Beyond the Fairy Gate

Chapter 37

Chapter 37

Nyline

Nyline sat in one of the large trees that were by the barracks, her legs going out across the burley branch that she'd found large enough to hold her entire butt and have her legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. In one hand, was her mp3 player, the other hand held one of her headphones as she spun it around her fingers. She scowled at it as if it were the headphones that had irritated her somehow. She'd been sitting in this exact spot for over an hour and it was starting to ride on her nerves. Not a single person had even had the forethought to come out this far to even attempt to find her. They were all chasing their tails and weren't even getting close to where she actually was.

Her fingers stopped spinning the ear bud as she sighed and looked around again, already knowing that there was no one. If she were being honest with herself, she was disappointed, but not just normal upset. She was overly disappointed. Why? Well, mainly because everyone had made it seem like this would be fun and it would be a challenge and if it had been either of those then she wouldn't have been sitting in a damned tree for an hour. Someone, anyone, should have found her by now. Yet, there hadn't even been the slight brush of magic as anyone had tried to attempt to find her by her aether, and them just wildly running around, like many of them were doing now, which seemed pointless to her.

Part of her wondered if they were even trying, and she'd actually believe that if she hadn't heard how cocky most of them had been originally. Now, they seemed out of their depths. Even some of them were grumbling about the Queen giving them too hard of a task, asking how they were even supposed to keep up when she'd just vanished.

Originally, when she'd first used her movement skill and started the whole game, she'd thought that they'd all race after her, or start spreading their aether out in search of where she'd gone. Reasons why she hadn't originally gone very far. Simply landing on the obstacle course, dropping herself into a very light version of her shadow skill that just masked her appearance. However, instead of running around and trying to find her right away, almost no one had moved. Pallsana and Omega had turned and walked away from the crowd as soon as she'd vanished. However, she knew that was more so that they didn't get bombarded by questions. For a long time, there had only been silence as almost every eye in the group had just stared at where she'd been. Then a heartbeat or two later, noise had erupted, inside and out as everyone started exclaiming. The thoughts and questions had ricocheted around in her mind like a pin ball as everyone asked the same questions over and over again, only to and from different minds.

There had been a few sets of mates that were focused on the task at hand and not simply complaining at this point. She'd heard Jason and his mate speaking softly as they tried to come up with ways to find her. She caught snippets of their conversation talking about last night, and how she'd done the exact same thing. However, without Gabriel to at least point them in the right direction they were at a slight loss as to how they could find her.

A soft wave of aether lapped at the sides of her mind and brought her back to the present as she sharpened her senses and listened, feeling her heart rate slowly increase at the thought that someone had finally found her and maybe, just maybe, the real game was going to begin? She'd hoped as she sat up just a tiny bit straighter.

"I found her," Nyline slouched as disappointment washed through her as she heard the king's soft inner voice.

"Good," Alice sighed, "Is she still within the boundaries?"

"Yes, over by the barracks."

"Well, that's something, we were starting to wonder if she'd just left." Alice spoke sounding annoyed. The tree swayed slightly as Nicholas landed on a branch that was a tad higher than hers and looked down at her as he braced himself on another branch.