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“Getting into the castle is the most important thing. If Badb is watching the messages, she’s probably also monitoring the entrances as well. Here. Use this to get in.” Mina handed me a necklace with an emerald ring attached to it. I recognized it immediately. The emerald allowed someone to change their appearance. To disguise themselves. It was the same emerald that Thaya had used to look like me right before she died. My hand shook as I took it from her and slid it over my head, tucking it into my shirt.
Except I had no idea whose image I should take on. If Mina was correct, and the entrances were guarded, what would keep Badb from regulating who entered the throne room?
“And when I get in?” I asked.
“Then we take down your sisters. I’ll sneak in with you, or at least my faerie guardian will. Just show me who to change into. Then, when we reach the throne room, we face off against them.”
A snort escaped, and I shook my head.
“Do you have a better plan?” Mina snapped.
“No,” I said quietly. “I don’t.”
She frowned then unzipped the large duffle bag at her feet. “Here’s your sword.” She handed me the blade that had the phoenix hilt and I remembered using a sword to almost cut out Dagda’s heart.
I thrust it away from me. Mina and Nellie both jumped. “Hey, watch it,” Mina said.
“Sorry.” I swallowed the bile. “I can’t use that.”
Mina pressed her lips into a thin line. “Fine, whatever.” She reached into the duffle bag and pulled out a faerie crossbow. “I know your dad taught you how to use this.”
I took it and ran my hand over its bowstring. “Thanks.” I set the crossbow on the seat next to me and glanced at Mina. I knew she didn't want to come with me. “If you don’t mind, I think I’m going to try and get some rest before everything. Oh, Nellie?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you look up a recipe for Rocky Road ice cream?”
It was already late afternoon by the time our plane touched down.
Nellie pushed her glasses up her nose. “Be careful.”
I peered at her. She was the first person to forgive me. After all those years that I’d bullied her, she’d become my best friend. I wrapped my arms around her. “Thanks for giving me another chance,” I said, and she softened, pulling me into a tight hug. Tears stung my eyes.
“You may have made five years of my life a living hell, but I’ll also never forget how you willingly shattered Mom and Dad’s glowing opinion of you so that I could have a family. You earned your second chance, Chels.” Nellie’s voice was filled with emotion.
Mina got us through customs and we slipped away into a small gathering of trees where she released her pegasus and we climbed on.
We flew high above the cloud bank toward our destination. I couldn’t help but remember the time Mina and I had flown on her pegasus on another occasion, fleeing for our lives after the Fomori had almost killed me. I took in the chin length hair of the girl in front of me. She’d been raised human like me only to find out she was actually faerie. That her life wasn’t hers. It had turned her life upside down as much as it had mine. She’d spent the past three years giving up everything for me, even attending a local college as if that was her only option.
And here she had dropped everything again, to help me.
We descended below the cloud bank and we could see the portal entrance, Labby Rock, in the distance in a small clearing. The pegasus took us into the trees. I checked the time on Mina’s phone and I trembled. Only an hour and a half till sunset.
“We need to be careful,” Mina said. “This soon after Samhain, there’s a good chance people are out and about.”
We crept to the edge of the forest. The pile of moss-covered stones that was Labby Rock stood less than a hundred feet from us.
“I think we’re clear,” Mina said.
I caught her arm. “Stop.”
“We don’t have a lot of time to waste.”
“I don’t want you to come.”
She let out a laugh. “Sure.”
“I’m serious. I’ll go by myself. You’re going to stay here.”
