Destined

Chapter 23

The windows of the Winter Palace were as dark as the night sky, and as Laurel approached she closed her eyes, desperately hoping her plan had worked.

“Laurel!” Chelsea’s whisper sounded from a cluster of honeysuckle.

“I knew you would figure it out,” Laurel said, throwing her arms around her friend as she stepped from her cover.

“What are you doing? You’re not really going to do what Klea said, are you?”

“Not if I can help it,” Laurel said grimly.

“What can I do?”

“I need you to go to the Winter Palace. Tell the sentries that Marion and Yasmine are still in danger and that they are not to let them come out until you personally tell them it’s OK. Klea can’t see them.”

“But—”

“Even their Winter powers can’t do anything because we need Klea alive and cooperative. We need what’s in her head.”

“Can’t Jamison, like, read her mind?” Chelsea asked. “If he’s OK, I mean,” she added when a flash of fear went across Laurel’s face.

“Maybe,” Laurel said, pushing her dismal thoughts away. “But I don’t think so. It took Yuki a long time to just get the location of the gate from me. Besides, even if he could just pluck a recipe from her brain, it’s not enough.” Laurel hesitated. It had taken her a long time to understand what Yeardley had meant when he taught her about the mixing process: The most essential ingredient in any mixing is you.

“It’s hard to explain, but that’s how Mixing works. I think Marion might kill her on principle, and we can’t let that happen — just in case. After that I need you to run back to the Academy and tell Yeardley everything Klea said about her poisons, especially the red smoke. We may need to go back into the Academy, so they’ll want to know the poison neutralised itself. Tell him I’m trying to find a solution, and tell him… tell him to be ready.”

“Ready for what? What are you going to do?”

Laurel sighed. “I don’t know,” she confessed. “But I guarantee I’m going to need help.”

“Where are you going?”

Laurel looked to the top of a far-off hill. “To the only place left to turn,” she said.

Chelsea nodded, then took off like a shot, following the back wall towards the crumbling archway they had crossed through earlier that day. It felt like an eternity ago. Laurel watched her for a few moments before turning and beginning her own journey.

Would Tamani last another hour? Could she do this in time? Laurel’s energy was already sapped, but she pushed herself to run faster, even as breathing grew painful and she reached the bottom of the valley between her and her destination.

One more hill to climb. The thought was enough to bring tears to her eyes as exhaustion threatened to crumple her to her knees. The night air was chilled but her legs burned as she climbed.

When she crested the hill she allowed herself a moment to catch her breath before stepping under the expansive canopy of the World Tree.

She hadn’t been here since Tamani had brought her almost a year and a half ago. She’d contemplated a visit this past summer, back when she didn’t know where Tamani was or whether she’d see him again, but the memory of that day had been too painful to face. Now she bowed her head reverently as the power of the tree washed over her.

The time had come to ask her question.

Tamani had told her the tree was made of faeries — the Silent Ones. His own father had joined them not long ago. Their combined wisdom was available to any faerie with the patience to receive it, but getting an answer from the tree could take hours, even days, depending on the questioner. She didn’t have that kind of time.

She thought back to when Tamani had kissed her after biting into his tongue — the sensations that overwhelmed her, the ideas that had flooded her consciousness. It hadn’t worked the way she’d hoped, and instead of figuring out how to test Yuki’s powers, Laurel had learned Klea’s secret: that potions could be made from faeries the same as any other plant. But Yeardley had taught her that she could do more than merely bend components to her will. That she could unlock their potential if she could feel their core.

Picturing Tamani in her mind, the black lines snaking out from his wound, the look on his face that told her he had resigned himself to death, Laurel steeled herself against the sacrilege she was about to commit. She walked up to the trunk of the tree and placed her hand on the rough bark, feeling the current of life that surged through the tree.

“This is gonna hurt me a lot more than it’s gonna hurt you,” she muttered under her breath. Then after a moment she added, “I’m sorry.” She raised her knife and hacked at the trunk of the ancient, gnarled tree until a bit of green wick showed through. Even as she looked at the beads of sap beginning to ooze from the wounded trunk, Laurel knew it wasn’t enough. You give, I give, she thought. Placing the knife’s edge to her open palm, she gritted her teeth as she sliced her own skin.

Laurel pressed her self-inflicted wound to the exposed green treeflesh.

It was like stepping beneath an avalanche of voices, every second a thousand hailstones of whispered knowledge bouncing sharply off her head, drumming on her shoulders, threatening to carry her into the abyss and bury her alive. She staggered beneath the weight of the assault, refusing to be swept away.

Forcing herself to submit her consciousness to the tree, the avalanche became a waterfall, and then a torrent, and then a part of her, running gently through her mind, rifling through her life and her memories. She almost pulled away at the intrusion, but tried to breathe evenly and focus on what she needed to know.

She pictured Tamani, relived the scene that had led to his poisoning. She recalled Klea’s explanation and the impossible choice she had put before Laurel. Into the flow of thought she released Klea’s final threat — that the toxin would destroy all of Avalon, the World Tree included.

Again the river of life became a storm of souls, but this time Laurel was standing in the calm, enveloped in the silence. Warmth spread up her arms and filled her from head to toe.

And then, the tree spoke. Laurel felt, rather than heard, a single voice cut through the numberless, formless silence.

If you can think like the Huntress, you can do as she has done.

What does that mean? Laurel pleaded, even as she committed the words to memory. But the warmth was already receding from her head, gathering in her chest, slipping down her arms.

“No!” Laurel yelled, her voice sounding sharp in the silence. “I don’t know what that means! Please help. I have no one else to turn to!”

The strange presence was draining from her hands and the roar of life beneath her fingers was picking up again, softer now that it wasn’t inside her head. As her fingertips tingled and grew cold, there was a final pulse from the storm, and one almost-familiar whisper somehow made itself heard above the others.

Save my son.

Then the warmth was gone. The whispers were gone.

“No. No, no, no!” Laurel pressed her hand harder against the tree, pain shooting across her palm, but she knew it was pointless. The World Tree had spoken.

Laurel dropped to her knees, scraping them against the rough bark of the tree’s sprawling roots and let the tears come. She had gambled everything, and she had lost. The World Tree — her one last hope — had not worked. Avalon was going to die. Whether from Klea’s toxin or under her rule, it scarcely mattered.

If only Laurel had taken more interest in the viridefaeco potion! One of her classmates had been working on it obsessively for years; why hadn’t Laurel studied with her? She didn’t know where to start now! Couldn’t even remember that faerie’s name.

Klea knew. It was maddening to have the knowledge so close, and yet completely inaccessible. Another dead end. How could she possibly think like Klea? The very idea was revolting; Klea was a murderer. A manipulator. A malicious, sneaky, poisonous…

Poisonous. The word drifted through Laurel’s head as her tears traced lines down her face.

It’s only by becoming familiar with poisons that you can make the best antidotes. Klea’s words less than an hour before.

But that was a dead end; Mara, the Academy’s expert on poisons, had been forbidden from studying them further. And what could she teach Laurel in such a short time, even if she would?

Laurel leaned against the World Tree, wondering if there was any point in returning to Klea. To watch Tamani die? She wanted nothing more than to hold him in her arms right now, even if it was for the last time. She wasn’t sure it mattered if the toxin infected her. Was her life worth living without Tamani? Was the risk worth one last kiss? One final embrace? Of course, then she would die alone, poisoned and untouchable. But—

It’s only by becoming familiar with poisons that you can make the best antidotes.

An idea began to form in Laurel’s head. She tried to envision a young, enthusiastic Klea — Callista — working by herself in the classroom, in secret. She would have needed test subjects for her poisons as well as her remedies.

Who else would she have used?

If you can think like the Huntress, you can do as she has done.

Laurel was on her feet and running almost before she realised it.

The stars were out in earnest, peeking through the forest canopy, then filling the sky where the path cut through a clearing. The fire seemed to have gone out at the Academy — it was cloaked in murky darkness — but other lights were visible in Spring and Summer; Laurel tried not to wonder how those quarters had weathered the attacks before the trolls had all collapsed. If she failed, it wouldn’t matter.

She stumbled a few times in the darkness, but soon she was approaching the strange, docile soldiers and David was reaching out for her, stopping her from falling into an enormous moat he had dug. She blinked in the darkness and, after a few seconds, realised what he had done for Avalon. Laurel threw her arms around him. “Thank you,” she whispered. Before pulling back she softly asked, “Jamison?” not wanting to bring him to Klea’s attention.

“Alive,” David murmured.

Laurel nodded before bracing herself on the edge of the circle, and then hopped over.

It took her a moment to make out Klea, lying motionless in the shadows, and Tamani, who sat in the middle of the circle with Yuki’s head resting in his lap. He looked up at Laurel with haunted eyes.

Laurel stared down at the unmoving faerie. “Is she…?”

“I don’t see the Queen,” Klea drawled, pulling Laurel’s attention away.

But Laurel gave her only a moment. She turned her back and crouched down next to Tamani and Yuki instead. Yuki looked like she was sleeping, but her features were waxen and she wasn’t breathing. Laurel felt a stab of grief and a flash of panic; if Yuki was already dead, how much time did Tamani have?

“Take your shirt off,” she ordered.

Tamani obeyed.

Laurel nearly gagged at the sight that greeted her. From the tiny scratch near his collar, the black lines reached out across his shoulders and up his neck. The wounds on his abdomen were weeping green-tinged sap — a sure sign Klea’s infectious toxin was spreading through him internally as well. He didn’t have long.

“You failed, didn’t you?” Klea said, still motionless only a few feet away. “You failed, and now all of Avalon is going to die because of you.”

“I didn’t fail,” Laurel spat. “I never went to the palace. Did you really think I was going to help you? Jamison was right to send you to the Unseelie.” Laurel paused, her eyes shooting daggers at Klea. “I would rather die than live in your perfect world.”

Laurel heard a crunching sound as Klea clenched her fist, and oily droplets of serum dripped through her fingers on to her black shirt. “Wish granted. It’s a shame you felt the need to take everyone else with you.”

“Not today,” Laurel whispered under her breath.

It’s now or never.

Her intentions must have been painted on her face, because Tamani pulled back slightly. “Don’t!”

But her palm was already pressed to his blackened skin, fingers splayed, eyes closed. She could feel the life beneath his skin, feel it fighting — could feel the poison it struggled against. Klea’s toxin was like no potion Laurel had ever encountered, even more complicated and alien than the powder Klea had used to conceal the places she’d based her trolls. Laurel had successfully reverse-engineered that powder, but it had taken her a long time and no small amount of luck.

Fortunately, it had been a learning experience.

When she pulled back, Tamani met her gaze with tears in his eyes. “Why did you do that?” he asked, bringing his hands to her cheeks. “I’m supposed to be protecting you.”

“You’re the best protector a girl could wish for,” Laurel said, leaning forward, pressing her lips softly, briefly, to his. “But it’s my turn now.”

She could feel Klea’s poison working in her fingers and her lips, breaking down the chlorophyll and lysing her cell walls, commandeering her energy and turning it against her. She would have to work fast, but it was speaking to her, and she was ready to listen.

“Oh,” she said, rising to her feet. “Your dad says hi.”

Without waiting to see the look on Tamani’s face, Laurel closed her eyes, repeating the World Tree’s words in her mind. If you can think like the Huntress, you can do as she has done. “I’ll be back,” she said, hopping over the trench again.

“Laurel,” David said, stopping her. “Where did you go?”

“I went to the World Tree,” she answered, feeling time ticking away in her head.

“The tree that talks to you?”

Laurel nodded.

“What did it say?”

“It told me to save Avalon.”