Page 78 of Broken

Chapter 32

All too soon for Ireland, it was morning. And it was time.

They had the final mission briefing: Plan A, Plan B, and “the shit hits the fan.”

Ireland hoped that was enough plans.

The Outlaw Ridge wolves were ready. DB and Thanatos were standing by. Mikey’s secret weapons were on board: three giant, impossibly hot men who were apparently fire dragons. Cazbek, Zakerek, and Mikah. Who Mikey called her uncles, even though they didn’t look any older than she was. Apparently, you couldn’t tell with dragons.

Now it was all up to Ireland and Cole.

They stood with DB in the middle of the Outlaw Ridge compound, all the wolves around them: some in human form, with conventional weapons, and some in wolf form with gear packs on their backs.

Ireland’s hands were clammy and cold, and she slipped her hand into Cole’s. He smiled down at her. “You’ll be fine,” he said. “You’re a badass. An Outlaw Ridge wolf.”

Yeah. She was no longer that scared, helpless Bright Fae girl who’d always been told she was worthless—worse than worthless. Bad. Wrong, just for existing. She wished she completely believed that.

Cole tightened his hand. He believed in her. They were going to do this. She straightened her shoulders.

“Ready?” Gunn called out.

All the commanders of the different squads sounded off, then the leader of the dragons, Zakerek. Then Thanatos. Then DB. Cole squeezed her hand, and Ireland said, “Ready.”

DB made the first magical doorway to the Fae world. Cole and Ireland stepped through together. It was a grassy field in Bright Fae territory—full of sunlight and wildflowers and butterflies, with great spreading oak trees in the distance.

Farther still, in the other direction, they could see the peak of a small mountain, looking like it rose straight up from the grass.

The smell hit her like a slap in the face—the scent of the Fae world, subtly different from anything on earth. Fresher, sweeter. Tears suddenly prickled her eyes.

But they were here to do a job, she reminded herself. She dropped a small coin engraved with a dragon on the ground. Very carefully, Ireland did the spell DB had taught her, imbuing a tiny bit of magic into the coin. Since a Bright Fae was casting it, hopefully it wouldn’t set off any alarms.

Once they left, the coin would serve as an anchor to allow Gunn to reopen the doorway without DB’s help.

When she was sure the spell was set, they went back through the doorway, and DB closed it. They didn’t test the re-opening. They’d done it dozens of times in practice, and it had worked every time. Opening it unnecessarily could draw too much attention.

Then they did it again with the second door, closer to the Valley. Two doorways, in case one was compromised. Redundancy—that’s what the mission commanders called it. Just in case.

But after they’d placed the second anchor, DB closed the door behind them, starting the mission clock. They had to make their way to the Valley.

The sight of the door disappearing gave Ireland a lurch in her heart. She felt trapped. What if they were caught? What if Cole were killed? What if she were stuck here forever, a prisoner?

Cole put his hand on her back. “We’ll be fine,” he said. “They’ve all got our backs. Now we need to do our part.”

He looked totally normal—dressed in his mission gear, looking exactly the way he had the day she met him. She could sense his feelings, and he was perfectly fine.

“How do you stay so calm?”

“Lots of practice,” he said. “And trust in my team. Come on. Clock’s ticking.”

They walked across the empty field in the direction of the mountain peak, her back prickling. Anyone could be watching. But no one was—or if they were, it was no one who cared they were there.

After about ten minutes, they saw some rock formations in front of them, and in ten more minutes they were at the edge of a cliff, looking down into the Valley of Silence.

It was a canyon, really—maybe a quarter of a mile across, rimmed with rock. To their right, a hundred feet away, was a steep trail leading to the bottom. The whole perimeter was of uniform height, except directly across from them, where the valley abutted the side of the mountain.

The Door to the Mountain was obvious—two ornate carved half-pillars of stone set into a vertical rock face, with a semicircle of flat rock in the ground just in front of it.

The whole valley floor was level, most of it covered by a short thick green lawn that looked like it was mowed twice a week—but there was no one there.