He half-heartedly waved at the rest of the Hawks, before we both started to move in the direction of the castle.
“Good night?” Jovi asked.
I shrugged. “It was fine,” I replied.
“I’m sharing a room with Phoenix,” Jovi muttered. “I hope he’s remembered that… and he’s alone.”
I laughed. It was unlikely.
“You can use mine if you need a place to crash,” I offered.
We strode along the corridors, going up to the second floor where the rooms were located. Both of us were silent. The doors all looked so similar, the corridor almost impossibly long, and I half-wondered if it was some kind of fae illusion that made the interior of the palace seem even larger than it appeared from the outside.
“I don’t know how I’m going to find my room,” I mumbled, checking to see if I recognized any of the ornaments that hung on the walls, or the small stone sculptures that were suspended from the ceilings.
“They should have numbers on them or something,” Jovi replied. He smirked. “Maybe it’s designed for people to stumble in on the wrong rooms…”
I put my hand up to silence him for a moment. I’d heard some strange groaning coming from one of the rooms, as if someone was in pain.
“What is that?” Jovi replied, picking up on the noise.
We reached the door where the sound was coming from, and I could distinctly hear Serena’s voice. Before I could knock and ask if everything was okay, the door swung open and Serena stood in its frame. Her body was swallowed by a large fluffy robe, which would have looked comical if her face hadn’t been fraught with anxiety and distress.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“The girls,” she replied, her voice pitched high.
Before she could say another word, a loud thump came from inside the room. Jovi and I moved past her, and I saw Vita, lying on the floor next to her bed. Her body tautened for a moment, the small frame of the human-fae stretched out, her muscles tensed. We rushed toward her as she started to jerk, her body contorting in some kind of fit.
“Roll her on her side!” Jovi cried out.
We moved her, trying to be as gentle as possible, but holding her firmly so that she didn’t hurt herself.
“Serena, get a pillow!” I told the girl, waiting till she dragged one from the bed and placed it beneath her friend’s head. Vita’s convulsing continued, her body jerking violently. I was about to tell Serena to start knocking on doors for help when Aida let out a howl.
Jovi looked over at his sister in astonishment, his face paling.
“What the hell?” he breathed, jumping up to race over to her bedside. It looked like Aida was experiencing a similar thing to Vita. Her body had arched upward off the sheets, her limbs stiff as the howl continued.
“It almost looks like she’s turning,” Serena exclaimed. “What is happening?”
“Of course she’s not turning!” Jovi replied, trying to soothe his sister and roll her over into the recovery position before she started fitting in the same manner as Vita. It was horrible. I glanced briefly at Serena—she was traumatized, and I half worried that she was about to succumb to the same mysterious state as her friends.
“Serena, go and get help—just run down the corridor, knock on all the doors!” I commanded her. The girl raced to the door, but before she’d stepped through its frame, the room was blinded in a flash of bright, yellow light.
Serena
[Hazel and Tejus’s daughter]
I saw a blinding flash of light, and closed my eyes against it. A jolt in the pit of my stomach followed swiftly, making my insides feel like they were being squeezed, all the blood rushing from my head. The light vanished, and I slowly opened my eyes, turning around to see if the others had just shared the same experience.
They were gone.
Or I was.
I glanced wildly around the room, too panicked to fix my focus on one thing. It was different. I wasn’t in the fae palace, or if I was, it was a different location entirely to the one I’d just been in.
Where am I?
My brain just couldn’t compute that a moment ago I’d been about to leave my room, and now I was standing in a completely different one…and my friends! Vita and Aida… where were they?
I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath.
Focus, Serena.
I tried to steady my racing heart. When I was ready I opened my eyes again, and started to properly observe the room I was now in. One of the strangest things, which indicated that I was no longer in the fae palace or even on the fae star, was the fact that outside it was daylight. I walked over to the nearest window, one of three dusty glass frames that ran alongside the room. Peering out, I saw a pale blue sky. Where it met the land on the horizon, I saw miles of rich, verdant forest—more like a jungle, if anything. In some places the green was so bright it was almost neon, the trees and plants wide-leaved and tall, growing thickly in some places, and in others parting to make way for streams and the natural slope and rise of the land. It went on for miles, bands of heated haze blurring its sprawl off into the distance.