Fates Divided: Halven Rising

Elena rushed through her shower, attempting to chisel two and a half days’ worth of grime off her body in under a minute, while Deirdre spoke to her neighbors about the cure they would release into the water. Thankfully, Sunlanders were peaceable. Elena didn’t have to worry about being attacked, whether she was here to help or not.

“We will see if a friend of mine can assist us,” Deirdre said, after she’d given Elena clean clothes and new boots that fit a heck of a lot better than her old ones, which were too small on her now.

They jogged a couple of blocks from Deirdre’s home to a door built into a hill of green grass. Large boulders littered the hilltop, along with what looked like solar panels secured aboveground. Two steps down an incline, an awning covered a carved turquoise door.

“Your friend lives here?” The exterior smelled like grass and dirt, which, she supposed, it was.

“Camille.” Deirdre twisted her lips lightly. “No one knows where Camille originated. Some say the Dark Kingdom.”

“The Dark Kingdom?”

Deidre waved it off. “A myth. There is no evidence the Dark Kingdom in the center of the realm exists. No one could survive in the land of ice and snow. Regardless of her origin, Camille has been a Sunlander for as long as I’ve known her, and she is very powerful. She senses magic. Given the right amount of energy, she can create portals.”

Elena nodded. “Definitely helpful.”

“Yes, but there are limits to the number of portals Camille may construct in a short span of time. We will need Derek’s ability if he has grown as powerful as you say.”

Elena didn’t doubt Derek’s ability. She worried about whether or not she could help him escape Old Kingdom with Niall’s spell in place.

“Let us hope Camille has survived the virus. She is a recluse. Perhaps she avoided exposure.”

Deirdre knocked on the turquoise door. After a moment, it swung soundlessly open.

The room inside appeared empty, lit by a single candle. Which didn’t provide much light, because the home was a windowless cave. Most of the light poured in from the open door.

Deirdre stepped inside and slipped a hand beneath her tunic to her arms belt, the only sign she was on her guard. “Camille? It is Deirdre. Are you here?”

A smallish Fae with long raven hair stepped out from the shadows, her body clothed in a flowing red dress. Her pale porcelain skin and bright blue eyes glowed even in the dim candlelight.

Elena had never seen a black-haired Fae—didn’t even know they existed.

After a moment’s hesitation, Camille stepped forward and grasped her friend’s hand. “Deirdre,” she said in a relieved tone, her voice light and feminine. “I apologize for the rude greeting. Many of the sick have come, insisting I take them or a beloved one somewhere safe. If I knew of such a place and had the power to move everyone, I would gladly do it. Unfortunately…. ” She shrugged sadly. “Instead, I have maintained a distance.”

Camille looked at Elena with curiosity. “Whom have you brought?”

Deirdre placed her hand on Elena’s shoulder. “This is Theodora’s daughter. My niece, Elena.”

Camille’s gaze was about as penetrating as Derek’s, and seemed equally capable of reading Elena. More so, because a warm heat swept past Elena’s exposed skin, as if Camille was actually reading her.

“She is not Halven—nor fully Fae.”

“No,” Deirdre said. “Elena drank from the Ancient Allon. Her powers have increased. She has the ability to rid us of the disease.”

“Yes,” Camille said. “I see that she can. Come inside and tell me what has happened.”

They quickly informed Camille of what had transpired inside Emain and Tirnan over the past several days, and why they required her assistance to enter the kingdoms.

“I’d also like your help finding my friend,” Elena added.

If Camille could sniff out power sources like a hound, she could find another Halven with Elena’s unusual strength—not quite Fae, not quite Halven, as Camille had pointed out.

Right now, Derek could be anywhere. He might have managed to hide from Niall and his guards in the woods, but considering the king’s determination to have Derek, she feared the worst.

“I believe I could detect him, but we must move closer. We’ll travel to the border and see if he remains where you left him. The Fates River that separates the two kingdoms runs downstream from Old Kingdom into New Kingdom. If we travel to Old Kingdom first, we can pour the cure into the fast-moving river. It will not take long to reach the Newlanders. First, though, let’s go to the Sunland lake; it isn’t too far from here.”

Camille changed her clothes into standard Fae garb and led them to a lake so vast Elena couldn’t see to the other side.

Elena had made a batch of highly concentrated virucide to have on hand, but it wouldn’t be enough for all of the lakes. For now, they collected a large batch of allon leaves from the forest nearby and threw them in the lake. Elena transmuted the leaves into a virucide with the same properties as the sap in the jar she carried, and created a heavy breeze along the surface to mix the cure with the rest of the water.

Afterward, they ran to the Sunland-Old Kingdom border, making quick time now that Deirdre was healthy.

Camille paced the edge of the creek. “Your friend Derek is not here. I sense a large magical flame near a power source similar to Elena’s in the location of the castle. It seems Derek is with his father, the king. No one else possesses that much strength. It will be very difficult to reach Derek if he is already with the king.”

Anger replaced fear. No way was Elena leaving Derek with Niall after what the Fae had done to him.

Her limbs tingled and a rush of power bloomed at her fingertips. “I won’t leave without Derek.”

Camille and Deirdre exchanged a look. “We can try to get to him,” Camille said and paced some more. “It is risky, but I could create a portal to the castle. Do you remember a quiet section—someplace shielded from view?”

Elena considered it for a moment. “The laboratory. They don’t use it, but it’s right in the middle of the castle.”

“Perfect,” Camille said. “They’ll sense intruders, thanks to the Presence Charm, but the charm will wear off quickly with us in the heart of the castle and surrounded by other Fae. My portal will throw them off further. They’ll search the borders and static portals before they search the castle. By then, the charm will have ceased working, and they will assume the intruders became lost in the woods or are off the land. They may consider the possibility that we entered the castle without being discovered, but the chance of success in doing that is very low. Most would never try, and they know this.” Camille smiled. “Few in our land possess my ability. They will not be expecting it.”

She peered across to the Old Kingdom’s trees. “I sense the position of the castle by the king’s energy and the number of Fae in the area. There is a pattern in my mind that gives me an idea of perimeters, but I will need more information if I am to take us to the abandoned laboratory.”

In the dirt, Elena sketched a rough diagram of where she thought the lab was located within the castle.

Camille nodded. “Very good. I’ll use this to get us inside the walls of the room.”

“This map probably isn’t very accurate. What if your portal is off and we wind up in the wrong place?”

She gave a light shrug. “We run.”

Nice. A solid plan. It sounded like something Elena would throw together, and this was no time to improvise.

“Any way we attempt to access the castle, we risk failure,” Deirdre said gently. “Camille has two, perhaps three portals within her. After that, she’ll need significant recovery time before formulating another. The portals she creates are not like the ones you are used to, Elena. They are transient—good for a minute, at most. Once she forms one, we will need to move quickly.”

So, only two or three one-minute portals that needed to be in the exact right place, or they were all screwed.

No problem.