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“I’m coming.” She wasn’t—a book next to the case had grabbed her attention.
Flint reached out to her. “Don’t touch—”
Arden grabbed the book. The magic around it was so complex and subtle that she didn’t sense it until it was too late. An alarm blared outside of the room.
“Shit!” Arden hissed, turning back to the case to try to cover her tracks.
“No time for that.” I grabbed her by the elbow and waved a hand over the case, reversing the spell she’d broken. “Go.”
She powered through the first two doors, and we covered her tracks. Not that it helped. Guards shouted in the halls, and we were in a dead-end.
Arden burst out of the second door and into the main hallway, looking left and right. Guards rushed at her down the hall, yelling for her to stop. She took off down the hallway, and we followed close behind. I started to create a ball of fire in my hand, but Arden cut in.
“Don’t help me!” she said in as low of a voice as possible. “They can’t know you’re here.”
Fuck. She was right, as much as I didn’t want her to be. I had to wait until it was life or death to step in.
She darted through the different hallways, the headquarters a labyrinth. She made another turn into a dead-end hallway and threw her hands up, pounding against a wall. It wasn’t hiding a door.
The guards came running up behind her, standing at the mouth of the hallway. Arden whipped around, her hand behind her back.
Before any of us could throw out a spell, she whipped the artifact out from where she’d tucked it away and unsheathed it.
A blast of pure energy ripped through the hallway, blinding all of us and sending the guards to the ground. I squinted against the fading light.
Was Arden okay?
Arden wasn’t there. Or at least Arden as we knew her. In her place was a nymph.
Her fair skin shimmered as if she had thousands of crushed diamonds under her skin. Her hair was the same, glittering and turning silver. She looked up at us, her green eyes vibrant, as if she were glowing from the inside out.
All of us were so shocked that we froze. Arden examined her hands, touching her face and hair like she didn’t recognize herself.
I understood her shock. Nymphs were considered legends—nobody had seen one in centuries. While other shifters had power over the earth element, their powers didn’t come close to a nymph’s. Fae with earth elemental powers could only control one aspect of the earth—growing flowers, creating earthquakes, or controlling sand. But nymphs had power over it all.
Arden wasn’t a weak fae with no shifter form or elemental abilities. She was one of a kind.
My feelings for her grew so intensely and quickly in that moment that I lost the ability to breathe. I loved her. Was I drawn to her because this was who she was underneath? I didn’t know.
But I did know that if anyone knew about her, they’d take advantage of her abilities.
I acted fast, not thinking twice. I threw balls of white-hot fire at each of the guards, lighting their clothes on fire to slow them down. Flint caught on to what I was doing and pulled water from the air, shooting it at the guards with so much force that they were decapitated. I pulled back the flames—we didn’t need to burn the whole place down.
I ran into the hallway to check if anyone had escaped. It was all clear, aside from a few traces of magic in the air. Arden’s sudden shift had spread a hint of it all over the place, so I wasn’t surprised.
“We need to go,” I said. Arden was frozen in place, staring at her hands and the artifact. “Come on!”
“How do I…how do I change back?” she stammered. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Just concentrate on how you feel in your fae form,” Flint said. “And it’ll just happen.”
Arden took several deep breaths, squeezing her eyes shut. It took a few moments, but she shifted back, gasping for air. I grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a gentle push into the hallway. Moving her feet focused her again, and she ran through the labyrinth of hallways until we were outside.
I looked over my shoulder every few seconds until we made it back to the van. We’d killed all of the witnesses and hadn’t been detected, but there was always a chance that they’d sense the magic that Arden had unleashed. Her power was unlike anything I’d ever felt, which even the weakest fae would sense. No one came after us, though.
And if they did, I’d skin each of them alive before I let them get to my Little Flower.
I put my arm around Arden, who was still shaken from the ordeal. If the Moon Oracle caught onto what Arden truly was, she’d come after her. We had to keep her safe, now more than ever.
