Page 4 of The Ruins of the Heartless Fae
The walls of the apartment suddenly felt too small—too crowded, toosuffocating. It would take less than a minute for the room to fill with guards, swords, and charged magic.
They were here for her.
And they weren’t normal men. They were the freakingRoyal Guards. The Royal Guards were too prestigious, too busy, too pretentious to have anything to do with a normal citizen. If they were here in this rundown apartment complex, they were definitely here for her—for a criminal.
Blood pounded in her ears, her chest tightened painfully and her breaths came in shallow inhales. She had to use her magic. It was the only way to escape. The only way to make it out alive, because if the Royal Guards caught her, she was dead.
She squeezed her hands together to keep them from quivering. But what if they weren’t here for her? If she used her magic, she would be irrefutably outing herself as a fae.
“Ma’am, we’re here to ask some questions,” the voice called again, sterner this time.
There was no time to think. Kolfinna unlatched her window and threw it open. Mana pulsed beneath her fingers and she sighed in relief at the familiar feel of life pumping through her veins. Almost automatically, the smell of damp moss and wet tree trunks filled the air, and gnarled, brown roots, infused with her mana, shot through the cobbled streets. The men below yelped in surprise as Kolfinna tangled the roots around them, flicking her wrists to manipulate nature and bring a thick, woody tree root in front of her. She hoisted herself up on the windowsill just as the door behind her burst open. Over her shoulder, two Royal Guards filled the room, their mouths open in a shout and their ornamental swords drawn.
She leapt onto the root and her right foot slipped, the abrupt motion awkward for her stiff ankle. Kolfinna’s arms flailed and she almost plummeted down five stories before righting herself by grabbing the windowsill behind her.
“Hey—” one of the Royal Guards inside her room shouted.
Kolfinna released the windowsill and dragged her hand across the stones below it, directing her mana to control it. The Royal Guards in her room drew closer to the window, but before they could reach it, she forced the stone wall to stretch and seal it shut. She then raised the root and latched onto it, controlling it so it brought her closer to the ground, while simultaneously wrapping the two Royal Guards on the lower level with a cage of unrelenting weeds, thorns, and roots. They swung their swords to cut down the plants, but they were quickly engulfed in her nature manipulation.
She could hear their muffled shouts as she lowered herself with the help of the root. Her apartment was located on the top floor, so she weaved more vines to crack through the ground and assist her so she wouldn’t fall on the hard cobbled street. They came beneath her feet at her command and she stumbled to the ground, unable to find her balance because of her right leg. The two Royal Guards she had tangled up were now struggling against the vines, but it was only a matter of minutes before they freed themselves. Kolfinna bolted in the opposite direction of them. Were there more? Or only those four? She needed to reach the cusp of the city and disappear into the woods, where her magic was the strongest.
Her leg painfully dragged behind her with every stride she took. Fear lodged into the back of her throat. She had somehow run away from those four, but there was no way she could defeat them in a fair fight. They were the Royal Guards! The Royal Guards never accepted anyone below a yellow ranking.
A water spear whizzed past her cheek and grazed a strand of her pitch-black hair. Over her shoulder, one of the guards she had entangled had freed half of his body and now struggled against the vines, his hand outstretched and his dark brown eyes set on her as water settled around his fingers.
A water elemental user.
It wasn’t the worst matchup against her, but he was a Royal Guard, and if he wanted to do damage, he definitely could.
Kolfinna raised her hand and caused the weeds and shrubs to entomb him once more. Her magic came back to her easily, despite being dormant over the past year. Using mana to create magic was like a muscle—the more practice and training one did with it, the stronger it was, and the more time one didn’t use it, the rustier and more strained it became. Despite the ease with which it came to her, it drained faster and less efficiently than in the past.
She rounded the corner of the alleyway, only to be met with half a dozen Royal Guards slouching in wooden chairs on the outdoor patio of the neighborhood tavern.
“Hey, it’s her!” one of them shouted.
She cursed softly, her mana pervading into the pavement below her as she raised her hands to mold the ground like she saw in her mind. She imagined a wall rising between her and her pursuers, and in a split second, the stones groaned beneath her feet and shot up in uneven blocks to stave them off. Kolfinna’s good foot pounded the pavement, broken up by the dragging of her right foot as she took off away from them.
Why were there so many guards?
The early morning citizens pushed away from her as she sprinted down the thickening streets; they clung to the buildings and watched, ashen, at the flurry of motion she created. The city that had once kept her safe and hidden, now shook with her uneven gait, the city-dwellers forming a path for her as they stared in horror.
They knew. Her earth manipulation had shown them what she was—a fae.
A heartless, evil fae.
Would she even be able to run away? Her right foot was killing her and she was slowing down already.
Kolfinna couldn’t keep running in the open like this. She needed to flee into the alleyways and find a way to the edge of the forest. But that would take time, and she most certainly would have to engage in battle. How long could she last against them?
An ear-screeching bang followed behind Kolfinna. Behind her, a woman had punched through her stone wall; the other guards swarmed from the hole she created.Well, dang, Kolfinna gritted her teeth.They’ve got an Enhancer?Yellow? Purple? Her power level had to be at purple.
The Royal Guards wouldn’t let her step foot into the forest, she realized as she was driven deeper into the heart of the city. People were just starting to enter the early morning streets, and unlike the streets by her apartment, they didn’t keep out of her path. In fact, they didn’t seem to register what she was, or why she was running, until they noticed the growth of nature behind her. Kolfinna raised vines and walls behind her with every turn to obstruct her pursuers’ path, and the people who had just woken up, unaware of the commotion, screamed and lurched out of her way.
“A fae!” someone to her right screamed.
She ducked when someone threw something her way. Their faces blurred together, but she could still feel their fear and hatred for her.Kill her, they all seemed to say. She drove her vines to shove the bystanders away. They shouted when her plants lashed them to the ground. The last thing she needed was to get taken out by a bystander by accident. A flying pan to the face would stun anyone.
Kolfinna rounded the corner, gaze roving over the tall buildings and the blur of faces around her. The edge of the forest—where was it again? She couldn’t think straight past the adrenaline rush and even though she had walked through the capital streets hundreds of times, her sense of direction was gone. She felt like she was in an unfamiliar town running nowhere.
