is dead, I’m going to visit you every night. We’ll have so much fun, Summer.”
“How?” I say, trying to drag out any details possible. “How will they kill him? Even with his name . . . he’s too powerful.”
His nostrils flare in anger. “Powerful? Let’s see how powerful he is when he’s faced with an army of darklings and his magic is bound. Did you know, there are ways to control darklings? To use them as assassins? All you need is a name and you can focus all that savage hunger on one single Fae prince.”
An army of assassin darklings . . . all trained on Valerian. I shudder. Still, after the last darkling attack, they reinforced the wards over the Island and the academy. They wouldn’t be able to get that many darklings past those defenses.
But off campus . . .
“The Wild Hunt,” I whisper.
“Ding ding ding.” He beams at me. “Stop frowning, Summer. You don’t need to worry about him anymore. You have me. In fact, why don’t you come back with me for a little while. We’ll have a party.”
“They’ll notice I’m gone.” Panic constricts my chest. I can’t leave with him; I have to warn Mack somehow. She’ll be with Asher and the prince . . . she could get hurt.
She could die.
“So what if they do?”
He reaches for me. At the same time, a blur catches my eye. A thunk, like a hammer hitting raw meat, fills the forest. Cal’s face changes, his smirk twitching into surprise. He cries out, collapsing to one knee.
An arrow sticks from his shoulder, silver blood sticky around the entry wound.
Jane walks up with another arrow nocked and ready. They’re not iron-tipped so they can’t kill him. But they can hurt like the devil.
“She isn’t going anywhere, dickwad,” Jane shouts.
While he’s still trying to process the situation, I slam my palm upward into his nose with a satisfying crack. He flails backward onto his back.
My heart is in my throat as I lean down and fish my pendant from his pocket. Then I grab Jane and we run. We don’t stop until we’re in my room. I watch from my window as his friends help him to their four wheelers. The same window he came inside last night.
How did I not know?
I don’t stop watching until they disappear into the forest.
Then I run to my new cell phone and message Mack.
She doesn’t respond, and the message remains unseen.
Crap.
“Summer?” Jane says. She’s shaking, but her voice is steady.
“It’s okay.” I wrap her in a hug and then begin throwing on warm clothes. “You did good, Jane. Cal won’t retaliate against you. It’s me he wants.”
“He’s one of them, isn’t he?” she asks, her voice way too calm for having just shot a Fae with an arrow.
I nod. “They call them changelings. How much did you hear?”
She tugs at one of her braids. “Enough.”
I pull her close. “Thank you for saving me. But now, I have to go back to save someone else.”
“The prince he mentioned?”
“Yes, but also my friends.” Her hazel eyes narrow and I add, “They’re human, and they’re innocent bystanders.”
She nods as if she understands that part of my speech, at least. But tears glisten her eyes. Tears she’s too old and too stubborn to spill.
“Don’t promise me, this time,” she says, her eyes harder than any fourteen-year-old’s should be. “Don’t promise you’ll come back. Not unless you will.”
I squeeze my arms around her one last time, my throat clenched. “I’ll see you again, Jane. Who else can keep you from running wild?”
Then I rush down the stairs toward the Shimmer before she can see the hesitation in my eyes.
56
Magus balks when I ask him to open the forbidden vault. He didn’t hesitate when I stood in the Faerie ring and called him over using the Gaelic words he gave me two months ago, after he returned me home. Words only to be used in an emergency. And he didn’t so much as blink when I demanded transport to the academy. But now, he finally seems to realize what I plan to do, and his large mossy eyes go wide.
Turns out stealing a forbidden weapon imbued with a hundred Fae souls using dark magic is where he draws the line.
He tries to talk me out of it. Tries to make me go to the headmistress instead. But by the time I find her, it might be too late for my friends. And even then, she might not believe me.