Sirensong

Chapter Eighteen

“Use the brooch,” Ethan whispered to me urgently as once again magic filled the air.

Kimber and Keane both gave me quizzical looks, but now wasn’t the time to explain. I shook my head.

“Don’t argue!” Ethan said. “I’ll sit on you and stick you with it myself if I have to.”

“What are you talking about?” Keane asked.

I wanted to scream at them to run instead of sitting here and arguing, but the reality was that we would never make it. Even if Ethan cast his invisibility spell on us as he had the night we’d fled the palace, he couldn’t keep it up for very long. I doubted he’d have the time or the power to work the standing stones—assuming we were willing to risk trying them—and if we just ran off into the woods, we’d leave a trail any idiot could follow, with no storm to wipe it out and no Green Lady to draw the pursuit off.

Ethan put his hands on my shoulders and leaned into me, his eyes boring into me, deadly serious.

“If it’s the Queen’s forces, using the brooch is your only hope,” he said. He was squeezing my shoulders so tight he was probably leaving bruises. “Leave us. Get back to Avalon and be safe.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but he stopped my words with a searing kiss that took my breath away. I groaned with the pleasure of his kiss, even as a part of me knew something was wrong with this picture. Now was so not the time for a make-out session, but my hormones were in overdrive, and I couldn’t seem to make myself push Ethan away. Even when I felt his hand delving into my pocket and grabbing the brooch.

A part of me knew exactly what was happening, was aware of the magic prickling my skin. Ethan had used a milder version of this spell on me once before, but that time I’d been able to shake it off as soon as I realized my hormones were being magically manipulated. This time, I felt like my body wasn’t my own, and I kept kissing him, pressing against him, my hands buried in his hair, as he pulled the brooch out of my pocket.

Something sharp pricked my thigh, right through my pants, and suddenly the flood of arousal left me as Ethan sat back on his heels and blinked at me.

“You bastard!” I said, my eyes welling with tears. But Ethan couldn’t hear me, because the brooch wouldn’t let him. For the next thirty minutes, I would be completely undetectable.

“What the fuck did you do to her?” Keane growled, looking like he was about to forget everything and pound Ethan into the ground.

“The Erlking gave her a magic item that makes her temporarily invisible,” Ethan explained calmly. “No one can see or even hear her while the spell is active, so she’ll be able to get away even if we can’t.”

I felt rather like punching Ethan myself at the moment. Maybe using the brooch was the smart thing to do, but I’d vowed to myself that I wouldn’t abandon my friends. I already didn’t know how I was going to live with abandoning my dad and Finn.

Since no one could see me, I grabbed the brooch from where it had fallen on the ground and stuffed it back into my pocket. I quickly checked my watch so I’d know when the spell would wear off, then climbed to the top of the embankment so I could see who or what was coming.

The news wasn’t good. There were at least three Knights creeping up toward the hollow where my friends sat arguing pointlessly. I suspected there were more Knights I couldn’t see, circling around and cutting off our escape routes. Certainly they would have sent someone to guard the standing stones, too.

Below, I heard Keane accuse Ethan of having somehow captured me for the Erlking with his magic. I suppose it did look kind of bad, and I wished I’d come out and told everyone about the brooch. I’m sure I would have, too, if my earlier bombshell hadn’t gone over so badly.

My friends wouldn’t hear anything I said to them, nor would they feel it if I touched them. I’d already realized that running wouldn’t do them any good, but I couldn’t stand to hear them arguing about me while grim-faced Knights armed with crossbows snuck up on their position.

I grabbed a stick and scrambled back down. The Erlking’s spell made it so that no one noticed the stick moving from the top of the embankment and then hanging in the air in front of them. I tried poking Keane with it, but he didn’t seem to feel it. Then I dropped it on his head.

Keane reached up and brushed the stick out of his hair, then glanced up, probably looking for the tree it had dropped from.

Encouraged that he’d actually felt the stick, I bent down and grabbed a few pebbles from the stream and began lobbing them at him one at a time. He looked so confused that I would have laughed in any other situation.

“It’s Dana, idiot,” Ethan said. “Trying to tell you she’s all right.”

“Um, guys?” Kimber said. “Maybe we should run now?”

Ethan shook his head. “Dana should run instead of hanging around here throwing pebbles. We should surrender to give her more time to get away. I don’t know if they have any spells that can sense her, but if they do, she needs to be well away before they start casting them.”

Keane made a low growling sound. “You surrender if you want. I’m not giving up without a fight. There’s more than one way to buy time.”

“Come out of there and keep your hands where we can see them,” one of the Knights yelled.

Kimber peeked over the lip of the embankment, then quickly dropped back down. “Knights,” she said, her face pale with fright. “They’ve got crossbows.”

“We won’t last more than a minute or two in a fight,” Ethan said. His gaze darted quickly to Kimber and back, fast enough that she didn’t notice. But Keane did, and he got the message. Kimber might not be totally defenseless, but she was still way more vulnerable than either of them because she couldn’t even cast a shield spell. If the boys tried to fight the Knights, Kimber might very well get hurt, or worse.

Keane looked grim, but resolved. “All right,” he said, and he even managed not to look like the concession caused him dire pain. “If we got ourselves killed, Dana would never forgive us.”

Ethan gave a halfhearted bark of laughter, but quickly sobered. “Look, I’m sorry I tried to hit you with that spell. I guess I was being kind of childish.”

Keane sighed, reaching over to take Kimber’s hand. “No, you were just being her big brother.”

“Come out now!” the Knight shouted. “This is your last warning.”

I let out a scream of frustration, hating the helpless feeling of standing there watching and being unable to do anything.

“We’re surrendering,” Ethan yelled back. “Don’t shoot.”

Hands up, Ethan stepped slowly out of the hollow, Keane and Kimber close behind.

Maybe I should have just run away after that. After all, it wasn’t like I could do much of anything to help my friends all by myself, unless I were willing to unleash my mortality spell on a bunch of Knights who were just following orders. And who had every reason to believe we’d been behind the bombing. I didn’t believe the Knights would be able to sense me behind the Erlking’s magic, so all I had to do was hide until nightfall and then travel through the standing stones right under their noses.

Maybe if I ran back to Avalon, I’d be able to get help for my dad and my friends. And at least I’d be safe myself, as long as I got out of Avalon before the Erlking found me. Ethan and Kimber’s dad was as powerful and influential as my own, and he’d do everything in his considerable power to get them safely home.

But who would fight for Finn and Keane? And would my dad’s political rivals try to make sure he never returned to Avalon? The only person who cared about my dad and all my friends equally, who would fight for them all, was me. Which meant I couldn’t run to Avalon and hope someone else could and would save them for me.

My mind churning desperately, trying to come up with an idea that didn’t suck, I watched as the Knights bound my friends’ hands behind their backs and bullied them through the trees. I followed, unseen and unheard.

When I broke through the trees, I saw a narrow dirt road, much smaller than the main one. The handful of Knights who had rounded up my friends was only a portion of this search party, which consisted of about a dozen people, some Knights, some not. The air around them buzzed with magic, raising all the fine hairs on my arms and the back of my neck.

A cold-faced Sidhe woman questioned Keane, trying to find out where I was. She completely ignored Ethan and Kimber, but I supposed that was a result of the rivalry between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. She no doubt thought Keane, as a member of her own Court, was more trustworthy.

Keane told her about Ethan’s attempt to capture me for the Erlking—which earned him a look of shock from Kimber, and scorn from Ethan. Ignoring their outrage, Keane went on to explain that I’d run off after Ethan’s attack, terrified that he was still tied to the Erlking and would try again.

I thought it was a pretty good story. Plausible, at least to someone who didn’t know me. And if the woman believed him, she’d send at least some of her men on a wild goose chase.

I couldn’t tell by her face whether she was buying Keane’s story, but she didn’t seem inclined to do a full-out interrogation, at least not in the middle of the road. She picked out five of her men and ordered them to carry my friends back to the Sunne Palace, where I had no doubt they would be deposited in some nasty dungeon-type place. Then she directed the rest of her men to continue searching for me.

Once again, I was helpless as my friends were hoisted up onto the backs of horses and then tied to the saddles. The rest of the search party fanned out into the woods again, one man staying behind to guard the remaining horses, while my friends and their captors took off down the road at a gallop.

I thought about trying to steal a horse, but gave up on that idea immediately. How could I get the horse to do what I wanted if it could neither see, feel, nor hear me? And even if I could, being invisible wouldn’t do me much good if I was riding a horse down the road. Maybe no one would be able to see me, but they would know something was wrong with that picture.

Instead, I checked my watch to remind myself how much longer the spell would be working, then forced my weary legs into a pathetic imitation of a jog, following the road toward the Sunne Palace. What I was going to do when and if I actually got there was anyone’s guess.