“Wait! No!” I cried, but Ethan grabbed hold of my other arm, and he and Keane started dragging me toward the gate, Kimber limping along behind us.
“We can’t leave my dad here alone,” I protested, turning a pleading gaze on Keane. “Or yours!”
I had a strong suspicion that if I wasn’t around to take the blame, my dad and Finn—wherever he was— would pay the price for me. And if I wasn’t around, it would be pretty damn hard to prove my innocence.
“We have to,” Keane said, still pulling me. His eyes were glassy, as if he were on the verge of crying, although he was too much of a manly man to allow that to happen.
I still didn’t want to go, didn’t want to leave my dad and Finn to face the wrath of the Seelie Court. But Ethan, Keane, and Kimber weren’t going anywhere without me, and even if I wanted to stay and defend myself, I couldn’t in good conscience drag them down with me. Maybe Titania would hold them blameless, maybe she would figure the blame belonged entirely on me and my dad, but I didn’t dare take the chance. Dad was telling me to run for a reason, and it wasn’t because he expected things to go well when the members of the Court figured out what had happened and decided I had to be responsible.
With a sound somewhere between a sob and another hacking cough, I allowed my friends to drag me away. I looked over my shoulder as we passed through the gate. The last thing I saw before I turned and ran was my father, standing there alone, with those prison-like walls all around him as he prepared for a battle he knew he couldn’t win.
We managed to make it through the gate without anyone chasing us, though we weren’t exactly inconspicuous, running at top speed as we were. At least we would have the cover of darkness once we got away from the torches that lit the gate area.
“We have to get off the road ASAP,” Keane panted, then coughed. It worried me that he was out of breath, seeing as he could usually spar for like an hour without being even slightly winded. How much smoke had we all inhaled?
“No shit, Einstein,” Ethan responded, and I couldn’t believe he was wasting breath on his feud with Keane at a time like this.
Keane gave him a dirty look, but otherwise didn’t respond, which I thought showed admirable restraint. Magic prickled in the air around me, and Ethan pulled me close enough to put his arm around me. “Stay close,” he told me. “I’ve been working on my invisibility spell, and I can cover us with it, at least for a while.”
Of course, I had the ability to make myself invisible without Ethan’s help. I almost opened my big mouth to tell everyone about the Erlking’s brooch, but decided at the last minute not to. Not because I wasn’t willing to face their anger at my long deceit—well, yeah, maybe a little because of that—but because I was afraid that if they knew about the brooch, they’d make me use it to run off without them.
There was only so long Ethan’s little spell was going to last, and once he ran out of juice, we were probably going to be sitting ducks. I could already see the strain on his face, and I could only imagine how much power it was taking for him to extend his invisibility shield over all of us while running at top speed. And still coughing from the smoke inhalation, to boot. If I knew my friends at all, if they knew about my brooch, then once Ethan’s spell gave out, they’d want me to use the brooch and go on without them. I supposed I’d be safer without them if I could be invisible and they couldn’t, but there was no way in hell I was going to abandon them, no matter how practical it might be. I wouldn’t have run in the first place if my father and the boys hadn’t bullied me into it, and I still felt terrible for leaving my dad and Finn to face the music.
We ran down the road until we rounded a bend that hid us from the view of anyone hanging around the gate, and then Keane directed us off the road and into the trees. Personally, I didn’t have high hopes that we were going to evade anyone. It might take a little while for the folks at the palace to figure out what had happened, pin the blame on me, and organize a pursuit, but we were on foot, and we didn’t know our way around. Surely we’d have to stick close to the road so we wouldn’t get completely lost, and that would make us pretty damn easy to find. At least the heavily forested town gave us some cover.
Ethan slowed down as we crashed through the underbrush, and because he had his arm around me, I was forced to slow down, too. Keane and Kimber both kept going full speed for a moment, then stopped and looked back at us with wide eyes.
“What are you doing?” Keane cried. “We’ve got to haul ass.”
Ethan shook his head. “You can bet they have a tracker who can follow the trail we’re leaving.” He pointed at a couple of bushes we’d just plowed through. It was dark out here under the trees, although the moon was bright and close to full. I had to be practically on top of the bush to see what Ethan was pointing at, but then I saw a couple of broken branches. If
“Shite,” Keane muttered, and I couldn’t have agreed more.
“Well, we can’t just stand here!” Kimber said, and she was right, too.
Ethan’s brow furrowed. “I can create an illusion to hide our trail if we move slowly enough.”
“And by the time we’ve gotten a hundred yards, they’ll be on top of us,” Keane argued. “Trail or no trail, we’ve got to move.”
“No point in moving if they’re just going to catch up with us immediately,” Ethan countered. “We need to hide. They’re going to assume we’re running like hell for the Avalon border, just like Seamus told us to. If we can hide ourselves, we can let the pursuit go straight past us. Once they’re gone,
“So you want us to just sit here and cower,” Keane growled, and there was that curl of his lip again.
I knew the boys were going to keep arguing if I didn’t intervene, and we didn’t have time for it.
“If you can hide us, do,” I said to Ethan, then turned to Keane. “We’re not cowering. We’re trying to be smart about this, and Ethan’s right. Leaving a trail anyone and their brother can follow is going to get us caught real fast.”
Keane didn’t like it one bit, and I thought he was going to waste more time arguing with me. But I guess it was easier for him to concede the argument to me than to Ethan, because he nodded tightly.
“This had better work,” he warned Ethan, giving him a narrow-eyed stare that would have been more intimidating if we weren’t running for our lives. If this didn’t work, Keane was going to be the least of Ethan’s worries.
“It will,” Ethan said, though I wondered if that was confidence, or arrogance. “I’ll run back to the road and do what I can to hide the evidence of where we veered off.” He looked back and forth between the three of us. “If I get caught, I’ll holler.” His eyes landed on Keane. “If that happens, it’ll be up to you to protect the girls.”
Kimber punched Ethan in the shoulder. “We’re not helpless damsels in distress. We don’t need protecting.”
Even in the darkness, I could see Ethan rolling his eyes. “Fine, you two protect Keane. Just don’t try to play hero if I get caught.”
“Don’t worry,” Keane muttered, “we won’t.”
Ethan pretended not to hear him, slipping away from us and heading back toward the road. Leaving the three of us alone and strung out on adrenaline in the darkness of the forest.
At first, I could hear the rustle of Ethan’s footsteps as he moved away. Then there was nothing but the sound of crickets and the occasional hoot of an owl.
My heart was still thudding in my throat, and I still felt like my lungs were coated with soot. I didn’t dare cough, not when the road was so close by, but the very fact that I didn’t dare cough made the urge even stronger.
Keane had taken a couple steps toward the bushes through which Ethan had disappeared, putting himself between Kimber and me and the road. He probably thought he was being subtle, but you could bet that if Ethan shouted an alarm, Keane would stand there to cover our retreat while ordering Kimber and me to run. What he could do to protect us when he was apparently unarmed, I didn’t know.
And that was when I remembered the gun my father had given me before we’d set out. Like every other mortal artifact I’d brought with me, it was in my backpack. I wasn’t sure I could shoot anyone, even in self-defense, and I doubted killing our pursuers would make my situation any better, but at least I didn’t have to feel completely helpless.
Moving as quietly as possible, I slid the backpack off my shoulders and lowered it to the ground. Keane jerked
