Page 81 of Faeheart
Elias
Wild was gone. My heart ached as the word echoed through my mind. Gone.Gone. Taken by his own mother to be sacrificed for her and my father’s disgusting ideals.
Through our soul bond, I could still feel him. He was alive, angry, and terrified all at once. The connection stretched thin like a thread about to snap, but it was there. Wild was in the foyer with the others, held by magic far stronger than he could fight without our help. But something was stopping him from using the tetrad bond, something I’d never felt before.
“We have to move now,” Atlas growled, his golden eyes flashing with protective fury. “They’ll use him to power that thing.”
My hands trembled as I tried to focus through the panic threatening to overwhelm me. “The plan… we can still make the plan work.”
“How?” Caden asked, his gentle voice strained with worry. “We need all four of us to teleport something that powerful out of the mansion.”
“We… We have to dosomething!” I barked, rounding on them both. “We can’t just leave him to be killed!”
“Elias,” Atlas said, taking a step forward. “I’m not going to leave him behind. But we have to move. They know where we are. We’re gonna save him, but we need a minute to figure it out.”
“What if he doesn’t have a minute?” I sobbed, gesturing back toward the library door blown open by Lady Briar. “What if they’re torturing him? What if theykillhim?!”
As if in answer to my desperate questions, a scream tore through the mansion.Wild’sscream. The sound ripped through our bond like a serrated blade, sending me to my knees as his pain became my own.
“They’re hurting him,” I gasped, clutching at my chest where our soul bond burned like fire for just a moment before dulling again. “We need to go now.”
Atlas moved with startling speed, pulling me to my feet while Caden gathered his magic around us like a shield.
“Then we go,” Atlas said, his voice deadly calm. “But not blindly. Not without a plan.”
“What fucking plan could we possibly have that they haven’t thought of?” I cried. “We don’t have time to stand around here and try to figure it out. The cube is blocking the mansion’s magic. So even if they kill one of us, the dead man’s switch won’t activate.”
Caden’s brows furrowed. “You… You put a failsafe in your spell?”
“I… I did,” I said at last, realizing I’d never told them about my insurance policy. “I want to make sure that… if things wentterriblywrong, that the Purity Front didn’t make it out of here alive.” I shook my head, grinding my palms against my eyes. “But now even that doesn’t fucking matter.” I looked up at Atlas and Caden, the defeat sweeping through me like ice in my veins. “Why did we do this? Why did we even think we could stand up to these people? We… We’re just a bunch of stupid kids…”
“No,” Atlas said firmly, gripping my shoulders. “That’s exactly what they want you to think. That we’re powerless. That’s how they control people, through fear and self-doubt.”
Another scream echoed through the mansion, Wild’s pain pulsing through our bond like a fresh wound. I doubled over, gasping.
“They’re trying to draw us out,” Caden said, his nostrils flaring in anger. “Using Wild as bait.”
“And it’s working,” I choked out, straightening with newfound determination. Whoever was dampening the bond between us and Wild, they were allowing his pain through to get to us. “I can’t just stand here while they torture him.”
Atlas’s golden eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “What if we give them what they want?”
“What?” I stared at him.
“They want us to come to them,” Atlas explained, his tactical mind working through scenarios. “So we do exactly that. But on our terms.”
Caden nodded slowly, understanding dawning across his features. “A false surrender?”
“They expect us to fight,” Atlas continued. “To come in, guns blazing. But what if we don’t? What if we just... walk in?”
I frowned, struggling to follow his logic through the haze of Wild’s pain clouding our bond. “And then what? Let them trap our souls in that thing?”
“No,” Atlas said, a dangerous smile spreading across his face. “The cube sucks up magical beings that get too close. That means they had to turn it off to protect themselves. And even if they had some sort of weird immunity, Wild doesn’t. They wouldhaveto turn it off to keep Wild close so we couldn’t get to him.” He looked at me, his eyes filled with determination. “If we make them think we’re not gonna fight, we could get close enough to attempt the teleportation spell before they knew what hit them.”
“It’s a massive risk,” Caden said, his amber magic flickering anxiously around his fingers. “If they realize what we’re doing before we can complete the spell...”
“Then we die,” I finished bluntly. “But at least we die trying to save Wild rather than hiding in this library while they torture him.”
Another wave of pain pulsed through our bond, weaker this time. Wild was fading. Whatever they were doing to him was draining his energy rapidly.
