Aprilynne Pike: Destined

“I’ll come stand in the doorway if it’ll make you feel better,” he whispered.

But Laurel shook her head, swallowing her anger as best she could. “I’m okay,” she said, willing it to be true. “He’s still the same Shar he’s always been, right?”

Tamani nodded and squeezed her hand before letting it slide from his fingers.

“I’m going to go,” Chelsea said wearily, before Laurel could follow Shar.

“Thanks,” Laurel said, hugging her friend. “The house is unlocked.” One bonus of having so many sentries surrounding her house was that Laurel never bothered to lock her doors anymore. “Try not to wake my parents. Trust me; you don’t want to have to explain all this to them.” She swallowed. The inevitable explanation would be her task, soon enough.

Chelsea nodded, stifled a yawn, and headed out the front door; Tamani bolted and chained it behind her.

Laurel walked into Tamani’s bedroom, not bothering to flip on the light. The sun was halfway over the horizon now, casting a purplish glow through the curtainless window. It illuminated a sparse room where a single wooden chair draped with various articles of clothing sat beside a double bed with a mussed blanket on it. Laurel stared; it was Tamani’s bed. It was strange to think that this was the first time she had seen it. The first time she had been in his room at all.

“Please close the door.”

Laurel did, meeting Tamani’s eyes for an instant before the door shut between them.

“We can’t tell the other sentries what we’ve learned about Yuki, and we cannot go to Jamison,” Shar said. He stood with his face close to hers, his arms crossed over his chest and his voice barely loud enough for her to hear. “For several reasons, but the main one is that we can’t risk going anywhere near the gate. The only thing standing between Yuki and Avalon is that she does not know its exact location. As soon as she does, everything is over.”

“But Klea worked with Barnes. She must have. She’s got to know where the land is already.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Shar said brusquely. “Short of cutting down that entire forest, the only hope she and Yuki have of accessing the gate is if they know its precise location and how it’s disguised.”

“But we could send someone. Aaron, or Silve, or—”

“And if they’re followed? That could be the reason Klea has waited this long to rescue her protégée. She could be waiting for us to go for help.”

“And what if she never shows up?” Laurel snapped. “We can’t keep Yuki chained to that chair forever, Shar!”

Shar drew back.

“Sorry,” Laurel muttered. She hadn’t meant to speak so sharply.

“No, it’s fine,” Shar said, sounding bemused. “You’re right. But it may not matter. As far as I’m concerned, the only way this ends well is if we keep Yuki as far from the gate as possible.”

“So we just sit round?”

“We’ve come to a fork in the branch. Right now, all we have is one Winter faerie and a lot of strong suspicions. Say we go to Avalon. Assuming Klea doesn’t know where the gate is, we might lead her to it. If she does know, she may have set traps along our path. Either way, we stand to lose a lot more than we stand to gain. And even if we make it to Avalon safely, what then? How will you feel if Queen Marion orders us to execute Yuki?”

Laurel swallowed.

“Believe it or not, that’s probably the best we could hope for,” Shar said grimly. “Our other choice is to wait here,” he continued. “The circle will hold as long as it’s unbroken, but make no mistake, it is a fragile thing. One wrong step and Yuki is unleashed on us all. The only way to guarantee our safety is to put a knife in Yuki right now.”

“What? No!” Laurel couldn’t keep the panic from her voice.

“You’re starting to see the problem,” Shar said, his voice just a touch softer. “Yuki is clearly dangerous, but I don’t think she’s done anything worthy of death. Not yet, anyway. But no matter what we do, at some point it will almost certainly come down to us, or her. The only hope I have is that Klea does need Yuki, and that she will come to rescue her. And if we can just last long enough — if we can find some way to neutralise Klea here —”

“Then we confirm our suspicions, the gate stays safe, and nobody has to die,” Laurel finished in a near monotone. She didn’t like it, but she didn’t have any better ideas. They were only three faeries and two humans trying to stand against Klea and whatever forces she had at her disposal. What would they face? A dozen trolls? A hundred? More faeries?

“Do you understand now?”

Laurel nodded, half wishing she didn’t. She had to grudgingly admit that Shar’s plan was, in all likelihood, the best one. For now. Without a word, she turned and left the room, Shar close behind.

“So… how does this work?” she asked, surveying the apartment and trying her best not to look directly at Yuki.

“We just sit. Or stand. Whatever you want,” Tamani said. “Shar and I watch the door and the windows. I try to ask her questions, but that generally goes nowhere.” He shrugged, the gesture seeming to be directed at Shar more than Laurel. “It’s pretty boring, to tell the truth.”

Yuki snorted, but none of them acknowledged her.

An electronic ding! sounded from Tamani’s bedroom, followed by a murmured exclamation from Shar.

“Beastly, frost-blighted—”

Laurel smirked; Shar detested mobile phones, and every time one went off, he swore at it. Quite creatively, most of the time. His dark mutterings were swallowed by the bedroom as he went to retrieve his “human trinket” from where he had almost certainly accidentally-misplaced-it-on-purpose.

A knock sounded at the door and Tamani sprang to his feet. “Chelsea probably forgot her keys again.”

Shar stepped out of the bedroom carrying his phone. “It says Silve’s name. What does “text two” mean?”

Tamani pressed his eye to the peephole.

“It means you have two messages—” Laurel began.

But Shar’s wide eyes were fixed on the back window of the apartment. “Don’t!” he shouted, turning back to Tamani.

With a crack of gunfire, the door exploded.

The blast threw Tamani to the floor and shattered the security chain with a metallic zing. As Laurel spun from the stinging spray of debris, she saw the back of the apartment burst apart. Window glass and drywall skittered across the floor as the most massive troll Laurel had ever seen came crashing through — a lower troll, like the one she’d seen chained in Barnes’s hideout. The misshapen, pale monstrosity thrashed about in an attempt to dislodge Aaron, who clung to the knives he’d embedded in its shoulders. The struggling pair rolled further into the kitchen, disappearing from sight.

As she turned back to Tamani, Laurel was horrified to see a bouquet of roses arcing through the air from the front door, shedding crimson petals like drops of blood as it floated almost leisurely toward Yuki’s prison. The instant stretched to eternity as Laurel realised that in about half a second the roses were going to breach the salt circle, Yuki was going to be free, and if Shar was to be believed, there was a good chance she would kill them all.

A diamond-bladed knife cut through the air, pinning the paper-wrapped bouquet to the wall not an arm’s length from the salt barrier that was keeping them all alive. Shar was already pulling another blade from a sheath at his waist as Yuki screamed in frustration and Laurel turned to the wrecked front door and the figure framed in it.

“Callista!” Shar exclaimed as Klea raised her face into the light.