Moonways pt 13

Lily sat at her kitchen table, a sort of morose numbness stealing into her limbs, making her head heavy. Dusk sat opposite, his face sunk in shadows cast by his falling hair and the dank, miserable weather outside.
"What's going to happen?" Her words fell into the silence and sank heavily.
"I don't know. This is... not how things are supposed to be. The Balance... I should have seen it. I should have realised." Was that regret in Dusk's tone? It was difficult to say. For a moment, his eyes wavered blue, then green, then darkest brown, and his skin flickered across milky paleness to a weathered tan. "We should get going."
"Can we still look for the Moonways in this weather?"
Something like pity pulled at the corners of the Fey's mouth for a moment. "No, I'm sorry. We can hope that the weather clears up by tonight."
Lily felt the apprehension like a knocking in some distant hallway of her heart. It was muffled by too little sleep and too much emotion.
"Fine. What is it that's so urgent?"
"We should get you better prepared for crossing the--" He paused suddenly, head jerking to the side at a sudden, soft sound. Lily felt a tickle behind the back of her eyes, as though feathery fingers were brushing along the inside of her head. They seemed to be searching for something. She shut them out stubbornly, but they were persistent...
"Lily. Listen to me. You need to go to Arthur's house. Do you remember how to get there? Go there and stay there." Every muscle in the Fey's body was tight with tension. His voice was calm but pitched low, and his movements were slow and deliberate as he stood and seemed to draw a sword from some hidden place inside his jacket. Lily stared at the blade in fascination - it seemed to be made of some sort of black, shiny stone that glittered and flickered with silver fire deep in its heart. Just like starlight... she thought in a daze as the world erupted in slow motion around her.

She was thrown backwards as the table shattered into splinters. There was a woman, impossibly beautiful, where her kitchen table used to be - I liked that table, a stupid voice protested weakly inside her malfunctioning mind - and the beautiful woman was holding short swords in either hand, turning towards Dusk with the grace of a ballet dancer turning en pointe. She had long, long hair that flowed and curled in its own liquid gravity, ignoring the laws of physics to float and swirl mesmerisingly about her head. It was a thousand gorgeous shades of green, from the deepest forest shade to the palest new spring shoots, and it framed a face that was like the morning sun, filling Lily's limbs with warmth and joy and... but there was something wrong with the apparition floating before her. It was the eyes. They were black, completely black, and as they turned on her the smile below them widened and the teeth...

Then the spell was broken and Lily scrambled backwards, Time rushing back into the room as the two Fey leapt simultaneously into action. Twin swords, cast in finest rippling metal, crashed into Dusk's strange blade and rang like a melody of bells. Dusk's expression froze in calm determination as he whirled around his attacker, the singing of their weapons creating discordant music that they danced to in perfect time. Though the new Fey had seemed to fix upon Lily in that one impossibly long moment, she was clearly interested in Dusk now. Her mouth opened again and she hissed, a long, forked tongue flickering between her extended fangs. Suddenly she didn't seem so beautiful any more. Frantically, Lily grabbed her backpack in one hand and shoes in the other, and burst through the front door into the rain outside.

She ran like she had never run before, the road beneath her feet disappearing in great swathes. From grey mist, into grey mist. Nothing into nothing.... The strange thought echoed down the halls of Lily's panicking mind and soothed her. She held onto the idea of darkness, of nothing, of sinking into cool depths where no sensation touched her and no fear could reach her. After a while there was an insistence she couldn't ignore - a frantic thumping that seemed to fill her entire body. Reality rushed into her darkness and she realised it was her heart beating and she was still running.

All at once she collapsed onto the ground, heaving and gasping for breath as her starved lungs shot agony through every corner of her body. For a horrible moment she thought her heart might burst and she clutched her chest desperately but then there was heat beneath her fingers and it settled back into an almost regular rhythm. With a creeping suspicion, she glanced inside her shirt. The snake mark had darkened a little more - it was about a third of the way full around its circumference. It had barely been a quarter full when she'd looked at it that morning. Did it save her? Was that how it worked? She stood up, realised it was still raining, and looked around. She had probably covered about two thirds of the distance into the city - about ten kilometres. No wonder she was hurting. She took a glance at the soles of her feet and winced. They were shredded from the assault.

Gingerly Lily slipped her shoes on and started trudging onward. Could she remember where the old man Arthur's house was? Probably. It was in that long street full of terraces... not too far, she realised, and turned toward it. The rain soaked deep down into her, cold filling her bones, until she was chattering and shivering. Her thoughts swung obsessively between Dusk and the terrifying reptilian woman and Mona and the mysterious Percontors. They had somehow imprisoned Dusk's partner in a dreamland, and they had her sister. Had they sent an assassin to take out their other opposition in the remaining Keeper of Laws?

Lily had struggled to understand the convoluted laws that bound the Fey, but weren't the Keepers of Law important? She supposed they were just positions, not people. They could be replaced, in the same way that the King and Queen had been replaced. But that hadn't exactly worked out well, as far as she could see. Now maniacal fairy priests were trying to destroy the world, and somehow her sister's blood would make that happen, because she was a bastard half fairy whose tainted bloodline was against their laws. Hot determination settled in next to the rain in her bones and she stopped shivering. Whatever happened, she would save Mona. She was all that mattered.