Destined by Aprilynne Pike

Author:Aprilynne Pike
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-04-27T16:16:32+00:00

“Are they . . . dead?” Chelsea asked after a long spell of silence.

“That one in Spring was very, very dead,” David said.

“So, what?” Laurel asked, staring out on the carnage. “It’s over?”

“What’s going on?” Yeardley said, bursting onto the balcony amid the tense silence. He was holding a cloth sack in one hand – his kit, Laurel realised. “Why did the fighting stop?”

“It’s hard to say,” Tamani replied, scanning the grounds. “They look dead, but the Goddess only knows why. I don’t trust this.”

“What’s that?”

A blur of motion on the green hillside caught everyone’s eyes – several figures were making their way up the path from the Gate Garden.

“More trolls?” someone asked from the crowd.

Laurel watched the approaching figures for a moment and found it suddenly hard to breathe. “It’s Klea,” Laurel said softly. “She’s got Yuki with her.”

“I don’t understand,” Yeardley said.

“The Wildling,” Tamani said. “The one we were trying to figure out last time we were here; she’s a Winter.”

Katya gasped. “Are they coming here?”

“I don’t know,” Tamani said. “If not, then they’re headed for the palace. I’m not sure which is worse. Either way, we’re too late. This is why we needed Jamison – to fight her off.”

“She’s hostile?” Yeardley asked, a subtle fear filling his voice.

“It’s hard to know for sure,” Tamani said.

Laurel didn’t think it was hard to know at all; Yuki was the only reason the trolls were even in Avalon, so that made her responsible for the death and destruction around them.

“But she is the puppet of an exiled Autumn – Callista,” Tamani said.

This time the horror in Yeardley’s expression wasn’t subtle at all. “Callista? That’s . . .” He turned towards the Autumn faeries gathered on the balcony. “We’ve got to get out of here. Now!”

“We can’t just leave,” Laurel said, following Yeardley as he threw himself back from the balcony railing. “We’re barricaded here. It’s probably the safest place in Avalon right now.”

Yeardley stopped short. “And just how long,” he said in a soft voice that chilled her to the core, “do you think it will take a Winter faerie to remove a barricade made completely of wood?”

“He’s right,” Tamani said from over Laurel’s shoulder. “We should run. There’s a pretty dense forest to the west – there’s an exit that way, right?”

“There is,” Yeardley said.

“Gather whoever you can and head that direction. Without Jamison, I – I don’t know what else we can do.”

Laurel hated hearing Tamani sound so defeated. All day he had fought trolls and won, and now two faeries were enough to destroy his spirits.

“Right. You there, run to the west barricade,” Yeardley ordered a dark-eyed faerie Laurel thought she recognised from a more advanced class. “They need to take it down immediately!” Then, turning back to Tamani, he said, “Some of the staff are with the sprouts upstairs, and you saw how many students are gathered in the dining hall. Everyone else is busy securing their experiments and—”

“Their what?” Tamani asked.

“Their experiments,” Yeardley repeated, with no indication that he considered this less than completely rational.

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