These Twisted Bonds (These Hollow Vows, #2)(5)

We ride for nearly half an hour before the path turns out of the forest and back into the moonlight.

Unintelligible shouts ring out in the distance, and the smell of fire tickles my nose. A final steep incline reveals pure chaos ahead. Cursing loudly, the orc dismounts and pulls a sword from his hilt before running into the fray. Fires blaze at random intervals throughout the clearing, and fae of all sorts dart in every direction. Some, dressed in the yellow and gray of the queen’s guard, wield rope and nets and chase after children. Others swing swords and knives, felling the uniformed guards.

My mare whinnies and backpedals.

“Shhh,” I whisper, turning into a patch of trees out of sight of the melee. I jump to the ground and grab her reins, tying her loosely to a tree. “I’ll be back soon.”

Beyond the flames and the chaos looms a large structure with metal roof and bars for walls. The prison is an iron cage. The queen has caged the children like animals. I feel it in my bones, in my heart. I feel the loneliness and terror of the children inside as clearly as if they were sobbing on my shoulder, and my rage becomes a living thing inside me, clawing and scratching to get out.

What kind of monster would do that to children? And what kind of monster would stand by and let her?

I knew I hadn’t trusted the queen. So why did I trust Sebastian?

Slipping through the darkness to get closer to the clearing, I assess. A long-haired elven boy around Jas’s age screams and thrashes as one orc holds him down and another plunges a needle into his backside. The plunger depresses, and the boy’s scream slices through the air, through the night, and through my very core. It’s the sound of agony, of life and soul being severed. I know that sound because I made it myself after bonding with Sebastian. I made that sound when I was dying.

I let my rage grow, feed it like the beast I’m preparing to unleash on my enemies—for these innocent children, for every member of the courts whose lives were cut short because of the golden queen’s curse, for every human who was tricked out of their life when they bonded with a shadow fae, for myself and my own broken heart.

Power builds inside me, swelling alongside my anger, and when I cast my magic out, the darkness that blankets the clearing is so thick and so deep that even the light from the crackling flames is swallowed into the night.

Cries of surprise and dismay rend the air, and I use their voices to target my power—using all my focus to home in on the Seelie guards through the blackness and lock them in cages of darkness, one by one.

They push back against my darkness, trying to break through it with their own power, but I’m stronger and I don’t let them.

“Nice trick.”

I jerk away, reaching for my sword as I take in the male crouched beside me in the thicket. I was so focused on the guards, I didn’t even hear him approach.

Russet eyes glowing like an owl’s in the darkness, he holds up two hands. “I’m on your side.” He points down the hill from the direction I came. Silver webbing pulses with light on his forehead like pieces of broken glass illuminated by the moon. Pretha and Lark both have those markings, perhaps this male is Wild Fae as well. “The queen’s sending reinforcements,” he says. “We need to get these children to the portal and out of here before they arrive. Most of them have been treated and won’t be able to defend themselves.”

“Where does the portal go?” I ask, realizing only now that I had no plan for what to do with the children once I freed them. I came to protect them and to punish those who would hurt them, but leading a group of Unseelie children around in Seelie territory is a recipe for disaster.

“We have refugee camps in the Wild Fae Lands.”

Can I trust this stranger? How do I know the children will be safer there?

“Not camps like this,” he says, as if reading my thoughts. “Houses, not cages. Settlements where they can reconnect with their families. A safe place where they’ll be fed and protected until they can return home.”

Then I see it in the woods, more eyes like his peeking out toward the camp.

I knew that Finn’s people were helping to move Unseelie refugees from the queen’s land to the Wild Fae Lands, and since this male’s story matches up with what I learned from Finn’s people, I take a chance and decide to believe him. “Okay,” I say, nodding. “I’ll take care of the guards, you get the children to the portal.”

“Take care of them how?” he asks.

“Trust me.” I turn back to the camp and focus. I’ve always been able to see at night when no one else could, but now my night vision is better than ever. Focusing on the sentries standing outside the cage, I cast out my power, directing it like a dozen synchronized arrows flying from their bows. I aim for the sentries in the yellow and gray uniforms. Darkness grabs them, wraps them up, and traps them.

One by one, I wrap the queen’s sentinels in night so vast it swallows them whole.

The male beside me chuckles. “I like you.” Then he’s gone, racing toward the prison as quick as a fox.

But the whole camp is swarming with Seelie guards, and when I trap more, my focus slips and I lose my grip on another.

One lunges toward my new friend, shouting a warning to someone else.

My ally dodges, and I wrap the guard in a blanket of shadow until he too has vanished. My friend throws me a delighted grin before the bars bend and spread. Shackled children flood into the clearing.