Page 6 of Rules of Stone
Coal turns away.
A heartbeat later, a glistening boot dagger whizzes so close to my ear that I hear the whistle of air as it flies by. With a dull thump, the blade impales itself into a tree, the hilt still vibrating from the impact. Saying nothing, Coal mounts his horse, leaving me to collect my final gift in silence.
With everyone mounted up, River lays a large hand on his sister’s shoulders, Autumn reaching up to grasp his muscled forearm. The siblings trade no words, and I wonder how many such goodbyes they’ve exchanged over the centuries—each time knowing they might not be quite the same beings when they meet next. Before I can dwell on the thought, River clicks to his stallion and leads us to Great Falls Academy.
5
Lera
The ride to Mystwood’s edge is quiet and efficient. Letting the horses rest and water before we enter the warded forest, River pulls out a saucer-sized disk carved with runes—one of the few keys permitting the bearers passage through the forest. The magic radiating from the relic tickles my skin, drawing me toward it.
“Stay together. We’ve a small radius,” River says, his calm voice a beacon as I ready to step into the Gloom—one of the new and rare skills my fae body came equipped with. Which makes entering it no more pleasant than it was when the males had to tow me along.
The air around me thickens, a moment of viscous blackness pushing against me on all sides, and then I’m in the dull echo of the world. The colors and noises and smells are all short of what they should be—shades of gray and strange echoes. Wrong. But travel is faster here—and when it comes to Mystwood, traveling through the Gloom is the only way possible to traverse the place. Even with the key.
River once explained the Gloom as an underlining to the normal world—what we call the Light—a slippery undercloth that shifts and moves with the main cloth but is separate from it as well. Some of the stitching, like many of Mystwood’s ash and maple trees, penetrate all the way through. Other pieces, like much of the shrubbery, exist only in the Light. Poetic, but I’ve worked out my own, more practical, definition.
The Gloom is where creatures of darkness and evil thrive and roam, unseen in the Light until they are ready to rise and strike. Something that can never be permitted to happen in the mortal realm.
This is my second time crossing Mystwood, the first being when the males whisked me away from servitude in Zake’s stable. Now, returning as a fae warrior myself, I expect the forest to seem less oppressive. In reality, the opposite is true.
“One nice thing about being human is that you don’t know what goes bump in the shadows, Lilac Girl,” Tye says, stretching lazily beside me—seeming to read my mind as usual. “Which is why I make it a personal goal to know as little as possible about everything.”
We move along with little conversation, Shade’s wolf keeping as close to us as the horses will tolerate. When the five of us clear Mystwood less than six hours later, stepping into the Light just before the edge of the mortal realm, the muted oppression of the Gloom finally melts away—only to reveal a new set of shackles one step later. My magic. Lashed down as tightly as a ship’s furled sails.
Having lived most of my life without the magic, I thought this part would little bother me, but the emptiness grips my throat. Looking around with my immortal’s heightened senses, I mourn the loss of Lunos’s lush intensity even as I pick up each sound and smell the way my human body never could.
With so few humans willing to live anywhere near the edge of Mystwood, it’s relatively easy to keep out of the humans’ sight during the four-day ride to the town of Great Falls, which takes its name from a tall, narrow waterfall rushing over a cliff high in the mountains on the right. Its roar echoes distantly around the small, steep valley, over the patchwork sheep meadows and neat timber-frame houses. The lonely screech of circling ravens and a stiff breeze mark our passage across a bare, grassy ridge above the valley.
Stopping at an overlook a mile off, I raise my hand to block out the sun as I examine the Academy’s estate sprawling at the top of a foothill overlooking the town. An immense walled-off fortress of gray stone, blending into the mountains behind it, its gilded red standard flapping on the cold wind. The hiss and crack of the fabric cuts into my hearing. I frown. Even with my fae senses, the flapping cloth is too far away to be heard. No, the hiss and crack is coming from something else, though it certainly sounds like a flapping flag.
I glance around, Sprite dancing beneath me enough to earn a disapproving glance from Coal. Nothing about him or the other males suggests they hear anything amiss. In fact—I realize with a start—River is speaking.
“…A generation of influential youth all in one place.” The quint commander pats his stallion’s neck, his voice filled with a responsibility he can’t help. Perhaps that need to take charge is what makes River who he is. “I hope the staff have a firm bit in the youngsters’ mouths before the would-be kings decide to compare the size of their cocks and do something unusually stupid.”
Hiss crack crack.
My pulse jumps.
“Lass?” Tye frowns. “Are you—”
“They aren’t children,” I say quickly, forcing my voice into mild outrage to knock Tye’s inconvenient perceptiveness off scent. After all my insistence over us coming here, at the first sight of our battleground, I’m already hearing phantom noises. “Twenty years might be nothing for fae, but for a human, it’s rather significant. It also happens to be my age.”
“My point exactly,” says River. “Let’s get this done. Remember what Autumn said about muted bonds and brace yourselves for the change.” Taking out the veil amulet, the male snaps it around his neck with no ceremony, the others wordlessly following his example. The intricately carved wood medallions fall against their sternums until they each tuck them away under their shirts.
Hiss crack crack.
I fumble for my own amulet, a chill running over my skin as I settle it around my neck. The soft click of the clasp is one of the loudest sounds I’ve ever heard—a slamming door cutting me off from the males. My lungs tighten painfully, and it takes all my willpower to keep my hands light on Sprite’s reins. To raise my chin. To smile with a cockiness I wish I felt.
“So, then,” I say, realizing too late that I’ve forgotten to don the dress Autumn gave me. Damn it. I’ll do it as soon as we find a less exposed spot on our way to the Academy. In my black pants and favorite fitted blue tunic, belted around the waist, the magic could give me a disguise for just about anyone. “What am I now?”
“A pain in the ass,” says Coal, the carved angles of his face still as he cocks a brow at me.
“We know you, cub. The amulet won’t spin a veil for those who know the truth,” Shade, now in his fae form, says gently. “We look like ourselves to you too, do we not?”
“Right. Of course.” I rub my eyes with the heel of my hand.
“What’s wrong, Lilac Girl?” Tye asks.
