I stand up so quickly that the log I’m sitting on lurches and Dorian nearly tumbles onto his ass. “What the hell, Luce?”
“Atlas.” His eyes blink open as I startle him, but I rush on before I lose my train of thought. “Tap it into Faerie instead of yourself. Cambria can pull energy from the earth and channel it, so you should be able to as well.”
Cambria’s eyes widen as she looks over at the three changelings tackling each other and rolling around the small clearing, just horsing around and leaving the four of us to our own, boring devices. “My abilities are tied to the changelings’,” she murmurs, sounding breathless.
Dorian picks up on it, looking excited and rushing towards Azazel like he intends to make him do tricks for treats. “They couldn’t kill the changelings because Faerie reacted.” He picks up Azazel, currently a rabbit, getting to it before Raziel could. “Because you little psychos created the original fairy rings, didn’t you?”
Atlas nods slowly, jumping on board. “So that would mean Faerie needs that connection to earth or it withers like Achlys said.”
“The rings draw their energy from the land rather than the creatures that created them.” Grinning, I shake my head at the genius of it all. “Because Faerie uses the connection to suck energy from Earth. This place is only magical because it siphoned all of the energy of another world to make it happen.
Chapter 11
Dorian
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“This feels like a badjoke. A panther, raccoon, and a murder rabbit walk into a wasteland...”
The three changelings are growing bolder, exploring farther and farther away from us before returning. I’m not sure if they’re testing the waters of their newfound freedom, but I wouldn’t doubt it. If I were in their shoes, I’d be nervous of Cambria locking me back up, now that they’ve realized who she is. But ultimately, everything’s just assumptions and guessing games, reading into their behavior and trying to interpret it.
If this is anything like Lucien used to feel, I owe him an apology. That disconnect he always struggled with, it sounds an awful lot like this; overanalyzing and stabs in the dark.
“Woe be anyone exploring the valley of death right about now,” Cambria agrees, eyeing their fleeting forms through the sparse trees.
No matter Lucien’s threats to Achlys, none of us wanted to risk staying in one spot for too long. With as much energy as Atlas was expending trying to create the rings and Cambria replenishing him, it was betting an awful lot on Lucien and the changelings to protect us if we were ambushed. She attempted rallying some light court fae into her forces once before, so who’s to say she wouldn’t venture to other kingdoms or hidden villages to replace the people she lost in her culty little city?
So now we’re a few miles away from the point we originally left the wasteland on our way to Achlys’ hidden kingdom, just inside of the crumbling tree line with a seemingly endless expanse of solidified ash stretching out before us. Pitted mountains, blocking the view of what lies beyond the desolate terrain, and three small dots kicking up a plume of dust as they explore.
“Not going to lie, I was half convinced the ground would collapse in on us like quicksand on the top of one of those hills.” Gently prodding the tree trunk beside me, a chunk breaks free and falls to the ground with a cloud of dust that makes me cough.
“Why did you guys go over instead of through the center pass?” Atlas asks, looking a little better.
He’s spent days trying to create a ring that might get us to the prison, or hell, back to Earth if nothing else. But no matter how much he tried to connect it to the earth instead of himself, it wasn’t working. I’ve bitten back my theory, not wanting to put it in his head and make him give up, but I’ve seen the same concern mirrored in Luce’s eyes.
Maybe he can’t. Havinganyability is a blessing, but it’s entirely possible that that’s the price he has to pay to wield it. Luce might be able to manipulate other people’s emotions like Cambria can, but still, it isn’t the same either. He just has to focus, but it isn’t a musically inclined ability like hers is. So potentially, that means that Atlas’ abilities won’t work like hers either. Hell, we’ve even had Cambria take a crack at it, but it doesn’t look like creating fairy rings is part of her impressive arsenal.
