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“Yes, I would have been coming back for you as well. That was my plan.”

“And? What happened?” He’d been trying to claim he had never planned to come back, and there was another lie.

“The elders did.” He gave my hand a squeeze. “Although I am an elven lord, my relatively young age makes me low on the pecking order. They looked into the glass gargoyle, and after I told them of it coming back, they re-read their scrolls. That’s when they realized about another artifact. But our scrolls are in pieces and mostly copies from the ones left behind. They didn’t find out what the second artifact was until about two weeks before I came back here. Until then they kept everyone in the city.”

I leaned in for another kiss. The last one left me dizzy even though I knew it was probably the damn spell that was killing us. We probably shouldn’t have been talking all this time, nor kissing, but I’m glad we did. Just as we started a second, and in my opinion much better, kiss, the wall next to us exploded.

Chapter Thirty-Three

We stumbled away from the wall and I realized the entire wall hadn’t exploded, just three very small holes. Followed by three little blurs of color that came flying in and slammed into my head. I didn’t think I’d ever been so happy to see them.

Alric immediately went to the small holes they’d punched through the wall and started trying to widen them. Already more air flowed into our prison.

“I told them we find you.” Garbage Blossom puffed herself up as she did a loop around my head. “They think we not.”

“We found them!” Leaf Grub yelled out to no one in particular then looped around the room.

Crusty Bucket stayed silent but clung to the side of my head.

Finally she let go and start flying in crazy circles. After a few laps she slammed into the wall they’d come through, but not through their original holes. Before I could yell out, Crusty had slammed back into the room, again creating a new hole.

I knew the girls had picked up some more powers recently, but even for them those walls should have been too hard to go through.

Garbage Blossom flew around my head one more time, then like Crusty before her, did a few laps of the room and blasted another tiny hole.

Leaf started to follow but I grabbed her. “Wait, how are you doing this?”

I didn’t really expect much of an answer, this was Leaf Grub after all, but she cocked her head then closed her eyes as if reciting something. “We move fast to create power vortex slam through hard stuff.” The grin she gave me once she opened her eyes told me that probably made a lot more sense when someone told it to her.

“That’s great,” I patted her head with my finger and let her go. “Just keep doing what you’re doing then.” With a shrug to Alric I joined him in trying to pull free more pieces from the holes near the center. The girls’ feats were impressive but the holes they were making were still very small.

“I see them!” Harlan’s yell seemed far away. “Over on this side.” He was coming closer, and at a speed that was making him huff. “Hello?” He put his mouth right by one of the highest holes. “Are you there?”

“We’re both here. Thank the goddess you found us!” I would have to stand on Alric’s shoulders to reach that hole, obviously the ground was higher outside than it was in here.

Harlan chuckled and made a chuffing sound. A minute later all three faeries flew in through three new holes. “That was all Glorinal, yes, I have to revise my thinking of your boyfriend, my dear. A right stand-up chap. Cast a searching spell and told us exactly where to find you.”

I didn’t look at Alric, but I was certain my face had gone red. Great girlfriend I was. At the first chance I try to make-out with another elf. Although, Glorinal and I weren’t really a couple. Well, I had thought of us as that way—briefly. Then when he had introduced me as his girlfriend, even though it was a bit sudden, who was I to complain?

I snuck a look at Alric who was still studiously pulling away chunks of wall or whatever it was that made up this room. But a moment later he turned and gave me a concerned look.

“I have enough magic back that I should have sensed a searching spell directed at us.” He kept his voice low and I felt a chill go up my back.

I pulled away a few more chunks of wall where I was yelling through to Harlan. “Is Glorinal there with you?” Something wasn’t right but I wasn’t sure what.

“No, he stayed back in town, said he could work better on finding who was behind this there.” He paused and I heard a voice further away talking to him. The faeries had enough time to do three more holes before he came back to the hole he was speaking through.

“Covey said he mentioned that he might be out of reach for a bit. He had some things to finish up. He said for you not to worry, he wanted to search the ruins where they grabbed you for clues as to who was behind this.”

Alric and I looked at each other as the same thought hit us.

My heart broke. “Glorinal is working for the bad guys! You need to go back into town and stop him.” Harlan started to argue but I cut him off before he really got a word in. “No, Harlan, no one else knew we were in the ruins.” I couldn’t believe it. Yet again some guy I’d fallen for had been working an angle and used me to get what he wanted.

Alric pulled away pieces of wall faster as we both heard what sounded like very unlady-like swearing coming from outside. “Ask Covey if she gave Glorinal access to anything she was working on.”

Here I was thinking about my horrific track record in men, and Alric was worried about the whole end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it situation.

Covey must have been running to the wall of the room we were trapped in, because her swearing was quite clear now. She obviously heard Alric’s question.

“He has access to all of the scrolls and all of the research the academics did on the chimeras.” A few more swear words muddied the rest. “Harlan, I have to go back and stop him.”

A body slammed into the wall.

I pulled Alric back just as the upper part of the wall crumbled and a beautiful pink sky peeked through. I’d thought we’d only been in there a few hours, but if it was dawn, we’d been gone all night.

Another slam and Covey landed on the ground in front of us. At first I thought she’d gone berserk again and was using herself to break through the wall like the faeries had. And that may have been her intention, however I think her current trajectory was caused by the armored guard peering into our room after flinging her through the wall.

I couldn’t see much, but it looked like about a dozen armed guards running out of the woods and swarming Harlan. Which was impressive since I wouldn’t have thought it would take that many to subdue him.

Sadly I was right. They had knocked him out by the time Covey climbed back out of our room and tore after them. Three blurs of color flew over her head and dove down so sharply they each hit a guard with enough impact to knock them down. By the time the guards got up, the girls were up high again and were diving once more—this time with rocks.

Their aim was far better than I would have given them credit for and this time two of the guards stayed down.

“We need to get out there.” I turned to see that Alric was holding his hands up as a step. While Covey and her long-lost reptilian ancestors had been able to scramble up the wall to the hole she’d made, I hadn’t been sure I could. Alric clearly had the same thought.

I used his hands to boost myself up and out of the hole.

They were down to six guards but Covey didn’t look like she was going to last much longer. Even without going into berserker mode, she was an excellent fighter, but there had just been too many as attested to by the six or seven bodies littering the ground. Alric crawled out of the hole behind me. He was a much better fighter than I was but neither of us had weapons, his knife had been lost when the guard he threw it at was buried under the landside.

Alric charged forward and tackled the nearest one, using his momentum to roll them both away from Covey.

I didn’t have the weight or strength to do that, so I mimicked my faeries. Their initial trick wasn’t working this time, but they were still hounding the guards fighting Covey. I picked up the largest rock I knew I could throw and aimed for the nearest head.

Not a direct hit, but enough to make him lurch forward, then turn around and come after me. Not my best plan, but hopefully if Alric and I could knock down the numbers facing Covey, she could finish hers off and come rescue me. My best plan was to get the guard free from the rest of the fighting. I ran up the hill leading away from the meadow.

The hill topped out and I looked for a place to hide, but was greeted by another group of guards, armed and running toward me. The forest to the left hadn’t looked very welcoming until that moment, but I zigged to run into it.

“Wait! M’lady! ” I recognized that voice.

The new guards were Harlan’s actors. They might not be real fighters, but the weapons they carried were real.

The fully armed and looked like he knew how to use it real guard was almost upon me. I ran toward Harlan’s fake guards hoping they’d at least taken fencing in acting school.

He yelled to the actors. “Grab her for me and I’ll see you have a great reward.”

I was panting going up that hill but obviously the man chasing me didn’t have that problem judging by the volume of his yell. The captain of the actors frowned and lowered his weapon.

Crap—I didn’t know what Harlan was paying them, but probably not a lot. If they turned me over to this real guard and he killed me, they could say they were never here. We were too far away for anyone fighting down below to see us.

I slowed a bit but started aiming more toward the tree line. It was a thick, scraggly forest, but I was far skinnier than any of the guards, fake or real, and could probably make it through faster than they.

The actor appeared to ponder the offer, and I was set to run as fast as I could into the forest, when he raised his left hand and then dropped it.

An arrow, from a bowman hiding behind the captain, shot out and hit the guard in the chest. Lucky shot that it was, it missed the chest plate and hit the bare section right above the metal and dug deep into a section of chest and muscle going to the arm.

It obviously wasn’t a fatal blow but the guard dropped his sword with a lot of cursing.

“I recommend you also drop any other weapons you may have, and stay perfectly still. My man here sometimes has a tricky arm, and I do feel you would not be able to recover from an arrow to the head.” The captain was using his King of the World accent, as if he didn’t care what the lower life form before him really did, but was willing to dispense advice anyway.

The real guard pulled out another knife with his left hand at an awkward angle, then tossed it to the ground and dropped to his knees.

I slowed down and nodded to the captain. “Thank you for your timely arrival. You did have me worried there a bit.”

He bowed and in what would be an off-stage voice said, “That is why it is called acting, my dear lady.”

Harlan’s goofy little actor troop just validated themselves completely and forever at this point.

“Well, I thank you.” I shook myself. “Covey and Alric are fighting the rest of his friends down in the meadow below. Harlan is unconscious and will need protecting.”

The captain sent three of his men down the hill but the archer stayed with him. “What shall we do with this one?”

I wasn’t sure if these guards were completely evil or who they were working for. They were city guards. Not that ones like the men who grabbed us couldn’t change uniforms, but that seemed doubtful at this point. It also seemed like they were trying to capture us, not kill us. But considering the last time that happened Alric and I were left to suffocate in an abandoned hovel, I wasn’t too keen on that either.

Still, I couldn’t order someone to be killed when they’d surrendered.

“We take him with us.” I marched forward and picked up the wounded guard’s knife and stuck it in my waistband. Then I picked up his discarded sword.

“Get up and start marching.” The arrow looked like it must have gone pretty deep and hit more than a few muscles and nerves on the way in. His arm was hanging loose and his face was paler than before. He struggled to get to his feet, but I sure wasn’t going to help him.

With the archer following last, and off to the side a bit so he maintained a clear shot of the guard, we made our way down to the others.

Alric had disarmed one of his two guards and was sword fighting with the other one. Covey still had her remaining two, but wasn’t looking as exhausted as she had been. As I watched she kicked out with one of her extremely long legs and caught a guard hard in the throat. He dropped, gurgled a bit, and didn’t get back up.

The remaining guard looked up and noticed the actors standing there watching and the three of us coming down with one of his own clearly wounded and captured. He feinted left, then turned and tried to run away.

I could have told him that was a really bad idea. Covey wasn’t berserker, but she was in full predator mode now and the last thing you wanted to do was run in front of an annoyed predator. She grinned and took off after him. I noticed she was letting him get a lead and not running at her full speed. I shook my head and walked over to where Alric had disarmed and tied up the second guard he had been fighting. The first was either unconscious or dead to the left of the ruin we’d been trapped in.

Harlan was being attended to by the captain and his men, except for the archer who had placed himself in a way to watch our prisoners. Clearly, he had some sort of military career before becoming a thespian.

Harlan was dusting himself off, then scowled toward Covey and her prey. “We don’t have time for that. We need to get Taryn’s boyfriend before he steals all of our things.”

Covey was almost out of visual range, let alone earshot, but she did have amazing hearing. She didn’t yell back, but threw a knife she picked up somewhere at the running guard as he tried to change direction. He crumbled to the ground.

“I think he’s dead. Sorry, meant to keep him alive but aiming at that speed is hard. I’m going down to protect the scrolls.”