Chapter 17
Astounded is probably too mild a word to describe Fiona’s reaction to learning Caspar Harlock is the High Thane.
To her credit—as a well-trained Abbot-in-law—she covers the way she chokes on her champagne with grace, gives Nora a quick kiss and an excuse about the upcoming gala, and we hightail it out of that luncheon before I have another bloodlust breakdown and stab a cater-waiter in the neck.
The drive back to the Windsor is tense and quiet.
The sky has faded from an afternoon as gray as my eyes to an equally grim, colorless dusk.
Fiona makes me lie down in the back seat like a teenager sneaking out of the house, even when I assure her my safety hasn’t changed—the High Thane doesn’t know Beatrice Abbot’s daughter is his missing aeon.
It’s still taking her a beat to wrap her head around everything. I get it.
“We’ll need to see the Elders immediately.” Her slender fingers are an iron vise around the wheel.
“We? What happened to avoid the Elders like the plague?”
“I can’t tell them I figured it out on my own. You cannot lie to the Elders.”
I make a scoffing sound. “I can lie to anyone.”
“No, Viv,” Fiona says, voice shaking with the gravity of it all. “They’re ancient. Far too powerful. They can sense lies like you can sense deviants.”
“Then I can’t possibly go with you.” If they learn what I am—what I carry within me—I’ll be executed.
Fiona knows this better than anyone. I almost tell her what Deacon told me.
That he believes the Elders won’t even go after Caspar.
That they already know who he is. But I can’t allow myself to believe it.
Or to admit to Fiona that I’ve been working with a deadly demon, looking for Reid, and doing so off campus—three different things she made me swear not to do.
Long minutes pass. We crest the hill separating the Half City from the Hesperides, and the fogged-over sky is brightened by NTC high-rises and glowing streetlights. We’re two minutes out from the Windsor when Fiona speaks again.
“I think I have an idea.”
Professor Dawnmere’s cottage looks how I imagine the inside of a genie’s bottle might.
Jewel tones paint the space—curtains of vivid cobalt, a plush magenta rug.
Fat ruby-red candles glint on an ornate mantel over a roaring fire.
Vibrant hanging lamps cast silk-covered cushions in colorful pools of light.
“Come in, come in,” she coos. “It’s frigid out there.
” She’s wearing some kind of nightgown that might as well be couture—long enough to pool at her feet, stitched with fine thread, hanging elegantly off her dainty shoulders.
Her mass of dark hair is tied back with a ribbon, her gossamer wings lightly tucked into the glowing brown skin of her exposed back.
The woman is as much a goddess as she is a fairy.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” she offers, floating into the kitchen. I watch, mesmerized, as a golden kettle tips itself into two porcelain teacups and the scent of rooibos dances through the air.
Fiona does as instructed, kicking off her shoes like she so often does at the Windsor, and taking a seat on a teal cushion. It’s hovering slightly off the floor.
Dawnmere brings us our teas with a smile. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“What I’ve come to you with tonight is of the utmost secrecy,” Fiona says, back in her shifted form as Professor Lisette. “I need your help with a matter that could not be more delicate.”
Dawnmere’s eyes soften. “Gemeline, if I could keep your secrets as a first-year roommate in Elkfore, I can keep them now. You can tell me anything.”
“I know, but…” Fiona turns to me. These are my secrets she’s worried about.
All I can do is nod. I trust Fiona implicitly. And if she trusts Dawnmere, then so do I.
“Viv has discovered the High Thane’s identity.”
Dawnmere doesn’t flinch. In fact, she goes preternaturally still in that way only fairies can. Her chest doesn’t even rise with an intake of breath. She waits, patient as a heron.
“But, she’s…Well, Viv is an aeon,” Fiona says quietly.
Only then does she gasp. Covering her mouth with delicate fingers. I can’t help but wince at her reaction.
“And she’s been imbued with a syrabraxa against her will,” Fiona continues, undeterred. “The Elders will be able to sense the dark magic in her. We need to tell them of the High Thane’s identity without them knowing what she is or what’s been done. You know as well as I do what they’ll do to her.”
“I’m sorry for what you have been through,” Dawnmere murmurs to me, eyes shining. It’s hard to reconcile this woman with the same professor who launched a goblet at Matt’s head.
I shift awkwardly on my floating cushion. “It’s all good.”
“But, Gemeline…” Dawnmere takes a breath. “If the wrong deviant—the wrong lymantrian—finds her, it could mean—”
“We are close to finding a cure for the spell. She won’t be a danger to the world much longer.” The lie would be more encouraging if Fiona’s voice didn’t break, but I don’t argue and neither does Dawnmere. “All we need is a fragment of one of your wings to mask the syrabraxa in her back.”
My brows knit together. If fairies’ wings have masking properties, it’s not something I’ve ever learned. But I guess it does make sense. Fairies, unlike any other lymantrians, are able to blend into their surroundings, turn themselves invisible, fly—and all that power is stored in their wings.
Dawnmere presses a few dainty, gold-ringed fingers to her mouth in thought. I hold my breath and swear I can hear Fiona do the same. The fireplace cackles, and my tea grows lukewarm.
“All right,” Dawnmere says eventually, so quiet I barely hear the words. “Turn around, Viv.”
Fiona exhales mightily. “Thank you, Rosalind.”
“Please be safe,” Dawnmere urges her friend. Though I understand the complexity of the situation, I still find it an odd way to talk about the governing body of lymantrians. If they don’t find out I’m harboring the syrabraxa, there’s no reason to fear them, right?
“We will,” Fiona assures her.
I stand from my cushion and turn my back to Dawnmere, zipping down the back of my Wednesday Addams dress. I’m glad I’m facing Fiona when I hear the sharp intake of breath from Dawnmere. I don’t love being pitied. Certainly not by one of my professors.
Since I’m looking in the other direction, I don’t see her remove a fragment of her own translucent, membranous wing, but I hear the sticky pull as it’s extracted and the slight shudder that comes out of Dawnmere.
“Hold still,” she tells me. I grind my teeth, fist my hands, and prepare for an onslaught of pain as I am used to with anything involving my scar, but the moment the fragment touches my back all I feel is a breeze of pleasant air against my skin. Lavender and citrus fill my nostrils.
“All done,” Dawnmere says, her voice like wind chimes. She zips up my dress for me and I turn to face her. “The magic will not be sensed by anyone. The scar won’t be visible, and no spell can detect it.”
“For how long?”
“The syrabraxa is a difficult spell to mask. My power will only last an hour at most. But here.” She flutters one wing out—illuminated in the candles’ glow, lucent and radiant as a ray of sunlight—and plucks off another sliver to hand to me.
The piece is thin and tacky, gleaming in my hand. “Just in case you need more time.”
“Thank you.”
Fiona gives Rosalind a warm embrace. “The High Thane,” she says. “It’s—”
“Don’t tell me,” Dawnmere says. “Not until the Elders decide how to proceed. I don’t want the burden of lying to them on my shoulders if they decide it’s not knowledge they wish to share widely.”
And that should have been my first clue.
Fiona and I tramp through the mounds of snow outside of Old Campus.
We pass the silent lacrosse pitch and the empty coliseum and frozen Lake Hellebore, a dark mirror reflecting clouded moonlight.
When we reach the Fickle Thicket, we’re led through by the Citadel hunters in dark navy battle uniforms who are always standing guard.
Inside the forest, nocturnal creatures keep their beady, glowing eyes trained on us until the trees untangle, giving way to a great palace right in the heart of the woods.
“Holy shit,” I breathe.
Fiona and the four Citadel hunters who flank us shoot me equal glares of disapproval.
But I don’t think it’s an unfair reaction. The Citadel is as grand as any medieval castle—limestone turrets that rise high into the night, wrought-iron gates, willows weeping into the courtyard outside the heavy battlements and stone doors.
We follow one of the Citadel hunters through gates manned by at least twenty more. They’re strapped with everything from daggers and bows to guns filled with silver bullets. The Fort Knox of lymantrian keeps, I suppose.
Inside, the Citadel is less imposing European castle, and more West Wing.
Despite the hour, the main hall is lit by grand chandeliers and busy with Citadel hunters marching from room to room, looking over dossiers I can only imagine contain all kinds of deviant sightings, killings, and cover-ups.
But there are also rows of mahogany desks, where hunter alums who I’d imagine are more Peter than Elliot types click away on laptops, make hushed phone calls, and study manila envelopes marked CLASSIFIED.
“This is…” I shake my head. “Not what I expected.”
“Everything that makes lymantrian society run is done inside these walls,” Fiona tells me as we’re led up rows and rows of stonework stairs. “As deadly as taking out Brood factions and vampire nests and as mild as sorting through security tapes.”
“Security tapes?”
“One of the Citadel’s many jobs is keeping deviant and lymantrian activity from the prying eyes of mortals.”
Makes sense. Nothing’s more likely to pick up a vampire sucking down some cabbie’s blood than CCTV footage. I guess the Citadel can also claim the title of Big Brother.
“Here you are,” the Citadel hunter tells us when we come to a stop before a set of looming double doors. “They are expecting you.”
I don’t ask how. I don’t want to know the depth of power the Elders hold.
I’m anxious enough as it is. My heart jackhammers in my chest as Fiona gives me one last shrewd look.
I try to remember what she told me on our way over.
Few words, no lies. Let me do the talking.
She’s known me for nearly six years now.
She knows I can stretch and skirt the truth.
We just have to tell them about Caspar and get out.
They remove him, a new Thane will sprout, like heads on a hydra.
Better the devil you know than the one you don’t, right?
I swat Deacon out of my mind as the doors are wrenched open for us. Fiona knows what she’s doing. I trust her with my life. Literally.
The chamber over which the Elders preside is not that opulent upon first glance, but a lifetime of living among the blue bloods of Astera has taught me how to pick up on quiet luxury.
Stealth wealth, if you will. The floor is rich hardwood.
Polished daily—not a scuff on it. Throws with a thread count higher than the number of hairs on my head pepper the couches that sit opposite low wood coffee tables.
The lamps are dim and cozy. The air scented with flowers I can only imagine the price of.
And this is just their workplace. I’d be curious to see the living quarters these Elders and their families enjoy in this highly protected castle.
The food they eat. The seats they get when they go to the theater in Astera.
At the end of the room the Elders sit on five thrones that might be solid gold.
There are three men and two women, each of them old and wizened.
Their ears are pointed, their frames a little larger than an average human—not one of them in the row of thrones before us is under six feet—and they all have crinkled, sharp-lined faces.
But more than that, they’re decked out in riches.
Jewels and fine linens. Italian leather footwear.
An angry, indignant feeling is taking root deep in my stomach. These five aging lymantrians we walk toward don’t feel any different to me than the richer-than-god elites North of the Chasm in Astera. Caspar Harlock, for one.
But something else is curving through my body too as we draw nearer. It takes me a full minute to place the feeling, because it is so wildly unexpected. But once it clicks, I stumble on the ornate rug. A twisting, prickling, gnawing sensation is ratcheting up the scar I’m not supposed to have.
A tingling throughout my limbs.
As Fiona and I reach the five Elders and gaze upon their wrinkled, ancient faces, I come to the gruesome, unfathomable realization: The Elders are…deviants.