The Court of Outcasts Read online

  “This is the one place you will be safe from the Court of Outcasts, should they come after you,” Briar said. He extended an arm out toward the clearing. “Step through.”

  Nola’s fingers clenched around the knife. “How do I know you will not trap me again?” She still had dreams where she was trapped in her own body, unable to move, as she had been in real life. By him.

  Briar winced. “I have not given you reason to trust me, have I?” He dropped his arm and shifted his feet, eyes cast down.

  Nola crossed her arms and waited until he continued.

  “The truth is I’m not exactly sure who killed the faerie whose remains used to rest here. I remember dragging him a distance in Faerie as he clung to life. Then I remember being here, my hands covered in silver.” He paused, looking at his hands. “And then Fable was pulling me away.” Briar looked up at her again. “So you see, there are real gaps in my memory, things I cannot tell you because I am not sure of the truth myself. It is the curse of being close to him.”

  Nola felt her resolve to distrust him melting. To not be able to remember things like that… “That is the truth? You honestly can’t remember?”

  He nodded, expression solemn.

  “But why did you paralyze me?” Nola narrowed her eyes. “Can he compel you to do things like that?”

  “No,” Briar said in a voice near a whisper. “I did that so you would not be near him. I knew he would retreat once Kelty showed her power. He wanted to see what she would do, but not to stop her.”

  “All of that was a trap?” Her voice sounded dead even to her own ears.

  Briar shook his head. “No. Fable used the cloaks to make those substances, as you know. It just was not important enough to reveal himself when Kelty showed up to destroy his plans. I think he was impressed, actually.”

  “You brought her here to bring down…well, Fable,” Nola said, putting two and two together. “But what about me?” she asked, hating how weak she sounded. “You swear the whole time you were just trying to protect me?”

  “I do not know how humans swear to the truth. What would you have me say?” he asked her, his expression open and earnest.

  Nola had the sudden urge to giggle at his formal words. Instead she waved one hand at him and pocketed the knife with the other. “Your word is enough. We cannot swear oaths or anything like faeries.”

  He frowned at her. “You humans are oddly trusting.”

  “I just like to believe in the goodness of others.” Nola stepped forward into the shimmering pocket of woods Briar called a safe place. There was a tingling sensation that went through her whole body and then vanished as her body fully entered the area. It was warm inside, all sounds muffled. But there was also a feeling of being safe. Like a hug, Nola thought, almost laughing at the absurdity.

  “I have kept Fable away from you and will continue to do so,” Briar said after stepping in behind her. The space was barely big enough for both of them, so she ended up only about a foot away, trying to focus on his words rather than the jumble of emotions his proximity called up.

  Nola lifted her head and looked into the woods beyond as voices drifted to them from outside the protective bubble. Figures came into view, combing through the marsh and calling Emily’s name.

  “I hope they find her,” Nola said softly.

  “Who?”

  Nola gestured to the searchers. “A missing girl.” They watched as the searchers passed them, walking safely around the bubble.

  I hope people won’t be looking for me like that someday.

  Briar interrupted her thoughts, bringing her back to the subject at hand. “If you are found out and can get to this place, do it. They cannot break through it. It will look as if you have disappeared.”

  “Fable is powerful enough to mess with minds, but not to break into here?” Nola asked. “What about the others?”

  “His affinity is spirit,” Briar explained. “If he cannot sense your energy, he cannot manipulate you. This barrier is crafted from the water in the air and will prevent him from sensing you. Even if he somehow finds it and gets the one water-user of his court to unravel it, I will find you before that can happen.”

  “And how will you find me?” Nola raised skeptical brows at him.

  He took a breath as if not entirely sure of himself. “Place your hand here.” He knelt and placed one palm flat on the wet earth. Nola copied him, the movement bringing them even closer together. Her breath hitched as their faces came within an inch of each other.

  But he did not seem at all affected as he spoke. “Channel your energy and think of me,” he told her.

  Well, that won’t be hard, Nola thought. She took a breath and focused on feeling the energy of the land around her. Then she pictured Briar in her mind, pictured the need to see him. The need she struggled with during his absence despite everything he did to her. Then she sent that wish into the ground.

  And nothing happened.

  Briar let out a harsh sigh.

  “I—I’ve been working on my magic.” Nola’s cheeks heated as she tried to explain.

  “No,” Briar said as he straightened and pulled her up. “I feared you may not have enough magic, or be able to use it, but you did amazingly well. I felt your call here.” He pointed to the center of his chest. “There is so much of my energy here, I will feel it as a part of myself. Use it to call me—for any reason.” His eyes bore into Nola’s.

  “Okay,” Nola managed. I have to get out of here before I do something I regret. She stepped sideways out of the opposite side of the magical bubble.

  A buzzing started up immediately in her pocket. Nola winced and reached into her jean pocket for her phone as Briar stepped out of the bubble to her side. Her mother’s name flashed across the screen. Nola was suddenly aware of the dimness around them.

  She answered, saying quickly, “I’ll be home soon, Mom.”

  “Must you still worry us like this? Start home right now, please,” her mother said in a strained voice.

  “Yes, Mother,” Nola replied, guilt coursing through her but also a little resentment.

  Nola turned to Briar. “I need to go.”

  He eyed her phone strangely, but nodded.

  “And I want you to do something for me.” Nola looked him in the eye. “Please tell Kelty what you have just told me. She deserves to know all of it.” Then she remembered his slyness and added, “Now, please.”

  Briar studied her a moment, expression a mix of curiosity and something else Nola couldn’t discern. Her heart beat faster as she feared he would refuse. But then one corner of his mouth quirked up.

  “As you wish, Nola.”

  Chapter 6

  A familiar warmth grew in Kelty’s core as she flew back to the woods. When Rowan first came to the human world, he had touched down in Kelty’s home and tracked her from there. Now that they were potential partners—their magics able to call to one another, to connect, but not bound to each other until they each unconsciously accepted the partnership—he could focus on her energy and appear wherever she was. Unfortunately now was not the best time. Despite being invisible from the human eye, Kelty did not want to have a conversation in the open. The humans were too close for comfort. Glancing around, she quickly dove for cover in the trees of a large backyard.

  Kelty automatically closed her eyes against the flash of light that was the magic used to travel the path between Earth and Faerie. She opened them and looked into warm brown eyes that almost made her forget the events that transpired moments before.

  Rowan smiled down at her. “See the night,” he greeted her in his rich baritone.

  Kelty smiled back warmly and stepped into his arms, placing a quick kiss on his lips. She loved the way he said the traditional Night greeting no matter what time of day it was.

  But then she pulled back. There were many things to be discussed. He glanced around with a curious frown, realizing they weren’t in the woods Kelty called her home. He opened his mouth, presumably
to ask where they were, but Kelty quickly cut him off.

  “How fares the Night?” she asked, nearly bouncing on her toes in anticipation of the answer.

  After Rowan agreed to try at a relationship with her, despite living in different worlds, it hit her how little she knew of him. She trusted him and felt safe with him, but the facts just were not there. The first thing he revealed about his past life was that he dealt in information. In his position at the Night Court, he would travel frequently in their territory and beyond, keeping tabs on the goings-on of Faerie—truly a watcher, as she first described him. He knew many of the storytellers, even courtiers. A fact that thrilled Kelty to her core.

  She dared to hope he could help erase the stain on her name in Faerie—and he worked tirelessly at it—but there had been little progress.

  Rowan’s expressive face betrayed him, though he tried to reassure her as always. “The time will come when they forget.”

  Kelty turned away from him, blinking away irrational tears. So now we are just waiting for them to forget?

  A warm, gentle hand turned her back around. “What is it, Kelty? Why are we here? Why did you leave the wood?”

  Wordlessly, Kelty held up the palm, now empty of the summoning mark. He took her hand in his, the grip too tight to be comforting.

  “What did they want?” he asked in a hard voice.

  “To put me on the throne of the Court of Outcasts.”

  Rowan’s eyes widened, surprise etched into his features, though he quickly recovered and began to analyze the situation. “They are organized enough to have a court? Who sits on the throne now?”

  Kelty sighed. “I only saw the one who summoned me. He said the throne was empty and that it was meant for me. He was known in the Day Court as The Punisher.”

  As close as she was, Kelty felt Rowan stiffen. “Does that name mean something to you?”

  “Yes,” he answered, frowning off into the distance. Then he blinked and gave her an apologetic look. “I must go. I will find out more as soon as I can. And the Night needs to know about this.”

  “He said the throne would be a way to gain the favor of The Glorious and earn my way back into Faerie,” Kelty blurted out. “At least, to visit.”

  His eyebrows rose as he searched her face. “You believe him,” he said in a stunned voice.

  Kelty closed her eyes against the frustration building up within her. “His reasoning makes sense, though his plan is crazy. This throne would give me access to Faerie, a place among the rulers. I would live here but be able to return as I wished.”

  Kelty opened her eyes again to see his expression turn from concerned to stormy. An unease started in her stomach. No. I need him to pull this off. I will need him at my side.

  “Getting closer to the humans and their problems is not the way.”

  “I don’t like it either, but it may be my only chance,” Kelty said more in thought than to him. Despite Rowan’s efforts, and those of her family, Kelty was getting used to the possibility she may never walk among the faerie again as one of them. At least as ruler of the outcasts, she would be someone.

  Tension ruled the silence that followed.

  “You do not trust me to fix this,” Rowan said in quiet anger.

  Moon above, I didn’t mean it like that!

  “Rowan, I—”

  “You do not need to resort to this to get back to Faerie. Tell him no.”

  Kelty stiffened. “I do not take orders from anyone, even you.”

  She regretted the words as soon as she saw the hurt cross his face.

  “I will go and find out what I can about The Punisher and The Glorious,” Rowan said in a clipped voice.

  Kelty nodded. She wanted to say something to erase the tension, but could think of nothing. “Come back,” she said by way of goodbye.

  Rowan answered, “Always,” but he threw the word back over his shoulder in a hardened voice.

  Please come back, she thought as she watched him disappear, not bothering to shield her eyes from the painful flash of light.

  Chapter 7

  The reception that awaited Nola at home was frosty. She walked past a plate of food sitting on the kitchen table, no doubt cold by now, to find her parents sitting in the living room.

  “You’re late, Nola. This is the third time this week.” Her mother sat on the sofa, legs crossed, hands clenched in her lap. Nola hated the worried lines of her mother’s forehead and the frazzled state of her normally styled blonde hair. Her father—the Scientist, as she silently referred to him—slumped in the armchair across the room, thinning hair and pasty skin even more pronounced than before he lost his job.

  Nola knew she was putting strain on an already fraying relationship by staying out late, but lately she hadn’t wanted to be home. She doubted her parents wanted her there either.

  When Kelty and Nola went up against the group of humans Nola called the cloaks, Derek, their leader and also her father’s intern, met an untimely end. When Derek’s absence was discovered by his parents, who owned the corporation her father worked for, they blamed it on him. He was fired as soon as they gave up the search weeks later. There was no body to be found, given that it had disintegrated along the pathway between worlds, and no evidence linking her father’s experiments to his disappearance, so her father didn’t get any jail time. But the Millers found an excuse to fire him anyway. Her father had been despondent ever since then. Nola suspected he blamed her, though of course he didn’t know of her connection to any of it and never spoke it outright.

  He never even asked her if she was involved. He just looked straight past her and continued to do it ever since. Nola’s gut twisted every time she looked at him, so she found more and more reasons to stay away from home, hiding out in the woods with Kelty or staying over at a friend’s house. She was able to spend time with Tris and Lauren again, a union made bittersweet by the strain on her relationship with her parents.

  “Sorry, Mom,” Nola said, on the verge of pleading. “I lost track of time.”

  Her mother pressed her lips together. “That’s been happening way too much lately—”

  “Are you doing drugs?” her father broke in, startling both Nola and her mother.

  “What? No! Why would you say that?” Nola made an effort to look him in the eye. Don’t fidget or he’ll think you’re lying.

  “You are out late almost every night. You have mood swings. You still spend time with that group that used to hang out with Derek.”

  Nola opened her mouth, then looked to her mother, who stared intently at the floor. She turned back to her father. “I told you we had nothing to do with Derek’s disappearance,” she protested. “And I don’t like being around here anymore because I have to hang around you two.”

  Then she clamped her mouth shut before she could say any more and ran up the stairs to her room.

  A roomful of plants greeted Nola, their comforting presence at least calming her nerves a fraction. She ran her fingers over the leaves as she made her way counterclockwise around the room to the opposite side of her bed.

  Suddenly, Nola’s vision swam and darkness took her like a tidal wave.

  When she opened her eyes again, she was on the floor.

  Oh, no. She rolled over, closed her eyes again, and tried to keep from panicking. It was a full couple of minutes before she finally felt like she could try to sit up.

  It’s getting worse. Maybe human faeries were not meant to be.

  Chapter 8

  Kelty paced the ground in front of her home tree. The leaves around her rustled in response to her agitation.

  Every time Rowan left now, she feared he would never come back, that he would realize he really didn’t have a reason to come back. They were still only potentials after all, neither of them apparently ready to accept the bond that would tie them together forever.

  None of them have found a way to clear my name. Not him, not my family. I may be clinging to an impossible dream. And what then? Rowan wi
ll be twice as unlikely to accept the partnership if I am doomed to live here and never be allowed to return home.

  Kelty sighed. Nothing in my life is as I thought it would be. I imagined and prepared for battles and conflict, but never ones such as these.

  The energy of the woods washed over her as she ran her fingers over the leaves surrounding her tree. The tension in her shoulders relaxed slightly. At least if I am doomed to stay here, I have a place such as this to call home. Though she was not sure how she would cope if Rowan refused to stay with her.

  Frustration and fatigue threatened to overwhelm her despite the welcoming approach of night. After all these months, she still wasn’t used to being awake primarily during the day.

  Kelty sensed the blue one then, the trees sending a tinge of his magic through their network and up through her hand.

  “If you are not here to give me answers, leave now,” she said as he approached on foot.

  Briar nodded at her solemnly, stepping into her clearing and stopping there, as if unsure if he should come any closer. “That is why I am here.”

  Kelty’s mouth nearly dropped open. Then she recovered quickly, speaking the first question that came to mind. “You brought me here to fight the gold one, not the cloaks. Why?”

  Briar was quiet a moment. “So, he summoned you personally.”

  “You are familiar with this Punisher?”

  “We call him Fable,” Briar admitted quietly.

  “Fable, then.” Kelty waved her hand impatiently. “Answer the question. You brought me here to fight him. Why?”

  “Who better to rule a Court of Outcasts than one who can wield all of the affinities?” Briar answered, pensively looking off into the trees.

  “But why doesn’t he want to rule?”

  “I imagine it would be easier to scheme and plot as an adviser than as a ruler.” Briar turned to look at her. “Did you see anyone else? A green faerie that goes by the name Allora?”

  “No. There was no one within sight. Though a land-user magicked a tree into the throne.” She gave Briar an evaluating look. “Who are the Court of Outcasts? Who is Allora?”