I knew that too, but I couldn’t believe that. I knew what Farrah was doing. She was sacrificing herself for her people. That hardly seemed fair.
After many botched attempts to sneak into the fortress, I let Ariella guide me deeper into the forest, where we wouldn’t be found out by the shadow fae patrolling the area. She was sure they were expecting me and searching for me, with every intention to kill on sight.
I paced around the fallen tree trunk Ariella was seated at, my mind racing, my emotions buzzing, my blood boiling.
“Wyatt, you have been like that for hours now,” Ariella said, her voice hard. For an angel, she was quite the tough one. “You have to stop and rest and relax if you want to keep going later.”
I stopped, but I didn’t relax. I glared at her. “I don’t want to keep going later. I want to keep going now.”
Ariella rolled her eyes, annoyed at me. Yes, I had been in this fucking state for hours now, and honestly, I couldn’t see myself relaxing until I was able to rescue Farrah from the Shade Fortress.
“I know you want to save Farrah, and if you’re so adamant about it, we will, but we can’t just charge into the fortress now. It’ll never work. We need another angle.”
Fuck, she was right. I knew that. But it was hard to admit it.
With a heavy sigh, I finally succumbed and plopped down on the tree trunk beside her, the full force of my failure hitting me square in my chest. Holy fuck, I had let Farrah slip through my fingers and now she was the prince’s prisoner.
There had to be something—
I slipped my hand inside my jacket and found something. Frowning, I pulled the blue stone Spencer had given to me before opening the portal for me. I stared at it.
“Do you have any idea what this is?” I asked, showing the stone to Ariella.
She took it from me, lifted up to the sky, turned it around. “Nope.” She shook her head and returned it to me. “Why? It’s supposed to do something? I couldn’t sense any magic coming from it.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Can you sense magic?”
“It depends. I never could pinpoint how it works, but sometimes I can feel magic coming from a person or an object.” She shrugged. “There must be a rule, I just don’t know it yet.”
“Interesting,” I muttered. I turned the stone around my fingers. “Anyway, an old fae gave me this stone before I came back. He told me to give this to Farrah. That it was crucial.”
Ariella frowned. “How did he know about Farrah?”
“I have no fucking idea.” I tucked the stone back into my pocket. “But if he knew about Farrah and me just like that, this means he knows more stuff, right?” I wanted to believe Spencer had some kind of super sixth sense, and he could predict something would happen. Like me taking the stone to Farrah would somehow help me in rescuing her. Otherwise, the alternative, that he was just plain crazy and came up with crazy things, was too disappointing.
“I’m afraid this Spencer guy is in the fae realm, though,” Ariella said. “We can’t get to him now.”
Fuck, that was true. “What can we do then?”
After a moment of silence, Ariella glanced at me, the wheels inside her mind visibly turning behind her blue eyes. “What do you know about Blaze fae?”
“Just that they are one of the four more powerful kinds of fae in the fae realm, why?”
“Because I’ve heard about them before. When I was looking for the demons who took my wings, I heard there was a large camp of Blaze fae near the Grand Canyon, that they had come to hide after a big war they had against the shadow fae.”
“So?” I asked, impatient about her point.
“So, if we can convince them to start the war again, but on Earth this time, we’ll have help to rescue Farrah.”
I shot to my feet. “They would do the heavy lifting for us.”
Ariella stood before me. “Right.”
A sense of purpose filled me. The Grand Canyon was far away from here, but if we got allies to help us fight, it would be worth it. Though it pained me to leave Farrah with Prince Lark, I knew he wouldn’t hurt her. She would be safe for a couple more days.
“All right, then, let’s go to the Grand Canyon.”
I started marching toward the nearest road. Ariella caught up with me in no time, and we discussed a quick plan on the way. Steal a car, drive to the Grand Canyon, search for the blaze fae. If we didn’t find them right away, we would try to find someone who had heard about them. Then we would convince them to fight the shadow fae stationed in the human realm.
But, before we reached the road, a group of women dressed in black clothes stepped in our way.
“Hello there,” one of them said, with a toothy smile. “I’m Myra from the Bonecrown Coven.”
My body stiffened. The Bonecrown witches. The ones that had kidnapped Farrah to use her in a blood sacrifice, but instead beat her up and let her to die alone in the forest.
Why the fuck were they here?
3
Farrah
If I had to measure my eternity by my first three days in the Shade Fortress, I would say I was in for a boring life. During the day, Lark called on me to be by his side almost all day. First for breakfast, then for a walk in the courtyard in the center of the fortress, next for an audience with his people, where he sat at his throne and I sat in mine, and the shadow fae residing nearby came to tell their grievances to the prince. Most of the time, Lark seemed indifferent about the people’s problems, but here and there he showed some emotion, especially when it was all about revenge.
Once, I became too curious and asked him why the hell there were shadow fae living in the human world. Didn’t that mean they would also lose their powers, grow old, and die? Very happy with my sudden interest, Lark explained that his fortress was protected with his father’s magic, which didn’t allow anyone inside, plus the shadow fae residing nearby to suffer like the frost fae had.
After our boring morning, we had lunch. After lunch, Lark met with General Auron and his soldiers for a meeting—this one I wasn’t invited to. Later in the evening, Lark called me again to watch him train with his soldiers in the training center underground, just above the dungeons. I couldn’t deny he was an expert fighter and his magic was immense. If I had ever to face him, I knew without a doubt that he would win easily.
So I scratched “fighting the prince” off my list.
At night, after he showered, we had dinner, then we had another boring walk along the courtyard before Lark escorted me to my chambers, where I was supposed to stay until he came back for me the next day.
Besides the time when he listened to his people and I wanted to do more than he did, Lark’s day was simple. Normal. Boring.
Still, my mind didn’t stop working the entire day. How could I kill the fae prince if he was too strong for me, and he was always surrounded by his guards?
I only saw two solutions: I either killed him in his sleep by sneaking up in his chambers, pretending to want to be with him, or by poisoning.
What I needed was to research about poisons. Thank goodness, this damn fortress had a huge library. While Lark met up with his general and soldiers, I snuck into the library.