CHAPTER 194

"I don't understand," she said as he pulled several out and handed them over to her. "What are we doing?"

"We need this," he informed her. "You need to have silver for powerful earth magic. It's why my kind love it so much, it's a powerful catalyst. Same applies to dragons, especially of the earth variety. With enough of it, I can help you fix your wing."

"You really think so?" She looked at the coins in her hand, afraid to let herself hope.

"I know so," he stated matter-of-factly. "My leg got broken off once by a hunter who shot me. I used a silver dollar from the late eighteen hundreds, and...oh no!"

Emery's wings flapped frantically as he dug deeper into his stash. The little imp was making choking sounds as he tossed coins onto the ground. Abella picked one up and saw that the silver on it was tarnished badly. The profile on the coin was almost nonexistent, as if it had been rubbed away.

"What's wrong?" she asked, but he threw a few more coins out. These ones weren't just tarnished, but looked as if acid had etched away their features, leaving behind dark pits.

"It's all gone bad!" he declared, then crawled into the hole and grunted. When he scooted back out, he threw a blackened stone on the ground. Abella picked it up and recognized it immediately. She had pulled it out of the head of the serpent from the lake.

"Silver tarnishes, but it doesn't go bad," she said, then held the stone up to the light. It felt like weeks ago that she had pulled it from the serpent's head. She could have sworn that the stone had been a ruby.

"Something happened, it's..." Emery went quiet, his gaze locked on something in the hole. "Oh. Oh my."

Curious what had his attention, Abella flattened her body to the floor to see what he was looking at. The inside panel of the wall went further back than she realized, revealing the size of Emery's secret stash. The coins inside looked as if the silver had been stripped away from them, and she could see where it had gone.

In the middle of the stash, as if sitting in a nest, was a metallic blue egg with silver swirls running along its outside edges.

"Where did you find this?" she asked.

Emery folded his hands between his legs and sat down. "After you destroyed the others," he whispered. "I was there when Velvet was laying them, in case she needed help. Sometimes her mom needed help. She hid this one in the glove box, and I snuck it out when Dana started working on the car."

"I see." She reached toward the egg, but Emery blocked her hand.

"Please." He shook his head fervently. "Don't break it. I was only going to grab enough coins to help you, you weren't supposed to see it. It's all that I have left of her, I--"

"Emery." She touched him calmly on the head, her eyes on the egg. It looked vastly different from the clutch she had shattered. "I owe Velvet my life. The least I can do is ensure that her legacy lives on."

He bit his lip, then let out a sigh and stepped aside.

Abella reached into the stash and picked the egg up and held it gently in both hands. Pain blossomed in her chest as she held the egg against her chest and mourned once more for the dead.

Mike sat on the shore of the Dreamscape, his eyes out on the horizon. Spectral arms clutched him from behind as Tink sat on his lap. He had wrapped his arms around the goblin and was using her as a head rest while Cecilia hugged him tight.

The others sat on the beach with him, but nobody spoke. A gloom had settled over the island, one that pressed down so hard that it threatened to squeeze out any remaining joy. The technicolors were all gray now, and moved about sluggishly where the ocean gripped the sand.

His right arm was smoky. The few times he had contemplated it, it kept blurring itself out as if being censored on a show.

Dark shadows watched him with angry eyes from beneath the waves. He wasn't entirely certain what they were, but he could feel their anger whenever they breached the surface and hissed. Were they a manifestation of his wrath? Or perhaps something far more sinister that had been waiting to catch him if he fell from grace?

"That's a good way to think of them."

The voice startled him, and he looked over his shoulder to see the woman from the cabin standing a few yards away. She was barefoot in the sand, but he noticed that she wasn't leaving any footprints.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Mourning, like you." She smiled sadly and he noticed that she was wearing black. Her hair flowed behind her, blowing by a non-existent breeze. "The forest grieves for its fallen child."

"So you're the forest."

"Nope." She winked. "It's far more complicated than that."

"Dare I ask?"

"You really shouldn't." She squinted at the creatures below the water. "If you hadn't heeded my advice when you did, you would probably be dead. Or worse, with them."

"What are they?"

"Trouble." She summoned a bow from the air and pulled back on its string. A golden arrow appeared moments before she fired. It streaked through the air and pierced one of the creatures the moment it surfaced. It let out a screech of pain, causing the water around it to turn black and then freeze. "There isn't a word for them. They're scavengers, hovering at the boundaries of reality while patiently waiting for their next meal. Most of the time they feed on fear, sustaining themselves on sheer terror alone. But you? You're not just a meal, not anymore. You may be a means for them to cross over into this realm, which is something you must never allow to happen."