Chapter Text
“You lied to them, you told them you were dead.”
“To them, I am. They can’t reach me here.”
“They could have. The child, the one with the dragon flame. She could have reached you, the others could have anchored her. You could have been whole, alive in the Otherworld, at the school you love so much. Why lie to them?”
“They didn’t need the distraction. They needed their focus and strength to be on the battle that was ahead of them.”
Her companion laughed, low and cruel. “And you thought you could protect them, even in death. How noble of you, Farah. How selfless.” The laughter became mocking, too loud in the otherwise silent room. “It’s such a pity you failed. But then, you seem to fail more than you succeed, don’t you?”
Turning away from the window, from the landscape that always felt cold no matter what the season, the former Headmistress of the infamous magic school, stared at her companion in confusion. “What are you saying?”
The woman on the dark throne smile and stood, the skirt of her dress falling around her like a shadow. “I’m saying your precious little changeling is here, Farah, in my realm. And where the fire fairy goes, I’m sure the others are bound to follow.”
“No.” Panic gripped her. Farah tried to fight it, tried to keep it from showing on her face or in her voice. In the Otherworld, she wouldn’t have had to think about concealing her emotions. Her magic would have shielded her, concealed her whirling emotions. Here, in this realm, her magic felt sluggish, within her as always but oh so difficult to wield.
“You made yourself her role model. Noble and self-sacrificing.” The mocking laughter came again, accompanied by the swishing of material against the cold stone tiles. “She came through to save the Otherworld, to close the portal between that realm and this. And now she’s here, resigned to her fate, searching for answers, while her friends work diligently on the other side trying to get her back.”
Farah closed her eyes. “They won’t be able to. Only the Dragon Flame can open the doorway.”
“That’s not exactly true.” Her companion shrugged, and smiled. “My child is there now, learning all he can of your world.”
Farah could only stare as the Queen of Darkness laughed at her, feeding off of her worry and despair. The other woman reached out to touch her shoulder, her finger tips like icy trails. “If I were you, I wouldn’t worry yourself with their problems, my dear. You’ll soon have enough of your own to deal with.”
Refusing to rise to the bait, Farah stood resolute. She held the cold gaze of the Dark Fairy Queen, pushing her feelings deep down as much as she could, out of reach of the Queen’s magic.
“No words, Farah?” The Queen laughed and shook her head. “No matter. You’ll speak soon enough, and tell me what I want to know.”
How to transform. How to access the deeper, darker magic she could feel but couldn’t use.
“I’d say over my dead body but we’ve already done that,” Farah retorted, her voice as cold as she could manage.
“It can be arranged again, and again. As many times as is needed.” The Queen smirked again, turning away towards a door only she could see. “For now, I must go and meet my new guest. Consider my offer, Farah. Once the changeling gives me what I want, it will cease to be available.”
Farah watched her disappear through the shadow door, his hands clenched as she closed her eyes. She called on her magic, willing it to aid her as it had so many times in the past.
‘Don’t be deceived, Bloom,’ she thought, desperately hoping the fire fairy would hear her. ‘All is not as it seems.’
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In the Otherworld, Saul Silva looked up from the glass of whisky in his hand. His third, fourth maybe of the night.
Was it the alcohol that gave him a false sense of warmth, a glimmer of light and hope?
Or was it…?
No. NO.
The glass shattered against the wall, the sound startling him before he realised it was he who’d thrown it.
For a moment, he’d thought… he’d felt…
But no.
Farah was dead.
She was dead, and so was Andreas.
Ben was gone, and Rosalind… Rosalind could rot in hell because Farah was dead.
In his heart, he’d suspected it. He’d clung to the remnants of their bond, hoping that somehow the strength of his feelings would be enough to bring her back from wherever she’d fled.
But not even the rare and coveted bond between a fairy and her specialist could bring someone back from the dead.
He had no reason to doubt Bloom’s account, no reason to hope…
… But there it was again.
The tiniest of tugs, a pull on his senses that he recognised as being Farah in distress.
“All in your mind,” he muttered, listing to one side as he stood to replace the broken glass with a fresh one. Maybe he’d miscounted, maybe he’d had more than five. Alcohol could play tricks on the mind, the cruelest kind.
He’d learned that lesson with Andreas, even if in the end it hadn’t been his sword that had killed the man he’d once considered more brother than friend.
The whisky had barely made it to the glass when there was a knock on the door; it opened before he could respond.
A broken Sky stood on the threshold for a moment, the first time he’d voluntary visited Saul’s suite in a long, long time.
“She’s gone,” Sky told him, his eyes red from a combination of exhaustion and tears. “Sebastian opened the portal to the Realm of Darkness. Bloom… Bloom left through it. She’s gone.”
He cursed under his breath, damning stubborn fairies and their self-sacrificing nature, but pushed it aside as Sky stumbled forward.
“She’s gone,” Sky repeated, falling into Saul’s arms as he had done the first time that Saul had told him Andreas was dead. “She’s gone.”
Saul held him and found himself making a promise he wasn’t sure he could keep, a promise he also made to Farah’s memory, knowing how much she’d cared for the girl Sky mourned. “We’ll find her, Sky,” he vowed. “We’ll bring her back.”
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