Biting back a scream, I wrap my hands around the handle of the hatch and turn with all my might. Just like it was outside the first hatch, this one is impossible to turn. There must be a locking mechanism I don’t know about.
Sweat beads at my brow as I cast another glance at the grenade. My inner fire can sense the spark devouring the unseen fuse inside the device, and I know I only have seconds before it reaches the detonator.
My lungs collapse as fear locks me in an iron grip. How do I get out of this? How? I could melt the iron walls, but will that be fast enough? If I wrap myself in my flames, will they protect me from the blast? I may be strengthened by fire, but I can’t see how that will help if my body is blasted to tiny pieces. The memory of Cobalt and the other sea fae I saw obliterated by a grenade has me trembling.
I need to be invisible. No, ethereal. If I could walk through walls like a wraith…
I sense the spark racing toward the detonator.
This is the end. It’s here.
And all I feel is fear.
Take it to the Twelfth Court.
I don’t know whose voice it is—is it Aspen’s? Mine? —but I obey. Gathering all my fear around me, I close my eyes and wait for the blast.
* * *
When it doesn’t come,I blink into a world of shimmering violet.
My first thought is that I’m dead.
The grenade exploded, and in my journey to the Twelfth Court, I avoided pain but not the physical blast. However, if I were dead, I’d like to think the afterlife wouldn’t leave me in the same place I died. And that’s exactly where I am now, inside the tank with a grenade below my feet. The only thing that has changed is that all matter is now composed of shimmering particles of violet light.
I study the grenade, surprised that I can see through its outer shell to the inner spark that has slowed to a snail’s pace. Like the first time I visited the Twelfth Court, time neither moves nor stands still. Everything around me is in motion, alive, active, and yet seconds and minutes and hours don’t seem to exist. Neither do walls. Although the tank surrounds me, its particles shift and sway, and the longer I look at them, the less substantial they become. Soon the walls appear paper thin, a mere layer I can peel back with my thoughts, providing a view of what’s on the other side. Squinting through the particles, I see a soldier suspended in midair, as if he were leaping from the tank. Another is doubled over as an earthen fae’s horned head rams him in the gut. Other fighters are nearly frozen in battle.
I pull my attention back to the inside of the tank and examine myself. I too am composed of violet light, still clinging to the top rung of the shaft. My body feels weightless, as if I could float away if I simply let go of the rungs. The rungs seem both firm and weightless at once, given shape only by my hands. As if…
My heart has grown calm since entering the Twelfth Court, my mind steady. With my intent fueling each move, I lift a hand from the rung and press it against the vibrating particles that form the wall nearby. It feels firm beneath my hands yet yielding at the same time. Shifting my attention to the layers of swirling light outside the tank, I extend my hand. As if the tank were made of air, my hand slips through it. Angling my body away from the rungs, I slip both hands through the walls, pushing out as if swimming through slow, murky water. With my body fully outside the tank, my feet seek the ground, touching down just as a bone-chilling vibration rattles the air behind me. Moving faster than the other figures in my proximity, I run, tackling the nearest earthen fae in the process, hoping I can push him as far from the tank as I can. Each step I take feels heavy and yet strangely buoyant. I’m halfway down the street by the time the tank explodes, sending slow, violet flames and debris unfurling incrementally outward.
I turn to watch, hypnotized by the deadly dance of flame and shards of iron, but more pressing concerns urge me on. Surging into the mass of languid fighters suspended in battle, I race back to the beach. There I see Lorelei, frozen in time, her roots wrapped around a tank like a cocoon. Willing my sight beyond the walls of the tank, I see three human figures, electrical wires, mechanical panels, crates of guns. But no orb of powerful, dangerous light that I’d expect from the Parvanovae. I continue on, to where Aspen stands before the last three tanks. The closest one is nearly buried in sand, while the farthest one back is tangled in ropes of seaweed.
I gaze through the violet particles that compose each tank, beyond every layer, but I see no sign of the Parvanovae.
It isn’t here at all.
* * *
With this realizationcomes a return to sound, to color, to substance. The Twelfth Court vanishes, leaving me in the midst of chaos. Fighting rages all around me as I struggle to orient myself with this new location and the flow of time. I only have a moment to gape over the fact that I truly escaped the exploding grenade through the magic of the Twelfth Court. But now that I’m here, new dangers await. Igniting my flames over my skin, I race to Aspen.
“I don’t think the Parvanovae is in any of these tanks,” I shout over the din once I reach his side.
He looks at me, temples pulsing as he thrusts outward, pushing the nearest tank back, burying it deeper in the sand. “How do you know?”
“I just do.” At least I hope I do.
The tank struggles to climb from the sand, but it gains just enough purchase for the barrel of its gun to swivel toward my mate. Before it can fire, Aspen flicks his hand, and the enormous gun twists and bends, like the rifles he manipulated at Varney Cove. With a blast, the gun backfires, imploding the tank with a modest burst of flame.
“Well, it wasn’t in that one, that’s for sure,” Aspen says.
“They all must be diversions,” I say. “There must be another tank. Perhaps they sent another landing ship farther down.”
“One of the fliers would have seen it,” he says.
I turn my eyes to the sky, but only a few members of the aerial team remain there. Most must have joined the fighting on the ground. But that gives me an idea. “I’ll go back to the bluff,” I say. “Ask if Estel has seen anything unusual.”
“Be careful,” he says. “I’ll take care of the rest of the tanks.”
