Page 88 of Prince of Ruin

“He’s pregnant!” I shout, and Abaddon pauses. He’s not a complete monster, but he does have a colony to save. “Clavicle is the father,” I add for extra measure. Because if Clavicle is the father…then—“that baby in Aden’s womb is the future Spine Sovereign.”

Abaddon’s ribbed ears twitch, his wings whooshing in annoyance as he turns fully to face me. “You’re lying.”

I push myself to my feet, wincing. “It’s all true.”

Abaddon looks down at Aden clutched in his claws. He has to see the sickness in Aden’s eyes, see how weak he’s become.

“Let him go,” I say. My voice is husky, on the verge of tears. I can’t lose Aden again. Ican’t.

Abaddon’s black eyes shift to mine, and I can see the regret in them. It fucking kills me.

“There are children in my colony too,” he growls, his eyes hardening as he flaps his wings harder. “And Clavicleabandonedus.” His voice hitches. “Our sovereign fuckingleftus, Tarsus. All of us! So why should I care about his unborn child? My folk will all die if I don’t do this. The children and infants in my colony willdie.” With Aden still clutched in his talons, he turns toward the window.

“Please! NO!”

But he’s out the window, large wings flapping as he soars toward the night sky. Toward theHeart of Faerie.

Clav

I drop another fireball bottle to the floor in my mother’s office. It’s been two whole fucking weeks since Mother Terra kicked me out of the fae realms. I woke up in my own bed on a Saturday morning and padded to the kitchen where Dad was having breakfast.

“‘Morning,” he said, setting the morning paper down where he’s been working on a crossword. Dad never worked on crosswords. He’d always been too busy worrying about demons and studying the King James version of the Bible.

But the bigger surprise was, Dad didn’t seem at all surprised to see me, almost as if I’d never been gone. My stomach tightened, but I played along. After all, Mandi and I left him searching the woods for demons, and we never returned.

“Where’s Mand—Mom?”

He took a sip of his coffee. He was still in his bathrobe. I have never seen him in his bathrobe this time of day.

He should have been out fighting demons.

“Left.” He took another sip and studied his crossword. “They went to some conference.”

Okay. So Mandi must have returned and glamoured him… or something. Either that, or everything that happened since that night with Aden was a fucking nightmare. Maybe I got so hungover after the Ren Faire that I returned home and passed out.

I cleared my throat. “What day is it?”

“October third.”

Mean Girls Day. But also, it’d been two weeks since the Ren Faire, which meant I would have been passed out for two weeks if it had been a nightmare. I raced to the calendar, looking for the full moon icon. October seventeenth was the next full moon. Two weeks from now. Assuming the faerie land full moon was the same as ours. Who the fuck knew?

My heart was beating too fast, my hands slick with sweat. The possibility of it all being some sort of hallucination sent me into a spiral of panic.

“Why aren’t you fighting demons?” I asked Dad.

“It’s been two weeks since I found a demon on our land, Clav.” He grinned at me and set his mug down. “I think I did it. I think I finally scared ‘em off.”

I immediately set out to the portal after that. I leapt into the swamp, only to be met with a soggy,muddy pond floor. I scoured that pond, dug holes in every inch of its bottom until sunset, with no proof that it was a gateway to the fae lands.

When I returned home, I showered and tried to call Mom’s cell, but there was no answer. I dug through the papers in their desk, ransacked their whole office, but found nothing about how to open portals to the fae realms. At one point I was able to quiet my mind enough to spirit journey to the fae realms, but was only met with complete darkness…and that familiar cackle of Mother Terra echoing in the darkness beyond.

After several days of panicking, I tried to find some semblance of normalcy. Dad and I watched the tv seriesLostuntil he fell asleep. And once I felt alone again, I switched off the tv and sat frozen on the couch, the silence pressing in on me while panic roared through my veins. After what happened with Tarsus and Abaddon and Aden, nothing would be normal again. If I don’t find a way back, they’ll all be gone for good.

I stayed up half the night and eventually passed out, only to be met with nightmares. Not only nightmares of my old life—my abusive father, my careless mother, of Tarsus and Abaddon and human sacrifices followed by blood-curdling screams. But nightmares of Aden being one of those humans shovedinto the mouth of the volcano, his own screams swallowed up by the canyon.

Depression, anxiety, panic—they all followed me the next few days. When no one came back to get me, I was starting to doubt anything really happened. If I could just get a hold of Mom—Mandi—they could tell me if any of it was real.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all very real, and that in some alternate universe, there was a continent about to be destroyed by a furious volcano, and the only way to stop it was for the man I’d come to love to throw himself into her fiery pits.

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