Page 82 of Fae Unleashed
My teeth slammed together. My entire body clenched. Though I tried to open a pathway for the searing arcana to enter my own garden of power, it was damn hard with my body clenched so tight.
“You’ve got this,” Addie whispered with her hand on my back.
Her cool arcana held my soul in place. It gave me breathing room so I could finally open the right channel and funnel Vi’s light into the seed at the heart of the hedge maze.
Beryl must have sensed her impending defeat. I felt her shadow tendrils crumble under the light pulsing through my arcana now. Her seed shrank as she pulled back.
I should have known that she wouldn’t leave without one last strike, though.
A crack rippled through the castle. A low, grinding hum filled the basement. My head snapped up. The distraction made my arcana falter.
The castle had split in half and was falling down upon our heads.
This was it. I told my friends to run. If they didn’t run, then they would perish down here with me. I used this moment as an in-between and opened a portal back to the mortal realm.
I took my friends hands and told them that I would run with them but urged them to go first. Vi ran headlong, trusting my word. Addie, however, hesitated. She could see that I wasn’t about to go. Neither of us said anything as we stared each other down.
In the end, I shoved Addie through the portal. I gave her a sorrowful wave goodbye as I slammed the portal closed between us. There was no way they could come back. I had to endure this all on my own.
Rhoan, I loved you.
My friends couldn’t stop this building from falling, but maybe I could. If I poured enough arcana into the ground, there was a chance I could grow something that would hold this crumbling structure together. If that didn’t work…then I was going down with this ship.
Rhoan
My heart stopped.
Fear turned my blood to ice even though I had Faust by the throat. His ichor blood coated my tongue while the Sluagh tried to press in around us. Faust hadn’t really put up much of a fight. At first, I’d thought that he wanted me to kill him. Then I realized he kept the Sluagh army because he wasn’t all that strong himself.
While Morgan, with the aid of the cursed beasts, held off the other Sluagh warriors, I cornered Faust. But now, the feeling of something wrong slammed into me and gripped my soul.
Rhoan, I loved you.
The words reached me on the warm wind. There shouldn’t have been any warmth in this realm. When I dropped Faust and lifted my head, I could see a glow in the distance. Sunlight rose from the ground like sunrise had come early even though I knew that the sun would not peek over the horizon in that direction—even in the unpredictable fae realm.
Cerri was in trouble.
My princess needed me.
Even with Faust at my mercy, I knew that there was nowhere else I should be than at Cerri’s side. I rushed to step in-between with my heart full of love and fear.
Faust laughed. The sound echoed like thunder in his realm. Morgan lashed out at him, but the man disappeared. Faust reappeared crouched before me. He slashed his hand through the portal I’d opened and turned his gleaming eyes back towards me.
“You belong to me now, Rhoan Glenwood of the fallen Seelie Court, last knight to fail the royal family.”
Faust’s eyes flashed with contempt and victory. The light in them consumed my vision until everything became a blur.
I heard Morgan’s distant roar, but I could see nothing. No matter how I tried to move, my body refused. It stayed put as if there was something else pulling the reins now.
Faust…no. That wasn’t quite right. Even now, I could hear Faust’s grumbles of frustration. He told me to go stand with the others, but not even they were listening to him.
What made him think I would listen to him?
Cerri was waiting for me. She was…wreathed with morning light as she stood in the kitchen in the mortal realm. The smell of sage and butter filled the air and pulled me closer to her.
Talons gripped my back and shook me out of the dream trying to overwhelm my senses. My vision of the fae realm remained a blur, but I could feel Morgan’s talons in my back and the wind beneath his wings.
Cerri was waiting for me…in the castle.
