Page 17 of Land of Monsters

Catching up to Ash, we came to a stop next to the leader, Iacob’s hands flying out as he spoke. Residents were running around us in chaos. Parents screamed for their kids, elderscollected provisions and items, while anyone over the age of fifteen headed to Iacob for direction.

“Vlad, get your team to the border of the spell. Find out who it is and what—”

“I know who it is,” Ash inserted, snapping every head to us. “It’s the Romanian army.”

“What?” The color drained from Iacob’s face.

Ash nodded above to the hawk circling. “She led them here.”

Realization dawned on Vlad, his eyes widening as he noted the bird above, probably recalling it from the fortress. “You.” Vlad’s shock turned into fury. “She trackedyouhere! This is your fault!” He lunged for Ash, his chest puffed out. “And you are the reason I had to run from the fortress and leave all the weapons I purchased behind!”

“Whoa, whoa!” Iacob put up his arms, stepping in between. Codrin grabbed his friend, pulling him back. “We don’t need this right now!” Iacob shouted at Vlad. “We deal with the enemy at hand before we start pointing fingers and fighting amongst ourselves. Now go,” he ordered Vlad.

Vlad stared Ash down but took his order, peeling away from Codrin. A dozen other men and women waited for instruction, leaving Dubthach to glower hate and resentment at us both.

“I’m sorry,” Ash spoke to Iacob. “We brought this to your door.”

“You may have brought it earlier than expected, but this danger was eventually going to come.” Iacob squinted in the distance as if he had any chance of seeing what was arriving. “At least with the Druid protection, we should be able to keep them off for a bit.” Fae magic couldn’t break Druid magic, which was why they feared and hated us so much. It was why my mother was beloved, but at the same time, some would never accept her as their queen—an impostor standing in until a real fae queen could be crowned.

“Go reinforce the spells. Maybe she can help you?” Iacob turned to me.

Deep shame boiled down through my body. Embarrassment and sorrow blinking my lashes. “I-I can’t,” I muttered.I wasan impostor to both Druids and fae.

I couldn’t help Dubthach reinforce the boundaries like a normal Druid could. His spell was white magic. Protection. An obscurer was only black magic. Mine was to kill and harm, coming up short of anything good.

I grew up knowing I was “special” or, as some might say, defective or unnatural. Many times as a child, when my temper flared or I was going through fae/Druid puberty, I had to go into a time-out because my powers could hurt people. My parents, wanting to keep me safe, taught me how to mask my powers and keep myself calm, especially when my dark dweller was invoked as well. The combination was deadly and depleted me for days.

The embarrassment was all-consuming when I learned I could never fully shift like my brother, leaving me on the sidelines when my whole dark dweller family did a forest run. Though they never treated me differently, I was an outsider even to them. The only one who understood was my uncle West, who, after extensive trauma, couldn’t shift anymore either. But my Aunt Ember was the one who understood me the most. As a Dae and half dark dweller because of Uncle Eli, she also was considered a monster by many, her kind hunted down and obliterated.

“Go.” Iacob nodded at Dubthach, confusion lining his forehead at why I couldn’t help. A disgusted noise came from Dubthach, sneering at me before he took off.

A shriek impaled my ears from above as the hawk-shifter Ash called Nyx flew closer to where we stood. I swear I could feel the hate coming off her. This was more than a tracker carrying out her master’s orders—this was personal.

The alarms wailed from another section of the property, screaming of intruders, turning us toward the south.

“They are surrounding us.” Ash’s tone seemed calm, but I could pick up the anxiety in his inflection, the tightness in his muscles. “What do you need us to do?”

“Leave.”

“What?” Ash and I both spun back to Iacob.

“If it’s you they are after, then you need to get as far from here as you can. We can hold them off with spells, but we have no other means of fighting an army.” The few guns Vlad collected would not hold up against a throng of royal soldiers.

“We can’t just leave you!” Ash countered.

“Two people will not hold back a troop.” Iacob shook his head at us. Louder squeals from the spell plucked at the sky, coming from the north side of camp.

My powers were coming back, but I knew they weren’t at the levels I needed to fight for long. The battle in my body, trying to fully shift when I never would, drained me as much as when my obscurer invoked its magic. It took me days to recuperate. Another painful reminder I was fucked up.

It was like when my brother and I were in the womb, he fully developed while I came out stunted and “undercooked.”

Iacob struggled to stand still, his attention fluttering around to his panicking inhabitants. “I hope you understand, but my people come first.”

A ripple of energy broke against my skin, my ears crackling like they had just un-popped, flooding in sound from outside the spell.

“Iacob,” a voice shouted, the sheer panic gripping my lungs. I somehow knew before Viorica came running up that the army had gotten in. “They have broken through!”

“What?” Iacob went still, his head trying to negate what she just uttered. “No, it’s impossible! They can’t just walk through a Druid spell!”

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