Elves Invasion

69

Now I need you to let me possess you.

Why?

It’s how I’m going to get my army to yours. Hurry. The fire is rising.

Ava smelled the smoke billowing up from the bottom of the pyre and felt the heat that followed. The next moment she was out of her body and soaring across the overworld toward the beacon that was Mia. She was easy to find, high up in the Appalachian Mountains.

She dove down and felt searing pain—Mia’s pain. Her guts rolled with nausea, and her vision tracked a few seconds behind the movement of her eyes, setting the world into a dizzying spin around her. It took her a moment to push past Mia’s sickness enough to feel the vibration of the earth under Mia’s hand, summon the willstones of her claimed, and jump them all to Mia’s position.

Ava’s army appeared amid Mia’s. There was no boom or gust of wind or streak of lighting. The Outlanders, below folk, and ranch hands simply materialized among the open spaces between the Walltop guards on the rocks and cliffs.

Ava appeared next to Mia, inside her tent. “Tell your soldiers not to panic,” Ava said.

Mia’s cracked lips were parted in surprise, but she gathered herself and closed her eyes for a moment, sending out a message in mindspeak to all of her claimed. Ava could hear the shocked murmurs coming from outside the tent, but luckily, she didn’t hear the sounds of fighting.

“I probably should have given you more warning,” Ava apologized. “A bunch of Outlanders and criminals appearing alongside a bunch of soldiers could have been bad. I see that now.”

“I know why you didn’t warn me. You couldn’t give me any chance to figure out how to do this . . . feat . . . and go without you,” Mia replied. She crinkled a wan cheek into a half smile. “What would you call this in your world?”

“Teleportation,” Ava answered. “But that sounds so corny I’ve mostly been calling it jumping.” Her face pinched in sympathy. “You look terrible, Mia.”

“I told you. I’m dying,” she replied with a humorless laugh.

“I’m sorry.” The words didn’t seem big enough.

Mia was paper white, skeletal, and the sickly sweet smell of decay clung to her. Her head was wrapped in a strip of linen, and from the bare pink sheen of the skin high on her temples, Ava could tell it was because her hair had fallen out. Even her eyes seemed drained of color. Ava reached out and took Mia’s hand. She wanted to hug Mia, but she knew that any contact would feel like knives sticking in her.

They heard voices outside the tent and turned in unison as Isaac, followed closely by Captain Leto, pushed into the tent. Isaac stopped abruptly and made a dismayed sound deep in his chest when he saw Mia.

“I’m sorry, My Lady,” Leto was saying as he grabbed Isaac’s arm. Isaac didn’t resist. He’d gone boneless as he stared at Mia.

“It’s all right, Leto,” Mia said, raising a placating hand. “Isaac is here for her.”

Leto noticed Ava and dropped Isaac’s arm in shock, looking back and forth between the two Mias.

A long sigh gusted out of Isaac. “Oh, Mia. Why didn’t you let me help you?” he asked. He took a step toward her and Mia lurched away from him, her eyes pleading.

“Don’t, Isaac. There’s nothing you can do to help me now,” she said. She turned to Leto. “Captain, would you please escort Lord Fall out of my tent and ask him what his people need? Ava and I will be out in a moment.”

Isaac allowed Leto to lead him away. Ava turned to Mia.

“You’re still not going to tell him?” she asked. Mia shook her head. “I think you’re wrong,” Ava persisted. “I understand why you hid the version of River you saw in the cinder world, but Isaac’s changed since you knew him. He accepted that I wasn’t you. He can accept that his father wasn’t that man in the barn.”

Mia looked down, wringing her hands. Ava watched her, eerily recalling how she was prone to do that when she doubted herself.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “What was this all for if I do?”

Ava felt truly sorry for her. “Do you want me to see if there’s anything I can do? I don’t know much about healing,” Ava said, trailing off with a shrug. She thought of Brick. He would know how to heal Mia.

“I can show you,” Mia said, accepting Ava’s offer.

Ava helped Mia comb through her cells and kill off as much of the cancer as she could, but there weren’t enough healthy cells left after that to keep her organs running properly. Ava might not have done much healing in her time as a witch, but she knew a failing liver when she saw one. When she had done everything she could to keep Mia going for a few more days, she sat back on her heels.

“Your rose stone did all the work,” Mia said. She wiped away the sweat beading on her upper lip. “So it’s true that the different colors are better at different kinds of magic?”

“Yes,” Ava answered distractedly. She heard shouting outside the tent. “Mia, we need to talk.”

“We do. It was always my intention that you take my place when I’m gone. That’s why I went to find you in the first place,” Mia said. “I’ll leave instructions with Leto that you are to be treated exactly as they would treat me. Salem is yours.”

“No, that’s not—” Ava stammered. “It’s the Hive. We can’t beat them. Not with the numbers that we have right now.”

“I know. That’s why we need to use the bomb.”

“But that’s insane—you know it is,” Ava said.

The shouting outside the tent grew loud enough to bring Mia to her feet. She and Ava looked outside and saw people running past as Ava felt Isaac reaching out to her mindspeak.

Things are getting ugly out here. Come quickly.

“It’s Isaac,” Ava said urgently.

She and Mia rushed out of the tent and followed the sound of a fight to a clearing among the trees, where a year-old rockslide had knocked down a swath of thick timber. Isaac was holding back someone who looked like he was trying to attack Alaric, while Caleb and Tristan restrained two screaming ranch hands. Joyce, Breakfast, Captain Leto, and some of his uniformed soldiers seemed to be busy with crowd control as waves of people, most of them from the ranches, shook their fists and shouted. At the center of it all was a small Outlander woman with steel-gray hair and skin like leather. She stood stock-still with her hands crossed in front of her, her gaze elsewhere and her expression unconcerned.

“Chenoa,” Mia said, teeth bared. The name hissed out of her like a curse word.

As Ava and Mia approached the center of the clearing together, the shouting fell to a murmur. The crowds stopped pushing against the barricade and the man in Isaac’s headlock settled down enough that Isaac let him go.

Chenoa looked at the two Mias, her mouth tilting with a knowing smile. Her eyes were like two black beads—hard and clear—and they sent a thrill down Ava’s spine.

“So I suppose you’ll be fixing to hang me,” Chenoa said, instigating a fresh round of hateful calls.

“She should be hanged!” yelled the man recently released from Isaac’s headlock.

“Otter—don’t,” Isaac growled in warning in case he decided to lunge at Chenoa again. Isaac knew this man. He spun away from Isaac and faced the bloodthirsty crowd.

“She killed my Lena and our baby,” Otter said. Voices shouted out the names of more dead. “She could have told us what was in those canisters.” More voices rose like “amens” in church. “She should have told us it was going to make them sick.”

Ava looked out at the quickly turning mob, and then back at Mia’s impassive face. Mia would let the mob hang her, and as Ava recalled the women dying horrible deaths in the tunnels, a tiny voice in her head said maybe Chenoa deserved it.

But then she noticed the Outlanders in the crowd were slowly detaching themselves, watching with their weapons ready. Ava reached out to Isaac.

Will the Outlanders fight if the ranch hands try to hang Chenoa?

Yes, Isaac replied in mindspeak. To a lot of Outlanders she’s a hero. This could get very bad, very fast. Find a fire and get ready to fuel us.

I don’t think you can stop my army from tearing itself apart, Isaac.

Neither do I. The only thing that I’m concerned with now is keeping you safe.

While Ava racked her brain for a way to defuse this powder keg, Mary stepped forward, holding up her hands for everyone’s attention.

“We below folk know all about the dust sickness that Chenoa brought on us,” Mary said in a commanding voice. “We’ve seen it with our own eyes. And if you’re anything like me, you’ve had nightmares about it ever since.” She started to pace around Chenoa, circling her like a cross-examiner. “This isn’t just something she brought on the women who agreed to carry her poison dust into the Outlands. It’s something that got brought back to those women’s families. Children. Babies, even.”

Chenoa grunted and smirked. Mary broke off and turned to address her.

“You think babies dying is funny?” Mary asked. Chenoa leveled her with a look. Anger seemed to gather around the old woman like a cloak. “Speak,” Mary urged. “Give us some reason why you did what you did. I’m trying to give you a chance here, or would you rather I just let my people string you up?”

For a moment it seemed as if Chenoa would remain silent on her own behalf. She looked out at the mob as if it were happening to someone else, and then nodded to herself as if she already knew the ending to this story.

“I’ve always been good with numbers,” she said in a soft, dry voice that carried. “I’ve always been able to look at numbers and equations and understand them. Always been able to see through the numbers to the truth hidden behind them. I don’t know, maybe it’s a kind of magic. How many children do you think I’ve had, blond city woman?” she asked.

Mary was taken aback by the question. “I don’t know,” she replied.

“Four. All dead in their first year.” Chenoa’s voice was even and empty, her words pressed flat by the weight of the grudge within her. “My first babe starved to death. Belly swollen and so weak she couldn’t even cry anymore. She just made this mewing sound, like a kitten.” A long silence spilled out of her and swept over the crowd. “My middle two were taken by the Woven and the pox got my youngest. You ever see a baby die of the pox, blond city woman? No, you haven’t. The witches wouldn’t help us Outlanders when the pox came, but the below folk, they got the medicine ’cause they’re citizens.” Chenoa laughed, her head settling deeper into her shoulders, like a bird’s in a rainstorm. “You below folk are acting like you invented suffering, but how many of your children were lost by what I did? A few hundred? How many hundreds of thousands of our babies starved, were taken by the Woven, or died from the pox . . . or maybe you’ve done the math and think your pink babies are worth a thousands times more than our brown ones?” Her mouth pressed into a sneer. “Well, I’ve done the math, too, and I got some different numbers. One number in particular.” Her eyes dropped to the ground, all the fire suddenly snuffed out of her. “Four.”