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Chapter Twenty-Six
Astrid
I know it’s risky trying to transport somewhere I’ve never been before. We could get lost somewhere in between, float forever in nothingness…
But those bastards are strapping my daughter to some sort of hospital table, and whatever is about to come next can’t be good. Not to mention I can’t get enough detail from their surroundings to tell where they’re at. There were no signs or anything else to provide a clue. They could be anywhere in the world.
And it’s clear I don’t have time to figure it out, let alone somehow travel there before they harm Lilli.
My magic swells around me and Erik, and I keep Lilli’s face firmly in my mind’s eye as I murmur the transportation spell. Lilli, her face stricken with fear as she sits on the hospital table, surrounded by strangers. Strangers who are going to be very dead in several moments.
A flash, and we disappear from the mountaintop, reappearing in the room next to Lilli.
“Mommy!” she screams.
The three people by the table spin. Erik moves like lightning, darting forward and snapping their necks in the space of two heartbeats. Lilli lets out another shriek and I close the distance to her, bending over and working at the restraints around her wrists.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say soothingly, though my voice shakes from the insane amount of adrenaline I have pumping through my veins.
“You should be careful what you say to young people,” says a voice behind me. “They’re very impressionable. It’s never a good idea to lie.”
Darkness enters the room, a wall of shadows crawling in behind her. Everything goes black. Erik growls and charges her, but she vanishes in a swirl of her shadows, reappearing two feet from my side. I throw myself between her and Lilli, casting a magical barrier between us. It sparks golden in the midnight that now surrounds us. Erik comes at her again, but Darkness’s shadows wrap around him like cords, binding him in place.
“What do you want with my daughter?” I hiss.
“I would think that you of all people should know,” Darkness says, arching a brow. She paces back and forth along the edge of my barrier in spike-heeled boots. Her eyes burn into me, the color of melted pennies. “Being her mother and all. She’s quite a special girl.”
“A witch-faerie hybrid? She’s not the first of her kind,” I say.
Darkness pauses in her stalking, then reaches out and runs one long blood-red fingernail along my magical barrier, sending sparks out into the night that has fallen over the room. “Come now, that’s not all there is to it, and you know that. Her faerie side has something extra special.”
My heart goes still. “Her father was an orphan. And we were never able to find out who his parents were.”
A disturbing sound moves across the room, and I realize that Darkness is laughing. It crawls up my spine like spiders.
“Oh my, do you really not know? How tragic. Perhaps if you had, you would have taken better care of your offspring.” Darkness smiles, and it rakes across my heart likes razorblades.
Erik breaks free of the shadows and lunges for Darkness, his dragon magic roiling, but a pillar of illumination appears in the doorway and Erik hits some sort of invisible wall. Light stands there, one hand raised, his gaze on Erik. White robes, white hair, glowing eyes. He wears no emotion on his face, which is even more disturbing than the outright evil of Darkness.
Erik beats against the wall, face twisted in rage, but it doesn’t move. I can’t even hear him anymore.
“The bad angel,” Lilli whispers, shaking as she stares at Light.
And suddenly, I remember. The nightmare she’d had a couple nights ago. She must have somehow dreamed of the future.
Ice grips my heart.
“Why are you doing this?” I growl, staring at Light. “You’re supposed to be good. To maintain balance.”
Light turns his pale eyes to mine, but his face remains as expressionless as before.
“I’m afraid my brother isn’t much of a talker these days,” Darkness says with a chuckle.
“He isn’t working with you willingly, is he?”
I turn and look back at Light. He almost seems to be in some sort of a trance. A robot, a prisoner of Darkness just like we are.
Darkness shrugs. “He is quite a useful little soldier. I don’t need his love and devotion. I just need his power.”
My eyes flick back to Erik again. He’s still pounding on the invisible barrier Light has him trapped behind. His magic surges around him, flashing silver in the darkness. As my eyes move back and forth, I catch a slight glimmer running between Darkness and her brother, like a magical rope or tether. Had they done some sort of joining spell like Erik and I had? Is that what allows her to control him? Maybe, if I can sever the tie, I can free Light. Get him on our side.
“But back to your own family,” Darkness says, arching a brow.
I look down at Lilli, who is still staring out across the shadowy room, eyes wide.
“You see,” Darkness continues, “The blood that runs through your little half faerie here isn’t just any faerie blood. Those parents of her father, they were faerie royalty. And even that might not be so special, since there are so many royal faerie families one tends to lose count.” She waves her hand and rolls her eyes.
“But this particular faerie family is rarest of the rare. Imbued with magic far beyond all the others.” Darkness locks her molten eyes on mine. “Your daughter descends from the very first faerie in all creation. And she’s the last of her line.”
