damned pleasing sprinkling of snow writhes and resolves into hundreds of double-headed albino vipers slithering over skulls and femurs. These fucking hallucinations will be the end of me.
Pure rage fills me.
I want to snap their bodies with my bare hands.To tear their heads off with my teeth.
I want to wreak havoc, because I am so fucking tired of tricks, lies and illusions. Because I want my sister back, and not just in some drugged-up dream.
I have no idea which way to go, but I keep moving. A rain of iridescent droplets falls from the sky but I cannot feel them on my skin. Or maybe it is thousands of sprites swarming through the air, each the size of a pinprick. Either way, I can hardly see through it.
My boots stumble over a thick, gnarled root and I smack straight into a tree. I remember that assassin calling the trees sociopaths and rear back from it. My feet land on the edge of a cliff, my heels hanging over the drop and sending stones crashing down the mountainside below. I pinwheel my arms to regain my balance, breathing hard.
I keep wandering, lost. I don’t know which way is up or down anymore, or which direction I came from. The toxins run rampant in my blood. There is a buzzing inside my head.
Then I remember it is that guiding voice.
Aldrin, please!she cries.
I pause, tipping my head to the side to listen.
Look up,she commands.
I squint at the sky above, blinking through the psychedelic lights around me until they slowly recede. There is no sun in the sky, no moon, only a blanket of bright gray, with the mountain rearing up to one side.
Turn slowly in a circle. Stop. Go back the other way. There! Walk forward.
One foot in front of the other. How hard can it be?
I sway. I get distracted. Laughter boils out of me until I can barely breathe, then I immediately forget what was so funny. Tears start running down my face. Shakes overtake me by the time I reach the spot that snagged her attention, alongsidea hunger and thirst I have never known before, not even in Edmund’s prison.
There!Triumph fills her voice.A staircase cut into the rock! Approach it slowly. Oh, Aldrin, you are almost at the top of the mountain.
The stairs move, elongating then shrinking.
It’s not real,I throw back, rubbing my hands across my face.Nothing here is fucking real.
Toss a rock at the staircase,she urges.
It takes the longest time to pick up a rock, because the infernal things keep sprouting legs and skittering away. When I finally toss one at the steps, they burst into hundreds of iceflies. I frown as all those creatures stutter in their trajectory, pause, then take the exact same path in reverse, sucked back to the staircase. The steps are formed once more without a flaw.
My stone remains, half hanging over the edge of one step.
Well, what the fuck does that mean?I grumble.
They are real. Climb the staircase,Keira whispers back.
It leads me up and up. I trip multiple times as the steps seem to move around my feet. The flight takes me between immense carnivorous plants as large as I am, with gaping mouths and barbed teeth. I try to sneak past them but my boots set off the tiniest rockfall and all those huge blooms turn toward me. Two things happen at once: they spit thick, black poison at me and send out vines to capture me and drag me back.
My eyes and skin burn from the acidity of the spray, half blinding me, but I slice my way out of their domain.
