Chasing Midnight - A Cinderella Retelling (Once Upon a Curse Book 3) Page 3

  Her magic is gone.

  There’s no trace of her in the room, but what if they’ve somehow destroyed it? Do they have an invention for that too? Could they bottle her power up in a little beeping box and keep her locked away for all eternity?

  I close my eyes, trying to dredge up the memories Omorose accidently flung into my mind, but my thoughts whirl too much. They won’t settle enough to let me focus. Instead, question after question rises to the surface, making it impossible to concentrate, until a voice stops me cold.

  “And she’s going to help us.”

  A shiver rushes down my spine as I sense multiple sets of eyes on my skin. I blink, feigning a sense of confidence I don’t feel. My arms are crossed defiantly across my chest, as though rebellion has become part of who I am—something the meek little girl I once was never would’ve foreseen. I’m not meek anymore, and no matter what power these strange humans have, I’ll find a way to defeat it. I may be surrounded on all sides, but I refuse to be backed into a corner. So I cock my hip, deepen my scowl, and arch my brow in a silent dare.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are,” Omorose says, voice sharp with conviction. I don’t know what she wants my help with, but the demanding nature of her tone irks me enough not to care, especially when she adds, “I saved your life. You owe me.”

  Owe you? I want to scream. Owe you!

  She runs around with my sister’s stolen magic beneath her skin, and now has the gall to think I owe her a favor? For what—destroying everything I hold dear? My spell for healing sleep would’ve worked eventually. I didn’t need her help. I didn’t want it. It’s so typical of a human to take credit for something that was never even asked for in the first place.

  I roll my eyes, unable to stop the spiteful response as it rolls from my tongue. “You just expedited the process. I was going to be fine.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  I grit my teeth. “Either way, I got out of the business of helping humans a very long time ago, when their greed murdered everyone I know. One act of kindness doesn’t undo all the harm your people caused, all the lives they destroyed.”

  “What about helping me?” the shifter prince whispers softly. “My kind?”

  I wince and turn toward him, guilt churning in my gut. A glimmer of the girl I once was rises to the surface before I can force her and her caring heart back down.

  “I’m sorry.” The apology spills out before I can stop it. I’m not sure if I’m speaking to the prince or to the girl I used to be, the one who would be ashamed to learn of the woman she’s become—cold, and bitter, and cruel to the very beings she was created to protect. But I don’t want to go down that road, so I turn my focus on Cole. “I really am. What I did to you, I did out of desperation. Believe me when I say there was no other way. I never wanted to hurt you, but I needed magic and I needed it fast.”

  “You’re a priestess, aren’t you?”

  The sound of that word shocks me still. I thought the people of the world had forgotten my kind, that we’d become little more than a myth lost to time. Yet if he believes I’m a full-fledged priestess, maybe that will help me. Maybe it’ll fool them into thinking I’m stronger than I really am, that my magic is more powerful than they could imagine, that I’m not someone they want to cross.

  “All faeries have a little magic,” I murmur with a shrug, fully aware that their own imaginations will do more than my words ever could. I let my response hang there for a moment, so it sinks in and expands, teeming with possibilities. “But that’s not the point. Yes, I borrowed your magic. Borrowed. The spell was going to run its course and the magic would have been returned to you no matter what.” I’m not entirely sure who I’m trying to convince—Omorose, the prince, myself? The thought of owing a debt to a human makes my skin crawl. It can’t be true. I plow on, pointedly ignoring the smug look shooting my way. “I left your magic alone and I left your parents’ magic alone, so the three of you could still guide your people until that day came. I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

  I’m not evil.

  I’m not a monster.

  Again, I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince.

  “Well, my parents are dead,” he murmurs darkly. “So your plan didn’t really work out.”

  The underlining fury in his tone whispers that my spell undoubtedly had something to do with their deaths, though for the life of me, I don’t know what.

  I release a breath.

  Myself—I was trying to convince myself. And I failed. I’m a horrible person. I left this boy alone in the world because I couldn’t bear to die without seeing my sister one more time. And I’m doubly terrible because I’m going to do it again. I can’t stay here. I can’t help these people. Not when Aerewyn is out there somewhere, finally alive. I’ve been waiting a lifetime for this moment, and I refuse to wait any more.

  “I’m sorry for that. I am,” I mutter, only half feeling the words. My mind has already slipped through the break in the tent flaps and into the crisp night, alive and wanting. I need to go. I need to get out of here. I need to see her. “But there are things I need to do, people I need to see. And I can’t waste my time helping a human, least of all a human who possessed stolen magic”—Aerewyn’s magic!—“not when other people need me.”

  “Would it be a waste of your time to break a curse? To free some magic? To give it back to the people you claim you want to help?” Omorose’s voice latches onto my escaping thoughts and yanks them back into the tent. I flinch with the impact.

  “What do you mean?” I turn to her slowly, eyes narrowing. “Your magic is gone. Otherwise I’d feel it.”

  “My curse isn’t broken.”

  “What?” Cole growls, stealing the word right out of my mouth.

  The magic fled. I felt it. If it wasn’t being freed, if it was still cursed, then she must mean—

  “It’s not me,” Omorose quickly tells the prince to quell his fears. “When I died, my magic transferred to an heir I didn’t know was still alive.”

  All the pieces sink into place.

  “My sister,” she continues, unaware of how my mind whirls with this new information. She has a blood heir, and that changes everything. “My little sister. My spirit traveled to her. I saw her. I saw the magic consume her. She inherited my curse. And I have to save her. I’ll do anything to save her.”

  As I will for my sister.

  Aerewyn’s magic isn’t free—it’s still trapped. It’s been passed down Omorose’s royal lineage to a new human host, a new human thief. But it won’t be for long. No matter what lie I have to tell, no matter who I have to hurt, I’ll save my sister. I’ll do whatever it takes to see her again. I refuse to come this close just to fail. Consequences be damned, I blink and meet Omorose’s pleading eyes.

  The part of me that’s still a little bit good whines in protest, twisting my insides painfully tight, so I can almost hear a plea in my pounding blood, telling me not to cross this line. Omorose’s memories flood my thoughts until the face of her sister fills my mind, a toddler with chestnut hair and big hazel eyes, the picture of innocence.

  I smother the image.

  I smother the protest.

  I smother the good girl I used to be, and I tell this human the one thing I know she desperately wants to hear. “I’ll help.”

  I’ll help Aerewyn—but Omorose doesn’t need to know that.

  I spend the next few days in isolation, which serves me just fine. The hours give me time to understand this new world I’ve found myself in. I knew it was different—I could taste the rotten, sour flavor in the air—but I had no idea how different until I dove into the memories Omorose accidently gave me.

  The first seven years of her life were lived in the world I knew—the world between the two apocalypses, when the humans had stolen all the magic and ruled unchallenged. She was a princess in that world, being raised to inherit a power that never belonged to her. Then in her seventh year, while I was still in
my healing sleep, everything changed. An earthquake struck while she was riding in a carriage with her father. I watch the scene through her eyes, my emotions a mirror reflecting hers back at me—the same awe, the same terror—as the ground stilled and she opened her eyes to a new reality. The open field her carriage had been riding across was gone, replaced with a city made of human inventions I’ve never seen before, never even imagined. The buildings were so tall, they glimmered like swords cutting into the sky. Instead of horses, people rode in big hulking machines that sat on four wheels. Their language was different. Their clothes were strange. Most of all, their weapons were advanced. They didn’t use swords or arrows, but strange metal objects that at first seemed harmless, but then, with the blink of an eye, shot death across any distance.

  In the hours spent studying Omorose’s memories, I’ve come to learn these weapons are called guns, and the humans value them above all else. I’ve also come to learn that the thing they despise most of all is magic. They believe our worlds were running parallel to each other, existing on two different planes of reality that somehow crashed together, merging into one. Before the earthquake, their world didn’t have magic. Now, they’re terrified of it—as they should be—and they want to destroy the human royals who possess it. In that way, we’re the same. I’d almost consider them allies, except for the small fact that they’d kill me too if they knew what I was.

  All magic is unnatural to them, not just the stolen kind, which is why I’ve been locked in this tent and hidden away from the rest of the camp.

  While I was in my healing sleep, humans destroyed the shifter village and tore their castle to the ground. They think that Cole and his people are refugees who fled from the evil king their weapons destroyed—they have no idea Cole was the king all along. Now, the humans have come here to help these perceived victims rebuild a new home in the mountains. They think they’re helping, but the shifters are terrified of them and their guns. With my healing spell lifted, the shifters have regained their magic, but now they’re trapped in a different way. They remain stuck in their human forms, pretending to be simple men and women. They’re too afraid to show the humans who they really are, who we all are—beings made of magic.

  Unfortunately for me, with the faerie glow sparkling along my skin, I’m not so easy to hide. The shifters only allow me outside in the middle of the night while the visiting humans sleep. Omorose and Cole even stationed guards by my tent to make sure I don’t break their rules. It’s cute, almost, that they think a few shifters with swords could stop me, but I play along because until I know more about the location of Omorose’s sister—and my sister’s magic—I can’t leave anyway.

  “Good, you’re awake.”

  With a sigh, I slip free of Omorose’s memories and open my eyes in time to see the canvas flaps slap closed behind her. A small waft of fresh air washes over me and I greedily suck it down. I’m tired of hiding in the dark.

  “Did you bring any useful information this time?” I drawl. The last time she spoke with me, she came with nothing but confused visions of a sister she hadn’t seen in a decade sitting on a dusty wood floor, reading a book beside a simmering fire. There were no locations, no specifics, nothing I could actually use to track her down.

  Omorose glares at me. “Yes.”

  “Then, welcome,” I mutter as I sit up and meet her glower with one of my own. I’m starting to think the only thing we have in common is a mutual disgust. She hates me for what I did to her prince and his family. I hate her for what her ancestors did to mine. Oh well. The world is painted in shades of gray—ones I don’t have time to decipher. “What news did you bring?”

  She grabs the chair in the corner and sets it closer to the bed. Like me, she doesn’t bother with pleasantries. “My friends Asher and Jade were able to sneak in some time on one of the defense computers back at the base.”

  I stare at her blankly.

  Omorose winces. “Right. My friends Asher and Jade went back to the Midwest Command Center, the human military base where I grew up. There are a few of them scattered across the country, created to fight the magic. This one is only a two days’ ride on horseback, but they took motorcycles so it was even less. Oh, motorcycles are—”

  “I know,” I interrupt. I don’t explain how I know—that I’ve seen them in her memories—but she doesn’t ask. I have a vague understanding of what computers are too—strange little machines filled with facts—but I don’t understand why that helps us.

  Omorose frowns at the interruption, but swallows whatever snide remark she wanted to say. By this point, I think her stomach must be full of them. I almost wish she’d just explode—it would make pushing her buttons all the more fun—but I get the feeling she’s had a lifetime’s worth of practice at biting her tongue.

  “As I was saying,” she continues through gritted teeth, “they got access to the computers and it took a while of searching, but they think they found my sister. When they tried searching for her under her given name, Eleanor Bouchene, nothing came up that fit. But then I remembered she was only two when the earthquake struck, and she never said her full name—the only thing she could say was Ella. I don’t know if she knew our last name, not really. So they tried searching with the new parameters, just Ella with a surname starting with a B, and we found a listing for an Ella Bush at an orphanage in London.”

  “London?” I’ve never heard of it.

  Omorose nods enthusiastically and opens the folded paper in her hand to reveal a map—one I don’t recognize as any world I’ve seen before.

  “We’re here, in the Rocky Mountains, in a country called the United States,” she says, pointing to a spot on the left side of the map. “And London is in a place called England,” she murmurs as she drags her hand all the way across the paper, over what I believe is a long stretch of land and an entire ocean, “which is here in a country called the United Kingdom. I don’t know how my sister got all the way over there—I mean, I don’t even know how she survived the earthquake. My kingdom disappeared when the worlds merged. I looked for it on maps for ages but never found anything, and I know my mother died or I never would’ve inherited her magic, so I’d always assumed my sister had too. But Asher has a theory. He said that there were a lot of children orphaned during the fusion, children on both sides, and the countries that were hit the hardest didn’t know what to do with them. The United States practically fell apart—so many of their major cities were destroyed or simply gone—but the United Kingdom is much smaller in size and it got off relatively unscathed. Anyway, they offered to take a lot of the orphans to help ease the burden on harder-hit areas and to help transition the humans from the magical world into their society. That’s probably how my sister got shipped over there as a little girl. According to the records we found, she’s been at this orphanage for almost seven years.”

  “Do you know what it looks like?” I ask, keeping my eyes on the black spot beneath the tip of her finger. “Do you know what it’s called?”

  Omorose opens another piece of paper, this time revealing the image of an ornate building made of red brick, with defensive battlements along the top and a gatehouse framed by two large identical towers. “The Queen of England didn’t want to force anyone to give up their own homes, so she donated buildings owned by the crown to the cause. My sister wound up here, in the orphanage called St. James’s Royal Home for Children.”

  I snatch the paper from her hand and hold it close, memorizing every inch of the image. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I saw it while I was—while I was—” She breaks off sharply, drawing my gaze to her face, which is absent of its normal color, as though all the blood has drained from her cheeks. I think I know why.

  “While you were dead?” I supply sweetly. She blinks and gapes at me, then recoils and sits taller in her seat while a pink flush returns to her face.

  “Yes,” she snaps, annoyance evident in her tone, though I have no idea why. By the looks of it I did her a favor,
returning a little life to those pale cheeks. “After I— I mean, when I—”

  “Died,” I interject again. Humans are so touchy about their mortality. She’s alive now, isn’t she?

  “After that,” she ignores me and continues, voice gravelly as though it’s getting caught on her clenched teeth, “my spirit followed the magic across a wide ocean and to a city lit by more electricity than I’ve ever seen in my life. Though it was nighttime, I recognize this building and it’s definitely the one my sister was sitting inside when I watched the magic consume her.”

  “Excellent,” I snippily reply, then fold the paper and tuck it inside my pocket.

  I prefer magic-spun clothes, but the humans of this new world aren’t completely inept, and I quite like these pants they call jeans. The fur-lined boots aren’t so bad either, though I almost fainted when the shifter prince first handed them to me. He’s part-bear and part-wolf. How could he condone wearing their skins on my feet? But he assured me the materials were fake, and only made to seem like the real thing. Some sort of new human invention. My feet are so warm I almost don’t care if he was lying—though Mother help me if my old teachers were alive to hear me think it.

  I glance back to Omorose, wondering why she’s still here. “Anything else?”

  Her nostrils flare. It’s becoming more and more effortless to annoy her, and though I know it shouldn’t give me pleasure to see another person in pain, even if that person is a worthless human, one thought of my sister and her stolen magic smothers the guilt.

  “Don’t you want to know how you’re going to get all the way to England?”

  “No,” I quip. There go those nostrils again, and the red cheeks.

  “We’ve been working on a plan for days—”

  “I don’t need your help.”

  “But we—”

  “It’s not necessary.”

  “Would you just shut up for two seconds?” She finally cracks, raising her voice. I sigh and shut my mouth, humoring her. “Soldiers from the Midwest Command Center are crawling all over these mountains, but we found a way to smuggle you out. Once we do, we’ll supply you with train tickets and some travel documents so you can get across the country. Jade and Asher are working on securing passage on a ship crossing the Atlantic, and we thought we could maybe try putting some makeup on your exposed skin to hide all the…” She pauses and waves her hands in the air, gesturing toward my face. “All the sparkle.”