The Faerie War by rachel morgan Read Free Book Online

and I look up to see someone pointing behind me. I swing around, my fingers already prickling with the instinct to fight. Protect. But I don’t see Draven’s faeries. I see a group of reptiscillas running, stumbling, crying. Many of them are children, the younger ones carried by adults, the older ones dragged along. I see blood and scratches and dirt.
    A girl falls onto her knees and drags herself out of the way. People start to gather around her, but not before I notice the colorful ribbons in her hair. I run toward her, skidding to a halt and dropping onto my knees beside her. Natesa has a knife sticking out of her chest, just below her right shoulder. A knife that glitters like fiery golden stars.
    Someone shouts for a healer.
    Someone else screams that we’re under attack.
    “No,” Natesa gasps. “They . . . they stopped. They saw the children and . . . they backed off.”
    “She’s right,” says a man clutching Natesa’s hand. Her father? “They started attacking, but then they disappeared. We ran the final distance to get here, but no one followed.” A woman beside him weeps as she clutches a young boy to her side.
    I feel the crowd moving behind me. A second later Jamon is on his knees next to me. “We need a healer right now. Somebody find a healer!” He touches the knife but doesn’t remove it.
    “Can’t you heal her yourself?” I say. “You know, with your magic.”
    “What? No. We can’t do that. Natesa,” he says to her, “everything’s going to be okay.” He touches her face, then pulls back and looks up. “Where’s the healer?” he yells.
    “Let me do it,” I say. I place both my hands on her bare arm and get ready to release magic into her.
    “What are you doing?” Jamon pushes my hands away.
    “Giving her my magic. It’ll help her body to—”
    “You can’t do that! Your magic isn’t the same as ours. You don’t know what it will—”
    “Move aside.” A woman with white ribbons twisted through her two thick braids steps through the rapidly parting crowd. Behind her is a man with strips of white fabric criss-crossing over his right arm. In his hands is a long, rectangular board. He sets the board on the ground, and he and the woman use their magic to move Natesa onto it. Swiftly, they lift the board and head down one of the corridors. Jamon and Natesa’s family follow closely behind.
    I look around and see more reptiscillas with white fabric or ribbons wrapped around parts of their bodies attending to various people in the room. No one seems to be as badly injured as Natesa, though. Guards run in and out of the room, and healers start sending patched-up people to find their new houses. I join the back of the queue again to find out where Farah’s living while I try to wrap my mind around the most puzzling question of the day: Why did Draven’s faeries back off instead of capturing every reptiscilla they could get their hands on?

 
     
     
     

     
     
     
    Farah’s new house in the mountain is so small the two of us have to share a bedroom. It’s okay. I mean, it’s not like she snores or anything. It’s just a little weird lying awake at night and hearing someone else breathing from across the room.
    The next morning, I tell her I’m going to spend a few hours familiarizing myself with the tunnel system. In reality, I need time alone to figure out some of my guardian skills.
    I’ve been told what guardians can do—they have special weapons that only appear when they need them—but no one can tell me how it works. Weapons appeared for me when I fought Jamon and when I protected him, but I have no idea how that happened. My body just went ahead and did it without giving my brain time to figure it out.
    I’m also told that guardians are fit and strong and fast and all these other things that I’m so not anymore after spending weeks cramped Underground with barely any exercise. But since I no longer have the status of Major Threat amongst the