“I need a break,” Elle finally growled after walking for miles with the beating sun on her back.
Oh, thank gods. I hadn’t wanted to be the one to call for a break, but I needed one, too. There was a large rock off to the right, and we started to walk toward it for shade.
“Shall I make us a nice illusion to enjoy?” Elle mused.
Trissa and I nodded. Elle was the best at these. The boys just shrugged, either not caring or not knowing what illusions were.
With a snap of her fingers, a lush garden appeared around the desert landscape, with a blanket of green grass to sit on and a small blue pond to swim in. It was lovely but depressing—if we tried to swim in that water, we would eat sand.
“Wait…is that…” Cam tried to reach out and touch one of the flowers, but his hand passed through.
“Fake, sorry,” Elle said. “But it looks pretty.”
He frowned, plopping under the rock and sitting on the fake grass. We all guzzled from our water jugs, and I relished the cool liquid as it poured down my throat.
“All right, so the Winter Castle is rumored to be inhabited by a…well, it’s hard to explain,” Trissa said. “You’ll see what I mean when we get there, but we will have to be extremely careful.”
We nodded. I was just standing to prepare to continue our walk when a shadow passed overhead. My gaze flicked to the sky just in time to see three harpies dive-bombing our group.
“Harpies!” I yelled, and rolled out of the way as one of them landed right where I had been sitting. Her talons dug into the dirt where my butt had just been parked. Elle’s illusion disappeared, and chaos destroyed our water break.
Pulling a dagger from my thigh holster, I reached out and stabbed the wing of the harpy closest to me. The blade slammed into her, stopping only when it reached the hilt.
She shrieked and launched into the air, with me still hanging from her wing. I beat my own wings wildly, holding on for dear life as she climbed, making crazy, high-pitched noises and spitting at me.
I was wondering why the hell this psycho would spit on me when a burning sensation spread over the skin of my neck and chest, where her saliva had landed. Yanking my dagger from her wing, I dislodged myself and flew to the ground.
It burned. Badly. And we had no healer. Landing on my feet, I dropped to the sand and picked up handfuls of it, rubbing it on my chest and neck to wipe the acidic spittle off.
“They spit acid!” I screamed to the rest of our group. I was just pulling the lid off my water to douse my chest when that shadow passed overhead again.
Fuck.
Without much thought, I held up my hand and shot a beam of sunlight right into the harpy’s face. A cry left her throat, and the pain slamming into my brain brought me to my knees.
Holding one hand out, I called forth my powers and blasted her with another bolt of light so hot that it took her head clean off. Her body plummeted to the ground, hitting the sand with a thud, and I leaned back, panting.
It was quiet—too quiet.
I sat up and was relieved to see the other two harpies dead on the ground. But Liam, Elle, and his men were looking at Trissa. She’d gone to one knee, and her head hung low as she looked up at me with tear-filled eyes.
“How long have you known?” There was hurt in her voice, and emotion welled up inside of me.
The sunlight magic. She had seen it. She knew what it was.
I sat up and crawled over to her. “Don’t be mad. I wanted to tell you. I just…”
She chewed her bottom lip. “You didn’t trust me.”
“Not that.” I reached for her, and she recoiled.
“You are royalty.” She looked incredulously at me on my knees before her. “You shouldn’t touch me. There are rules.”
I rolled my eyes. “This is why I didn’t tell you. Don’t do that! Don’t treat me like some stuffy old royal.”
She sighed, then reached out to grasp my shoulders. “How? Did your mother know? Was she…”
“Only recently. I found her journal. She’s not…my biological mother. Queen Dahlia is.”
Understanding crossed Trissa’s face. “That makes sense.”
“Please don’t be mad. I wanted to tell you.”
She nodded. “Of course. I understand. But there is protocol that needs to be followed. We must hold a meeting with the Elders, tell them and then the village. You will take ownership of the—”
I put out a hand to halt her. “I’m not ready. I just want to wake the queen and have her do all of that. Let’s stay low and under Indra’s radar.”
She nodded again. “Okay…if that’s your wish.”
“It is.”
Trissa looked haunted, her mouth turned down and her eyes hollow. “Your mother knew and didn’t…”
I pulled her in for a hug. “She worried Indra would target you if you knew. I’ll let you read her journal when we get back.”
She squeezed me hard before releasing me, and nodded. Suddenly, she seemed to realize there were other people standing around us, watching uncomfortably. All emotion was wiped from her face—the fierce Trissa I knew and loved was back. “All right, we should move out.”
With that, we trekked on, stopping only in short bursts for water or snacking. The most horrifying part of our journey was all the bones. We passed hundreds and hundreds of skulls and bone fragments, remnants of our lost brothers and sisters. The reminder was enough to put a permanent pit in my stomach.
Eventually, the landscape changed from the barren desert to a frigid wasteland. As far as the eye could see was an endless sheet of ice. No green, no life. Everything was dead.
“Wow…not the magical wonderland I’d imagined.” Liam shrugged as the rest of us hugged ourselves, our teeth chattering. He was the only one who seemed okay with
