Destined

“But you can’t get to them from here,” Caelin argued. “There’s no door. They just share a wall.”

“Thanks,” David said, wrapping his fist around Excalibur’s hilt, drawing it from its temporary sheath, “but I make my own doors.”

Laurel watched as he ran to the wall, bowed his head for an instant, as if in prayer, then raised his sword and thrust it into the stone wall. Tears of hope sprang to her eyes as she watched him cut a long, vertical line in the stone. Two more cuts on the side and Laurel could see light bleeding through the wall.

“Help me push!” shouted David, and soon faeries were gathered around him, picking their way carefully over the unconscious fae they’d collected at the edges of the room. They heaved with all their might as David cut at the bottom and, with a loud scraping, the panel gave way and fell to the ground, the light of the setting sun pouring in.

The next fifteen minutes were like a fast-moving nightmare. Laurel’s arms ached as she dragged faerie after faerie through the narrow passage David had opened into one of the greenhouses. Her legs, already weary from a long day fleeing trolls, threatened to collapse. But each faerie they dragged out of the dining hall was one more Mixer who would live.

A moment of chilling fear made all the fae halt in their tracks for a few moments when the red poison began pouring over the edge of the dining hall roof and onto the transparent glass ceiling of the greenhouse. They all seemed to collectively hold their breath as red coated the sloped roof, but the seals held; the faeries were safe.

Sweat poured down the faces of those who worked beside her — almost certainly a new experience for most Autumn fae — but time was running out. In the dining hall the puddling gas had almost completely filled the floor and continued to pour in through the open skylights, no longer in single streams but waves as wide as the skylight itself.

“We have to stop,” Yeardley said at last.

“One more,” Laurel said breathlessly. “I can get one more.”

Yeardley considered for the briefest of instants, then nodded. “Everybody, one more, then we have to find a way to seal this hole or all our work will have been for nothing.”

Laurel ran to the nearest group of fallen fae. She had a good six metres to drag this one. With aching arms, she reached around the chest of the first faerie she came to, hating that there were so many others close enough to touch — so many she couldn’t hope to save.

As she turned, a new line of mist fell from an overhead skylight, cutting off her view of the exit. When it hit the stone floor the ruby poison splashed, tiny wisps swirling so near that Laurel had to throw herself out of the way to avoid getting hit.

Gritting her teeth, Laurel hefted the body higher. She had to get out of here.

She dragged the faerie round the cascade, legs screaming in protest. She looked forwards again and her path was open. Four more metres. Three. She could make it.

Then her legs tangled in something on the floor and she fell, feeling the skin on her elbow split as it hit the stone floor. She looked down at what she had fallen over.

It was Mara.

She’d been working in here before but must have fainted from the heat and smoke before the skylights were opened. Laurel looked back. The creeping gas was inches away from Mara’s feet.

I will not let you die.

With one more glance at the exit, Laurel turned and shoved one arm around Mara — she’d get them both; she had to! Her arms rebelled, shaking with fatigue as she awkwardly dragged them a few metres. A few more. She turned to get a better grip while staggering backwards; other faeries — faeries who hadn’t spent the day hiking and running — slid past her with their burdens. Laurel’s chest and throat ached from the smoke still in the air — she’d been in here too long — and the mist seemed to be following her now, inching forwards as quickly as Laurel could manage to flee.

It’s her or you. The thought came unbidden, and though she suspected it might be true, she shook her head, yanking the two faeries a little further.

I can’t do it. Yes, I can! She glanced back at the exit. It felt so close and yet so very far away. Pulling with all her might, something made her look up just in time to see another cascade of smoke pour down from the skylight, splashing to the floor and sending a wave of poison rippling towards her.

Chapter 18

Tamani half threw the unconscious faerie out of the hole in front of him and staggered over the stone lip, gasping for air. The gash in his side was seeping again and it was all he could do not to curl up in a ball and clutch at it. He had never put his body through so much torture before and wasn’t entirely sure how he was still standing.

What doesn’t kill you…

Shocked, Tamani stood up straighter and looked around him. The greenhouse was enormous, at least five times bigger than Laurel’s entire house back in California. And through the glass walls he saw more, a long row of them just like the Mixer boy had said. Tamani vaguely remembered the greenhouses from his childhood days of roving the Academy with Laurel and his mother, but he had assumed they had only seemed gigantic in comparison to his tiny sprout self. This was a perfect place to harbour the survivors.

The parade of faeries had stopped emerging from the smoke and Yeardley and some of the older fae were crouched at the hole, calling to the few who must still be in there. Where was Laurel?

His eyes found David, working with several faeries to raise the piece of stone wall upright, ready to push it back where it had been. Chelsea was kneeling beside someone who was on the floor coughing — probably a faerie who had breathed in too much smoke.

But no Laurel. Tamani scanned the crowd, then again, and a third time, but he couldn’t find her.

Fear clutched him as he realised she must still be inside. All thoughts of weariness left him and he ran to the hole David had carved, elbowing through the crowd.

“No more,” an older faerie said, laying a firm hand on his chest.

“I just have to see,” Tamani said, pushing him away. “I have to…” But no one was listening. He stopped talking and focused on worming his way closer when he managed to get a quick look over a shorter female’s head.

There she was! Just three metres away from the exit, struggling to save one last faerie, her back to them as she pulled him toward the opening.

“Leave him!” Yeardley was yelling, but that blonde head was shaking furiously.

Tamani cursed Laurel’s stubbornness and tried to push forwards again. “I’ll go get her,” he said. But no one seemed to hear him, the hands pushing back at him growing stronger as they all began to panic.

Why won’t she leave him?

“I have to… I have to.” Tamani continued struggling against the faeries, his words no longer coherent, only one thought in his mind. I have to get to her.

Tamani’s breath caught as Laurel stumbled backwards, the bulk of the faerie she’d been dragging dropping on to her legs, pinning her. She was kicking the weight away, but somehow Tamani knew those few precious seconds had tipped the balance against her.

“No!” he screamed, launching himself forwards making little progress in the crowded greenhouse.

She heard him — he could tell; she was scrambling to her hands and knees, turning her face toward his voice. But then she convulsed, silently, as the poisonous tendrils overtook her, her pink shirt seeming to glow in the darkness as the wispy red smoke enveloped it.

Everything inside Tamani shattered, razor-sharp edges that cut every inch of his body from the inside.

“That’s everyone,” Yeardley said mournfully, gesturing David and the faeries forwards with the stone square. “We can save no more. Block it.”

Tamani’s feet seemed to have taken root in the ground. “No!” he screamed again. “Good Goddess, no!”