Page 156 of Beyond the Faerie Gate

Has she abandoned me?

“It’s okay.” Kitarni tries her best to soothe me, but I’m already spiralling. “That’s normal for a high-stress situation. You’re new to magic, remember? You just need to centre yourself, take a deep breath—”

Before she can say anything else, I stumble to my feet. “I need to get up there.”

If I can get them to stop, to end the danger, then maybe I can focus on reaching for Danu and helping them heal. Right now, I’m too on edge.

Kitarni’s lips—or really, the bark at the edge of her mouth, since she lacks lips in the traditional sense—purse together in disapproval. “Is that an order, my lady?”

I nod, staggering to my feet. “It is.”

The high priestess clearly objects, but she nods at the servants on either side of me. “You heard Her Majesty.”

The arms around my back turn from gentle and supportive to firm and uncompromising. The weight of my body falls entirely onto my shoulders as two fae lift me beneath my arms, their wings beating furiously in an effort to carry my dead weight.

“I will meet you at the top,” Kitarni promises, glancing towards the stairs as my feet draw level with her eyes. “Don’t rush in. No matter what you see or hear. Wait for me.”

I can barely hear her past the rushing in my ears, and even if that wasn’t the case, I don’t think I would’ve cared. I’m so caught up in my bonds that I can’t focus on anything else.

Everything is overshadowed by the feeling of wrongness coming from all five of my bonds. Though the pain is mainly coming from Lore and Caed, trickles of it have begun to echo from Drystan and Jaro as well. Not so much that they’ve started to draw from me, but enough that I know they’re both involved.

Bree is the only one I can’t feel, and that’s because his bond is locked down tight, as it has been since the moment he left my garden. I don’t think he’s even in the palace.

My feet land on the solid stone of the stairs outside my own garden room. The two maids on either side of me set me down gently, keeping their grips under my arms to make sure I don’t fall. Both of them remain silent, but they’re clearly hesitant to walk into the chaos and smoke before us.

I take a wobbly step.

“My lady…” one of the maids says. “Should we not wait—”

“Go.” I shrug away their hands with a strength I didn’t know I had. “I’ll be fine.”

I’ll crawl if I have to.

They still aren’t leaving, and a part of me wants to hug them for their loyalty, even as the rest of me doesn’t want them in the way of whatever is in front of us.

“The high priestess will be right behind me,” I remind them. “Please, I need you to go and fetch the palace healers.”

Giving them something to do gets them moving. The two of them bow once, then flit away into the night. With my babysitters gone, I stumble up the final few steps and into the chaos beyond.

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