Staring out of the cair window, I didn't see much of the forest below. Thoughts of Raza and his Angel theory distracted me, but I was shocked out of them by the cair lurching.
“Damn it all!” Tiernan fought with the wheel.
“What's happening?” I focused on the view.
“The wind has picked up.” He glanced in the rearview mirror at the knights. “See if you can calm it.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” The knights in the backseat turned toward the windows, their hands lifted to direct their air beags.
I was about to assist them when the first petal hit.
The cair shuddered, and I gaped at the windshield as a black petal struck the glass and dark veins spread out from it like a web. Or an infection.
“What the hell?” I whispered.
More rank petals hit, and I spun to see a whirlwind of black swirl around our convoy. All the cairs bucked in the ill wind, hit over and over with airborne blight. So many petals danced around us that the sky went dark. They covered the cair, blocking our view. The metal panels held, but the glass wentblack. Technically, glass is a liquid, and I'd never seen a clearer demonstration of the fact. The black petals seeped through the glass and reformed on the other side as if bobbing to the surface of a lake.
“Fuck!” I summoned Light, keeping it close to my hands so I wouldn't burn Tiernan, the knights, or the cair's dash. Petals drifted about, evading my waving fingers. I must have looked like an idiot, fluttering my glowing hands about, but even though I had learned to target the blight, I didn't want to risk blasting Light in a flying vehicle.
More and more petals seeped through, and I finally decided to risk it. I held up my hands and focused my magic on the blight.
A whisper stopped me.“You're not my daughter.”
I gasped as Ewan Sloane's voice shivered over my skin. Ewan had raised me, believing I was his daughter. Until I entered Fairy and proved him wrong. He'd been so hurt by my mother's betrayal that he had turned his anger on me. She was dead, after all. He had no one else to blame. Ewan was dead now too, and I thought I had forgiven him for his cruelty. Maybe I had. But I hadn't forgotten, and the storm used it against me.
The knights cried out.
But their voices were faint. I was lost to the past.
“You're a filthy fairy. No kin of mine.”
I shuddered and covered my face, the Light going out.
“Get away from me! Traitor! You're just like your mother! You even look like them now.”
“Father, no!” someone shouted.
It took a moment for me to realize that it was Tiernan's voice, not mine. It wasn't my pain. I would have drowned in my misery if not for him. For Tiernan's pain, I roused myself. For him, I would tear free from my past. And as I did, I realized that the whispers weren't from my past. Like a rumor, they had taken the reality of what happened and magnified it. Ewan had disowned me, yes. He had walked away while I screamed for him. It was one of the worst moments of my life, and it would haunt me forever. I could still feel the hollow ache of crying for my daddy and watching him walk away. Ignoring me. Disowning me. But he never said those things about me being a traitor.
Body jerking, I mentally fought the heartache. The blight had found a way to attack us. Instead of taking our pain, it was intensifying it. And it had gone airborne. I saw the King in my memories and knew this was his doing. I had rejected his truce and his offer to help me. This was war.
Blinking away the fake memories, I saw reality—a petal on my arm. I brushed it away with a glowing fingertip, and it burned into nothing. The blight didn't retract this time. By leaving the ground, it had given up a path of retreat. The petals were essentially kamikaze pilots. Suicide petals. Great. The Garden of Regret was angry enough to sacrifice parts of itself to kill us. Or was it capture? I didn't know the Garden's endgame, and that made it so much worse.
Tiernan cried out again, this time wordlessly, and I spun toward him. His hands clenched the wheel while he stared straight ahead, tears streaming down his face. Several petals spotted his skin.
“Tiernan!” I brushed my hands over him, removing the blight.
Tiernan blinked and shuddered.
“Tiernan?” I shook his arm.
He swiveled his stare to me.
“Take us down! We need to land!”
He nodded while I turned to the knights in the backseat. After burning away their petals, I lifted my hands. And froze. The windows were black. Petals seeped through the glass like crude oil bubbling up through cloth. But if I blasted the glass, it would shatter, and we'd be overrun with them. I couldn't do that, but I had to do something.
“Duck!” I said to the knights.
