Bones of Faerie03 - Faerie After by Janni Lee Simner

course he is.” She looked to her mother. “Is there no end to the sacrifices you will both make for humans?”
    “Is it true?” Allie asked. “Will coming here really kill him?”
    “Oh yes.” Elin turned abruptly from her mother and strode to the standing stone. Allie and I looked at each other.
    “Well, come on, then,” Elin said. “Someone needs to see to it that you do not die, as humans tend to do.”
    We stared at her, wary of some new trap. Elin sighed.“When my people make a mistake, we try to set things right. It may be different among humans, but even so, I will accompany you on this journey. As far as I can tell, even with her mind gone, Karinna the Fierce remains quite capable of protecting herself and no more requires my presence than she ever did. A few short days without food or drink will not hurt her, any more than a few days without sleep will hurt me.”
    I doubted Ethan, who’d lost his town to her, would think Elin had set anything right, but I couldn’t stop her from leaving. I glanced back. Karin wept as she called another stem to grow, and another. What use was I as her student if I could not help her? I joined Elin at the standing stone. As far as I could tell, Karin would be in no greater danger if I left than if I stayed, and that wasn’t true for Matthew and Caleb. Allie put one hand to my arm and reached for Elin with the other. Elin ignored her to put her own hands to the stone. “I can find my own way to the Arch, without any seer’s visions to delay me.” The stone turned liquid at her touch. She stepped into it and was gone.
    Yellow sunlight reflected off the bright rock.
The Arch. Show me the Arch
. The light grew brighter, filling my sight, and I saw—
    Karin, on her knees in the ashes of Faerie, tunic stained with blood, silver eyes dull as tarnished steel.“This madness is welcome indeed,” she whispered as she fell forward. Only then Caleb was behind her, pulling her to her feet. She fought him, hissing like some wild creature as she bent his wrist at an unnatural angle, but his fingers grabbed her wrist in turn, and in a flash of silver light she fell limp to the ground. “I’m sorry, Eldest Sister, but neither of us gets to escape all we’ve done so easily. You will survive this War, as will I.” Caleb hefted her over his shoulders, walked toward a burning lake, and disappeared within it—
    Too far. This was too far in the past. “Show me the present,” I whispered, as I’d practiced with Karin so many times. The scene shifted slowly, as if the present were something my visions were reluctant to reveal, until I saw—
    Matthew and Caleb running side by side, on four legs and two, running along broken black stone roads, through forests whose green was giving way to red, yellow, gold—and gray, patches of crumbling gray dust, made more dead by the bright colors around them. The wind was wild, and lightning flashed beneath a storm-tossed sky. Branches grabbed at them by day, tree shadows by night. They kept running, toward a crossroads that looked down on a mirrored silver Arch, its top hundreds of feet high, its legs hundreds of feet apart—
    I stepped forward, Allie’s hand on my arm. Stone and darkness closed in around me, squeezing the air from my chest. I fought for breath as my heart slowed, stopped for a beat—
    —and then I staggered free, into a cold, spitting rain. Elin waited beneath one leg of the silver Arch, which was bright in spite of the thick yellow-gray clouds above. I glanced at that mirror, but no visions sought to draw me into its surface. I’d never been able to look at the Arch without visions before.
    “I’d forgotten how big it was.” Allie’s eyes traveled up the mirror’s curve. It stood on a white stone platform that had been soaked by the rain. Autumn was further along here than at home, but the yellow and orange leaves of the trees beyond the platform were broken by patches of gray, just like in my vision. Beyond the