Chapter 40
CHAPTER
40
Half an hour later, I had the tome tucked between my arm and ribcage and was dashing out of the house and into the night with Willa on my heels.
The crickets stopped chirping momentarily to listen to my footsteps. An older female owl swooped above me, hooting, “A rush in the night leads to thrush in the light,” but I ignored her.
Coen had told me after the game that he and Garvis were going to stay on the field and practice some maneuvers they’d picked up from the Shifting team earlier today. They might have gone to bed already, of course, but I didn’t think so. Mostly because Coen hadn’t told me goodnight yet, but also because I knew him, and I was beginning to know Garvis: they were both hellishly competitive, and would do anything it took to smash their opponents in their upcoming game. Including staying up to practice until the first smudges of dawn graced the sky.
I could hear them as Willa and I crept closer, sticking close to the cold shadows of the houses and stadiums. They were out there, alright, two young men in a swath of white moonlight, kicking those balls back and forth in zigzagging motions.
The grass sensed my distress before Coen did. Each blade quivered around me, bowing inward and giving a low whistle to match the deep ringing in my ears.
I whistled back on instinct even as I continued striding forward, and the grass—that manicured pool of soft green, cut and groomed and perfectly tamed—turned absolutely feral to match the wild scampering in my heart.
A ripple of bent blades shot toward Coen and Garvis. The ones around their feet lunged up and out, twining around their ankles and pulling them down.
I finally stopped, looming over the two men sprawled to the ground.
“What the hell?”
Coen nearly cricked his neck to look at me.
My face felt strangely slack. I held the tome out, letting the foiled lettering catch the moonlight.
Coen’s face creased. “Oh. That.”
Garvis turned to frown at him. I dug my fingernails into the tome’s spine.
“Leave us,” I ordered. Not at Garvis, but at the few spiders I could sense at my feet, waiting with dripping fangs for gossip and drama and rumors to spread.
To my surprise, I heard the brush of several dozen hairy appendages against the culms of grass as a few of them scuttled away on command.
Interesting. If my heart wasn’t about to jump straight out of my throat, I’d wonder why they obeyed me when other insects didn’t—unless it was because spiders weren’t insects, not truly.
I shook the questions away and flattened Coen with a glare.
“You stole this memory from me. This knowledge. Why.”
It was hardly even a question. Just a command. And I didn’t care that Garvis heard. Didn’t care that they were both still roped to the ground, all those pentaballs scattered around them among the still-whistling grasses. The ringing in my ears had reached a pitch that made my fingertips seem to vibrate along with it all.
“I didn’t steal it,” Coen said finally. Carefully. “But I did hide it deep in your subconscious because you asked me to. You wanted to be able to focus on your test.”
And without even a swipe of his hand, he unveiled it for me—that memory he’d buried. I felt it spring up to the forefront of my mind, and I stumbled backward as it all poured back: Ms. Pincette giving me the tome, me learning I was faerie, then asking Coen to take the knowledge of it from me until after my test.
It wouldn’t be fair of me to remain angry at him for doing as I asked. But—
“I told you to give it back to me after that test,” I whispered.
“You didn’t pass that test,” he shot back. “You said you would, but you didn’t, and I thought it best for you to focus until you did.”
“You don’t get to decide what’s best for me, Coen.”
I had balled up my fists and found them shaking at my sides. I didn’t care why he’d kept this from me—to protect me, to shield me, I didn’t care. Not when my sense of self had been buried beneath his need to control the narrative. Not when the realization raised as many questions as it answered.
Had Dyonisia hunted the last of the Esholian faeries into extinction? Her arrival on the island certainly correlated with the final traces of them, according to Mr. Fenway’s first lesson. But if so—why?
What did she have against faeries, to murder them and lock them out and search ruthlessly for the strays she’d trapped within?
Did all of the Good Council know they were looking for faeries to persecute in addition to the humans that failed their Final Tests, or just her?
So many questions. Too many questions.
Coen flashed me his palms.
“I don’t know the answers to everything you’re asking, Rayna, but yes, I was eventually going to tell you that we’re faerie.”
“Why keep it from me at all?” My voice bobbed in my throat. Betrayal. This felt like betrayal in its deepest form, that he wouldn’t trust me enough to tell me about my own blood. “Just because you wanted to keep me safe?”
“Yes.” Coen didn’t flinch. “I will always choose your safety over my morality, Rayna. And I won’t regret that, no matter how mad you might get at me.”
“Oh, I’m mad,” I started.
I know. I can feel it. And I can take it. But by the moonbeam and the mist, please stop shouting about this in the middle of the pentaball field. There are other ways someone can eavesdrop on us besides spiders, you know.
Don’t belittle me, I snarled.
Don’t act little then, he snarled back.
I almost threw the tome into his face. My hands actually flexed to do so when Garvis disentangled his ankles from the grass and stepped between Coen and me.
Rayna. Take a breath.
I recoiled at the sound of anyone else besides Coen in my head. Garvis’s thoughts weren’t as wormy as Kitterfol Lexington’s had been, but they were raspier, wispier, like they were floating on a wind rather than sinking in my mind. They left tingles on the back of my neck as he continued.
You’re part-faerie, yes, but the power that derives from that side of your lineage is too immature to take form. If anyone from the Good Council finds out about that, they won’t hesitate to destroy you knowing that your natural, God-given magic isn’t advanced enough to fight back. Coen and I have erased the full understanding of our blood from Sasha, Sylvie, and Terrin, too. It is better this way.
To what end? I whispered back to Garvis, knowing that Coen was listening in. At what point do you say enough is enough and fight back?
What do you think all those ships are doing out there? Garvis answered gently. The Good Council likes to claim they’re pirates because piracy sounds scary, but they’re just Sorronian fleets waiting for a chink in the armor to attack and take back what’s theirs. What’s ours.
I blinked.
Fell a step backward.
Willa squeaked and scuttled up my leg.
Take back…? What do you mean?
He means… Coen rose to his feet, brushing off the mud clinging to his pants. That bascite is the natural metal found in faerie blood. Unlike humans, we don’t have to consume metals to help us breathe and grow and live. The oldest legends say that while the God of the Cosmos made humans out of dust, He made us out of loam, already rich in minerals and metals. Many of those metals, like iron, help air travel through our blood, but bascite is what carries the magic through our veins. Like a conductor.
Willa sniffled near my ear, but that was the only sound that permeated the night.
Dyonisia Reeve, Coen continued, stepping slowly toward me, took an abundance of faerie blood and found a way to plant its bascite within the layers of human skin. His eyes never strayed from my face as those words clashed into mind. She stole faerie power and has been giving bits of it to humans for centuries, tinkering with the weakest ones and experimenting on the strongest ones. To try to create her own race of beings.
“The bascite she gives us doesn’t come from the mountaintop?” I murmured, touching the ridges of my brand. “It’s… she stole it from beyond the dome?”
Garvis, this time, nodded slowly. And the pirates aren’t some random seamen waiting to pounce on unwanted offerings each year. They’re faeries trying to reclaim what was taken from them so long ago. The magic in their blood.
But… I tilted my head as Willa nestled into my neck. But they’re faeries. Don’t they have enough power to take down the dome with the snap of a finger?
Even as I said it, though, I suspected I knew the answer. However she’d done it, Dyonisia had stolen so much power from the faeries that they’d become weak without it. Why else would they be desperate to take back the metal that had once surged in their veins?
I wiggled my toes, as if to shake free the blood pooling there.
It made sense now, what my raw power was. Bascite. It came from bascite, just like my Wild Whispering magic did. But it was natural rather than given, born with me rather than stamped onto me. And it was too undeveloped to take its own form as of yet.
But the Wild Whispering one… it was a stolen form of magic from some other, older faerie who… who wanted it back.
“Oh, God.”
I suddenly wanted to rip it out of me, this ability to communicate with plants and animals—even if I’d miss talking to Willa and Jagaros without it. It didn’t belong in my veins, beneath my skin, coursing around and between my bones. I ran a thumb across my brand again, feeling the crests and dips of the scarred skin.
“How long?” I whispered as Coen crept closer, softly nudging Garvis aside and angling his face to meet mine. “How long until our own powers develop?”
So that I can use mine to murder Dyonisia Reeve.
But Coen shook his head, his frown mere inches above mine now.
They won’t, Rayna. As long as we’re taking those pills, our powers should stay stagnant. A faerie reaching full maturity is quite the spectacle, so we can’t let ourselves do so while we’re in this dome.
I dropped my thumb from my brand. Dread swamped me.
If I let my power mature, Dyonisia would stifle it long before it would reach its full strength. But if I didn’t let my power mature, if I just kept on taking these pills and smothering it like water on a flame, I’d never be strong enough to defeat her.
Which meant I was trapped here as surely as a cockroach in a jar.