The girl motioned for them to come inside.
Wynn ducked through the doorway, and placed Mildred on the floor. The hen stayed close to her ankle as the big cat slid past them and melted into the dark. Mildred gave Shadow an angry tut. She wasn’t ready to be friends with Shadow. To be honest, Wynn wasn’t sure what she thought of Shadow, either. Sometimes she seemed nice, but she had tried to eat Mildred. Wynn didn’t want to have a friend that had tried to eat her other friend.
Wynn entered the doorway, and it was like stepping into a very dark cave.
Inside, she couldn’t see a thing.
“It’s dark,” she said, and kept her body pressed against the stones to the right.
“Does that matter?” the girl asked.
“I don’t like it,” Wynn said.
The girl sighed. A fire sprang to life in the center of the room within a small circle of stones. The girl didn’t seem surprised, but Wynn was. The fire didn’t burn sticks or grass. Instead it licked over a pile of ordinary-looking rocks.
“Is this better?” the girl asked. Bright tongues of flame danced through her curls for a moment, then faded.
“Yes,” Wynn murmured as she looked around. They were in an old room. On one side a wall had collapsed and was now a pile of rubble. The roots of a tree gripped the chunks of stone and held them. On the other wall was a faded mural of hunters holding fearsome contraptions and firing arrows into a dying tigereon that was caught in a trap. Shadow blinked her large gold eyes at the mural, then turned back to Wynn. Wynn frowned.
Poor Shadow. That was a terrible picture. Maybe if she had something to draw with, she could fix it for her. Wynn eyed the fire. Charcoal would work, but there was no wood in the fire, only rocks. The rest of the chamber was cramped, but relatively comfortable, with a pile of soft mosses and springy ferns in the corner. Wynn sat on a rock with a flat top, one of the blocks of stone that had fallen from the old wall.
“This is your house?” Wynn asked.
“At the moment,” she answered with a shrug. “It’s nice to have some company. You may stay as long as you want. The reapers won’t find you here. The smell of smoke that lingers in this part of the wood masks our scent, and the reapers are afraid of fire.”
Wynn was confused. The smoky smell came from the girl herself.
“I need to go back to the fairy palace,” Wynn said. Mildred strutted over to Shadow and gave her paw a peck before jumping on the tigereon’s hip and settling down to roost. Shadow growled at her and twitched her tail, but didn’t try to eat her. Wynn turned to the other girl. “Can you take me?”
“No,” the girl answered. “You don’t want to go back there. You can never trust the fairies.”
“The fairies are nice!” Wynn said. Mildred clucked in agreement.
The girl didn’t blink. Her dark eyes caught the flickering light. “I’m sure they are very kind as they sit in their protected little bubble and let the rest of the world around them rot under the stench of the Dark One.”
Wynn didn’t know what to say. She had to concentrate hard on the girl’s words. Shadow curled up behind the girl. She lounged back against the cat’s striped side. “If you think the fairies are going to risk their precious safety to save you, you’re going to be waiting for a long time. They will never set foot in this wood. This is your world now.”
CHAPTER TENElric
ELRIC BRACED HIMSELF AS HE fell through the fairy portal. Now that he knew what to expect from the fall, he was determined not to lose his balance this time when he landed. His feet hit the floor hard, but he managed to stay upright, even though he stumbled a little to the left. Osmund took a quick step back, but used his woodcutter’s ax to steady himself.
Elric blinked. The woods had disappeared and now he was back within the fairy palace. A circle of fairies surrounded them, all gaping at Osmund.
“Prince Osmund,” Raven said in a reverent voice. He fell to one knee and bowed. “You return in our hour of most dire need.”
Osmund handed Elric his ax. He walked past Raven without a word. He strode straight for the queen on her bed of frozen mist.
With gentle care, he lifted his medallion from his neck and placed it on the queen’s chest, then took her hand and laid it over the pendant. He rested his hands over hers.
“Mother, I’m home,” he said softly.
A thread of golden light reached down from one of the deep cracks in the crystal. It connected to the center of Osmund’s back, then pierced through his heart and reached the heart of the frozen queen.
Osmund cried out as he let his hands fall. He grimaced as the light grew brighter, and one of the deep cracks in the crystal slowly fused together. The light bleeding out of the cracks slowed, though it did not stop completely. Elric watched as the blue light of the crystal pulsed again, dim but steady. The heartbeat returned to the great tree. But three deep cracks remained in the fragile heart of the palace.
The queen’s eyes blinked open. She stared up at him without saying a word as the golden thread connected them. She reached out her hand and cupped the side of his haggard face.
