AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You look better as a blonde,” she informed Starling.
“Gee, thanks.” Starling eased back into her seat, steadfastly closing her eyes as Blackbird had done.
Thumbelina, still on the floor, placed her back against the curved glass wall and raised a pale blue eyebrow at me. “I like your do, though. Kinda punk.”
I had no idea what a Faerie punk movement might entail, but surely Thumbelina would be in the forefront, with piercings and tattoos to reflect the newly fierce personality behind her pastel prettiness. As for me, it was sobering—and not a little painful—to be reminded of the shorn slave that still lurked under my illusory image. Once we got out of this, I resolved to permanently fix my hair and the grimoire—if any of the information I’d painstakingly recorded survived.
And if we got out of this.
“Now what?” Thumbelina asked us, looking pointedly from one to another.
“I think we wait,” I replied in a dry tone.
“That seems awfully passive. Shouldn’t we fight or something? Make a plan?”
“Any suggestions?” I managed to extract Darling from my shoulders and let him bury his face in my lap. The thoughts, if you could call them that, coming from him were all frightened kitty with none of his usual intelligence. Hopefully he wasn’t severed from that self forever. Interesting, in a ghoulish way, that he hadn’t reverted to human-form fae, but instead became more entirely cat, which meant the spell that actively bound him let him retain his higher nature even though he’d become a permanent animal. A daunting thought.
“We could break the glass.” Thumbelina rapped her fist on it thoughtfully.
Blackbird opened one glittering eye. “Don’t you dare.”
We were flying over water now—likely the ocean we’d been traveling toward.
“Even if we could break the glass, which I doubt we could do without magic, I don’t know that I could stop our fall in time to keep the impact from killing us. It might depend on how far the dragon’s field extends. Something I’m not excited to test with our lives.”
Thumbelina pushed her ringlets back with a little snarl. “We can’t just sit here and do nothing at all.”
I petted Darling, who trembled, and remembered all the days I spent starving in that cell, waiting for something to happen. “Sometimes that’s all you can do. Our time to act will come. Quite soon, I suspect.”
We rapidly closed on an island outcropping in the midst of the ocean. Waves dashed themselves on jagged rocks and dissolved into sprays of water. Rising out of the rock itself, a fortress crowned the island in an array of towers, walls and fantastic walkways.
Where the hell did the dragon plan to land?
The dragon stooped, dropping in a dizzying spiral distinctly reminiscent of the near-vertical drop in a roller-coaster ride, dragging involuntary screams out of everyone but Blackbird. I’d just be happy if no one puked. The drop slowed, steadied and I risked looking down.
We hovered just over a circular tower roof. The dragon set the carriage down with jaw-dropping precision, the glass wheels making the barest clink against the stone. As soon as the talons released us, the magic rushed back in with an audible rush, like air filling a vacuum. My ears even popped.
Ready for it, I put my hair back how I liked it and Starling’s too. I decided to leave the grimoire as it was, for safekeeping. I’d find out soon enough if I’d lost all those notes. I placed the earrings against my lobes and they thankfully clicked into place with the now-familiar zing that made me think in totally inappropriate ways about Rogue’s nipping teeth. Distracting, yes—but any protection I could get would help, and being sexually revved would only increase my magic. I fervently wished for Rogue, knowing full well this one would not come true. At least Darling’s awareness seemed to be coming back. He blinked green eyes at me, wondering muzzily what had happened and where he was.
“Do you know where we are?” I asked Blackbird.
She smoothed her hair into place, giving me a sharp look. “Not for certain, but I believe this might be Castle Terra Incognita.”
I wanted to slap myself on the forehead. Starling gasped and peered outside. “Really? I thought that was only in stories.”
Thumbelina snorted and pushed her charming curls out of her face again. “Does anyone have a hair tie? And a knife?
I winked at her and drew up my skirt, showing her the dagger I kept strapped to my thigh as Liam had taught me.
“Nice. But what about me?”
With a wish, I dropped both at her feet. “Anyone else?”
Starling watched Thumbelina fit the dagger into her tiny fist and flash it experimentally through the air. “I don’t know how to use one.”
“What’s to know?” Thumbelina looked disgusted. “You stick the pointy end in people you don’t like.”
Hearing my words come out of her pretty pixie lips was beginning to unnerve me.
