"I don't understand why the hell you did that." Xenia hissed at Bloom softly. The girls had walked out onto the balcony, not wanting Stella to overhear them. "Since when do you get to make decisions on behalf of the group?"
"They were going to kill her, Xenia.. I couldn't..." Bloom gulped, "I couldn't let that happen."
"We could have taken them." Musa said bitterly.
Bloom whipped around to face Musa, her red hair trailing through the air as she did so. "Could have taken them?" Bloom scoffed. "We're a bunch of amateurs!" Bloom threw her hands up in the air exasperatedly. "To think we could battle three witches who are clearly more powerful and experienced than we are?" She shook her head. "We should have listened to Flora earlier. We should have gone straight to the headmistress. We are in way over our heads here, guys."
"Speak for yourself, Bloom." Musa bit back. "Just because you don't know how to use your magic doesn't mean we don't."
Bloom tried to hide the hurt from her face.
Flora bit her lip. "We didn't know that we would be facing those witches." She wrapped an arm around Bloom, who didn't let herself show any weakness by returning Flora's hug, but man, she really needed that. "If it's any consolation," Flora continued, pulling away and squeezing Bloom's shoulder, "I would have done the same thing. I would have chosen to save our friend."
Xenia sighed, and softened her gaze towards Bloom. "I'm not mad at your choice, I'm frustrated that you made it on your own." Xenia gulped, "Stella could have died. The odds of all five of us getting out of there were slim. There's no way to know whether or not the Trix were bluffing."
Musa crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow. "The what?"
Xenia shrugged. "The Trix. I don't know, it's what I've been calling them." She waved her hand through the air absentmindedly. "I know why you did it, Bloom. The outcome would have been bad no matter what we did."
Bloom bit her lip to keep the tears from spilling over. "So now what... Will Stella be exiled from Solariea?"
"Not if we can get it back." a voice said behind her.
Bloom whipped around and found herself face to face with the crown princess of Solariea herself. Stella had changed and showered, her hair wrapped up in a towel and a robe around her body. Bloom eyed that nasty red and purple mark around her neck, which was already beginning to fade.
"If we get it back before anyone learns of my..." Stella took a deep breath to steady herself. "failure..." She choked out, "then I can still claim my right to the throne."
Bloom didn't say anything, she just looked at Stella, who refused to meet her eyes.
Flora nodded. "And... should we ask for help from Faragonda?"
"No." Stella snapped. "Nobody can know about this..." She stared down all of the faeries one by one. "To the grave."
They exchanged a glance, and then nodded. "To the grave." Bloom said.
Stella turned to go back into the suite. "We leave tonight."
"Tonight?" Xenia said, taking a step forward. "Stella, it's too soon. You're not even recovered yet.."
Stella stopped walking, but made no move to turn around. "Sun-Weaver is connected to my magic, the more they wield it, the more it will drain me. We have to go now before they use too much. And if they're planning to lay claim to the Solarien throne, we have to get there before that, too. So we leave tonight." Stella strutted into her bedroom and shut the door.
...
Bloom plopped herself down on the couch beside Xenia, who was typing away on a laptop. Bloom was desperately trying to kill time to stop herself from going crazy as she waited for Stella to tell them it was time to go. "What do you know about Stella's ring?"
"Aside from the obvious?" Xenia said, not bothering to look up from whatever she was doing.
Bloom shrugged.
Xenia continued typing. "Not much."
Bloom nodded, and rested her head in her hand casually. "What are you working on?"
"I'm trying to figure out the optimal place to enter Cloud Tower. We can't teleport in, there are spells that prevent it, but I think there may be a way in through the underground tunnels that connected the three schools." Xenia looked up briefly, before turning her attention back to her device. "Unfortunately, nobody knows where the entrance to these tunnels are, so I'm using technology to calculate the most statistically favorable place for them to be."
Musa bit into an apple loudly and threw herself into a chair beside the girls. "How do you even know there are underground tunnels?" she said between chewing.
"During the last Great War, the faeries of Alfea were targeted. When they couldn't defend the walls anymore, they escaped somehow." Xenia said, "The probability of their existence is high."
Flora leaned against the door frame, her arms wrapped around her torso casually. Her sandy brown hair was braided back neatly in preparation for their attack. "You don't need to calculate their entrance, Xenia." Flora said softly. The girls turned to look at the faerie, who was dressed in a black sweatshirt and black leggings. It was strange for Bloom to see her in them, she didn't even know that Flora owned any black. Flora shrugged and continued, "I already know where they are."
...
The girls stepped quietly down the main staircase, passing the glass mural as they went. Bloom avoided looking at it, but she did brush her fingers over it for good luck.
When they reached the bottom of the staircase, Flora led them to the left.
"This is the direction the witches came from on the night of the ball." Bloom leaned forward and whispered. "Maybe these tunnels are how they got into the school."
"I wouldn't put it past those slimy witches to discover them." Stella said softly.
Flora led them forward to one of the hall lounges. She turned the brass handle of the large wooden doors and led the girls into the room.
Velvet couches sat in the center of the room, with large sturdy wooden tables and chairs littered throughout the large space. Three tall arched windows occupied the wall across from the door, and to their left was a wall of bookcases. Bloom had read enough Nancy Drew to speculate that the passage had to lie somewhere in those bookshelves.
The room was ornately decorated, with dark wood paneling and intricate rugs, tapestries, and curtains. To their right was a soft crackling fireplace.
"They'd really put a passageway in one of the residence wing lounges? It seems too easy for people to sneak out." Musa said, trailing over to the bookshelves. It seemed she had the same idea as Bloom.
"It makes sense." Bloom said softly, "in an emergency, the students would be able to escape."
Bloom stepped over towards the fireplace, her eyes lingering on a large painting on that wall. In the painting stood nine men and women, some with wings, some without, around a large flame that burned in the middle. She recognized a similar image from the mural. "Who are these people?" Bloom asked, crossing her arms before the beautiful work.
"Those are the original nine nymphs of magic." Stella said. "There's one from each great kingdom." Stella pointed towards one with gleaming blonde hair and large wings. "That's my ancestor, Mal, the goddess of sun. Her gift of light has been passed down through the entire Solarien royal line."
"Who are they?" Bloom asked.
"We don't have time for a history lesson right now, Bloom." Stella scolded. She tightened her hair which was pulled up into a high ponytail and adjusted her black turtleneck, "Ask me again if we make it out of this alive."
Flora stepped forwards towards the painting. "It seems you already found it." She smiled at them and placed her hands over the top right corner of the frame and pulled. With a click, the right side of the painting popped out and swung open like a door.
Stella snorted. "Fitting that the nine nymphs would look over this passageway. Pretentious assholes." Stella didn't hesitate as she heaved herself up into the tunnel. She crouched down and held out a hand for Flora.
Flora grabbed Stella's hand and pulled herself up into the tunnel, followed by Musa and Xenia. Bloom grabbed the frame of the painting as she stepped in, and spotted a small rope on the side to pull it shut. Clever.
Once the frame clicked back into place, Stella peered back into the lounge. She could see the shapes of the room pretty clearly from behind the painting. "They make it too easy to spy." She said softly, her voice echoing slightly in the stone corridor. "I wonder how many of these there are."
The girls shivered.
Bloom looked at the green ivy vines growing along the walls and roof of the corridor. Stella snapped and a faerielight bobbed above the girls' heads, illuminating all of the vines and the girls' faces. The girls walked forward and stopped in front of a twisting narrow staircase.
"Down we go.." Musa trailed off, peering over the dark staircase. She couldn't see the bottom.
Stella grimaced. "Now's the fun part: finding the entrance to Cloud Tower."
Xenia already had a plan for that, it seemed. She sent pulsing pink darts of magic into the passageway, which were mapping the tunnels out in real time as the girls walked.
The girls descended the stone staircase, keeping close to the wall. The staircase was narrow, and there were no railings. Bloom supposed it would be easier to fly down and up, but she didn't bother suggesting it as her hand trailed along the stone wall that hugged her left.
Bloom was relieved when she finally got to the bottom behind the girls. They were met before three dark archways that could have led anywhere. Xenia looked at her device and pointed to the left one. "That way."