“We have one more tether.” I shook off my unease. “Then we hit the big time.”
“Faegate,” he corrected me, amusement thick in his voice.
Oh, yes. He was definitely buttering me up for something. But what?
The four of us climbed down in a single file with Remy at the head and Ambrose at the tail. He burned more energy by running backward three steps then jogging down to catch up with us. He did that the whole way down to the third faegate, and my muscles twanged with sympathetic aches.
“Licorice,” Remy said after a while. “Black licorice.”
“I don’t know why they make the stuff.” I made gagging noises. “It’s disgusting.”
“It’s delicious,” she countered. “Your taste buds are just too snooty to appreciate non-chocolate treats.”
Midas kept his mouth shut, which made me suspicious about which way he leaned on the topic. Not the snootiness, but the licorice. Gwyllgi stomachs were lined with lead, so he could eat pretty much anything he wanted and get away with it. He would probably even enjoy it.
We trailed the scent to the corresponding level and exited the stairs, making room for Ambrose.
“This faegate is weaker than the others.” He made a thoughtful noise. “I must have broken a circuit with the other two.” He smoothed a palm over the gateway, its mirror surface reflecting him back at us. “That is good news.”
I would take all the good news I could get. “Will it make severing the archive from Faerie easier?”
“Not really, no.” He didn’t sound worried, just frank. “It will still require a magnitude of effort.”
“On the bright side,” Remy said, “the Buckhead portal ought to be primed to collapse by then.”
“Yes.” He planted his feet and bowed his head, his palms flush with the stone. “Brace yourselves.”
Midas and I held hands again. There was no magical element to it. Only comfort. Though, if you think about it, there was a magical element in that. If not a definable one.
Power surged into me, stinging down to my fingertips, but the burn wasn’t half as bad as the last one.
“There.” Ambrose straightened, smoothed a hand down the front of his chest, and faced us. “Done.”
“Three down, two to go.” I clasped my hands together. “Let’s—”
An earsplitting shriek from above raised the fine hairs down my nape and left us all craning our necks.
The mob of spirits we had collected fled into their tombs without so much as a wave goodbye.
Chickens.
“You dare,” a high voice shrilled, magnified with power. “You dare defile our most sacred place.”
“Your most sacred place is a super creepy murder closet,” I yelled back. “It needed airing out.”
Another scream, this one laced with fury, rent the air.
“Go.” Midas nudged me. “We must reach the final faegate before she catches up to us.”
“That works too.” I ran after Remy, who had hightailed it down and away from the danger. “She’s fast when she wants to be.”
A low chant rose to greet us, and the bottom fell out of my stomach.
The spirits hadn’t vamoosed because they were afraid of what was heading straight for us. She wouldn’t hurt them, after all. They had heard the coven chanting below us and been unable to resist its siren call to rest.
“The next batch.” Midas, of course, had already heard them. “We’re caught between them.”
Hindsight smacked me between the eyes with a revelation that came too late to be of any use.
We might have screwed ourselves over in forcing the coven to exclusively use the Faerie gateway.
The novices hailed from various cities. That was a good thing. Newbies were easier to beat. Anyone stepping through from Faerie? I…had my doubts about how that would go. Those practitioners would be the heavyweights. As would the practitioner stalking us from above.
And, thanks to the time it had taken to work our way down, we had sandwiched ourselves between a hammer and an anvil.
Fun times.
“How are we going to get past the coven recruits to the faegate?”
No one answered my question for a beat. Several beats, if we were talking about my heart.
“I will drain their power,” Ambrose decided, “and leave them unconscious.”
As the old chestnut goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That plan of attack had worked well for us so far.
“Will it impact your ability to finish the job?” That was my primary concern. “Even your stomach isn’t bottomless.”
Unless it came to expensive chocolates guaranteed to break the bank. Then it was a void.
“Perhaps,” he allowed. “I don’t see another way to neutralize the threat.”
Ducking into the tombs hadn’t worked. The witchborn fae had smelled coven blood on Midas and on Remy. Take that away, and we had nothing. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. We were stuck.
As much as it pained me, I had to side with him. “I don’t either.”
If Ambrose got us through the coven, the next stop was Faerie.
Deep breath.
Another deep breath.
You got this.
Faerie was a state of mind, or something.
“Okay,” I decided. “Ambrose, take them down. Everyone else, get ready to run.”
Remy snorted at my paper-thin plan. “Do you know how to use a faegate?”
Flip on the power and take a leap of faith was my understanding. “You walk through it?”
“I would pay good money to see you try.” She snorted. “You’d smack right into the stone.”
“I didn’t mean…” I narrowed my eyes on her in time to watch her laugh at me. “Never mind.”
All the energy Ambrose absorbed from the coven had to go somewhere. He might as well put it to good use. Powering the gateway sounded perfect to me. It wouldn’t burn off all he gained, but it was a start.
As the chanting swelled, I noticed a single voice sweeter than all the rest, rising high above the others.
Fear stabbed me in the heart, an ice pick that wouldn’t melt so long as I heard her song.
Natisha was with the coven.
Natisha was in the archive.
With us.
Oh frak.
Fourteen
“Midas,” Natisha called from the depths, her voice rich with mirth no doubt born from piercing the sigil I had been using as a mute button for us. “We have much to discuss, you and I. Bring the shadow child with you.”
A chill rippled the length of my spine and left me shivering with cold certainty this was the end for us.
Without hesitation, Midas stepped forward to meet the challenge head-on. “Let me go alone.”
“Let me introduce my foot to your adorable butt,” I said, and flexed my toes in my shoes for him to see.
“Hadley—”
“Our fates and lives are intertwined,” I reminded him. “You can’t protect me by leaving me behind.”
Lips stretched thin, he tilted his head in acknowledgment, but his eyes burned with the primal need to protect his mate.
No other choices left, I turned to Ambrose. “Are you ready?”