59. Giving In
59
GIVING IN
O’er those true hearts by trouble riven;
And a song of praise goes up to Heaven.
— EDMUND JOHN ARMSTRONG, “PILGRIMS”
“ W ait here.”
Celine led us to a large courtyard of bright green grass in what I guessed to be the center of the school. Stone walls soared hundreds of feet above us to what had to be the top of the mountain in a veritable tube, no doubt hidden from plain eyes and any other intruders’ by many spells protecting the place.
It was a pleasant spot, with a large fountain in the middle from which water poured from jugs held by statues representing the four fae creatures. Benches were set around it along with beds of flowers and carved topiaries. A proper English garden.
But a jail cell, nonetheless.
There was no way out.
I gasped, like the air was gone, though we were outside under genuine sunshine.
Breathe . Jonathan’s comfort and strength funneled through our clasped hands. I’m here . You’ll be all right. “Celine, wait.”
The sorceress turned from where she had been about to disappear into the building with her arms crossed. “I hope you don’t think you’re about to sweet talk me, Jon. That trick won’t work anymore. Not with a mate right next to you.”
He walked closer, tugging me along. “No tricks, I promise. But Celine, this isn’t you. You know what they’re doing is wrong. Unconstitutional, even. You must threaten to bring it before the Assembly.”
Celine smirked. “You’ve been spending too much time in plain courts, Jon. Our laws were determined by magic, not the mere mortals. No one in the Assembly will vote against the Council, especially when there is a quorum.”
“The divine right to power was a plain invention. You’ve spoken for dismantling the Council for years, and now you’re defending it?”
“I believe in the magic right to power,” she retorted. “And the magic chose the eight families. They are beholden to the rest of us, but they have wisdom in their veins. You know this.”
“The magic chose the original eight,” Jonathan argued back. “No one ever said it meant for power to remain in their families forever. And it certainly didn’t say a word about secrecy.”
Celine chewed on her lip and glanced between us, clearly uncertain about what to say in front of me.
She looked at the door behind her, then closed the gap between us.
“And you think this ”—she jerked her head at me—“is going to solve that problem?”
“An oracle means a revolution.”
Revolution ? I asked.
Later . He was focused on Celine for a reason he hadn’t yet revealed to me.
“Look.” The emphatic, no-nonsense expression was evident in her tone as well. “If you want to spend your time babysitting a half-bred mind bender who’s already failed a major test and committed an unforgivable crime, you’re welcome. But it’s a waste of your time and talents, and you know it. Don’t bring the Order into this. We’ve got much more important things to deal with.”
“The Order knows about her.”
My interest piqued. Yet another mention of the Order. Just how many places had they infiltrated?
Celine blinked between us, and then her lilac eyes brightened somewhat with her Sight before quieting back to a dark purple. “You’re bluffing.”
“Would I bluff about that?”
“You would bluff about the color of the sky, Ioannes. Lying is what you do best. Procuring others’ secrets”—she glanced again at me, this time with a bit of knowing—“and keeping your own.”
“This time it’s different,” he protested.
“Oh, really? And how is that?”
“Because this time it’s not about secrets! It’s about the truth.” He squeezed my hand, shaking it between us. “And Cassandra is truth, Celine. She is the Secret in more ways than one, no matter what Penny said.”
Celine’s jaw quivered slightly—with rage, maybe. Or nerves. “You’re wrong,” she said after a few moments. “It’s always been about secrets. More specifically, one secret that we have been protecting for fifty years. Which you and I both know the Council will discover in one way or another if you do not do what you must, here and now.”
“What’s that?” I managed to ask.
Fear shot through Jonathan’s touch. Along with something that could only be compared to a snarl. “That’s impossible now. You know it is.”
“Then I will?—”
“ You will not touch her .” His growl meant death. Even without his touch, I knew that.
Celine was smart enough to step away. “What a pretty sense of humor the Fates have. The one person our assassin must kill to protect us is the one for whom he would die himself to protect.”
Jonathan didn’t argue—not with her, and not with the questions for confirmation I sent through our bond.
You’re an assassin? Who has to kill me? Wait, I have to die?
It’s true , he told me silently. You are my mate .
As if that explained everything.
“She’s right,” I said out loud.
They both turned to look at me, almost as if I were a curiosity rather than a part of the discussion.
“You’re right,” I told Celine. “I’m a liability. But…there’s another problem on the Council. The seer, Senni.”
“Will break you,” Celine said. “You’re right to be afraid. He’s very good at it. There are no secrets from him either, which is why your grandmother left in the first place.”
“No, it’s not that,” I said. “He was looking for something else. The Secret—Penny’s Secret. But not for the Council. For himself.” I looked at Jonathan. “For your father, I think.”
“Senni Perumal has and always will be a boil on the Council’s face,” Jonathan muttered. We’ve got to tell her .
I glanced at him. Are you sure? Penny said not to.
I know what Penny said. But we need her help. And she will want something in return .
“Will you stop that?” Celine demanded. “Once again, it’s incredibly rude.”
Jonathan offered a grim smile. “Apologies. But Cassandra and I were discussing the fact that you—and the Order—should know there’s been a development about it. About the Secret.”
He proceeded to tell her in hushed tones what we had found in Penny’s box. The writing on the parchment. He didn’t tell her about the translation that Rachel had offered, but he did say that they did in fact believe it was a clue to something in the neighborhood of Pandora’s Box. Or the remnant of Hope left in it.
“Penny left it to Cassandra for a reason,” Jonathan said. “To an oracle. To a mind bender. A vector for truth, not secrecy. Celine, we don’t know what she is supposed to do with it, but we won’t know if she’s dead, and we won’t know anything if the Council gets their hands on it. We must leave. Please. Help us. You are the administrator here. If there is a way out, help us .”
Celine stared hard at the two of us. Then she sighed and looked behind her once more. “There won’t be much time. But I can…yes, I can adjust the wave binding overhead. You’ll be able to?—”
“I can get us out,” Jonathan confirmed. Trust me .
I didn’t ask him how , exactly, he planned to lift us more than two hundred feet up and out of an actual mountain. But he seemed sure enough, and I really had no other recourse than to do as he asked.
I trust you .
Warmth and gratitude filled his touch.
Celine turned to leave again. “Look for the blue light. When it’s visible, it’s weakened. That will be your only chance before they come.”
“Celine. Thank you.”
She opened the door but looked back once more at Jonathan. “I suspected you would have been a terrible husband. Now I know why.”
And then she was gone.
The doors closed, and I turned to my mate. Or my mate-in-progress. My almost mate?
Jonathan chuckled. “I think mate is fine for now. It’s inevitable.”
“They said it wasn’t…complete. And by that, they meant?”
His eyes found mine with a new hunger. “What do you think they meant, Cass?”
I rolled mine. “It always comes down to sex, doesn’t it? Don’t you find it a little ironic how much fae imitate the Puritanical views responsible for their persecution?”
“More than you could possibly know.” He tugged me back to him as if he couldn’t bear the distance between us any more than I could.
I understood. The man drove me crazy, but something about separation felt wrong . Even now, inches from each other, there was that underlying urge to get closer, to meld together, to find a place where the divisions between our bodies and minds ceased to exist.
Jonathan buried his face in my neck and groaned. “Don’t do that to me.”
I turned my face into his nape and inhaled his fresh scent. “Why not? Misery loves company. And you’re the only one who gets it.”
There was another groan. “You have no fucking clue.”
“Don’t I?”
“Impossible situation.” He straightened with a lopsided smile—a crooked thing I was starting to love for its irreverence and hate for its hopelessness.
“As for the mind bending?”
The smile disappeared. “That.” He glanced up at the sky which was irritatingly clear. “We need to get out of here.”
“Will I be a fugitive?”
His mouth folded into a thin line. It was all the answer I needed.
“So this whole mission was a bust, wasn’t it?” I asked. “Penny must have known. She told me never to do that, but she must have known they would figure it out. Why would she send me here to be targeted as a criminal?”
“She sent you here to shine a light on the injustices of the system,” Jonathan said.
“Great, so I get to be a martyr?” I kicked at a stub of grass. “What kind of life is that?”
“One where you change the world.”
I turned. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
He pulled me close again, urging me to feel every bit of his faith in me. “I believe that we have no idea yet what you are capable of. But I see what Penny likely knew—that you will be the most powerful fae in the world once you manifest. You will bare the truth of what we are to everyone and allow us to live freely as we never have. You will change everything , you magnificent creature.” He looked up to the sky again. Still clear. “If we can only get you away from here.” He shook his head. “This was my mistake. We never should have answered their summons. Penny wanted you to train for four years and come here after you had manifested. We’re here too early, and I put you in danger.”
He looked so forlorn and disappointed with himself, it broke my heart.
Acting purely on impulse, I stood up on my toes, clasped his face between my hands, and kissed him before he had a chance to pull away. I willed his lips to feel the yearning, but also the acceptance in me.
It was quick. I knew it had to be. But when I released him, both of us were breathing heavily.
“Why?” he asked after his heart calmed.
“Because you needed it, and I did too.”
Jonathan’s hands still fitted to my waist as he pressed his forehead to mine. “It killed me not to get to you. I couldn’t feel exactly what you were going through, but I felt…close…if that makes sense. There was a pull. I would have known something was wrong even if I hadn’t been in the room.”
I shuddered. “I’m glad you were there.”
I kissed him again. This time I didn’t stop, and he didn’t either. His mouth opened as if he could somehow achieve the closeness we both craved so deeply. I ignored the mingled confusion and desire running through his thoughts as he pulled me to his chest, then slid his hands over my hips and down further to take two solid handfuls of my backside and squeeze, hard.
“Bloody hell, Cass,” he breathed, then squeezed again as he sucked my bottom lip between his teeth. “I can’t,” he growled. “I can’t…stop.”
“Then don’t ,” I breathed right back, wrapping both arms around his neck to urge him on.
It felt so good, so beyond right. I was the overthinker, both in power and in temperament. I was the person who focused on the weather when another touched me because that was easier than facing the complexities of their mind. Closeness wasn’t in my vocabulary, and yet I was starting to find I had needed it all along.
And now, here was a fae with whom, well, if not my heart, then at least my magic was fated to find. Someone who knew my mind as well as I could know his. Whose kiss could make me forget the direst of situations, including the fact that I was all but being held in a prison, waiting for an escape or my execution.
And yet his kiss was all I wanted. I couldn’t imagine anything else, couldn’t feel anything else but Jonathan’s desire and mine trying desperately to unite. We luxuriated in the sweet pain as his teeth nibbled at my lip before his mouth slanted over mine to plunder it all over again.
We pawed at each other’s clothing, impatient for buttons and zippers to come undone. I touched the tawny skin just under his collar. He tugged at the hem of my skirt, nudging it up my thigh.
It would go no further, of course. I would stop it in a moment, just a moment more. Just?—
A blaze of blue called us from above.
Jonathan looked at me, hope—that thing everyone was chasing—etched across his handsome features.
And then he was gone.
I was gone too.
The mountain disappeared, the walls, the courtyard, everything in it gone as my mind went perfectly blank, and darkness descended for good.