CHAPTER 44
he air outside is thick with acrid smoke, but inside, the mansion is somehow worse. Toxic, sickly. Out of nowhere, I think of Mom.T Now that the noises of the chaos in the street are muffled, I can hear the hum of Caradoc’s veil magic much more clearly.
We walk softly over an ornate rug in the foyer, and it mutes our steps.
After a week of spying on him, we know that Caradoc spends the majority of his time on the second floor, in his library.
Raphael glances at me and raises his eyebrows, trying to ascertain that I’m okay.
My mind is still chaotic, bits and pieces of it cluttered with the guard’s thoughts. But I give him the thumbs-up and pull the knife from my boot.
Raphael unsheathes his sword, and we both creep deeper into the front hall toward a heavy set of double doors. By now, we’ve already mapped the house as best as we could by watching it through the windows.
We chose our moment carefully—ten at night. At this time, there’s a changeover in the staff between the evening crew and the late-night shift.
There’s still a cook in the kitchen, and Caradoc’s personal maid, who is hopefully in her quarters.
As I think about her, I get a flash of memory—kissing her passionately, hidden together in the pantry. She’s human, and I’m Fey…not my memory, but one that belongs to Silver Fox. It makes me dizzy, and I have to stop, just for a moment. Raphael glances back at me, and I motion for him to go on.
The door opens smoothly, and the stairs beyond are thankfully stone, not
creaking wood. No sign of the cook or the maid, but I still can’t shake the feeling that someone is watching and hearing us. That the mansion itself knows someone has intruded.
As we climb the stairs, the humming grows louder, and the veil mage’s magic buzzes over my skin. On the second floor, Raphael turns toward the door of the library. But I grab his arm and shake my head. I can hear the humming coming from the mage’s bedroom.
Raphael turns, and I follow behind him. As he touches the door handle, he glances at me. My mind roars with fear.
I nod to him, and he flings the door open. He storms inside, and I rush in behind him.
The walls of the bedroom are painted a deep maroon flecked with black, like a rotting rose. Caradoc stands by the window with his back to us. From here, he’s watching the fire.
Something’s wrong. I should have noticed it earlier. The humming, just a little too loud. And it surrounds us now.
I glance up.
The entire ceiling shimmers—a misty veil arching over us. A trap. As Caradoc turns toward us, he lets the veil drop.
Cold fear crashes over me, and I summon my Sentinel powers. I hurl them into the deadly mist around us, but it’s a fraction too late for Raphael.
Tendrils of the mist reach him, and he stumbles and falls, his sword clattering
on the floor.
Cold panic rakes its claws through me.
My magic dissolves most of the veil, but it’s still clinging to Raphael, wrapping around his chest. I kneel by his side, using all of my mental energy to pull the magic away from him, one strand at a time. If any of it pierces his heart or his skull, he’s gone.
I hear Caradoc’s footsteps behind me, and as I glance back at him, he clamps his hands around my throat. His fingers tighten, and he knocks me over, pressing his knees against my chest. I struggle, desperately trying to breathe.
Frantically, I try to keep my mind on Raphael, feeling for the magic that surrounds him. All my focus is intent on the wisps of pearly death snaking around his body. My vision goes dark, starry. I rip the last strands of veil
magic off him.
Time slows down.
My head spins as Caradoc’s iron fingers squeeze, crushing my throat. I strike at his arms as hard as I can, and his fingers loosen. I take a deep, ragged breath, but he’s still on top of me, reaching again for my neck.
I use my magic to creep into his thoughts. I will take over his mind, make him hurl himself out the window. But as soon as I enter his thoughts, I realize how impossible that is. Caradoc’s mind isn’t simple like Wrythe’s or Silver Fox’s. In fact, I can hardly make sense of his mind at all. He is hundreds of years old, maybe a thousand. He’s seen empires rise and fall, had seventeen wives and innumerable lovers. He doesn’t care for love or money or power.
His thoughts are mazelike, a tangle. Trying to control him is like trying to swim up a waterfall.
Instead, I find myself getting lost. Swallowed. Panicking, I try to pull away, but I can’t find my way back to being Nia. I am becoming a part of Caradoc, and I can’t feel the pain of my own suffocation anymore.
Because now, I’m seeing what he knows.
About the invasion.
Images and memories flit through my brain too quickly for me to process properly. There’s a training academy. Fey herbalists walking between Fey soldiers lying on beds. A dragon being injected with something and roaring with pain. A large Fey army marching with dragon banners. A tincture created by Fey alchemists. A brew of strange herbs mixed with…iron.
That’s what Auberon has been working on. Iron weapons stopped their army all those years ago, but the tincture will make them immune. He’s creating a Fey army impervious to its effects.
Iron is the only way humans have held the Fey back. Without it, they’ll burn through humanity like wildfire, destroying everything in their way. We knew the Fey were planning something, that we needed to stop them, but we didn’t realize we were already too late.
We wanted to destroy the veil, but it doesn’t matter. The Fey were about to drop it themselves. They’re going to send their army over the border.
Caradoc was at the meetings when they planned the invasion; he’s seen the map spread out on a table, marked where the forces will enter. I hear the plan for the fake assault on southern France—the one everyone would expect.
But that’s not the real attack.
Auberon is headed for England.
If only I could warn them, but he’s choking me again. Now, I can see myself through Caradoc’s eyes, lying on the floor, mouth opening and
shutting, desperate for breath, eyes bulging. I’m seconds away from death.
There’s nothing I can do. We failed.
A sudden sharp pain rips through me as my chest is pierced.
No. Not my chest. Caradoc’s. He gapes down, the blade of a sword protruding from his rib cage. His fingers go slack, and his jaw drops. A scarlet drop of blood falls from his lips as he slides off me.
I slam back into my own body, gasping for breath. Caradoc topples onto the floor, dead. Above me, Raphael stands, deathly white. Blood drips off his blade, and he kneels down. “Nia, are you alright?”
“Yeah.” My voice cracks, and it hurts to talk.
“We did it. Caradoc is dead.” Raphael slides his arm around my waist and helps me stand.
“No.” I lean into him, touching my bruised throat. “It doesn’t matter. I saw Caradoc’s mind. The Fey are launching an assault. They have an army of…of iron-impervious Fey.”
He falls silent for a moment. “That’s impossible.”
I rest against his powerful chest, my head spinning. “It’s not. Fey herbalists learned from human medicine, like immunotherapy. They developed a way to do it by exposing their soldiers to microscopic amounts of iron, then slowly increasing it. Thousands of Fey died in the process. That doesn’t matter to Auberon. He just wanted his army. And now he has it.”
I can hear Raphael’s heart racing.
“When are they attacking?”
I try to think back to what I’d heard in Caradoc’s mind, sifting through that wild flood of knowledge. “I think…in a week or two. But we just killed Caradoc, which means the veil will drop in a few hours. Auberon won’t hesitate. He’ll launch the invasion as soon as the veil is down. All we did was make it happen sooner. We need to inform Sir Kay. We need to prepare all our forces.”
Raphael’s fingers tighten on me. “MI-13’s invasion force is waiting in southeast France for the veil to fall. They’ll storm Fey France as soon as it happens.”
“That’s not where they need to be! We need to get our forces where the Fey are actually planning to attack.” I think back to the invasion plans, the maps. “They plan to land near Dover.”
“Are you sure?” Raphael curses under his breath. “It’s going to be hard to get them there in time. If what you say is true, the Fey army will already be
on the northern coast of France. MI-13’s force is at the southern border, nowhere near Dover.”
“We need to alert the British military right now. They have to be ready and inform Dover. They need to evacuate the city for the battle that’s about to happen. Do you remember what happened in Brittany? Once the Fey arrived and the war started raging, they left nothing behind but ash. The streets were full of the dead.”
He scrubs a hand over his jaw. “We can send Ginevra with a message to MI-13’s invasion force, get them to change their course.”
I nod. “And we should ride as fast as we can back across the veil. We need to get to a working phone.”
I STARE INTENTLY as Raphael argues on the phone. “Because I’m telling you,” he shouts, “she saw into his mind. She’s a telepath…no, she’s not just a new recruit. She has Avalon Steel. Captain? Captain?”
I hear the drone of a dial tone on the other side. They weren’t listening to us.
Both of us are grimy and exhausted. We rode all night. By the time we reached the veil, it was long gone.
Raphael’s first phone call was to MI-13’s command, to inform them of what we’d found. But all of MI-13’s agents were out in the field—some on the assassination task forces, the rest with Sir Kay’s invasion force.
His second phone call was to his contact in the British military.
“He wouldn’t listen,” he says, his expression grim. “Auberon’s plan worked spectacularly. As soon as the veil dropped, Auberon launched a fake assault on southern France. French and British military responded in force.
The majority of the British army and navy are there now.”
“But that’s not where the iron-impervious Fey are going to strike,” I say, sickened.
“MI-13 are sending everyone to Dover, but the majority are too far off,”
Raphael says. “We’re among the closest.”
I swallow. “We need to collect as many agents as we can and get to
Dover as soon as possible.”
He nods. “Exactly what I was thinking.”
My stomach drops. There are tens of thousands of people in Dover, and they have no idea what is about to hit them.
