“But it’s still winter, even though I’m back, and I’m alive.” I gestured toward the curtain. “I guess maybe the snow wouldn’t melt instantly?”
“I don’t know if it’s that simple,” Lily said. “But I’m sure we’ll figure it all out now that you’re back. The thing is, Alessia, when you disconnected from the court, we had to think on our feet. We implemented defense strategies to take over where yours had vanished.”
“Of course. You mean the wards.”
“Dr. Lewis made a breakthrough with the manufactured wards, just in time” Lily said. “He put some in place that are still in place. They’ve done a pretty good job of keeping out the spirits, considering he’s been working without Fae magic whatsoever.”
My head hurt then, pounded as memories came rushing back from the underworld. Spirits escaping through the portal. The sensation of disconnecting from my body. The Harbinger—Dr. Lewis—visiting me in my cell.Dr. Lewis.
“No!” I shouted. “No! You must disable the wards as soon as possible.”
“But”—Lily shot an anxious glance at her husband—“I understand this is upsetting, but we need wards in place. If you’re not strong enough to hold the wards, I think it would be a good idea to leave them in place.”
My head shaking made the ache in my skull worse but I couldn’t stop. “No. The wards must come down. Dr. Lewis is the Harbinger for the Darkest Lord. Any project he had his hands in can’t be trusted.”
“What?” Lily blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that when I went into the underworld, a man visited me in my cell after my spirit left my body.” I waved a hand. “It’s a really long story. But my mother—”
“Your mother,” Lily echoed. “That witch from New York? I mean, notwitchwitch, that’s probably too kind. Real witches are awesome.”
“No. My biological mother, the last Triune Queen”—another hand wave from me signifying I’d get to the details later—“just hear me out. Trust me. Those wards need to come down.”
As the Rangers and Silas mused over my head, I found my eyes drawn down to Liza. There was concern etched on her tiny face, but as I made eye contact with her, she smiled. She truly understood the joy of seeing her mother, even in the spirit form, even for a fleeting moment.
She gave the briefest of nods, rested her hand on my ankle—the only part of my body she could reach—and gave a light squeeze. She didn’t need to speak for me to understand she was saying,You did it.
And I hoped she understood when I smiled back, that I was telling her,You helped me through.
“If that’s true,” Ranger X said, “then we’re all in danger.”
“It’s true.” I tried to sit up in bed. “And if we don’t get those wards down and replaced, it could be the end of us.”
At this, a collective tear ripped across the island. It was the only way to describe it. Screams joined seconds later. The world as we knew it suddenly ceased to exist…as the veil between our world and the underworld ripped apart.
Even as I looked through the gauze curtains, I could see it: the spirits had arrived.
I leapt out of bed, landing wobbly and unsteady on my feet. Silas’s hands were on me before I could tip over—he gripped my waist tightly, like he couldn’t believe I was actually here in the flesh at all.
“Whoa,” he said quietly into my ear. “Slow down.”
“I just stood up too fast,” I muttered, more to convince myself than him. I felt the edge of frantic panic closing in on the edges of my thoughts. “We don’t have time to wait. We need to move. The attack has started.”
“We don’t know that.” Silas’s jaw was tight. “Not for certain.”
But that wasn’t true, and everyone in the room could feel it, including Silas. The tightness of his grip and the way his face had set in solid granite told me all I needed to know. Denial would only be a waste of time.
I shuffled more gingerly to the window, pushed back the gauzy curtain with one hand and peered outside. I saw them, the spirits, rising from the river before the castle like an army of smoke and terror. As if The Isle had been split in two, right down the river that separated the East side from the West side, but this tear wasn’t something visible. It was a rip between realms that allowed spirits from the underworld to join the realm of the living in huge numbers.
I watched with trepidation to see their next move, but like before, it seemed the spirits still weren’t able to set foot on solid ground without disappearing. They simply hovered above the water, some on horses, some on foot, some floating just above the surface of the water—waiting, as if for a command.
“There’s not going to be enough potion to stop a fleet of spirits this size,” Lily said, her face pale. “And that’s assuming this is all the Darkest Lord has, which I highly doubt. He’ll be breaching the island in multiple places, surely. What are we going to do?”
Several sets of eyes flicked toward me, but I was barely used to being in my own body again, let alone ready to command my powers at any great magnitude.
“I agree with Lily,” I said. “We need a solution that doesn’t involve potions—of which we have a finite amount. Not long term, and not with this volume. It’s too much.”
“Agreed,” Ranger X said. “We’ve properly equipped people with enough potions to get us through the night, to buy us some time, but as that runs out…” The head Ranger paused, placing a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “You did a good job. But we need something bigger. Something to stop this at the root, not annihilate the spirits after they’re already here.”
