Dark Promise by Annika West

49

“Aster, remember the plan.” Adair, despite being stabbed like some Dracula dummy, sounded as confident and calm as ever.

He held out a hand, and darkness swirled from it.

I coughed as it filled my lungs, and then my body drifted through the pyramid.

He’s giving you cover. He’s letting you run. He’s giving himself up.

Cursing, I waited until I made it inside to shift into my physical body and stop my space float.

The pyramid was dark, the only marks of power being a deep, almost imperceptible blue and violet.

I shifted back into the energetic realm and sunk myself downward, raging at myself. I’d planned on following Adair, not finding my own way. I was literally certain to get lost.

Just don’t die, old man. You’re the one manning the wheel of this shit. You’re not allowed to tap out before the mission is over.

Imagining Willow and August down for the eternal count wouldn’t help, so I didn’t invite that fun little image in. Sinking through tons of stone was my only job.

Let’s just hope I didn’t have a repeat of the muddy pond.

The golden thread was still wrapped around my wrist. Hopefully, that meant Hux was still alive and kicking too.

He is. They all are. You have to believe that.

It’s difficult to ‘see’ the magical energy whenever I was sinking through solid structures, so I didn’t notice the change in energy until I was yanked downward.

And when I say ‘yanked,’ I mean ‘pulled down and completely unable to take hold of my direction or velocity’.

Shit, shit, shit. If the Earth was trying to pull me under, I was going to be so pissed. Although maybe there is a Hades down here, and maybe he’s hot. Only one way to find out.

The stone disappeared, and suddenly, I was in a room.

Hopefully the magic of this place was pulling me toward it?

When I began to slow, that’s when the room’s details came into view.

Thank fuck.

I shifted into physical reality and dropped to the floor, letting my eyes adjust to the lighting. There was a stone altar in the middle. Nothing fancy.

Pretty straightforward —

Pain lanced my stomach.

I froze and looked down.

A sword protruded from my abdomen. The blade was thin and black, wet with my blood.

“But I had dinner plans…” I trailed, dumbstruck.

Whoever stabbed me yanked the blade back out, twisting as they did.

I screamed. If there was one sensation I could live without, it would be a double-edged sword shredding my liver.

My knees cracked on the stone. Cradling the wound wasn’t really any use. The blood poured out of me, first at a steady seep, and then in a faster, pulsing flow.

“Shit,” I hissed. “And Hux will have to make me a new spy suit. So… inconvenient.”

“Cheeky until the last breath,” a familiar, scathing voice said.

Elona strode into view. Her hair was done up in a very sleek bun, and honestly, her war eyeliner was on point.

I tried to tell her that her blade was tiny, and she should consider leveling up because frankly, it was embarrassing that I was still alive. All those hundreds of years of being a fancy immortal faery, and she couldn’t get a quick kill.

Pathetic, am I right?

“I knew you’d be here,” Elona said.

Beside her, a man with a red mask came into view. He had golden hair. Pretty, tan skin.

He was holding the tiny sword.

That just made the small blade joke better, but I can’t exactly speak yet. Dammit. Here I thought I was a woman who never passed up the opportunity to insult someone’s sword.

If I died like this, I’d be livid. Let me go out with a crazed bang. Exploded in dynamite. A crazy shoot-out in an abandoned factory.

Woah. When did I get so attached to violent scenarios?

I grimaced. Had to be the dumb dragon rubbing off on me.

“You’re rather quiet,” Elona said.

“You’re… boring,” I rasped. Every syllable was agony. My body was still in shock, but that didn’t stop the slivers of pain lancing through me.

Elona chuckled. “And here I thought the great Lord Adair’s incredible halfling daughter would have more to offer. You can’t even heal properly. Look at you. That wound wouldn’t have killed my house’s halflings. You’re weak, Aster King II. Pathetic. And once you die, there’s no chance of the portals opening up. Especially once we’ve disposed of your disgraced father.”

If my face wasn’t already scrunched in pain, I would have glared even harder at her. “What…?”

She crouched, smiling like a creepy villain while the masked Lord of Summer looked on. “Adair is always looking for others to do his filthy work. I imagine you inherited his power to open the portals. That’s the only reason I can think of that would explain his fascination with you.”

She’s crazy. Is she that crazy? Really?

Wait… they didn’t know about the crystals.

And they thought that Adair had some magical power to open portals. One that I’ve inherited.

An unhinged laugh gurgled from me.

Elona flinched.

What a stupid… stupidly smart faery Adair was. He did an amazing job lying to them.

If she’d known about the crystals, she’d search my body and find the last one in my very secret interior pocket.

But she doesn’t think I have something special.

She thinks I am something special.

That’s the problem of living in a world of ‘chosen ones’ and ‘destiny.’ While you’re so busy looking for something grand, you miss the obvious and end up losing the battle entirely.

I’m not here because I’m the only one with the power to open gateways.

I’m here because one poorly-dressed faery lord said it probably should be me because I was less likely to cause a war.

Me, being the idiot I am, went with it.

There’s no fate involved here.

This was strategic guesswork and gambling. I’m not special. I’m just the best-suited person who agreed to try.

Elona and the Summer Lord just took me out of the equation, and to them, that fixes a lot of their problems.

What they don’t know is that someone would find my body, take the crystal, and finish the job. Nothing fateful or special about it.

I’ll just lose my chance at being Faery’s most-hated hero.

Bummer.

My arms gave out, and I slumped against the rough stone. Finally, the pain subsided to a dull throb. But that was probably just the shock and dead nerves.

My cheek against the ground in the puddle of blood, I couldn’t help but remember when Hawk kidnapped me in the Equinox House. Talk about déjà vu.

Only this time, I wouldn’t be saving myself with a weird power glitch. And Hux doesn’t even know I’m in trouble.

Someone nudged my wrist.

“Looks like she’s gone,” Elona said. “I’d give her a minute before she dies. It really is silly how easy it was…”

Her voice carried away, leaving only a distant echo.

Another tug on my wrist.

The Summer Lord was probably here to check and make sure I was actually done for. Why didn’t he just slice off my head and get it over quickly?

He pulled again, harder now.

Stop it, already! Let me die in some fucking peace, for fuck’s sake.

My eyes wouldn’t open anymore. I wondered if the healing rune was trying to stitch me up or if it was shrugging its little rune-y shoulders.

Tug. Tug. Tug.

How does one tell a person to go away when one can neither talk nor move?

Memories flashed through my mind.

Oddly enough, none of them were mine.