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As I approached the top, the ivy began to wave, and Ulean swept by.
Beware. Be cautious. You are not through the tangle yet.
What is it?
But I didn’t have time to wait for her answer. One of the tendrils reached out and wrapped around my wrist. I struggled against it, but the ivy came thick and fast and began to wrap me up like a spider wraps its prey. I was having trouble breathing and couldn’t move fast enough to stop it. Below, I heard Grieve shout. The next moment, the tower quaked and the ivy sucked away from me, leaving me to tumble down the steps until I caught myself. The tower quaked again and I looked down.
The oak was caught in a frost that was spreading up its trunk. Grieve was standing on the steps, slack-jawed, staring as a layer of frost spread from his feet to the steps, and huge cracks began to form in the staircase.
Kaylin vanished as I glanced anxiously up at the top of the tower. I wasn’t far from it—but the cracks were spidering up the glass, and soon the stairs I was standing on would break and send me tumbling to the abyss below. I made a run for it, staggering up the slick surface to the landing at the top.
Grieve jumped off the bottom step back to Rhia’s side just as the foundation of the staircase shattered and vanished into the crevasse. I didn’t have much time. I glanced around the top of the tower and there it was—a crystal box, and within the box I could see the brilliant emerald stone, pulsing with life and with light. I grabbed up the case, trying to decide what to do. Just then, Kaylin materialized on the landing next to me.
“Can you take the case while you’re dreamwalking?”
He shook his head. “Yes, I can. As well as your clothing, since you’ll have to change into your owl-shape and fly down from here. There’s no returning down those stairs. Hurry—strip!”
I caught my breath, staring at him, reluctant to hand him the case. But there was no choice. I pushed the crystal box into his hands and pulled off my clothes, stripping as fast as I could.
The stairs were half gone, shattering like tempered glass into a thousand pieces. I kept my moonstone pendant, but everything else I gave to Kaylin, and he vanished back into the shadows. I glanced down at the stairs. Only a few more and the landing would go. I sucked in a deep breath and stepped to the edge of the landing. As the glass began to break beneath my bare feet, I gathered my courage and spread my arms, toppling over the edge in a freefall.
Arms into wings, body into bird, nails into talons. As I headed toward the ground, Ulean caught me in her updraft and I was aloft, flying around the room. It felt so good—this freedom to soar, to fly, to…what the…from here, I could see handholds carved into the walls. I followed them up, and when I got to the ceiling, found a trapdoor right next to a thin ledge. This was our way out. I turned to fly down to the others when the door shattered open and a wave of snow and ice came swirling through.
Holy fuck. Three Shadow Hunters leaned through, their expressions triumphant. And behind them—Myst!
I spiraled down quickly, shifting as I hit the ground. Turning to Kaylin, I whispered, “You have to dreamwalk. You must escape with the heartstone, now. ”
He tossed me my clothes, the look on his face pained, and I knew he didn’t want to leave us. “All right, but take this. ” He pressed something in my hand as I gave him a sharp nod and he was once again a puff of shadow and smoke, vanishing from sight.
I glanced at what Kaylin had given me. The obsidian knife. Gritting my teeth, knowing what was in store for us, I yanked on my clothes, as the Shadow Hunters began their creep down the ledge, using the handholds. Myst leaned in through the trap door, her laughter echoing through the room.
“Too late, too late, Cicely. And my Consort, what a naughty boy you’ve been. It’s time for summer to end. It’s time to bring the long night of the world. ” Her voice was chill, the winds of winter rushing through it. At least she only had three of her Shadow Hunters with her. But three of the Vampiric Fae against four of us? Not even the beginning to a fair match.
Rhia backed up, her expression grim. “We do whatever we have to in order to get out of here. ”
“Yes. And my first act is this. ” I swept out my fan and aimed it at them.
Cicely, do not overuse—
There’s no choice. I cut off Ulean with an abrupt whisper. “Hurricane force. ” And as I swept the fan, all hell broke loose.
The winds rose, but this time so did I. I felt myself rise half out of my body, yet I was still attached to my form. I loomed, overshadowing the chamber. I was both my shadow and myself, rising up with the winds, no longer feeling their backlash, but this time they were coming from within me. I tried to catch my breath but my shadow-self did not need to breathe, the winds were breathing for me as they raged forth from my body.
Ulean shrieked, and I turned in her direction. I could see her—the celestial sparkling form that I had only before seen when I was dreamwalking with Kaylin. Now she was clear and huge, and she spun around me.
Draw the wind back! You do not know what you are doing!
But I had to move forward. I couldn’t pull the raging winds back to me—they were sustaining me, lifting me up, making me a giant in my own world. The plinth shuddered as the hundred-mile-an-hour winds hit it square on. It shrieked, splintering as bone and branch broke apart, falling to the floor.
I took another step forward, shaking the room as I moved. Behind me, I heard Rhia, Grieve, and Chatter shouting, but I could no longer hear their voices, and right now I had work to do. I turned toward the Shadow Hunters and let out a long breath, and the winds struck the walls, shaking the chamber, howling as they echoed through the room.
The Vampiric Fae shrieked as I headed in their direction. They clung to the walls with a preternatural strength, pressing themselves against the tiles. I threw back my head, my hair whipping in the wind. As I laughed, my laughter rumbled through the room. The obsidian knife was still in my hand and now its energy began to ripple through me, a fierce hunger overtaking me.
I reached the wall and—shadow watching over my body—began to climb, like Myst’s people, clinging to the walls as the hurricane-force winds thundered from within me. My heart was buoyed by their strength. I scuttled up the wall like a spider, like an insect, and as I reached the first Shadow Hunter, he cringed as I brought up the obsidian knife.
Kill, bleed, feed, drain him dry, suck marrow from bone, feast on his heart, bathe in his blood and brains…
The impetus drove me forward, drove my hand up, brought the knife plunging down into his body, as I ripped, tearing him apart. Laughter came burbling up, and I licked the blade, not caring when it sliced my own tongue. The salty taste of his blood only whetted my appetite and I reached out, intent on drawing him to me, but the winds that buffeted the walls sent him careening to the floor.
Even as he fell, I reached out to catch him and Ulean swept by, catching up the fan in her wake, yanking it off my wrist. I screamed, furious, but she sent it spinning down to the floor.
No! No! You do not dare!
Cicely, come back to me. Cicely, let go of the knife. Let go.
I cannot—we cannot withstand them without it—
Look, Cicely. Look above you.
I glanced up at the walls. The other two Shadow Hunters had scurried up, retreating to Myst’s side. She was staring at me, her mouth in a rounded “O” and, for the first time, a look of hesitation filled her eyes. I ignored Ulean and began to climb higher, my gaze fixated on her. She would know what it was like to feel the kiss of her own weapons. The winds howled, raging up toward her and her warriors.
But before I could reach the top, she withdrew, and they were gone. We were alone. I growled, wanting to take her on. But the gusting winds began to recede, and Ulean took that moment to slam against me, making me reach for the wall to hold on, dropping the knife as I did so.
I gasped, shaking my head as my thoughts slowly
began to clear. I looked down, not sure how to get back down. I was exhausted and no longer seemed to have the same knack for climbing that I’d had a few minutes before. Grieve quickly began to scale the wall.
He reached me before I fell, and, using one hand to keep hold of the handholds, he managed to help me up to the top of the room. He looked down and motioned to Chatter, who said something to Rhiannon. She picked up my fan. Chatter gingerly picked up the knife, and they began to climb, with him helping guide her.
Within a few minutes, we were sitting outside the trapdoor, in the snow, staring at the path that Myst and her hunters had forged. It was somewhere near dawn, and they were nowhere in sight. I was almost sorry. If need be, I’d take up the fan and knife again, out here in the open, and get it over with. But inside, a voice of sanity whispered, Even with the knife and the fan, you could not defeat her. You must have Summer’s help.
I swallowed my regret. I’m sorry, Ulean. I did not mean to say those things.
Yes you did, Cicely. At the time, you meant them. As Lainule warned you, overusing the fan can put you at its mercy. It changes you, makes you more a part of its element. Use it too often, with too much force, and it will suck you fully into the realm of air and turn you into a hybrid—a Wind Elemental not endemic to the realm. And most of those who have that happen go mad.
I pondered this for a moment, then told the others what had happened. “The combination of the wind controlling me, and the knife…I could have taken her on. I wouldn’t have won, but I would have hurt her. ”
“But then you wouldn’t have come back as you. ” Rhia shook her head. “Your father is right—the knife is too dangerous for you to use until you learn how to master the power of obsidian. ”
“We had to do something. Myst would have killed us. ” I shook my head. “I do believe I need to learn how to use the power of the stone, but we were in a tight spot. I now understand what Lainule and Ulean were warning me of about the fan. The power is immense. It will—and has—changed me. I came very close to being carted off by the winds. ”
“We’d better get back to the warehouse. ” Chatter glanced at the sky. “We are near morning, thank heavens. I’d say another ten minutes until dawn, which means Myst and her hunters should be hiding from the light. ”
“We’d better get moving. ” Grieve stood, holding out his hand to me. “Are you tired?”
“No, I’m strangely exhilarated. And the rest we had in the realm of Summer helped me a lot. What about you?”
“Same here. A little weary but with the adrenaline of the fight, and the sleep we got…I’m good to go. ” Chatter glanced at Rhia and she nodded the same.
I gratefully accepted it, allowing Grieve to pull me up out of the snowbank in which we’d been sitting. “Do you know what day this is? We went in on Monday. ”
Chatter squinted, closing his eyes. After a moment, he shook his head. “I don’t know. But you have your phone. Better call Peyton. ”
“I’ll have to leave a message—they’re probably in the realm of Summer with Wrath and they won’t get the message till they pop out. ” I pulled out my phone. “I hope Kaylin got away. ”
“Yeah, so do I. ” Rhiannon looked around. “Where the hell are we? Do we even have a clue? The forest looks the same to me here as it does anywhere. We could be twenty miles in, or we could be ten minutes from the road. ”
I punched in Peyton’s number and left a message. Then I tried Kaylin. No answer. Sighing, I left my phone on and shoved it into my pocket. “Which way?”
Grieve glanced up at the growing light. “There—that’s east. We head to the west. ”
As we started slogging through the snow, I began to notice that I felt odd. Odd in a way that didn’t feel sick, so much as…changed. Something had happened to me. I pulled the fan out of my pocket. More than once, both Lainule and Ulean had warned me against using it too much, and I hadn’t known why. Now I stared at it, wondering if I’d have the courage to ever use it again.
Chatter hadn’t given me back my knife, and right now I didn’t ask for it. Truthfully, the ferocity of my feelings scared the fuck out of me. It reminded me all too clearly that in another life I had been Myst’s daughter. I didn’t want to remember that, but every day it was becoming clearer that I was going to have to accept that fact and learn to use it rather than run from it.
Myst had been scared of me, when the wind and bloodlust from the obsidian were controlling me. And we needed her to feel fear. We needed her to hesitate, to falter while she thought things through. Every time we could put her on her guard, throw her off kilter, was one more inroad we had to destroying her.
As we plowed through the snow, my phone jangled. By now, it was obvious that morning had arrived, even though all signs of the sun were obscured by clouds. So Myst and her cronies were in hiding.
I pulled out my phone and answered.
“Cicely here. What’s up?”
Peyton sounded relieved. “I’m so glad you’re okay. You are okay, aren’t you? It’s been two days and we were beginning to worry. ”
So we’d been in the realm of Faerie for two days this time. This losing time thing was a little intimidating. “Lainule—is she still alive?”
“Yes, she is hanging on—barely. Kaylin arrived back here with the heartstone a few hours ago. But Wrath says you must be the one to present it to her. Where are you? Are you near a road?”
“I don’t know…we’re walking west, in the woods. I have no clue how far we are from a road. Can Wrath fly over the Golden Wood to see if he can find us? He knows where the cedar is, though we don’t seem to be anywhere near that at this time. We came out a different way than we went in. ”
Peyton’s voice echoed as she spoke to someone else. After a moment, she came back on the phone. “Yes, in fact, he’s headed out the door now. Stay put, out from under the trees so he can see you. The moment he sees you, he’ll land, and then you call me back. ”