A shiver went down my spine. “Unless what?”
“Unless their King and Queen harbor their own desires for the conquest of this realm. If they provoke the Spring fae to attack them—in their home territory—the odds the Spring Court would fall are very high. Spring fae cannot handle the cold, not the way the Winters can. They don’t have the resources or the clothing to last long, especially not if it storms. With the Summers and the Springs out of the way, the Winters would only have to face off against the Autumn Court. As unlikely as I want it to be, I do have to admit that it’s a possibility.”
Hearing him talk through the fate of the realm as if the fae were merely chess pieces to be moved about a board…well, I didn’t feel particularly optimistic about preventing an all-out war. If the Springs wanted a fight, and the Winters were after a throne, and the Autumns were hell-bent on turning everyone against each other, I didn’t know how Otherworld would make it to the other side.
* * *
We left when the howling winds were a distant memory. A steady drizzle caused a thick mist to hang heavy in the air, but the thunder and lightning, the hail and the wind were no longer pounding against the trembling trees. Rourke gathered me into his arms, and we ran. It was a long way to travel back to the Summer lands that way. Rourke was strong, powerful, and immortal, but he wasn’t immune to weariness. We did a quick search for the horses we’d been forced to leave behind, but they were nowhere to be found—they had likely run for shelter during the storm.
I hoped to the forest they’d found it.
“Even as fast as I can run, it will take us much longer to travel back on foot than it will to travel by horse. This kind of speed is wearying, especially at this distance, as much as it pains me to say. We would have to stop many times along the way.”
“Could you show me how to do it? If I have Autumn powers, maybe I could do this, too,” I said as I leaned against a rough tree trunk to catch my breath. Despite the fact it had been Rourke who had been doing all the running, I felt out of breath myself. And a little bit dizzy.
Rourke pursed his lips. “I have no doubt you could, and I admire your tenacity even when you look as though the world is tipping sideways beneath your feet.”
He was right. I slid down to the ground and dropped my head against the rough bark, closing my eyes to block out the shifting colors of the sky. Moving so quickly through the forest had brought back the intense weariness I’d felt after using my magic on Rourke’s broken body.
“You haven’t recovered enough from your healing powers,” he said firmly. “We’ll just have to go by foot.”
My eyelids cracked open so that I could peer up at him. He was the perfect picture of calm, a silhouette of pure steel against the soft Autumn sun. “I don’t think we have time for that, Rourke. If we’re going to stop this war, we need to get back to the Summer lands as soon as possible. By dawn, if we can. Otherwise, we’ll have to wait a whole other day to get through the archway.”
His jaw clenched tight. “You’re right. I could try to run the entire way without stopping, but I know what would happen. I would push past the exhaustion and end up collapsing. Sleep would consume me for hours. We wouldn’t make it in time.”
An idea sprouted in my mind. A terrible one, no doubt, but it was the only one I had. “We’re right by that Wilde Fae village. And they sleep during the day, yes? So, we can sneak in and take something that would help us get home. Do they have horses?”
Rourke turned, his eyebrows raised so high they hit the golden strands of his hair. “Sneakinto a Wilde Fae village?”
I lifted my shoulders in a shrug. “Sure, why not?”
He let out a low chuckle. “You really are a strange mixture of both Autumn and Summer, aren’t you? Well, for one, the Wilde Fae would tear us apart if they caught us. And two, you’re still recovering from that spell.”
“Now that I have the stone, shadowing doesn’t take much out of me at all,” I countered. “I’m perfectly capable of keeping us hidden while you rustle up some horses for us, which means we won’t get caught.”
“This is a terrible idea,” he said, but I could see that he was already working out a plan in his head. He gazed through the trees at the towering wooden wall of the nearby village, his calculating eyes piecing together parts of a puzzle I couldn’t yet see. “Okay, come on, and stay close to me.”
* * *
Ascream ripped from my throat, so sharp and loud that a flock of birds took flight from a nearby tree’s twisting branches. I waited only a stone’s throw away from the Wilde Fae gates, heart rattling inside my ribcage. My hand slipped into the depths of my cloak, and I felt the smooth stone underneath my trembling fingers. I didn’t need to touch it to know my magic was working, but it made me feel better all the same.
After several quiet moments passed, I tipped back my head and screamed again. This time, the little hatch beside the gates cracked open, and a single green eye peered out into the clearing where I stood.
Rourke hovered with his back pressed against the wooden walls, his finger pressed tightly against his lips.
When the guard found nothing but the shaking tree limbs and the scuttle of fading leaves against the ground, he harrumphed and shut the hatch. So, I screamed again. Immediately, the hatch flew open, and the fae leaned out of his little hatch to see what all the commotion was about. His mismatched eyes gleamed as he raked them across the clearing, his parched lips stretched tight across his leathery face. And then his tongue darted out, as if the sound of my screams had driven him to hunger.
When we’d been planning our mission into the village, Rourke had told me something that had made all the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. He’d said, “Wilde Fae are partial to damsels in distress.”
I’d frowned and cocked my head. “You mean, they like to save them? That doesn’t make sense with everything else you’ve said about them.”
“Not save them. They like to eat them.”
So, of course, now I was standing in front of their village screaming my head off, just daring them to come out and find me so they could swallow me whole.
The guard slammed the hatch again, but this time, the gate began to crank up from the ground, the steel shuddering as it rolled. The gate stopped halfway, and the guard ducked under so he could take a look outside. He had a sword slung across his back, not in his hands. Clearly, he thought the damsel in distress, wherever she was, was no threat.
I shuffled my feet on the ground, just to make a little noise and catch his attention. Because when he took two more curious steps my way, Rourke launched at him from behind. It was over within seconds. Rourke wrapped his arms around the guard’s head and snapped it to the side, and then held the male’s weight and dragged him around the far corner of the village wall. I watched, heart stuck in my throat. It had happened so quickly that it was almost as if it hadn’t happened at all.
