A Fire in the Night

Chapter 2 - The Portal

Nehemia and her mother were falling through the sky at impossible speeds. Nehemia wailed her arms around like it would somehow slow her fall but failed. 

She looked over to her mother who was unconscious but shifting between her human and fae forms. Something must have happened to her when she fell through the portal. Maybe the music was affecting her somehow. 

 Nehemia yelled out to her mother but even if Aelin were conscious, she wouldn't be able to hear Nehemia over the wind whipping past their ears. 

But that's when Nehemia saw it. Out in the distance stood two fae. One female with brown hair and a male with... wings? Nehemia had never seen someone with wings before. His hair was black as night but that was all she could make out. 

He lifted his arm out to them, as if in greeting, but she soon realized that that wasn't what he was doing. A wave of cool, dark magic washed over them and it slowly lowered them to the ground. 

Once Nehemia was safely on her feet, she rushed to her mother. 

Aelin was still unconscious and she was in her human form. 

"Mom?" Nehemia said shaking Aelin by her shoulders. She wouldn't wake up. 

"Mom, please wake up! I don't know what to do!" 

Nehemia was almost about to cry, she could feel the tears swelling in her eyes. But she remembered what her mother had thought of her. 

Whenever you're in a situation you don't know what to do, you always stay calm. Panicking helps nothing and will only worsen your situation. 

Nehemia looked around and gathered certain details about her surroundings. The trees were different. The sky was darker, it was mid-day when they vanished from Oakwald forest but it was pretty much dusk now. 

Nehemia also felt the feeling that she was being watched. She looked around but couldn't see anything.

She averted her gaze back to her mom to try and get her to wake up again but that was when she felt something trying to penetrate into her mind. 

It was like a claw scraping down the shields that she brought up the moment she felt it. 

Her mother had thought her from a young age how to shield her mind from fae with those powers. She had told her that she had bad experiences with them in the past but wouldn't explain anything further. 

The claw was persistent though, trying so hard to get past Nehemia's shields. She grabbed twin daggers from her mother's belt and hid them beneath her sleeves. 

"If you want to get into my mind," Nehemia said, standing up and looking around for the person responsible, "then do it to my face!" 

No one emerged from the forest. It was silent.

"Come out you coward! How scared you just be to face an 8-year-old girl! Show your face!" 

Finally, someone came out from the tree line. It was that same fae from before. The winged one. The female followed closely behind. 

Nehemia raised her daggers and got into a fighting position. At that, the fae took a pause but soon recovered and began walking forward. 

"We do not wish to harm you or your friend," the male said. I didn't trust him. He looked like night, he looked of evil, he looked of the Valg, but more than that, he looked exactly like the woman her mother had been captured by...Maeve. 

She obviously knew he wasn't her, but she couldn't shake the idea from her head. Especially since whoever he was seemed to have the same mind-reading and controlling capabilities.  

"She's not my friend, she's my mother! And if you value your life, you will stay back!"

They both smiled at that. I decided then that I didn't like either of them. How dare they underestimate me and my mother like that. 

"You are a very interesting young girl," the male said, "but as I said, we have no intentions of harming either of you. If I did, neither of you would be alive." 

Nehemia paused at that. It was true, the male did seem very powerful. She could sense it radiating off of him. Nehemia glanced at her mother still laying there on the grass. 

Wake up wake up wake up... 

All she wanted was for her to wake up. 

The male took another step closer and Nehemia wasted no time. She threw the dagger with lethal accuracy right for his head, but he was fast. Too fast. 

He dodged it easily and it landed flat in a tree trunk behind him.

"Impressive," he said. "Who thought you that?" He said with a smile. 

Nehemia was about to answer when she heard that familiar, powerful voice coming from behind her. 

"I did," her mother said before standing up, unsheathing Goldryn, and shoving Nehemia behind her.