Chapter Twenty-One

 

 

 

 

Dylan

 

My love….

I woke to darkness, which soon turned into a soft glowing blue as electricity sparked across my skin. I was sleeping on Shade’s old bed, and I could smell her all around me. For a second before I woke, I had felt her lips brush mine as she whispered to me.

But the light emanating from my skin told me otherwise. I lay alone in her bed, which had been moved out of her original room to Anna’s old one. This was Anna’s room, but the bed was all Shade’s.

I sat up, feeling the morning and the Land of Faerie calling to me across the boundaries nearby. Living so close to Faerie had its advantages, at least for elementals. But for a faery who sat just outside their homeland, like me, it was almost torturous. The call to return to its magic ached in my bones like a withdrawal I couldn’t shun. When I’d lived here with Shade without returning to the Teleen Caverns, it had left me morose and broody, missing the magic swirling in the air in Faerie. The human world had its own kind of magic, but it depleted faeries with a ferocity even I couldn’t fight.

I shook my head, rubbing my arms to sling the longing off of me. My body was alert, sensitive to the possibility of Shade nearby. Had she called out to me in my dreams? Had I made it up? I waited to see if her essence would return and seek me out, but nothing happened. I sighed at the silence.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and groaned. I didn’t have to rest, but when I did, the sleepiness took a moment to wear off. Yet another quest awaited me. I had to return to the Scren to try the spell in the grimoire Ciaran had given me at the archives, but I first had to find out what was happening to humans in Faerie. Something was poisoning them, and I was sure there had to be casualties all throughout the land. If I was going to figure out what to do, I had to consult the greatest oracle I’d ever met: Ilarial.

Showered and dressed not fifteen minutes later, I headed into the living room and kitchen area to find Benton already awake in the dim light of dawn. He had a cup of coffee steaming in front of him. He drank it black without sugar. He was definitely more hardcore than I was; I loved mine smothered with cream and sugar.

“Good morning,” I said, grabbing a mug from the cabinet before filling it with the hot liquid. As I added my cream and sugar, he muttered a response I couldn’t hear, but I knew he was lost in his own thoughts. What was he thinking? What had bothered him so early in the morning?

I took a seat across from him and sipped my coffee, observing him tentatively.

“Okay, what’s going on?”

“What?” Benton finally broke out of his trance and flicked his gaze toward me. “What do you mean?”

“You’re gone, man. Someplace else. Where are you at?” I looked around. “Where’s Isolde?”

“She went on an errand. She wanted to send some care packages to her family and wanted to get to the post office really early.”

“Ah.” I checked my watch. It was eight-thirty. “The post office doesn’t open until nine.”

“Yeah, but it’s not close, remember? We live in Timbuktu here.”

I nodded. “Look, are you all right?”

Benton turned his eyes down to his coffee before shrugging. “I don’t know. I feel like I should be on this mission to find out what’s going in Faerie. I feel like I’m of no use staying behind, even though I want to watch over Anna and James. It’s just….” He sighed.

“You’re not used to sitting still for too long.”

“Exactly!” Benton’s expression lit up. “I can’t stand it. I’m going to go nuts here.”

“Look, maybe it’s a good time to train your brother a bit more in elemental magic. If something goes awry, you guys are going to need any defenses you can conjure up.”

“I suppose so.” Benton slouched once more, gripping his mug tighter. It wasn’t the answer he’d sought, but he was determined to protect his siblings. After a moment, he looked back up, scrutinizing me.

“Have you heard from Shade?”

Besides in my dreams?

I shook my head. “No.”

“Me neither. I guess we really are forgotten now. She’s moved on to better things.”

I exhaled slowly. “I don’t know about that. I think she’s struggling. I think she’s trying to fight an impossible force to get back to us. I don’t know if she’ll win, but Shade would fight. I know she would.”

“Yeah, she would.” Benton bobbed his head in agreement. “I hope she wins. I don’t know if I can keep them safe. I always had Shade to help me.”

“You’ve been doing just fine without her. Trust me. I don’t think she would’ve left as easily if she didn’t know you could handle everything, even though she wasn’t always rational.”

Benton chuckled. “Yeah, well, she may not always have chosen the right paths, but she chose them with us in mind. She sacrificed everything to save Faerie, which meant saving the ones she loved.”

“But Faerie almost killed you guys. How is that saving you?”

Benton’s smile faded as his eyes darkened. I knew speaking of Shade in any bad way wasn’t what he’d want to hear, but the bitterness, no matter how hard I tried to push it away, always crept in.

“There’s no way of knowing what’s going on with that. She’s probably trying to fix it.”

“She’s always trying to fix things. She fixes people, and she fixes everything. Why for once doesn’t she fix herself?” I breathed hard through my teeth, my heart beating hard as Benton stared up at me, his dark expression hardening at my outburst.

“James is sleeping.”

“I’m sorry.” I sighed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant.” Benton leaned back in his chair, crossed an ankle over his leg, and sipped his coffee. He pulled out his phone and stuck in his earbuds, turning on his music. He was done with our conversation. Even I could take a hint.

I took my coffee and went outside to the back porch, where I sat down and stared into the forest where the border of Faerie lay. I imagined Shade walking at the edge of the foliage and turning to wave for me to join her. Squeezing my eyes shut, I told myself it wasn’t real. I wished it were. For the first time in weeks, my heart ached like the wound had been cut fresh, bleeding crimson all over the ground.

“Shade, where are you?”

I heard a creak on the wooden boards of the deck behind me and quickly sipped the last of my coffee to mask my emotions. I hated being caught in the middle of a heartache. Especially when the person interrupting my thoughts was none other than Nautilus.

I cringed. He had probably heard Benton and me arguing. I wished I could keep my voice lowered when getting upset.

“Hey, Dylan. Are you about ready to head out?”

Good, he was strictly business. Maybe he was all right after all.

“Yeah, I’m good to go. You?”

“Yep, just having a bagel. Isolde and I stopped by that bakery down the road yesterday. Benton said you loved their bagels and cream cheese.”

I looked up, surprised as I took a plate with a sliced and toasted bagel smeared with veggie cream cheese. My confusion must have been noticeable, because Nautilus chuckled.

“Hey, he is your brother-in-law. He cares about you too. Try to go easy on him.”

He turned and re-entered the house as I sat there, baffled. Benton had requested my favorite bagel and spread. He knew me more than I gave him credit for. Suddenly, my determination to solve the riddle of Faerie’s screwed up magic reignited, and I began chewing on the bagel, ready to return to the quest.

Yes, I could do this without Shade. I didn’t want to, but we all had to do things we didn’t want. We were family, after all. And family always stuck together.