28
If you don’t want to partake in the Ascension Rite as a bald young woman, you’ll sit still ,” Oona snaps, her hands ripping my hair into an intricate patchwork braid of flowers, curls, and pearls.
I balance on my knees along a pebbled shore during lunchtime as pink waters crash against a shimmering seawall of gemstones and Castle Severi casts a large, foreboding shadow over us.
Directly behind us. We only have access to this one other sliver of the Realm of Superiority’s shoreline, and it makes me wonder how far away I am from the mortal realm.
From St. Augustine. From my father and home.
I tilt my head as I glance back at the castle’s exit.
A single door opens into the field where we have Combat training.
The movement only makes Oona tug my hair harder.
“ Ow ,” I whine. “A little rough, Oona.”
“Yes, well. We are being watched by a dozen guards.” A few sharper tugs. “I won’t let anyone think I am bad at my job.”
“I don’t think they’ll assume that.” I press a hand to my pulsating scalp. “But they might if I leave here without hair.”
“I told you to sit still.”
“I’m trying.” The air blows fresher out here, and the sun burns brighter.
It smells like sea salt spray, like the ancient rocks and seashells that make up the castle’s outer walls, and a part of me almost forgets everything that happened the last couple of weeks.
The tussle with Evie, the days of silence afterward, the moments when Sin couldn’t do more than glance in my direction without endangering either of our lives.
He’s on a tighter leash now, after his display of dominance over his future mate.
His intended equal. And I… I’m just trying to survive.
The court mourned Instructor Alvarez for seven days—with nightly fireworks, liquor at breakfast, and songs and poetry echoing in every corridor.
Since then, I’ve not managed to do much else besides record it.
Any of it. All of it. I flick open my journal now, keeping my gaze low but my head high, hiding its leather cover between the folds of my velvet red skirt.
Since Calix shifted my perspective to obtaining a motive before confirming the suspect, I have written every single piece of information I can recall of that horrible night.
Celeste celebrating my birthday early. Her enormous hickey from the wild party days before.
Her unruly behavior, so unlike her that it’d felt similar to being around a stranger, and, finally, the fight with Evie.
The hideous words exchanged with her and her brother.
But why would a werewolf have threatened their position to murder a human girl? What would Evie have to gain from Celeste’s death or my transformation? I tap my quill on the page. It can’t be a coincidence—any of it. The fight, the werewolves’ presence, or the cover-up afterward.
Something nags in the back of my mind. Some piece of the puzzle I can’t quite glimpse. I shut my journal and cover it with my gown. “How long do transitions usually take, Oona?”
“Longer than your own,” she says. “I’ve never witnessed a transformation as rapid as yours. Bitten humans experience a week or two of excruciating pain before the change manifests. You shifted the evening of the third day.”
A week or two. “And there’s no way to predict that amount of time?”
“Oh, no. Only the universe knows the potential of a human. Their fate.”
So they hadn’t Bitten me on purpose. They couldn’t have known what I would become. At least, they couldn’t have known I would survive. “And most Bitten are brought here, right? To the queen?”
She shakes her head. “All werewolves who seek to bite a human must have a regent’s verbal and written agreement first, but typically, once Bitten, those werewolves are free to live within a pack.
Most bites are reserved for same-sex couples and singles who adopt human children and want to transition them when the children are of the standard age for the First Rite,” she says, and then—before I can ask—she adds, “Twelve. Born werewolves go through their transformation when puberty strikes. Of course, there are always exceptions.”
At first, I think she’s speaking of me, but then she tilts my head, forcing me to look where the pastel waves beat against a seawall and splash up onto the legs of a short blonde with wide, yellow eyes and ballerina-pink lips.
“Nettie,” I whisper, turning to face Oona. “How did she become a werewolf?”
Oona flops onto the grass and rubs her hands on her apron. “Don’t you think it would be best to ask her that yourself?”
Antionette lowers herself onto the edge of the seawall, dangling her legs over the water. From here, she almost looks like a mermaid. Her sparkling silver top glitters like starlight scales. Her leggings could be a navy tail. She looks altogether much more modern than usual.
“And give Evie an even greater reason to stab me? Hell no,” I answer honestly. “This already took four days to heal.” I hold up the offending hand, showing off the jagged scar that remains in the shape of a sunburst in the middle of my palm.
Oona laughs, a short bark of a sound. “Silver is a wicked bitch.”
“Exactly. And Evie is worse .” I pick a fallen leaf from Oona’s hair and flick it away. “She didn’t have to attack me. She doesn’t actually like Sin.” I don’t elaborate on that, don’t gather confirmation that my suspicions are correct, and she much prefers Nettie’s company to her future mate’s.
“The law—”
“Yes, I am aware of the law.” I sigh, tracing my fingers over the ridges of my scar. Memories of pain flare through my bones. Not from the silver, but from the wolfsbane. God. I shudder. I’m lucky Calix let me leave. I’m lucky he didn’t turn me in and ruin what’s left of my life.
“If you are so worried about the Princess of Asia, you should be intelligent enough to know that you’ve yet to seek out your best source for information.” Oona snatches my hand and points my fingers at Nettie. “You’ve recorded as much as you know. It’s time to speak to someone else .”
“And you think Evie’s best friend will tell me her dirtiest, darkest secrets?”
“I think your conversation would be more productive than us sitting in the smallest expanse of the Realm of Superiority while being watched by a dozen guards because they don’t trust you to leave the castle.
” Oona releases my hand and leans back on her elbows, glaring at the sky.
“I do not like being monitored, and I miss ice cream, Vanessa.”
Glancing behind us at the not-so-subtle soldiers pacing in a semicircle around us, I scoff.
I don’t like it either. The soldiers showed up the day after the instructor’s death, however, and they have yet to do anything but follow me around like a merry band of Dobermans.
Punishment for threatening the princess, I’m sure.
“Ticktock,” Oona says. “You can use your brain, or you can rot, but make the decision before I sweat to death.”
Oona is full of it. The breeze that sweeps over us is especially autumnal and cold. Nothing at all like the heat and humidity of Florida. I track the tangerine clouds that soar overhead and sigh again. I would prefer to rot, honestly, but… that won’t help me. I need answers, and I need them now.
“Fine. But I’m going to hate it.”
“That is your prerogative, girl.”
“Loathe,” I hiss. “Despise.” Passing Oona my journal, I climb to my feet, wiping pebbles and seashells and broken bits of gemstones from my legs, and force myself to trudge toward Nettie.
She doesn’t glance up when I drop down beside her.
Her gaze remains fixed on the ocean, on the horizon line that dazzles and blinds.
“It’s my favorite sight,” she says quietly. “The sunlight reflecting on the ocean. Can you even imagine what lies beyond? There’s a whole world out there that our faerie ancestors thrived within, and we will never see it.”
Whatever I thought she might say, it’s not that.
I stare at her, mouth indelicately agape.
She turns, her brows rise, and she grins.
“You’ll catch gnats.” Finger on my chin, she shuts my mouth.
“Relax, Vanessa. I’m not going to shove you in.
Although”—she returns to gazing at the sea—“Evie would love that.”
“You hate me,” I say—or maybe I ask it.
Nettie laughs, a lovely, shimmering lilt. Almost like Celeste’s. I shift uneasily on the edge of the seawall. “I certainly don’t like you.”
Truth.
“I can’t say I’m your biggest fan either,” I offer. Then, “Why… why can’t we access more than this? The forest and the shore?”
She glances behind us, champagne-blonde hair blowing across her face and tangling with the variety of necklaces hanging from her neck.
Most of them seem homemade, braided from bright threads and seashells—but another, an open oyster dangling from a gold chain, glows iridescent, shimmering with magic.
Only an Alchemist could have made something so beautiful, and I bet I can guess exactly who it was.
“The castle is made of shells from this very beach,” Nettie says, “and materials from the forest. We already exist within both. But… accessing any more of it…” She pulls a clear baggie of gummy bears and sour worms from the pocket of her leggings, turning back toward the water.
“It doesn’t end well for a modern werewolf.
We can’t live, breathe, exist beyond that which the stars allow.
There’s no real explanation for it. Only that the universe doesn’t want us there, and the mortal realm doesn’t want us with it either.
We werewolves are forced to live in the in-between, never quite belonging to any one place but always belonging to our packs.
” She fishes a gummy out of the bag as if we aren’t speaking deep philosophy and extends a second one to me. “Candy?”