Page 130 of Avalon Tower
If only I could warn them, but he’s choking me again. Now, I can see myself through Caradoc’s eyes, lying on the floor, mouth opening and shutting, desperate for breath, eyes bulging. I’m seconds away from death. There’s nothing I can do. We failed.
A sudden sharp pain rips through me as my chest is pierced.
No. Not my chest. Caradoc’s. He gapes down, the blade of a sword protruding from his rib cage. His fingers go slack, and his jaw drops. A scarlet drop of blood falls from his lips as he slides off me.
I slam back into my own body, gasping for breath. Caradoc topples onto the floor, dead. Above me, Raphael stands, deathly white. Blood drips off his blade, and he kneels down. “Nia, are you alright?”
“Yeah.” My voice cracks, and it hurts to talk.
“We did it. Caradoc is dead.” Raphael slides his arm around my waist and helps me stand.
“No.” I lean into him, touching my bruised throat. “It doesn’t matter. I saw Caradoc’s mind. The Fey are launching an assault. They have an army of…of iron-impervious Fey.”
He falls silent for a moment. “That’s impossible.”
I rest against his powerful chest, my head spinning. “It’s not. Fey herbalists learned from human medicine, like immunotherapy. They developed a way to do it by exposing their soldiers to microscopic amounts of iron, then slowly increasing it. Thousands of Fey died in the process. That doesn’t matter to Auberon. He just wanted his army. And now he has it.”
I can hear Raphael’s heart racing.
“When are they attacking?”
I try to think back to what I’d heard in Caradoc’s mind, sifting through that wild flood of knowledge. “I think…in a week or two. But we just killed Caradoc, which means the veil will drop in a few hours. Auberon won’t hesitate. He’ll launch the invasion as soon as the veil is down. All we did was make it happen sooner. We need to inform Sir Kay. We need to prepare all our forces.”
Raphael’s fingers tighten on me. “MI-13’s invasion force is waiting in southeast France for the veil to fall. They’ll storm Fey France as soon as it happens.”
“That’s not where they need to be! We need to get our forces where the Fey are actually planning to attack.” I think back to the invasion plans, the maps. “They plan to land near Dover.”
“Are you sure?” Raphael curses under his breath. “It’s going to be hard to get them there in time. If what you say is true, the Fey army will already be on the northern coast of France. MI-13’s force is at the southern border, nowhere near Dover.”
“We need to alert the British military right now. They have to be ready and inform Dover. They need to evacuate the city for the battle that’s about to happen. Do you remember what happened in Brittany? Once the Fey arrived and the war started raging, they left nothing behind but ash. The streets were full of the dead.”
He scrubs a hand over his jaw. “We can send Ginevra with a message to MI-13’s invasion force, get them to change their course.”
I nod. “And we should ride as fast as we can back across the veil. We need to get to a working phone.”
I stare intently as Raphael argues on the phone. “Because I’m telling you,” he shouts, “she saw into his mind. She’s a telepath…no, she’s not just a new recruit. She has Avalon Steel. Captain? Captain?”
I hear the drone of a dial tone on the other side. They weren’t listening to us.
Both of us are grimy and exhausted. We rode all night. By the time we reached the veil, it was long gone.
Raphael’s first phone call was to MI-13’s command, to inform them of what we’d found. But all of MI-13’s agents were out in the field—some on the assassination task forces, the rest with Sir Kay’s invasion force.
His second phone call was to his contact in the British military.
“He wouldn’t listen,” he says, his expression grim. “Auberon’s plan worked spectacularly. As soon as the veil dropped, Auberon launched a fake assault on southern France. French and British military responded in force. The majority of the British army and navy are there now.”
“But that’s not where the iron-impervious Fey are going to strike,” I say, sickened.
“MI-13 are sending everyone to Dover, but the majority are too far off,” Raphael says. “We’re among the closest.”
I swallow. “We need to collect as many agents as we can and get to Dover as soon as possible.”
He nods. “Exactly what I was thinking.”
My stomach drops. There are tens of thousands of people in Dover, and they have no idea what is about to hit them.
CHAPTER 45