Tears filled Holly’s eyes, spilling down her cheeks as the truth called to her from far away, across a misty chasm.
He is really going through with it.
“No,” she managed.
“There is no other way.”
Holly felt the hollowness of dread sour her stomach.
“Please, Arty,” she mumbled. “Let me…” but she said no more as her lips had turned to slack rubber.
Artemis nearly broke—she could see it in his mismatched eyes, one human, one fairy—but then he stepped away from the couch and breathed deeply.
“No. It has to be me, Holly. If the second lock is opened, then I will die, but if my plan succeeds, then all fairy souls inside the magical corona will be drawn to the afterlife. Fairy souls. My soul is human, Holly, don’t you see? I don’t intend to die, and there is a chance that I may survive. A small chance, granted. But a chance nonetheless.” Artemis rubbed his eye with a knuckle. “As a plan, it is far from perfect, but there is no alternative.”
Artemis made Holly comfortable with cushions. “I want you to know, my dear friend, that without you, I would not be the person I am today.” He leaned in close and whispered, “I was a broken boy, and you fixed me. Thank you.”
Holly was aware that she was crying because her vision was blurred, but she could not feel the tears on her face.
“Opal expects you and me,” she heard Artemis say. “And that is exactly what she will get.”
It’s a trap! Holly wanted to scream. You are walking into a trap.
But even if Artemis could hear her thoughts, Holly knew there was no turning him from his path. Just as she figured Artemis had left the room, he reappeared in her field of vision, a pensive look on his face.
“I know you can still hear me, Holly,” he said. “So I would ask one last favor of you. If Opal outwits me and I don’t make it out of that crater, I want you to tell Foaly to power up the chrysalis.” He leaned down and kissed Holly’s forehead. “And give him that from me.”
Then the teen genius left, and Holly could not even turn her head to watch him go.
Opal knew that the ranks of her warriors were depleted, but it didn’t matter; she had reached the final level of the Berserker Gate’s second lock. Satisfaction flushed through her system in a buzz that set sparks jumping from the tips of her ears.
“I need peace,” she called to whatever Berserker was guarding her flank. “If anyone comes close, kill them.” She hurriedly amended this order to: “Except the human Fowl, and his pet LEP captain. Do you understand me?”
Oro, in the body of Beckett, understood well enough, but he wished the fairy bonds gave him the wiggle room to suggest that their leader forget her personal vendetta. However, Bruin Fadda’s rules were explicit: Total obedience to the fairy who opens the gate.
We should hunt them down, he wanted to say. If we can capture these last few humans, then there is no need to open the second lock.
Opal turned and screamed into his face, spittle flying. “I said, do you understand me?”
“I do,” said Oro. “Kill anyone, except Fowl and the female.”
Opal tapped his cute button nose. “Yes, exactly. Mommy is sorry for raising her voice. Mommy is stressed beyond belief. You would not believe the brain cells Mommy is expending on this thing.”
Say Mommy one more time, thought Oro, and bonds or no bonds…
The most Oro could do against the grip of the fairy bond was scowl slightly and bear the stomach cramps, but the scowling had no effect, as Opal had already turned back to her task, a corona of black magic shimmering around her shoulders.
The final tumbler in Bruin Fadda’s enchanted lock was the warlock himself. Bruin had interred his own soul in the rock in much the same spiritual fashion as the Berserkers had been preserved in the ground.
As Opal ran her fingers over the rock’s surface, the druid’s face appeared in the stone, roughly etched but recognizable as elfin.
“Who wakes me from my slumbers?” he asked in a voice of rock and age. “Who calls me back from the brink of eternity?”
Oh, please, thought Opal. Who calls me back from the brink of eternity? Is this the kind of troll dung I am going to have to put up with just to wipe out humanity?
“It is I, Opal Koboi,” she said, playing along. “From the house of Koboi. High Queen of the fairy families.”
“Greetings, Opal Koboi,” said Bruin. “It is good to see the face of another fairy. So we are not yet extinct.”
“Not yet, mighty warlock, but even as we speak, the humans approach the gate. Haven is threatened. We must open the second lock.”
The rock ground like a millstone as Bruin frowned. “The second lock? That is indeed a momentous request. You would bear the guilt for this action?”
Opal used the penitent face she had developed for parole hearings. “I would bear it, for the People.”