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“No. I got the feeling that it was glad to see me. Actually, relieved is a better way to describe how it felt. Like it had been waiting for me to tell me everything that had happened to them.” She threaded her fingers through Drav’s. “I think his people used the crystal’s power in a way that the crystal disagreed with but had no way to stop.”
“You think it’s alive?” I asked with a sinking despair.
“Yes and no. It’s not like us. It didn’t have those kinds of thoughts and feelings, but it could show me the past and in a way that influenced my thoughts and feelings. Clips of events, like it knew exactly what to show me.”
I glanced at the crystal tied to Drav’s wrist. “I think the source is why we can’t kill the hellhounds without crushing their hearts.”
“You think we need to destroy the crystal?” she asked intuitively.
“Why else would Molev’s instincts be telling him to return to the caves?”
Drav turned Mya toward him suddenly and kissed her forehead.
“Stay with Andie. I will return.”
We stood alone in the room a second later. She shook her head.
“We might as well move to the living room. I’m sure we’ll have company soon.” She yawned as she walked out the door.
“Sorry for interrupting your nap.”
She waved away my apology and settled on the couch. I took the chair.
“I’m tired all the time lately. Mom says it’s a normal part of pregnancy. It probably is for some, but I’m not so sure that’s why I’m sleeping so much.”
I remembered the way she’d greeted Molev.
“Growing a baby while trying to keep everyone alive is more stress than I’d want to deal with,” I said.
“Yeah, I’m cracking around the edges a little. The lingering headaches aren’t helping. We really need to find a way to swing things in our favor. Even just a little.” She sighed. “No matter how it looked to you, I’ve never believed the wall the fey built was some kind of impenetrable fortress. I do believe this is the safest place in the world for us, but only because the fey are here. That doesn’t mean I think we’re safe, though. The infected have already breached these walls once, proving they aren’t as afraid of the fey as we’d like.
“Over the last few weeks, Drav was talking about trying to kill the infected on a larger scale. Setting traps for them like they set for us. He and Ryan, my brother, were trying to figure out the perfect place. A stadium or something like that.”
She rubbed her fingers over her temples. “Can I whine for a moment and just say I really want this to be over? I’m just so tired of it all.”
“My brother’s a heart surgeon. A pretty good one. Because of that, his name was added to a drawing. He won two tickets to an island sanctuary. One for himself and one for whoever he chose. His wife Rachel told him to take their daughter Nova because she’s six and can manage on her own while he worked there, doing what he could to help us fight the infected here and preserve the knowledge he’d gained. Rachel had to watch my brother and niece leave while my four-year-old nephew sobbed in her arms.
“I promised her I would find a way to send him to his father. I signed up for an impossible mission to find a way to end this. When Molev’s group came across ours and when we saw for ourselves that he was immune to the infection, my team thought we’d found the answer. Nothing was that simple, though. We didn’t get our tickets to freedom we were promised, not without a fight. And Molev’s blood didn’t contain the answers we needed to stop this.
“My sister-in-law is here with us after sending her son to join her husband and daughter. She has shed her share of tears, but she hasn’t whined. Not once. She understands that feeling sorry for herself is a slippery slope. Rather than slide down that mountain, she’s still clinging to the sides, waiting for me to figure out a way to climb it because I promised her I would. Because I love her and my brother and my niece and nephew enough to give it everything I have to see them together again.
“We’ve all been dealt a shit hand, but if we’re not willing to do anything about it, we might as well just die now.”
She blinked at me like Molev did sometimes.
“You’re either shit at motivational speaking or amazing. I’m on the fence.”
I smiled a little. “I prefer to think of it as tough love. You should have heard the elderly couple I encountered at Eitri’s. I thought that woman was going to beat her husband for not downing a fey-shot.”
“Fey-shot?”
“Yeah, the doctor was looking for a male volunteer to drink semen since the results from the test groups showed the method of absorption played a role in successful immunization. The team wanted to verify it wasn’t just successful with women, though. I’m not sure what the man’s wife promised him, but he said no visitors until tomorrow because she’d be too worn out today.”
Mya chuckled. “That would be James and Mary. They hold a special place in my heart. They were the first humans to embrace the fey for who they are. No fear. No hesitation. Just acceptance. They look like the sweetest grandparents you could ever want, but boy are they open. About everything. I heard that Mary lets the fey use their bathroom to shower and washes their clothes so she can peek at the goods.
“The fey love them. They go over to visit all the time, asking all sorts of things I’d never ask my grandparents. But they know that any advice they get from Mary is a little extra and tend to verify it with Angel before taking it to heart.”
“Advice?”
