I drank in the sight of my best friend, his startling blue eye, hair as black as night. He had been my last thought before I plunged into the earth and I didn’t want to wait one more minute to tell him how much he meant to me. Without Braxton and all the Compasses I would be nothing. I threw myself into his arms and without hesitation he pulled me close. His strength surrounded me, and for the first time in hours I breathed easy. I gently nuzzled my face against the soft shirt he now wore.

“I couldn’t save you.” I heard the low anguish of his words, each ripped from his throat. “I had to watch as you plunged into the ground … I heard your bones break.” The anguish turned back into fury and suddenly his grip on me was even tighter. “I’m going to kill every last creature on this world, one by one, piece by piece.”

Jacob’s face popped up over the side of his taller brother. “This is the reason the fey abandoned Faerie. No longer is it safe for us here, and all the fighting is too much.”

I managed to wiggle my face free so I could see my fey best friend … and I needed to breathe – breathing was really important.

“Have you been here before?” I asked.

“Yes,” was all the reply I received.

Jacob was always quite cagey about this place and the tales of his people. We had few secrets in our pack; Jacob’s reticence was not of his own choice, they made all the fey swear oaths. He told us what he could, but it was very little.

“The doorway will be open in about a minute,” Louis said, sporting that half-grin cocky expression I associated with him. “I doubt you’re going to have time to go on a murderous spree, lizard, even on your best day.”

Braxton lifted his head from where he had it buried in my neck. I couldn’t see his expression, but I felt the sudden tension which filtered into his already hard body.

“Don’t push me today, Sparkie.”

Silence descended; Louis didn’t reply. I was surprised by his lack of smartass retort. Sparkie was a derogative name for magic users, for two reasons. Firstly, their spells often lit up in sparks, which alerted enemies to their location. It was as if they couldn’t be stealthy no matter how powerful they were, and shifters especially loved that weakness – mainly because magic was an unfair advantage, and our strength was in stealth. And secondly, according to our history tomes, most supernaturals descended from non-humans … probably fey. But magic users were different, they’d definitely evolved from humans, just one chromosome removed or something. They call humans their “spark of life,” and since we all considered humans to be … well, sort of beneath us, that riled the magic users.