We slipped through the open unguarded gate of the industrial machine park and then approached the building. The windows at street level were frosted with an acid wash on the lower half to give privacy, but the upper half of the window was crystal clear. There were two windows with the lights on, and one of them was cracked open for fresh air. If we could just climb on top of something and peek over the frosted bit, we could get a better view of what the Hades was going on.
The screaming had stopped and that worried me. Did they kill her? Who was she and what had she done to deserve such treatment?
“Here,” Raife whispered, and I peered over to see him lifting a big wooden crate that once held one of the queen’s machines. Scurrying over to help him, I hooked my fingers into the slats and carried it over to the base of the window that was closed so there was less chance we would be seen.
If we held absolutely still, we could hear the voices inside.
“Is she dead?” a man said.
“No, just passed out,” another male said.
Once the large crate was firmly in place, Raife and I both scrambled quietly on top of it and then looked at each other.
It was as if we were waiting for the other to say this was a horrible idea and we shouldn’t look. We should run to the garden and get back to Archmere and forget we ever heard those screams. But then, as if we shared one mind, we both slowly raised ourselves up to peer into the clear part of the window. It took a moment for my mind to process what I was seeing. There was a large machine the size and appearance of a giant fan with a hole in the center. In that hole was a glass box the shape of a coffin. In the box was a girl, limp but breathing slowly. The tips of her ears indicated she was either elf or fae. I couldn’t tell from here but I felt Raife go rigid beside me, which made me wonder if she was an elf. There were four guards, one at each corner of the room; they held various weapons that would overwhelm the small dagger I had brought.
“Will her ears shrink once the treatment is done?” a bald man wearing a white lab coat asked another male with long reddish hair that was tied back into a bun at his nape.
“No. I already told Queen Zaphira I could build her a machine that strips a magical creature of their power so they appear human, but it will not make them one genetically.”
Dizziness washed over me at his words. They just… did they somehow strip that girl of her magic? That was possible? Bile rose in my throat, and Raife ever so quietly pulled out his bow. I reached out and stopped his hand, giving him a pleading look. If he sounded the alarm now, we would never get out of here with my aunt.
I could not only see the rage boiling in Raife’s expression, I could feel it, his and then mine. I was angry too. I wanted to light this entire place on fire and burn it all to the ground, but I also wanted to live to fight another day. The queen was the brains of all of these inventions. So long as she lived they would still be popping up long after we destroyed one scientist or one machine. She had blueprints of all the machines in her safe, and dozens of engineers and scientists. These people were expendable. I hoped to convey that to Raife with a look.
“She’s waking,” the redhead said, and both of our heads snapped back in their direction. The girl whimpered as she looked up at the two men.
“Display your power,” one of them commanded her.
She lay there shaking like a leaf, sweating, and ignored him.
“Display your magic now or I turn the machine back on!” he snapped, and she flinched, holding up her hand. She held her fingers out like claws and stared at them in shock.
What happened next was too much for me to watch. A gut-wrenching wail ripped through the room and her sorrow slammed into me as if I were right in front of her. I fell backwards, scrambling off the box at the realization that she’d lost her magic, what made her who she was.
“Welcome to Nightfall. You are now human.” The man’s voice filtered through the window and reached me just as I threw up on the rocks. Her sobs were soul crushing, filtering out into the night. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be her to find out her magic had been stripped from her. She felt half empty, and my empathic gift was soaking it all up, even from out here. It was too much for me.
I turned, wondering why Raife wasn’t behind me, when I saw him standing in front of the now cracked-open window, arrow nocked in his bow.
I wanted to scream for him to stop but it was too late. Before I reached him he’d already loosed three arrows. I’d never seen someone move that fast. His arm was a blur, the arrows hitting their marks, because I could hear grunts of pain and shouts of surprise inside, before bodies thudded to the ground. By the time I reached the window to peer through, every man in that room was on the ground bleeding out. Arrow in neck, in chest, in stomach. It was insane, and I now knew why Raife commanded the army of Bow Men. He was the fastest, most accurate marksmen I’d ever seen.
The girl in the glass coffin sat bolt upright then and stared at Raife.
He pulled his hood back and she wept. “My lord.”
I didn’t know if he knew her personally or just as any elf would know her king, but she leapt out of the glass case and then sprinted across the room in record time. The feelings coming from Raife were similar to what he felt for me, an intense need to guard this woman and bring her to safety. She was one of his. Jealousy surged up inside of me but I pushed it down. It wasn’t right to feel that way. He didn’t feel romantically towards her, at least not any feelings that I felt, but still, I couldn’t help the envy. Just another sign how far I’d fallen in this one-way marriage.
Raife pushed the window wide open and told her to jump as he held out his arms. She looked to be in her early twenties, and was wearing a thin white medical gown. Without hesitation, she leapt and Raife caught her, setting her to her feet.
“Can you run?” he asked.
She nodded, her eyes bloodshot, lip quivering. She seemed to notice me for the first time and burst into a sob. “My queen…” She reached for me as if she needed a fellow female companion, and even though I knew it was going to be awful, I grasped her hands.
Absolute desolation and darkness enveloped me then and the girl gasped. “Empath,” she whispered, looking relieved.
There was no time for this, so I pushed her emotions deep down inside of me so that I could still function, and then dragged her along as Raife directed us to run.
Tears leaked from my eyes and muffled sobs escaped me as I processed the realization that she would never again heal anyone, nor be considered an elf among her own kind. Raife was nervously casting side glances at me as we ran down the road, coming to the edge of the palace before needing to cut back into the neighborhood and avoid the tavern. My aunt would be waiting at the gardens. Probably worried sick by now.
As we passed, Raife stopped, tucking us into the shadows and eyeing the palace in the distance with disdain.
“I could sneak in. Find Zaphira. Kill her. Meet up with you,” he breathed against my ear.
I shook my head, pointing to the large columns that decorated the front walk. There were at least twenty of them. “You see those columns?”
He nodded.
“They are hollow. A guard stands inside each one. And there are probably fifty more inside and twenty outside her bedchamber. Raife, you’re good but not that good.”
The hope died in his eyes and I hated that I was the one to do that to him.
“We need the others. We need an army,” I told him.
“I want to go home,” the girl whimpered, still clutching my hand.
I was torn between my own emotions, the broken girl beside me, and now Raife’s bloodthirsty revenge. It was causing my empathic gift to go haywire and overwhelm me.
“My aunt is probably worried, and someone will find those bodies soon,” I informed Raife.
He dipped his head, a defeated frown pulling at his lips, then we ran for the gardens.
It was a short run, but I counted the amount of times he looked back at the castle.
Five.
Five times he wrestled with ditching us and going after the woman who murdered his entire family in one night. I didn’t blame him. We found my aunt sitting near the open storm drain clutching her bag, and Raife helped all of us down into the tunnel quickly. He joined us inside the ankle-deep water and then covered the grate overhead so we couldn’t be followed.
Illuminating our path, we made it to the hollowed-out log boat at the river without incident. Raife had to take my aunt across first, then double back for me and the girl. She told me her name was Natasia, and she wouldn’t leave my side, no doubt enjoying the numbness of not having to feel her emotional damage and pain. Because I was feeling it all—nausea swam inside my stomach, and my mind was in a dark place. But I kept quiet. This poor girl had just been tortured within an inch of her life and then stripped of her power. I was going to carry that pain as long as I could.
We trudged through the woods, Raife carrying my aunt’s suitcase in one hand and guiding her elbow with the other. Watching him tend to her like she was his own family just made my hopelessness deepen.
When we finally reached the hole in the wall, I didn’t have much will to live. What was the point? No one would love me now that I had no powers. I couldn’t tell my parents I was… magically castrated.
I shook my head, dislodging thoughts that were not my own, and looked down at Natasia, who rested her head on my shoulder.
Raife helped my aunt through the gap in the wall and then reached for Natasia just as the siren sounded behind us at Nightfall Castle.
“Time to ride fast and hard out of here,” Raife said, yanking the girl from my clutches and shoving her through the opening in the stone.
I stood there in shock, a shell of self-pity as Raife stepped up to thread his fingers into my hair and cup my face. “Kailani, look at me.”
I looked up at him, realizing that I was sobbing uncontrollably.
“Kailani, listen to my voice. My mother had to learn when to let go of other people’s emotions. As an empath, you take everything, absorb it like a sponge and process it way too fast. You have to remember who you are. You are not her. You are loved, you have a family, you—”
“You don’t love me,” I said between sobs. “And now that I can’t heal, no one will.”
Raife looked concerned, his eyes going to my lips. “Kailani, snap out of it! This isn’t you.” He shook my face a little in his hands, but I tried to pull away from him.
“Just let me go. Let me die!” I screamed, wanting to go back and let them find me, kill me rather than live like this without my healing magic. I was her. She was me. We were one.
Raife pulled me against him, pinning my body to his, and then leaned forward, brushing his lips over mine ever so softly. It reminded me of our first kiss, the one when he was drunk and said he didn’t remember. He was toying with me, teasing me. And I loved every second of it.
“Lani, come back to me. I need you,” he whispered against my mouth. I gasped and the storm cloud of emotions retreated, and I was suddenly myself again. My chest heaved, the sobbing stopped, and I finally felt clearheaded. It was like being intoxicated and then rapidly sobering.
I shook myself, pulling back to look at him. “You remember our first kiss?” I asked him.
He gave me a crooked smile. “A man doesn’t forget a kiss like that. I’ll remember it as long as I live.” He then dropped my face and pulled me towards the hole in the wall as my head swam with what he’d just said. He did remember the kiss and he’d used it again to bring me out of whatever that was.
“My lord!” Cahal was on the other side, sounding panicked.
The barking of far-off scent dogs rang throughout the forest, so I allowed Raife to guide me through the opening. Then he came through himself.
When we stood up in the farmlands of Archmere, I nearly collapsed in relief.
We made it! I scanned the space to take in all that was happening. My aunt was consoling poor Natasia as Raife guided me away from her, a clear twenty-foot distance.
“You can’t let her be alone,” I told him. “Her thoughts are too dark right now.”
Frankly, I was afraid she’d try to end her life. That’s how I’d felt only moments ago.
Raife nodded. “I’ll have her under round-the-clock surveillance at the infirmary. And I’ll start your aunt’s first healing tonight,” he said. “But I can’t let you near her right now. You need to be alone and rest. That always helped my mom.”
I threaded my fingers through his and squeezed his hand. “Thank you.”
I was slightly embarrassed about my behavior a moment ago, saying he didn’t love me and all that other stuff.
Raife squeezed my hand in return and then got me in the carriage. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and then disappeared. A moment later my aunt was there, climbing in.
She sat across from me, and stared at me in the dim carriage light. I wondered what she would say. We were finally alone, and she’d just been torn from her home in the middle of the night indefinitely. She found out I was fake-married and then had consoled a poor girl who’d been tortured.
She looked me right in the eye and gave me a lopsided smile. “If you’re queen, what does that make me? Surely a duchess or something?”
I burst out into laughter, which turned to tears of relief. My aunt’s lighthearted personality was another one of my favorite things about her. Stepping over to sit beside her, I lay my head on her shoulder, snuggling next to her as I would when I was a little girl. Her energy was cool as a breeze in winter, and I nearly sighed in relief, taking that into myself and allowing it to relax my frazzled thoughts. Sleep was pulling at my limbs but I tried to keep my eyes open as I heard Raife barking orders to his men. He was calling the Bow Men troops up to defend the wall just in case Zaphira decided to come over. Then he asked Cahal to take the girl to the infirmary.
My aunt sighed, and I could feel her sudden anxiety fill up the entire carriage, which had me alert.
“He’s going to bring war to Nightfall, isn’t he? That’s why you had to get me out?” she asked.
I pulled my head up and looked at her. Her friends were there, and my childhood friends, and war wasn’t good for the people—it never was—but the queen had to die. She’d killed his entire family and almost poisoned me.
“Yes. Queen Zaphira will die. I will make sure of it.” I surprised myself with how much I’d taken on Raife’s duty.
My aunt just nodded, as if she expected as much to eventually happen. With that, we both rested our heads on each other, and then I drifted off to sleep.
When I woke up, it was only for a moment as Raife was slipping me into our bed in his room. Then again, I woke for a second time, in the middle of the night as the bedroom door shut and I saw him sleeping on the chaise lounge. I remember the pang of sadness that sliced through my chest that he wouldn’t sleep next to me, but I was too tired to dwell on it.
