As they emerged onto the balcony, Katya turned to them with panic in her eyes. “Thank the Goddess, you’re back! Something’s happening.”

“What?” Tamani asked, running to lean over the railing beside her.

“They’re falling,” Katya replied, studying the milling trolls beneath them. “I saw it happen a few times over the past hour or so, but I figured they had injuries I couldn’t see. Now they’re starting to do it in groups. Five, six, sometimes as many as ten. Look,” she added, pointing as Laurel, David, and Chelsea stepped forward to see.

The trolls were still banging the felled tree against the front doors and Laurel could see the wood crumbling beneath the assault. But as they backed up to take another run, the tree trunk shifted and began to roll to the side as several of the trolls collapsed onto their knees.

“They just did it over there, too,” Katya said, pointing to a group beneath the balcony.

“That’s what happened to that troll in Spring,” David said. “And on the rope, when you were pulling me up.”

“I don’t understand,” Tamani said. But even as he spoke, Laurel saw several more trolls go down. Even the disorganised trolls were realising it now, and they had turned from their task of breaking into the Academy to questioning each other and pointing. Panic spread like wildfire and the group on the balcony forgot their plans and watched, transfixed, as more and more of the trolls crumpled to the ground.

“They’re running away,” David said, with awe and more than a touch of relief in his voice. The remaining trolls had turned tail, heading to the gates now, but even retreat was fruitless. Soon everything was still and all of the trolls lay motionless amid the trampled remains of the once-beautiful Academy grounds.

“Are they . . . dead?” Chelsea asked after a long spell of silence.

“That one in Spring was very, very dead,” David said.

“So, what?” Laurel asked, staring out on the carnage. “It’s over?”

“What’s going on?” Yeardley said, bursting onto the balcony amid the tense silence. He was holding a cloth sack in one hand – his kit, Laurel realised. “Why did the fighting stop?”

“It’s hard to say,” Tamani replied, scanning the grounds. “They look dead, but the Goddess only knows why. I don’t trust this.”

“What’s that?”

A blur of motion on the green hillside caught everyone’s eyes – several figures were making their way up the path from the Gate Garden.

“More trolls?” someone asked from the crowd.

Laurel watched the approaching figures for a moment and found it suddenly hard to breathe. “It’s Klea,” Laurel said softly. “She’s got Yuki with her.”

“I don’t understand,” Yeardley said.

“The Wildling,” Tamani said. “The one we were trying to figure out last time we were here; she’s a Winter.”

Katya gasped. “Are they coming here?”

“I don’t know,” Tamani said. “If not, then they’re headed for the palace. I’m not sure which is worse. Either way, we’re too late. This is why we needed Jamison – to fight her off.”

“She’s hostile?” Yeardley asked, a subtle fear filling his voice.

“It’s hard to know for sure,” Tamani said.

Laurel didn’t think it was hard to know at all; Yuki was the only reason the trolls were even in Avalon, so that made her responsible for the death and destruction around them.

“But she is the puppet of an exiled Autumn – Callista,” Tamani said.

This time the horror in Yeardley’s expression wasn’t subtle at all. “Callista? That’s . . .” He turned towards the Autumn faeries gathered on the balcony. “We’ve got to get out of here. Now!”

“We can’t just leave,” Laurel said, following Yeardley as he threw himself back from the balcony railing. “We’re barricaded here. It’s probably the safest place in Avalon right now.”

Yeardley stopped short. “And just how long,” he said in a soft voice that chilled her to the core, “do you think it will take a Winter faerie to remove a barricade made completely of wood?”

“He’s right,” Tamani said from over Laurel’s shoulder. “We should run. There’s a pretty dense forest to the west – there’s an exit that way, right?”

“There is,” Yeardley said.

“Gather whoever you can and head that direction. Without Jamison, I – I don’t know what else we can do.”

Laurel hated hearing Tamani sound so defeated. All day he had fought trolls and won, and now two faeries were enough to destroy his spirits.

“Right. You there, run to the west barricade,” Yeardley ordered a dark-eyed faerie Laurel thought she recognised from a more advanced class. “They need to take it down immediately!” Then, turning back to Tamani, he said, “Some of the staff are with the sprouts upstairs, and you saw how many students are gathered in the dining hall. Everyone else is busy securing their experiments and—”

“Their what?” Tamani asked.

“Their experiments,” Yeardley repeated, with no indication that he considered this less than completely rational.

“Well, get them all together now,” Tamani said. “To hell with their experiments.”

“Tam,” Katya called from the railing, “they’ve passed the turn off to the Winter Palace. They’re definitely coming this way.”