Where was I?Whowas I? I didn’t even know. My fingers let go of the bow. Arthur’s sword slid through my chest, the steel burning me inside and out. I shoved my face in the dirt. I nocked another arrow. My lips burned against Blake’s.
Okay, this is weird.
Blake’s voice pounded against my skull, whispering in his foreign tongue. This time, the sounds formed words in my mind.Push them back,he whispered.
And then Iknewwhat had happened, and what I had to do.
I drew back into my head, holding all the me together, collecting the well of random, disjointed thoughts and impressions and compulsions. I turned all my heads toward the entrance of the sidhe, where the gateway lay. The itching in my fingers grew worse.
Ipushedwith my mind. Even as I did this, my heads – all the people inside my head – fought back. They wanted to stay. They had to finish off the witches or the king would hurt them.
Get out of here,I roared, and I drew up the heat Blake had stirred within me, and I thought of my parents who had been socruelly taken, of my boys broken and bleeding in the field, of the dream Blake had shown me of my guys burned and impaled on spikes, and my heart broke at the idea of losing them. But I held the image and all the horror and pain it evoked, and I thought the thoughts that made my stomach churn and my blood run cold, and I gave it to them.
I let the pain flow from me, allowing it to multiply and spread through their minds like a disease.
All the bodies I inhabited shuddered with my horror and saw the pain they would wrought. As one, they turned and walked toward the sidhe, their limbs jerking as they fought against the command booming inside their heads.
Pain surged against my temples.
Faster, faster,I urged them. I wouldn’t be able to hold this spell for long.
Back we pushed them, back into the sidhe. When the boys realized what was happening, they rallied. Arthur cut down a fae, stabbing his sword right through its chest. I cried out as the blade tore through me, gasping as it punctured my lungs. The pain tore me from that fae’s mind, and I pushed harder, forcing the others to rush down the stairs of the sidhe.
Jump now,Blake yelled inside my head.
He tore his mind away, and I grabbed hold of his voice and jumped with him, falling back into my own body just as the last of the fae were swallowed up by the gateway.
My head swam. The pain tore through me as the other minds ripped from my skull. My legs gave way beneath me and I collapsed in the dirt.
“Maeve!” Blake dropped down beside me, his hands reaching for my face. Ice rose from his fingers, clashing against the burning in my skull, cooling the fire of agony that threatened to engulf me.
“Did we…?” My voice cracked. I forced my eyes open. Blake’s face loomed over me, his crystalline eyes wide with concern. A lattice of red webs spread across his cheek, exactly the same as Flynn had after Blake used his magic on him.
But what was even more interesting was that I only saw from one angle and only existed inside one head – my own.
The other voices were gone.
But the pain was definitely still there.
Owwwwww.
“We did it, Maeve. We pushed them back into the sidhe.” Hands shoved under my back, behind my knees. Blake groaned as he lifted me into his arms, cradling me like a child. “What have you been eating?”
“Curry,” I croaked out. Blake laughed.
“You’re quite remarkable, Princess.”
My body lurched as Blake stepped over the wall and trotted down the hill toward the sidhe. “Will you be able to perform the ritual? We need to close the gateway before they start coming back.”
“I’ll manage.” My mind was already whirling through what had just happened, trying to piece it together. Blake had done some kind of compulsion – which I now knew to be a type of fae magic – and he’d used me to give him the power he needed to compelallof the fae at once. That was why I’d seen through all their eyes simultaneously, why I’d experienced all their thoughts along with my own.
And the kiss…the kiss called my spirit magic to the surface – the twin pillars of my desire and my dormant powers rising inside me. Somehow, Blake’s kiss unleashed them, and for the first time, Ifeltmyself performing magic.
Was that…normal?
Blake laid me down in the grass and rushed back to collect the last of his magical objects. Corbin dropped down besideme, brushing my hair from my face. “What the hell happened?” he demanded, a grim, dark silhouette against the pale moon. “Maeve, what did he do to you?”
“We saved you,” I groaned. My temples throbbed every time I moved my jaw. At least the sensation of needles stabbing into my skin was fading.
