Blood Before Sunrise

into focus, I realized they weren’t stars at all, but a scattering of Sprites glowing with a faint bluish light. I felt a lot like Gulliver surrounded by all these Lilliputians.

“Lie still,” she ordered in her tiny voice. “You need a Healer, but she hasn’t arrived. We’ll have to make do without her. You’re stabbed.”

“No shit,” I said, rubbing my temple. Brakae fucking stabbed me. What the hell was all that about? Not exactly the best way to ensure your protector is in her best fighting form. “I don’t suppose you or any of your little friends up there know how long I’ve been lying here?”

“Not long for O Anel,” she said.

Wonderful. Just the answer I was looking for. She might as well have said, You’ve been here for-fucking-ever, you idiot!

I pushed the thought of centuries passing in the mortal realm from my mind and focused on what I needed to do to get out of this goddamned backward place. The calm attitudes I’d encountered so far were starting to get on my last nerve. And that nerve was hanging on by a thread. The wound didn’t hurt as bad as the one left by Faolan across my chest, but that wasn’t saying much. Even if I could manage to find a weapon, I doubted I’d be able to wield one. Not to mention that I had no fucking idea where Brakae and Faolan had gone or how to find them.

I looked up to the sky and the floating blue lights descending toward me. Like snowflakes, they landed around me, on top of me, a couple on my forehead for Christ’s sake! “Do you mind?” I said, shaking my head. The Sprites laughed, a sound that reminded me of crickets chirping, and jumped to the ground like a scattering of dandelion seeds.

“Didn’t you hear what I said? You need a Healer, but we can help to at least mend your wounds.” This one seemed to speak for all of them. Maybe they were shy. “If you’ll be still, we can get to work.”

Her sweet voice couldn’t have sounded more annoyed. I had a tendency to get on people’s nerves. And on the nerves of Shaedes. And Sidhe. And Lyhtans. And Fae. Now I could add Sprites to my list. If Tyler could see me now, sprawled out on the grass while itty-bitty creatures administered my medical care, he’d bust a gut laughing. I closed my eyes, reliving our last moments together, wrapped in each other’s arms. Tears stung my eyes, and my stomach twisted with the anxiety of what I might find when I returned home. What if he hadn’t waited for me, or worse, what if he wouldn’t forgive me?

A shiver raced across my skin as the Sprites went to work, walking around on my body as if it were a construction site. In my mind, I pictured them with tiny hard hats and rolled-up sets of blueprints. But when I opened my eyes, I saw their serious faces and urgent concern as they poked around the wounds, sewing them up with sparkling strings that looked like cobwebs.

“This has got to be some of the craziest shit I have ever seen.” I talked more to myself than to the Sprites. But really, I wished I were talking to Tyler. I needed someone who understood how completely surreal these moments were to me. I mean, even as a Shaede, I never thought I’d see little picturesque creatures with transparent wings sewing me up with supernatural thread. I could almost hear The Twilight Zone theme in the distance.

I don’t know what they used, how they did it, or what magic aided them. Warmth radiated from the wounds, but not the fiery heat that had pained me before. The sensation comforted me, and I didn’t even feel the prick of a needle, that is, if they’d used one. Magic lived and breathed in O Anel with a steady pulse I felt all around me. But I also sensed the sadness of this place pressing in on me. “Why is nobody happy here?” I asked. “It seems like a pretty damned nice place to live.”

“There is no consistency this close to O Anel.” This was said by the-what should I call her?-foreman Sprite. “The natural order is all about balance. You cannot have order without chaos. The mundane world keeps order, so we are left with its other half.”

I had yet to see anything even remotely chaotic in this peaceful place. Obviously this Sprite hadn’t seen the real world, where people warred over the silliest things and famine and disease stole the lives of thousands. They’d probably never witnessed a natural disaster or seen the effects of pollution. Faolan had seen it, and it had driven him mad. “You’re wrong,” I said. “This place can’t possibly be chaos. It’s way too perfect.”

The Sprite laughed. I wanted to call her Cindy or Judy. She had that suburban look about her. She reminded me of a soccer mom: efficient and put together, perfectly coiffed and unflappable, like she ran a tight ship, remembered everyone’s schedules, and knew how to keep her brood of children in line. “Chaos isn’t always easy to see. You haven’t been here long enough to recognize it and form opinions based on more careful observation.”

“What’s your name?” I had to know. I was moving on to Vanessa or Carri as possible choices.

“Nila.” Huh, never would have thought of that one, but somehow the name fit with her large brown eyes, russet skin, and shoulder-length brown hair. “The sun rises and sets just as it should in the mundane world. The seasons come and go according to schedule. The tides ebb and flow. That is the order of your world. And you should feel fortunate to be gifted with its stability.”

Stability. That was a joke. But I supposed in a realm where you could see miles of green meadow and suddenly walk into a copse of trees that sprang out of nowhere, the mortal realm might seem to be a fairly stable place. “Where’s Faolan?” I steered the conversation back where it needed to be. “I don’t have time to waste. I can’t let him mend that hourglass.”

Nila eyed my wounds, much like the job foreman I imagined her to be. “A few moments more, if you’ll just sit still.” Testing the flesh with her finger as if judging a baking cake, she added, “And even then you won’t be completely healed. You need-”

“I know,” I said with a sigh. “A Healer.” Running at half capacity wasn’t ideal, though if it was the best I was going to get, I’d have to take it. But a healed body and all the time in the world weren’t going to help me if I couldn’t find Brakae and the bastard who’d taken her. “Where’s Faolan?” I asked again. “Do you know how to find him?”

“Brakae is no fool,” Nila said. “All you have to do is follow the trail she’s left for you. Now lie back,” she said, stomping her foot down on my forehead, “and let us finish up here. As you said, you don’t have time to waste.”

Chapter 26

I lay back and waited for Nila and her team to finish sewing me up. Two potentially mortal wounds in one day weren’t an all-time record for me, but the rate at which I healed was breaking all sorts of records. It took a considerable amount of concentration to keep from banging my head against the ground in frustration. Too many variables stood in the way of my success, one of those being Brakae’s not so gentle handling of me.

She could have been under Faolan’s influence when she’d rammed the dagger deep into my flesh. I saw it reflected in her eyes. But she’d spoken to me with a presence of mind that belied his control. Had she simply been playing along so as not to alert Faolan to her stability? If she’d meant to really kill me, I doubt she would’ve bothered with the prestab warning. No, Brakae had only put on a convincing show for Faolan. She’d been precise in her aim. She’d avoided my lungs and directed the slant of her blade low and to the outside. I’d said I trusted her and meant it. No way would she betray me-not Raif’s daughter.

As the Sprites worked on me, my hand wandered to my throat to where the pendulum should have hung. “Where is it?” I asked no one in particular.

“Almost done,” Nila said. “Lie still.” A pit bull couldn’t have been nastier as she pushed at my forehead again with her foot.

Just then, the Sprites looked up to the sky, and I followed their gazes. Dark night had melted away, the sky becoming bright with sunlight. This was the chaos Nila had described. Time couldn’t be marked in seconds, minutes, or hours. The sun broke over the horizon without preamble. If dawn had indeed preceded the sunrise, it happened in the blink of an eye-too fast for me to track. Black skies had been replaced with blue as if someone had flipped a switch.

“Are we done?” Not that it mattered. I was out of here. “Time’s wasting.” Literally.

Nila stepped away as the other Sprites took to the air, floating toward the morning sky, which matured to midday in what seemed like a matter of seconds. Faolan must have been close to following through with his plan; time seemed to move more unevenly than it already did. And I had a feeling, if I didn’t get my ass in gear, we were