“This is our shot. We can’t afford to throw it away. We need to buy ourselves time to find the cult. If you can do this through the Malovian Revolution, we don’t have any other choice.”
I nodded firmly. If I had my mate’s approval, nothing was stopping me from participating in this rebellion. I was ready to get back out there, and longed to do so.
Finlay was a wolven, and as we’d learned in class, we had a strong telepathic connection. I reached out over Dolinska, searching for him. I found he was still at that bar. His attention lifted as my consciousness crossed over into his.
I’m in, I told him.What do you need me to do?
The tone in his thoughts was satisfactory.Be ready. We assemble at midnight.
“I’mglad you decided to join us,” Professor Mara said. She, along with Finlay, Amantha, and a group of other students, were crowded beneath one of the towers on the university grounds at midnight. All of them were dressed in black cloaks, hoods drawn over their faces. I’d chosen a similar outfit, and pressed close to the wall as I leaned in. A couple of the students behind me gave excited whispers when they noticed I was among their ranks, but I ignored them.
“What are we doing?” I asked. Already, my pulse was pounding in excitement. I couldn’t wait to get back out there. Whatever I’d promised Emma, this was what I felt like I’d been born to do.
Professor Mara lowered her voice. “Finlay told me you heard about the slaves. The king and queen have amassed quite a few of their own slaves that they have been using for work at the palace. They fired all the servants.”
My fists clenched. This was so wrong. “So you seek to free the slaves working at the palace?”
“It’s worse than that. Eli’s been doing this all year, in secret. It’s just becoming public now because society is growing used to the idea again,” Finlay said. “He has slaves working in Malovia’s agriculture, tending the crops, and in the caves mining gold.”
Gold and agriculture were two of Malovia’s biggest exports. The fae often traded magical plants that we grew with other magical societies, and we sold copious amounts of gold to the humans as well.
“What’s to stop them from taking more humans after we set these ones free?” I asked. Faerie rings weren’t exactly hard to make.
“They could, and they will,” Finlay said. “But it has taken them some time to gather this many humans, and they can’t just hire all the fae back that they got rid of in one day. All of their money that they’ve allocated from slave labor is going directly to the military. Disrupting their worker supply chain like that is going to put the government into chaos.”
“How do you know for certain?”
“We have someone on the inside. A member of the Circle ferrying us information,” Mara said. “She’s been providing us knowledge on the state of the nation, as well as the treasury.”
It was Lady Magdalina. I’d bet my title, if I still had it. “There have to be thousands of slaves scattered all over Dolinska.”
“There are. We have several different teams going to multiple locations, to try and free them. They’ve already left. You’re with our group, which will be liberating the largest compound,” Mara informed me.
“Won’t there be security? Cameras and alarms?” I questioned.
“We’ve already taken care of it. Dorina is an expert at dismantling such things,” Mara said, with a nod to a girl beside her. “When we get close, she’ll hack into the security systems. From that point, all we have to deal with is the guards.”
It was a sound plan, but I was already thinking of all the things that could go wrong. As a singular vigilante, all I had to worry about was myself. The more people that were involved with a mission, the greater chance we would be caught.
But if this plan worked, it’d bring Malovia to a screeching halt. Elijah would be forced to try and allocate the funds he’d given to the military back into the industries he’d taken from. The effort would practically ruin the economy. It might even throw Dolinska into chaos.
The thought of hurting my city, and my country, in such a way made me very ill. But no nation could survive on the backs of slave labor, and if we had to take people’s freedom away in order to stand as a nation, we shouldn’t exist at all. If we were despicable enough as a country to enslave people, we deserved to collapse.
“Lead the way,” I said. “We’re stopping this tonight.”
Mara took us off campus and into the trees. We walked for a good part of an hour before she parted back the leaves, and said, “Look.”
The slave compound was huge, surrounded by barbed wire fencing. In the center of the compound was a square warehouse, where I assumed they had to be holding the slaves. It made me sick to look at.
There were a dozen guards roaming the perimeter, in their shifter forms and otherwise. I noticed with disgust that some of them wore the uniform of the Arcanea Alliance. I couldn’t believe the police force was in on this, but as I knew, they were a government entity and probably had little choice but to follow the king’s orders.
Dorina took a tablet out from the bag she was carrying and began typing in commands. The rest of us waited patiently while she finished her work. As she hacked the security system, Mara began giving orders.
“Tyren, Philip, Simon, and Ryzard, you’ll deal with the guards,” Mara said, pointing to four shifters on my left. “Ethan, Amantha, Finlay and I will go into the compound. Once we’re inside, we’ll work on creating portals to get these humans far away from here.”
“Done,” Dorina said. “The security systems will be down for at least thirty minutes. I don’t know if I’ll be able to dismantle it a second time. Move quickly.”
Mara put her hand on the fencing and ran her fingers down it. At her command, the fence cut in half, sliced by her illusion magic. We slipped through the gap, and our two teams went in different directions. The shifter boys went on ahead. I heard the sounds of muffled cries and bodies hitting the ground as the shifters ahead of us silently cleared a path for us to walk. Remaining in the shadows was key. As they were dealing with the guards, the rest of us headed forward to the warehouse.
