Free Golden by Melissa de La Cruz Page A

sworn to protect. The clear-skied domain of Vallonis, the fabled
Blue
to which she had once fled, took shape in front of her, as if it were stitching itself together into reality from the air and light surrounding her.
    So beautiful, it made her heart ache, except her heart was already aching. In fact, it was pounding in her chest, her fear of what the Queen had told her ringing in her ears.
You will bring death to everyone around you, death to all whom you love. If you stay with him, you will destroy him.
    What did that mean?
    When she was a captive at MacArthur, when she had been a prisoner of the RSA, she had also been their favorite weapon.
    A weapon of darkness.
    A vessel of rage.
    Nineveh was the Queen of Vallonis and she had rejected Nat.
Vallonis has no protector,
the Queen had said.
Only a pretender.
    I’m a monster,
she had told Wes once.
    Weapon. Monster. Pretender.
    What am I? Who am I truly?
    But then she had no time to think about it further, because the land had become real, the dust flying and the rock crumbling and the green growth springing beneath her toes.
    And then she was there.
Here.
Standing straight and tall, back in the land that she had sworn to defend.
    â€œNat! Where are you?” She heard his voice before she saw him.
Wes.
She ran to him and flew into his arms.
    As impossible as it had once seemed, they had escaped the city of the White Temple. They were here, and they were saved.
    Nat blinked her eyes at the bright sun of the fabled land. Wes was by her side, shaking the melting snowflakes out of his hair, looking dazed but alive. He’d done it. She rested her head on his chest, listened to the steady beat of his heart.
    â€œLook,” he said.
    The rest of the team—down to every last one of the prisoners they had rescued—were not far away. Liannan was breathing deeply into a handful of honeysuckle. Shakes lay back in the solid dirt. Brendon tried to help Roark out of a tangle of brambles where he seemed to have fallen.
    The grass was soft under their feet, the air clean and fresh.
    It was too good to be true. She was home.
    Except it wasn’t much of a homecoming.
    â€œWhat have you done?” a horrified voice called out from the meadow. From every direction they emerged, from behind rolling hills, from the dense groves of exotic trees, from the tangled crags that lay in the distance, from the sky, riding winged horses. The sylphs of Vallonis came with their golden hair glowing and their robes of deep green and silver, shining in the pale morning light. They came with their mouths gaping, eyes wide, staring up at the sky. “What have you done?” they asked again. There was shock in the voices, horror.
    â€œNothing we could avoid,” Nat said.
    â€œWe just took a fall,” Wes added.
    â€œNo.” A violet-eyed elder shook his head and repeated the question, pointing upward. “What have you done?”
    They looked up.
    The portal had been ripped wide open. It was now a jagged black hole in the sky, extending all the way down to the earth—nearly as large and as wide as a tank that barreled through the woods, rolling over everything in its path.
    Exactly like a tank, in fact.
    Because Wes and Nat and the others hadn’t escaped the war. The war had followed them to the Blue. For years the RSA had sought a doorway into Vallonis, and now they had one.
    Soldiers blasted their guns, claiming victory. Above them, the horizon seethed with mechanical drones.
    Liannan screamed in horror.
    Wes cursed like the soldier he had been.
    â€œNat, I swear—I didn’t know! I didn’t mean to—” he cried, his voice already hoarse.
    Nat stared at the sky, at the battle that was brewing above them.
No, no, no, no. What have we done? Nineveh was right. I should have known. I should have realized what would happen. This is all my doing. The Queen was right. She was right about me.
    â€œWhere is Nineveh?” the same sylph