Chapter 1 #2
Rime shakes his head. “It’s our job to find the weapon.”
“Just the three of you?”
Topaz shrugs. “You said there’s only three of them.”
“Yeah, but—” Why do I feel like I’m not speaking the same language as everyone else in this room?
Leo comes to my rescue. “We can’t waste time chasing them all over the countryside. Our safest bet is to find the weapon before they do. Because if this team fails, Brier will only send another, and another and another and another, until he gets what he wants.”
“What’s his endgame?” I ask, although I’m not sure I want to know.
“Endgame?” Rime tips his head like a curious cat. “What’s that?”
“Umm, like his ‘ultimate goal,’ I guess.” I’m too exhausted to define it any better.
Fortunately, he seems to catch the meaning. “To make Nàdar a monarchy and himself king.”
Oh, is that all?
“Nàdar’s been going through a drought,” Leo explains. “Not the worst one, but resources are scarce, and it’s causing competition and tension between the clans. It’s the perfect opportunity for someone as charismatic as Brier to manipulate people’s fears.”
“Who is he?” I ask, leaning forward. “Is he, like, a billionaire or a genius or, I dunno, a rockstar or something?”
Both guys smile. Topaz wrinkles her nose.
“He’s a deorai,” Rime answers. “An exile. An outlaw.”
“He was,” Leo clarifies. “Now he’s ‘Advisor to the Council,’ and his brilliant solution for the drought problem is to pool all the resources together so he can distribute them equally among the clans.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, right.” I know enough about history to know that never works. Not when the mastermind is a greedy, power-hungry despot.
Leo nods his agreement. “Right now he’s saying everything is under the control of the Council, but considering the fact that the Council is now ninety-five percent his followers, it’s pretty obvious that’s not his endgame.”
Rime mutters, “Even more obvious now that he’s got his army of lackeys going from clan to clan collecting taxes and seizing land.”
“Which is even worse than it sounds,” Leo adds, “because private land ownership has never been a thing in Nàdar.”
My coffee has gone tepid, the cream settling in a white ring around the inside of the mug.
I rest it on my knee and gaze, unseeing, out the sliding glass door.
An army of lackeys going around bullying people into giving up their livelihoods.
It sounds so… feudal. Brier is obviously long past pretending he cares about the public good.
What’s next? Forced labor, military conscription, political imprisonment?
No wonder Brier wants this weapon—whatever it is. What better way to enforce his tyranny.
“Betts,” Leo’s gentle voice breaks into my thoughts. “Do you mind telling us again what you saw at the hotel, since we’re all more awake now?”
Cooperatively, I share everything I remember, every detail I glossed over last night in my energy-drained haze. What the faeries looked like, what they were doing, how they acted, where in the lobby they each stood in relation to one another, to me, and to the potted plants and the luggage carts.
As I speak, Leo, Rime, and Topaz nod, frown, and shoot one another meaningful glances.
And when I finish, they speculate, using words and phrases that sound like they come from a fantasy series.
A good number of them aren’t English either, or at least not the English I know.
In my head, I try to picture them phonetically, but their trills and burrs make them incomprehensible.
And then there are the names: Heron the Boar, Meadow the Rowan, River the Wolf, the Thistle and Moor Clans.
The pattern is obvious: they don’t use last names in Nàdar, and they name everyone and everything after nature.
I ask Leo, “Were you named for the constellation?”
He nods. “I was born under a Leo moon.”
I learn Rime was indeed named after hoarfrost, and Topaz wasn’t named for the polished jewel, but for the mineral’s raw form, buried deep under layers of rock and soil. Their naming convention is quite beautiful, really. Humans should use it more.
“Do you think you know the people—I mean, fae—that Brier sent?” I ask.
Rime replies, “We might know the big one you described. A fellow Stag.”
Leo chews on his bottom lip, lost in thought. “Definitely sounds like River.”
“River the Wolf,” I say.
“Yeah.” His startled gaze meets mine, as though he finds it strange to hear me talking in the lingo of his world.
“And you’re not Leo Hawthorn, you’re Leo the Hawthorn.” Before he can respond, I turn to Rime. “And you’re Rime the…?” I forgot what specific bird of prey he wove with.
“Goshawk. I’m Rime the Goshawk of the Stag Clan.”
Topaz doesn’t need to be asked. “I’m Topaz the Adder,” she says, mouth twitching. For a moment, I think she’s about to smile, but as her lips pull back, pointed fangs erupt from her top gums. They don’t snap like the vampire fangs in True Blood, they grow, but really freaking fast.
I shudder. “Are you venomous?”
She shrugs as she withdraws the fangs. “Of course.”
“Not enough to kill you,” Rime qualifies.
“It might.” Topaz crosses her legs and settles back in her chair like a pampered movie star. “I’ve never bitten a human before.”
Why do I get the feeling she’d very much like to bite me?
I lean back in my chair and rub my dry, undoubtedly bloodshot, eyes. There’s so much I still don’t understand, but I don’t think I can take in any more information right now. Not after such a shitty night’s sleep. And the fight with my ex. And with all this… proximity to Leo.
“So, what progress have you made?” I ask, trying not to sigh. “Are you any closer to finding the weapon?”
“Sadly, no,” Rime answers. “We’re still trying to find Brownshill.”
I arch a brow. It’s Brownhill, no S, and it’s two miles up the highway.
“Brown’s. Hill,” Leo says, spacing the words far apart. “It’s supposedly a literal hill.”
Wait, so it’s Brown’s possessive? B-r-o-w-n-apostrophe-s? “Is Brown the founder of the college?” There’s no disguising my embarrassment at not knowing.
“Actually, no. He was the founder of Alderford.”
“But Brownhill was named for him?”
“No,” Rime cuts in with a grin. “It was named for his hill.”
“That the college is built on?”
Leo sighs. “Maybe, maybe not.” I must look as irritated as I feel, because he quickly elaborates, “Henry Browne—that’s Brown with an e, by the way—was on the 1587 Roanoke expedition. He was a member of the Lost Colony.”
“He’s the one who brought the whatever-it-is out here?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it was recorded in the Nàdarian archives that the weapon was brought to the Subworld and given to an Englishman named Henry Browne to hide.”
“Archives Brier also has access to,” Rime adds with a frown.
“But an Englishman named Henry Browne?” I argue. “There had to be a million of them at the time. How did you know it was the Roanoke Colony one?”
Leo massages his temples. “It’s a long story.”
One both of us are too tired for right now.
“Okay, then.” I sip my cold coffee. “Explain more about this hill.”
He uncrosses his legs and sinks back into the couch.
“Somewhere in this area is a mountain or a hill—or, who knows, maybe even just a slope—that was known colloquially as Browne’s Hill.
” He waves a hand at the endless, rolling, blue-green mountains visible through the sliding glass door.
“The problem is, no one knows which one it is.”