CHAPTER

17

Back inside the castle, but not exactly safe or sound.

It was hard for the four of us to fit on Ermie, but it was even harder for the other four on Stormy, who didn’t have magical stick-to-me fur. Worse, he was staggering with almost every other stride. I could hear Max crooning at him. A few times, Ermie drew us close, licking the horse on the neck or wherever he could reach.

Fortunately, even at injured half-kelpie speed, we outpaced the red caps and reached the front of the castle in moments. The massive front doors were open, and Mum, Dad, Princess Maryan, and Prince Christopher, all looking definitely the worse for wear, waved us in.

Ermie slowed, nipping at Stormy, driving him in first. The half-kelpie stumbled on the steps but made it inside. Ermie turned just at the stairs and shook. Off. Get inside.

We didn’t go flying, but I felt all his fur immediately release us. Chris and Lily caught Livy, who was totally unresponsive. Chris hefted her in his arms and ran inside.

I didn’t dismount.

“I’m not leaving you out here!”

Foolish child! He hopped and shook. With my broken wrist and him not holding me on, I lost my balance. His fur managed to catch me somewhat, so the fall wasn’t hard. Get inside.

“Heather, come on!” Lily called.

“Heather! Ermie!” Mum shouted.

I ignored her, looking to where the pack of red caps was approaching.

I will hold them off. They will try to break inside. Go!

“No. Not without you!”

Stubborn, foolish girl! He turned, grabbed me by the back of my shirt, and tossed me towards my parents.

“Nooo!” I screamed as Dad caught me in his arms, pulling me inside. Ermie would be killed! Tortured! Blood ran down all four of his legs, gashes bubbling from iron poisoning.

“Ermie! I’ve got it covered,” Mum said. “Look!”

At the edge of the driveway’s cul de sac, the red caps had stopped and begun lining the edge, drooling and frothing in fury or hunger. Or both. Many had blood smeared over their faces or hands. Whose blood? My friends’? Ermie’s? Theirs?

“Get in here! That’s an order!” Mum finally commanded.

Rearing and snorting at the staring fey monsters, Ermie turned and ran up the stairs to join us. Dad hefted me in his arms as Mum laid several lines of salt across the stairs and the doorway. She held up a small pin, stared at the red caps—no sign of Calbraith yet—and stuck it into the salt. “You shall not breach this threshold,” she stated.

There was a crackle, and I felt the hum of her magick.

Prince Christopher helped Mum close the heavy oak doors and set the wooden bar across them.

“Oh, Heather! Baby!” Dad said when he finally got a good look at me.

“Heather! Heather!” Rowan was bouncing beside my dad.

Isis danced around all of us, howling and barking until Dad told her to sit and be quiet. She positioned herself between us and where the two horses had run to, growling at Ermie and Stormy.

“Mum! Quick, help!” Lily called. “It’s Livy! I can’t get her to respond!”

Mum rushed over to them, cussing. “She’s in shock. Marie! Get me the compresses! Now! We have to get all the red-cap poison out of her.”

I wriggled in my dad’s arms, so he put me down. We rushed to Mum’s side. Beside me, Rowan keened a soft whine. “Go help Mrs. McInnis, Rowan,” I whispered to him.

Still whining, he shook his head violently and stood as close to me as humanly possible without touching.

“Back off, all of you!” Mum growled, adjusting Livy on the floor and wincing as she moved Livy’s legs.

“Is she breathing?” Sara-Not-Beth asked.

Mum leaned her head by Livy’s mouth and stared at her chest. I noticed a nasty scratch, like a giant cat’s claw, across Mum’s temple and a blood streak through her auburn-dyed hair, staining the grey at her temples. I remembered what Ermie had said about the breach at the castle, but I hadn’t a chance to ask. Mum was frowning as she pressed her fingers to Livy’s neck for a pulse.

The look on her face said enough. “Michael. Chest compressions. Now! The rest of you, back up.” Our group had crowded around her again.

“C’mon, Rowan.” I nudged his trainer with my boot till he moved with me. With the throbbing of my left wrist, the burning of the scourge marks on my right side, the general all-round pain of having been shoved to my knees, and then riding that hard, well, that was about all the contact I could muster.

Dad, bloody claw marks running up both his arms, knelt at Livy’s side and started counting as he bore his weight down on her chest.

A doleful, pained equine cry from across the castle’s great hall drew my attention away from Livy. Stormy was on the floor, Max kneeling by his side and Ermie standing over him. Bloody froth pooled beneath Stormy’s head. I saw Mickey McInnis leaning over him, frowning and reaching into the vet satchel that Dr. Caroline had given him years ago.

Ermie looked at me, looked at the dog crouching with her tail between her legs and growling still, then looked away, but said nothing.

Rowan whined louder.

“Maybe you could help Mickey. You’re good with animals, too.”

He shook his head, bug-eyed as he stared at Livy’s legs.

Mrs. McInnis was laying hot compresses up and down Livy’s torn-up legs, while Mum checked for Livy’s pulse. I smelled the same spicy, earthy herbs that Mum had used on Joe and his family last night. “Again,” she told my dad, shaking her head. Sweat was dripping off his face as he counted.

Princess Maryan put her arms around Joe, who had fresh red-cap scratches across his chest. She took a compress from the steaming bowl Mrs. McInnis had brought in and pressed it to him. Looking at the rest of the group, Mrs. McInnis started passing more of them out. Rowan slipped in and grabbed some for Lily and me. Everyone but me had the telltale green and yellow pus oozing from red-cap injuries, but I doubt Rowan noticed that difference. Sara-Not-Beth held a compress on Jared’s left shoulder; his whole right arm was swollen like a balloon and looked bent in the middle of the forearm. His face was downright grey, probably not helped by the streaks of black eyeliner all over his face. His eyes were glazing over.

“Marie, Eliza, get us some pain medicine, please,” Princess Maryan said to Mrs. McInnis and her daughter, who had joined us and finished wrapping Livy’s legs. Squatting in front of Jared, the princess asked him to breathe deeply in and out. “You,” she said to Chris, who was holding a compress just above his waist and had another wrapped around his forearm. “Help support your friend. Don’t let him pass out.”

“Yes, Your Highness, ma’am.” He edged over and gingerly put his hand on Jared’s other shoulder. “Hey, bro, stay with us, yeah?”

“Unh-huh.” Jared squeezed his eyes closed, but gave a brief nod.

“Those things were mad crazy, right? But you took one out, with your off hand, too…”

“Again.” Mum’s voice cut through the air as Dad continued compressing Livy’s chest.

On the other side of the hall, Stormy let out another moan as Mickey tried to clean the gaping, bloody, iron-poisoned cut along his side. Ermie was licking his face as Max, who was shaking himself, stroked his nose.

“Allow me.” Tony came out of nowhere—seriously, nowhere! Because we totally couldn’t have used his help sooner. He touched my parents’ shoulders. “The other children are all safe. I will take over here.”

My parents backed away, glancing at each other, as well as at the prince and princess, who looked as battered and bloody as my parents. They looked not at all surprised at Tony’s appearance and definitely relieved. What had happened here while we were out fighting Calbraith?

My mind was kept from considering this as my eyes were drawn to Tony and Livy. Could he save her? The djinni placed his fingers on Livy’s shoulders, closed his eyes, and breathed over her face.

It looked like phantom fire curled from his mouth and into her nose and mouth. She gasped, eyes popping open. “Sssshhh,” he murmured. Little tendrils of that fire seemed to curl their way down her body, gathering more wisps as they wound around her legs.

After a few moments, her face started to relax. Her breathing evened out. “Wh-wh—” she started to ask.

“Hush,” Tony said, moving his hands from her shoulders. He touched his forefinger to her forehead “Now, rest. Heal.”

The djinni locked eyes with Joe, who stared at him, jaw tensed. “Her soul had not yet left her body. Had it, I could not have brought her back.”

Pressing his lips together, Joe nodded and then looked at Jared.

The djinni moved over to him. He took Jared’s arm in his hands. After a moment, Jared’s face relaxed, too, and the swelling started to go down. “You’ll feel me set the bones, but it will not hurt,” he said, straightening Jared’s arm. More fiery wisps twirled around the arm.

“That’s so weird!” Jared breathed, eyes wide. “It…almost itches. But…like, I don’t care. Like the time my doc gave me half a pill of Vicodin when I pulled my Achilles!”

Tony gave a half-smile and let go of Jared’s arm. “Flex it.”

“Whoa!”

The djinni moved to his shoulder, pulling off the compress and running a finger down the cut. Poison pus seemed to dissipate as the skin reformed like brand-new and the red started to recede.

“Who’s next-worst?” The djinni looked around at us.

“Heather. She’s got a broken wrist, and her face and arm are split open from Calbraith’s scourge,” Joe said, then bit his lip as he stared at me.

“No,” I said, though I felt almost ready to faint from the returning pain as the adrenaline wore off. I didn’t dare move or I would fall over. Even my voice felt shaky as I said, “Stormy, Ermie’s son. And Max. And Ermie. They all have iron poisoning, and it’ll kill them!”

Tony looked at Joe.

“Please!” I said, louder.

Joe nodded, and Tony disappeared, reappearing across the hall and laying his hands on Stormy. My dad cradled an arm around me, helping me sit down. I leaned on him, thankful for the support. Lily nestled on his other side. Rowan sat beside me, and I wondered, briefly, how awful a person I was for feeling happy that I was his favorite sister…even if that thought seemed to make the throbbing pain less.

“Isis, to me,” Dad said to the dog, who glanced back and forth, growling even more at the equines and the djinni before coming to us and, at Dad’s command, lying down behind where we sat.

Mum offered us a comforting smile as she pulled the compresses from Livy’s legs with Prince Christopher’s help. “Put her on the couch in the parlor?” she requested. The prince nodded, gathering Livy in his arms, and headed for the parlor.

Once Livy was gone, Mum’s face grew grave. “Max has iron poisoning?”

“Calbraith is his father. He set him up to come here…” was all I could manage. I hadn’t exactly been taking evil speech notes.

She blinked, narrowing her eyes and setting her jaw. “Oh,” was all she said, though her hand fell to the iron knife on her belt. I heard the dog’s growl behind me grow louder from Mum’s reaction.

“But Max isn’t Unseelie!” I insisted quickly. “He fought him with us, and then he was going to turn himself over so we could get away, but we saved him.”

“I see.” Her eyes flicked from me to my dad. I knew there was way more going on in her head than I could even begin to see, and that worried me.

Grunts and clattering drew our attention to the equines. Dad let go of me to grab Isis’s collar gently and firmly. Max, Mickey, and Ermie stepped back as Stormy rolled to his feet and started pacing in a circle, panicked. Ermie moved with him, herding him out of the terrified circle, calming him down. After a moment, the two stood, heads lowered, nose to nose. Tony put his hands on Max and pushed him towards us. As they approached, I saw the flecks and flicks of flame that seemed to be the djinni’s magickal signature moving around his body.

Letting go of Max, Tony came to me. He glanced at the dog, and I saw her sit calmly at my dad’s heel. “Now, I believe it is your turn, Heather. Give me your hand first. As I said to Jared, you will feel the knitting of the bones, but no pain.”

He straightened my wrist, adjusting it with his fingers. Beside me, I heard Rowan gasp. I felt soft cracks and pops, and like Jared had said, a weird itching sensation. I stared at it in awe, mesmerized by the appearance of fire sprouting out of my skin.

“Now flex it.” I did as he said, while he moved to my face. I felt him run his finger over the cuts, which reminded me of when Mum spread cooling lidocaine and aloe over a sunburn. Only Tony got rid of all the burning the instant he touched each of the half-dozen or so cuts on my face, neck, arm, and hand. “Better?”

I nodded, feeling Dad hug me again and kiss me on the head, then watched as the last bit of skin pulled back together and the screaming red paled to my normal skin tone.

Max had knelt on the other side of Joe, who had moved next to me while Tony was healing me. Max’s brow started to furrow, then he squeezed his eyes shut, whispering, “No, no, no.”

“What is it?” I asked.

Isis jumped to her feet, barking and howling. Dad barely kept his hold on her. Tony was by Dad’s side and calmed her again with a touch, though the flame in the djinni’s eyes seemed almost to blaze out from his face.

“No! No!” Max stood up, fingers digging into his temples, heading to the door. “You have to throw me out of here. H-he wants me to… NO!”

Mum was on her feet in a moment. She slashed her iron knife across Max’s bicep.

He howled in pain, stumbling. She twisted him into a hold and forced him to his knees, pressing the flat of her blade to his bare arm.

“Mum!” I jumped to my feet, as did pretty much everyone else.

“Aimee!” My dad moved towards her, but she stopped him with a look. Sounding even more shocked than I had, Dad demanded, “What are you doing?”

“Trust me.” She adjusted her hold on the struggling Max as the iron hissed against his skin. “Maximilian Drummond, feel this iron and use it. Use it to block him out. Do you hear me? You’re stronger against it than he is. You’re stronger than he is.”

With a ragged groan, Max took a deep breath in, nodded, and stopped fighting my Mum. She released him, but kept her blade pointed at him.

“I’m…fine. For now. I can still feel…in my head. But, I, like, have it in a box. Locked.” He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. “If that makes any sense, at all?”

“It does,” I said, remembering how I’d tried to keep Calbraith from picking up on me calling for Ermie.

“The iron poisoning will hurt like hell,” Mum said, “but you should be able to tolerate it for now. It will interfere with Calbraith’s tie to you. I assume you looked him in the eye? For how long?”

Max shook his head, squeezing his eyes closed and scrubbing his face with his hands. “He delivered Stormy to me. When I signed the paperwork, I looked him in the eyes. I remember him staring at me for a long time, but…nothing else. Till today. I was so sick. I kept hearing this voice in my head…his…but I didn’t know it. And it told me to go outside and to brush away any salt in my way. So…I went through one of the doors when no one was looking. And then I just…got a feeling… I remember walking and finding a stone with salt and brushing that away. And then I went to the stables to go get Stormy, moving all the salt out of the way. The more salt I moved, the less sick I was.” He took a deep breath in and let it out. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know! I-I…”

“It’s all right.” Mum put a hand on his shoulder. “Rowan and I replaced all the salt around the castle, even by the secret door. We’re safe for now.”

“It’s not all right,” he said, gritting his teeth and pulling away from Mum. He stood, face red and anger sparking in his eyes. “Are we just going to stay here? What about my mum? He knows where we live!”

“Your Mum’s back in Perth,” my dad said softly, still keeping a firm hand on Isis’s collar. “And he wants to own this land, not where your mum is. Unless there is some faerie power that lets him teleport…?” He looked at my mum.

Not a daoine síth as young as he, said Ehrwnmyr, taking a few steps towards us. And certainly not injured as he is.

“Injured?” Mum asked.

“I got him, once,” Joe said. “Right after I loosed Stormy. He didn’t see me coming and was distracted.”

“Well done, son,” Prince Christopher said, squeezing Joe’s shoulder. Were he not breathing so raggedly from his injuries, Joe would have been beaming like a lighthouse. I figured his dad didn’t need to know that Joe had almost gotten himself killed doing so. I swallowed, shivering at the thought of him on the ground, at the end of Calbraith’s sword.

“Tony,” Mum said. “Will helping untangle Calbraith’s hold over Max go against your inability to get directly involved in fey war issues? Is that something you can do with your powers?”

The djinni frowned at my mum. His fiery eyes appraised Max. “Will none of your magick do the same, Mrs. MacArthur? There are three more children, as well as yourselves, who are struggling with injuries.”

Mum tightened her lip to a thin line. “I have never even tried something as complicated as that. I figured you would be better suited and could do it more quickly.”

“Calbraith will recognize my presence if I do so, and while I cannot get directly involved, the fact I am here and, at the very least, guarding and defending the royal family, should not be without merit.”

Mum and the djinni stared at each other for a moment. Closing her eyes, she gave a curt nod. “Understood. Max,” she turned to him, “do you want me to try and sever, or at least weaken, Calbraith’s hold on you?” She swallowed. “I can’t promise it will be a pleasant experience, but Michael is right. He will keep trying to ‘get in’ through you…and I think we’d both prefer not having to resort to iron again.”

Max nodded. “Do it. And if you have to, cut me with the blade again.” He looked over at my friends and me, though he seemed to stare at me longest. “I won’t risk anyone else getting hurt.”

“All right then. Follow me to my office. I need to focus. Michael, I may need your help. Rowan…” My brother looked up. “You, too. The spell we placed on you will help.” As he trotted over to her, Mum used her coaching voice. “Everyone! Prince Christopher and Princess Maryan are in charge. Do exactly as they say. I don’t need to tell you that your lives depend on it; I think you know that already.”

We all mumbled, “Yes, ma’am.”

After adding instructions to Mrs. McInnis and Eliza about food and water, she, Dad, Max, and Rowan disappeared through the “Private Area” door to my family’s part of the house, bringing Isis with them, as Tony finished healing each in turn.

And we waited.