A part of me wondered if it had been worth it. Would I have been better off marrying Simon and remaining oblivious to curses and magic and the magnificence of true love and friendship?
But as I gripped Silas’s hand, as that tremble started in my belly and pulled me away from my new normal, I knew the answer.
It was worth it. All of it.
Chapter 16
Silas whisked us awayfrom Wisteria Cottage. We Phased to the northernmost point on the East side of The Isle. Our destination was on a rocky cliff high above the water, an outcropping with jagged edges that sliced into the waters around us like a serrated knife.
We regained our footing whilst overlooking the crystal-clear expanse of lake. Wind pulled through my hair with angry strokes. Waves lapped hundreds of feet below us in protest.
“It’s like the island knows,” I whispered, raising my hands, letting the breeze peck at me like uneasy fowl. “It knows we’re about to betray it.”
Silas cocked his head toward me, looking truly startled. “You can feel that?”
“You can’t?” It made me uneasy, like I’d said something I shouldn’t have.
“I think the island is a living thing. I think it has an energy and a heartbeat of its own. It makes sense that it may have a sense of awareness.”
Silas hadn’t answered my question. He had, however, affirmed that maybe I wasn’t totally nuts for feeling that way.
“To break the wards, we’ll need to Phase to the bottom of the lake.” Silas looked into the sunshine, squinting so little creases appeared at the side of his eyes. I’d say he looked like a sailor at the helm, but really, he looked more like a pirate.
Silas looked at ease here, perched hundreds of feet in the air, balanced on the precipice of a sheer drop without a concern for his safety. His impressive body was perfectly still, his muscles flexed, eyes studying the horizon.
He looked at one with the island. Silas understood these lands, and they understood him. He was, at his core, an islander—no matter how much he argued otherwise.
“You’re Fae too,” I said. “You belong to this court. Your roots are deep here, even if you don’t want to admit it.”
For the longest time, I thought maybe Silas hadn’t heard me. I waited, about to repeat myself, when he finally turned his head a few degrees.
“Webelong here.”
Then he raised a hand to the Comm device that was attached to his wrist. It was the island version of a walkie-talkie.
“We’re ready,” Silas said into it.
The device crackled, and then Ranger X’s voice came through the speaker. “Boat’s all set.” A beat, and then, “Good luck, you two.”
“Boat?” I asked.
“I asked Ranger X to send a boat out to the perimeter,” he said. “The salt crystals are located at the bottom of the lake, so we’ll have to Phase underwater to access them. I want an easy location to Phase to and from that’s not on the mainland. It’ll be impossible to say where the curse will attack once we begin.”
I nodded. “You mentioned the crystals might be protected by force?”
“I suspect that hiding the curse in plain sightwastheir best line of defense. They wove the curse into our very own protective wards. It wouldn’t make sense to have a physical layer of protection on top of that—it would be noticeable, and it would defeat the purpose of being discreet.”
“What do you think will happen when we destroy the first crystal?”
“There are seven total, according to the ancient maps,” Silas said. “They’re laid out in a circle around the island. Picture them as anchors to a spider web of protective netting over us. A parachute of magical protection, tied down to the crystals.”
“Do you think we’ll only need to break one of the crystals to disconnect the curse?”
“I doubt it. If I had set the curse, I’d use everything available. Each of those salt crystals is powerful enough on its own to act as a generator.”
“Are you telling me that if we break one crystal, the power source will just shift to another? You’re saying there aresixbackup generators—and we have to destroy them all?”
“I can’t say anything for sure, but that’s what I would have done.”
