Chapter 22
CHAPTER
I flew downstairs faster than my breath could catch up with me, Wren right on my heels.
As soon as we made it to the parlor, I spotted Emelle bowed over on one of the sofas, surrounded by Cilia, Mitzi, and a small mob of other Wild Whisperers who were all pelting her with questions.
Above their heads, a vaguely familiar blue cotinga spiraled in quick, fluttering flurries like a moving fluorescent halo.
“Melle?”
As soon as she looked up and saw me—her eyes rimmed with red—I shouldered my way through the other women and dropped to my knees in front of her to gather her into a hug.
“I’m here,” I said into her hair. “What happened?”
I’d heard Wren, of course, and Dyonisia had told me about the pirate attacks on seaside villages last year in the Testing Center, but…
What had Steeler said to me right before he’d Walked me to the lighthouse? I don’t deny the attacks, but they’re not what you think.
And I’d been so overwhelmed with everything afterward that I’d forgotten to ask him to elaborate later.
“I…” Emelle started in a shuddery whisper, “…I made friends with Pedwill last year right after our first quarterly test.”
She nodded up at the blue cotinga still zipping in circles over her head, and I suddenly remembered where I’d seen it before. It had been the bird tapping on my window the morning after Lander’s party. The one Willa had wanted to strangle.
“My grandpa was sick when I left Merkwell for the Esholian Institute a year ago,” Emelle continued, each of her syllables shivering like fracturing glass, “so Pedwill has been flying back and forth, giving me periodic updates on his health.”
Emelle’s grandpa was sick? She’d never said, never told me. And…
Pedwill. The name of a bird I’d never even heard of until now.
My stomach clenched with the realization that Emelle had been keeping secrets of her own…
for even though it wasn’t strictly forbidden to communicate with family back at home, it broke one of the many unspoken rules that always seemed to loom over us alongside the domed shield arching across our sky. Keeping us small. Contained.
Emelle pulled back to look at me, a silent plea swimming in her eyes—a plea to not question it right now.
“I wasn’t expecting Pedwill today, but he showed up right after Mrs. Wildenberg’s class to tell me that some…some…”
Just as I was wondering if I should drop my blockade to try to access the thoughts that seemed stuck in her throat, her blue cotinga chirped in her stead, “Those monsters breached the shield and started ravaging the town with Magic! Magic I’ve never seen before!
The villagers tried to defend themselves, but by the time I left to tell Emelle, half the town was already burnt to a crisp! Or torn to pieces!”
My heart seemed to stall, then pick up again with a resounding beat against my ribs, pumping the first surges of rage through my heart.
Because burnt to a crisp and torn to pieces sounded exactly like what Dyonisia had described in the Testing Center all those months ago.
“Your family?” I managed to breathe.
Emelle shook her head, and Pedwill chimed in again.
“I couldn’t spot them in the chaos!”
God of the Cosmos. Emelle didn’t know if her family was dead or alive.
When would the attack end so she could find out?
I knew the pirates—faeries—wanted to break their original Good Council out of prison, but Merkwell was at least a hundred miles south of Bascite Mountain.
If they’d managed another breach, why the hell would they destroy an innocent village on their way? Just to get Dyonisia’s attention?
My hands twitched around Emelle’s neck, itching to drag my fingernails down Steeler’s treacherous face.
Who else could have helped the pirates bypass the shield besides someone with the literal power to surpass space itself?
If he’d been directly involved in this attack, I would not hesitate again before shoving my knife straight between his clavicles.
“Where’s Lander?” I asked, pulling back from my hug with Emelle before she could feel the hateful quiver traveling up my legs.
Wren answered from behind my shoulder.
“Gileon went to fetch him.”
Okay.
Okay.
All I had to do was wait until Lander arrived before I let that pumping rage propel me into action, spur me forward, and—
Lander came sprinting through the open doorway on elongated legs mere seconds later, surging through everyone to scoop Emelle up against his chest.
As soon as I heard Emelle’s muffled sobs finally unleash themselves against his shirt, I scrambled to my feet, hurrying for that doorway just as Gileon came lumbering in with Rodhi following closely behind.
“What’d I miss?” Rodhi asked, panting.
“Everything,” Wren spat. “Where have you been?”
“That’s a private matter, darling, but I appreciate your interest.” Rodhi blinked at the blue cotinga zipping around Lander and Emelle’s conjoined form. “Is this a new mating ritual, or something?”
I didn’t wait to hear Wren’s outburst to that.
I was already out the door, sprinting across the estuary bridge and through the Wild Whisperer sector until I crashed into the jungle, letting all the leaves and bristles and branches reel me in.
“Jagaros?” I called.
The trees hummed. The thistles at my feet nudged my ankles. Some nearby monkeys giggled as they peeked at me through the leaves. But not a single sarcastic growl ripped through the wildlife.
Of course not. I’d told him to not bother coming back. Jagaros was probably on the other end of the island by now, and honestly good for him. Because the accusations I wanted to scream at him would make even the top of the food chain cower and curl their tail.
But I still pushed myself forward until I was sandwiched between two colossal surface roots of a nearby tree and pressed my forehead against its moss-slick trunk, inhaling the heavy, sappy scent of it.
“Is Jagaros nearby?” I breathed into it.
The tree’s humming intensified, springing into a chaotic melody that told me yes, Jagaros was, however inexplicably, nearby.
“Where?” I asked.
Again, that humming increased its tempo, and suddenly a branch was curling around my waist, another one wrapping around my legs.
And hoisting me up.
Through snarled limbs and vines that parted a path for me, past lizards freezing on bark, snakes looped lazily around boughs, frogs, monkeys, and even a singular sloth dripping with moss.
My stomach bottomed out as the branches fed me to a neighboring tree that grabbed me with stiffer, clawlike limbs and passed me to another tree. And another and another.
Deeper and deeper, the jungle carried me along its braided chain.
Until it finally plopped me down gently on a bed of branches somewhere in the upper half of the canopy, where waxy leaves the size of my face cradled either side of me and a pair of fierce yellow eyes fixed onto mine.
“Interesting,” Jagaros said, uncrossing his paws.
He appeared to have been lounging in a flattened fork in the tree, but now his ears pricked on high alert as I readjusted myself, straddling one branch while I gripped another one with a tight fist.
“Hello,” I forced myself to say. For manners’ sake.
“I thought you no longer wished to talk to me.” Jagaros’s pupils had gone arrow-straight as they focused on my face. “Or are you done throwing a temper tantrum like you’re three years old again?”
“That depends.” I blew away a hawk moth fluttering near my face. “Are you going to give me one straightforward answer this time?”
“That depends,” Jagaros retorted. “Are you going to ask questions that won’t jeopardize all of our safety while you’re still learning to protect the secrets in your mind?”
No. The answer to that was no. This time, I planned to ask him all the questions I wanted and eavesdrop on the hidden thoughts simmering right behind that feline skull.
It definitely felt like a massive invasion of his privacy, but if Emelle’s village had been attacked by pirates and Jagaros was working with them…
I let it dissolve around me, my blockade.
Then I said, “I knew you were working with Steeler this whole time. You sound just like him.”
There. Let him deny it out loud but confirm it mentally.
But when Jagaros spoke, his outer thoughts matched his verbal growls so precisely, the two sounds merged into one.
“I’ll take that as a compliment, Rayna Drey, given Coen Steeler’s the only one I approve of for you.”
I was too stuffed full of shocked rage to even scoff at that.
“Okay, one, you’re not either of my dads.”
I pushed down the urge to think of Fabian and Don right now. I missed them hard enough to hurt, and the idea that they might be next, that Alderwick might suffer the same attack as Merkwell…
“Two,” I pushed on, “I don’t approve of Steeler for me. Did you know that his precious pirate family just demolished most of Emelle’s village? That her family might be dead because of him?”
I could feel the quivering take over my entire body now, and the branch I straddled actually seemed to be tensing, as if preparing for me to fall or lunge toward Jagaros and claw his eyes out.
But Jagaros didn’t even blink.
“Those monsters weren’t pirates that attacked Merkwell.”
My quivering stopped. My very heartbeat stopped.
“What? How do you know? What were they, then?”
Once again, Jagaros’s mental and verbal words merged into one, his stark honesty evident in the absence of even the faintest echo.
“Something far more unstable and dangerous. I do not know any more than that.”
He paused as that sunk into my gut like a vise clamping down.
Steeler hadn’t been involved in the attack today.
None of the pirates had.
I don’t deny the attacks, but they’re not what you think—Steeler hadn’t been lying when he’d said those words to me on his knees.
When Jagaros eyed me now, his pupils softened.
“You are correct in your assumption that I have been working with Coen Steeler. Not often, I might add, but whenever it is necessary for your protection. His mind called out to mine when he left you all those months ago, asking me to take care of you. His mind called out to mine again merely a week ago, telling me his plan to offer you Mind Manipulating power.”
So he knew. Jagaros knew I could read his outer thoughts right now, even if I hadn’t yet learned to dive into his mind to access his inner ones.
My lungs twisted in my chest as I raked in a breath and let it out again on a question that seemed to hover uncertainly between us. A question that had been hovering uncertainly between us for a while.
“And why are you protecting me, Jagaros? What am I to you?” I almost stopped there, but if I was expecting honesty from him, I knew I’d better deliver my own, even in the way I shaped my questions.
“Why are you so invested in my safety, but no one else’s?
Why are you comfortable talking to me, but no other Wild Whisperer? ”
This time, Jagaros kept his maw shut.
But I heard every desperate thought break free from his constraint of silence anyway.
Once upon a time, it was I who ruled this island in a different body. I was the faerie king of old, in harmony with my people… until she came and conquered.
I knew who she was even though his mind couldn’t seem to conjure her image without clamming up. Dyonisia, of course.
I froze in my position in the tree, reeling in every unspoken word.
She conquered, and I could do nothing to protect my people, not truly, not as a rightful king should have.
But you, Rayna Drey… Pain and regret and something even more ancient swelled in the cracks of his thoughts.
You are a faerie born on this island, just as my people were.
So maybe I can save you in ways I couldn’t save them.
A lump burned its way up my throat.
Perhaps I had known, deep down, that when Steeler had said Dyonisia swept away the indigenous clan of faeries, he’d been talking about Jagaros’s clan. But that didn’t make the lump burn any less.
“I’m sorry, Jagaros. For everything you lost.” I reached out and placed my hand over his paw. When he didn’t move away from me, I said carefully, “Does this mean I need to bow to you?”
Jagaros gave a snarling laugh that lightened some of the density in his eyes.
“No. What you need to do is focus on your Mind Manipulating lessons with Steeler. And keep practicing defending yourself with that knife in case you’re ever in a position where either of your magics are nullified.
” He placed his other paw on top of my hand for a brief moment before hefting himself up.
“And no, Coen Steeler didn’t ask me to train you with the knife.
That was my idea… perhaps born of my frustration that I don’t currently have proper hands of my own. ”
I furrowed my eyebrows at that.
Why didn’t Jagaros have hands of his own? If he’d once ruled the island in a different body—a faerie body, I assumed—did that mean he was a Shape Shifter who’d become stuck in this alternate form? Or had Dyonisia cursed him, somehow?
It wasn’t in me to pry even further, however. Not when Jagaros had already given me the one truth that mattered most:
I truly was a faerie born on this island. Which meant Dyonisia was not my only ruler—he was, too.
And for now, that ruler wanted me to train.
I pulled my blockade back over myself like a shroud.
“Well, if I’m going to focus on Mind Manipulating and defense, I need to get Kitterfol Lexington’s weekly interrogations out of my way.”