I didn’t want to know, not really. The weight on my shoulders was almost more than I could carry already.
Another boulder would drive me to my knees.
Chapter 16
After showering and dressing in warm clothing, I stood staring into the mirror while combing my hair. Should I leave it its regular black or go with a different color?
“You look fantastic,” someone said from behind me.
Jumping I whirled around, hitting my hip on the sink. I rubbed where it stung. “Alex.”
My tiny dragonfly friend hovered in front of me.
“Thought I’d stop by and chat.”
“I’m always happy to see you.” It welcomed a moment of normalcy. Too often lately, I’d relax my guard only to have the next bad thing happen. “Do you have anything cryptic to share today? Something that’ll lead me in the right direction?” Because, lately, I felt lost. Yes, I had a plan, but what if none of it worked as it should?
“You’re already going in the right direction.” Zipping over to the flowered shower curtain, he hovered like a hummingbird tapping pollen.
“That’s a relief.”
“It is and it isn’t.” Whirling around, he flew in close again and I was the one acting bug-eyed.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“What it always has meant.”
This conversation wasn’t getting me anywhere, like usual. “Oh, almost forgot to tell you. I found a Master Unraveler.” I couldn’t wait to share the news with my friends.
“Minerva.”
No denying the sting in my chest. “You knew about her already and you didn’t tell me?” He could’ve saved me months of heartache.
“You didn’t ask and…”
“Let me guess, you wouldn’t have been able to tell me.”
This time, he was the one to sigh. Well, his tiny chest expanded, and he puffed air past his buggy lips. “Would you really want me to tell you?”
“Yes. No.” I growled, because I was unsure. “I suppose not?”
“Anything you work for has more value.”
“Too true.” I never had wanted things handed to me. But just once, it might be nice to have something come easy.
He cocked his head as if he heard someone calling. “I should go.”
“Wait!” I held up my hand. “Minerva’s part of the sixth family. You’re a dragonfly.”
His lips quirked up. “Your insight astounds me.”
My turn to smirk. “Thanks. But what I meant is that a dragonfly is the companion to the sixth family.”
“Was.”
“Not any longer?”
“I’m not a companion. I’m your friend.”
“One of my best friends.” Despite him holding things back, I loved seeing him.
“Don’t forget.”
I frowned. “Don’t forget what?”
He morphed into the pendant I wore always, but his last word echoed around me. “Everything!”
Okay. More vagueness to shelve with the rest.
Leaving the bathroom, I walked into my room and found Tria still nose-deep in the journal.
“I’d say you found more to read there than I did,” I said. All I’d found was water damage and random scribbles.
She grunted.
“Care to share?”
Another grunt.
Well, she’d tell me eventually. My interest in the journal had waned now that I could talk to the source instead.
“I’m going to the library,” I said, sitting on my bed to put on my shoes.
She waved my way.
“Tria?” I asked.
“Yeah?”
I grinned. “Enjoy the book.”
“Intend to.”
Standing, I grabbed my backpack off the floor. “I’ll see you later?” I unzipped the bag and dumped a few notebooks and a textbook inside.
“Yep,” she mumbled.
Leaving the room, I shut the door behind me.
“Hey, Thorn,” I said to the lips on our door. Outlined in deep red today, he’d filled in the rest with bright yellow. Interesting look.
“Ah, Fleur. How goes the hunt? Any new information for my team?”
A team of doors was spying on the campus. Never would’ve thought something like this could happen.
“Nope.” Nothing about the Bespeller. I wasn’t sharing about Minerva. “How about you? Has the neighborhood watch found anything you can share?” Last time we’d talked, Thorn had suggested Ashton was behaving in a suspicious manner. Had they caught him doing anything incriminating yet? I had a hard time believing he was a hidden Bespeller but who would’ve thought Alys was shifting into nightlace?
Thorn dropped his voice to a whisper. “Door 212 in Wind Coven has some interesting news.”
It was wild to think we had a spy network made up completely of doors. Did Cloven or the Headmistress know?
After a quick glance up and down the hall to ensure we were alone, I leaned closer. “Yeah? What did you hear?”
“Eben—he’s an outling—”
“Yeah, he’s the self-appointed president of the Outling Club.” And a jerk, but that was beside the point.
“He and Vik—that’s Ashton’s brother, in case you don’t know—were seen sneaking out the eastern door of the main building last night. At about one in the morning.”
My voice grew hushed. “Where did they go?”
“The big question is, where were they going, because they didn’t get far. The Seekers caught them.”
“What happened after that?”
“Well, they squabbled.”
“I think Eben and Ashton are the friends. Vik’s along for the ride.” Whenever I’d seen them together but without Ashton, they’d been arguing.
“Not this time,” he said. “They were in this together.”
“Did they run? Get away?”
“Caught. They were taken to the Headmistress’s office.”
“Did Justine’s door listen in on the conversation?”
“Unfortunately, no.” Thorn’s lips scrunched, smearing some red into the yellow, creating a streaky sunset. “The Headmistress has wards to keep others from overhearing.”
Naturally. “Did anyone hear anything that might be helpful before the Seekers caught them?”
“The exterior door heard a few snatched words and the shed door corroborated them.”
I leaned so close to Thorn I was practically pressing myself through the wooden structure. “Do tell.”
“Slork.”
“Slork?” My Magical Creatures & How to Tame Them class had an after-dark meeting tonight. The syllabus said we’d be raking the slork’s interior.
Vik was in my class. Eben was not.
“Anything else?”
“One of them growled your name.”
I huffed. What were they planning now? When the nightlace was hunting outlings on campus, Vik, Eben, and Ashton had stolen nightlace vines from Professor Grim’s greenhouse lab and then rigged it to scare me. Their prank hadn’t worked. I’d notified Cloven, who’d intervened.
They’d hoped to spring a supposedly harmless prank, per Cloven’s report to me, but what if they didn’t plan something harmless this time? I doubted they’d been out for a walk at one in the morning.
“I want you to be careful, Fleur,” Thorn said. “We doors are the eyes and ears on campus but our reach—let alone our ability to act—is limited.”
“I’m not taking any risks.”
“That’s not what the western door told me.”
I scowled. “What did the western door say?”
“You were seen jumping into the moat.”
Straightening, I linked my arms on my chest and kept my face neutral. “Maybe I was going swimming.”
“Fleur.” He said my name like a chiding parent.
“Where I went is a secret.”
“I won’t ask you to tell. But maybe stay out of the moat. The naiads live there.”
And they
were deadly. “I will. I don’t plan to jump into the moat ever again.”
“Good. The western door will be delighted to hear that.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
“I believe that’s it. But we’re on patrol 24/7, and I’ll let you know if we hear anything further.”
I hitched the strap of my bag up higher on my shoulder. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Instead of going immediately to the library, I took a detour. Entering the parlor off the right of the lobby, I dropped my bag onto one of the high-back squishy chairs near the blazing fireplace.
I skimmed my finger along the built-in bookcase shelves and randomly grabbed a book, then took it back to my chair and sat, dropping it onto my lap. A Case Study of Banshee Sexuality. Blinking down at it, I couldn’t stop myself from flipping back the cover and scrolling through a few pages. Because…banshees? Last I’d heard, they roamed the countryside looking for those about to pass on and wailed to herald the eminent death.
How did a banshee hook up while doing that?
By the fae, the book had pictures. A snort of laughter burst out of me.
A guy studying in a chair a few over from mine glared. Yeah, you try keeping a straight face while reading this book!
But this wasn’t why I’d come here. The book was a cover.
Leaving it open on my lap, I closed my eyes and sought black threads…
There. A thick one a few feet long shimmied across the books as if looking for a good read. Sorry, magic, but the good read was lying in my lap.
Another, thinner and longer thread skipped along the ceiling, playing with a wide band of yellow, twisting and swaying. With my mind, I nudged the yellow aside and then mentally stroked the black. While Minerva said I needed to show the black strands who was boss, there was no harm in warming it up first.
Thoughts of banshee sex must be influencing me.
Come, I whispered.
The tip of the thread had started toward the yellow again but spun toward me as if intrigued.
No one had manipulated black for almost one hundred years. The threads had gone wild.
Come play with me, I thought. The entreaty worked too often for Sirra.
It shot in my direction, and I yelped when it hit me in the chest. My eyes popped open and I gasped, suddenly finding it a challenge to breathe.
Rolling his eyes, the guy who I’d disturbed closed his book. He dumped it into his backpack and, grumbling, rose and strode from the room.
Where had the black thread gone? I closed my eyes again and found it wavering so close to my face, I could call it Alex.
Reaching out with my mind, I ran my fingertip along the top of the strand. It rippled underneath me like a pub enjoying a vigorous patting.
Another black thread shot past us, heading for the yellow, but it paused as if it saw me interacting with the other. Gliding this way, it stopped beside the first and seemed to stare.
I nudged them together and they twisted into one thread, resembling a black stick of licorice.
Yes, I sighed. Like that.
When the ends snapped together, completing the link, I grabbed the tip and pulled the band inside me.
It struggled, the end snapping like the tail of a furious dragon.
With a crack, the strands yanked away from me and unraveled. Fleeing in opposite directions, they bolted from the room, leaving me alone with the yellow.
I could swear the remaining thread glared.
When the black threads didn’t return and calling for others resulted in nothing but a cluster of blue and green threads joining the yellow, I returned the Banshee sex book to the shelf and went to the library, where I located an empty table and dumped my backpack on the smooth surface. I hauled out a chair and sat.
On Monday, I had a history test, and I hadn’t looked over my notes in days. I’d intended to review the material yesterday after Grim’s class, but worry about my rotting hand had distracted me.
My hand stung. All the time. I kept picturing the Serum burning through my skin, muscle, and tendons, seeking bone. Tomorrow’s trip to the mall—and a visit with Katya—couldn’t come soon enough.
Since I’d still been unable to master content storage, an elemental magic trick that allowed wizards to memorize class material, I’d resigned myself to the old-fashioned way of way: index cards I’d go through over and over until I’d committed them to my mind. Boring and time consuming. You’d think just once something would go easy in my life.
I scribbled down details about the Ulfern War, a battle that had taken place among the Sídhe—the sixth and third families, actually, intending to run through my notes a thousand times before I left the library. A few more reviews over the weekend should help me pass this test.
Setting aside my notes, I got up, stretched, and took the stairs to the third floor. Months ago, I’d found a book about the sixth family here. At the time, I’d speculated the book would only allow me to read it while in the library because, when I snuck it out and flipped through the pages, they were blank. When I returned with it to the library, the words had magically reappeared. Sadly, Will, the librarian, had come up the stairs before I could read much, and I’d had to hide the book behind the sofa. When I returned after he’d closed up for the night, the book was gone. I’d looked for it, but hadn’t found it since.
I drifted through the lonely stacks. Almost everyone had gone to class, leaving this part of the library empty.
Where had I found that book?
It had been shelved on the inner side of the last stack.
A wink of light pulled me to the book like the crystal dragon in the fountain on the front lawn did whenever I saw it.
Dragonsworn. Cloven had told me the legend of the crystal dragon, that in a time of great need, the creature would come to life, take wing, and defend the one it cherishes most.
But I didn’t have time for legends today. They were for the future, many years from now, most likely. I had enough to deal with already.
The book winked again, just like the crystal dragon’s heart glistened deep within its chest whenever I watched it closely.
I snatched the book off the shelf and stuffed it underneath my shirt before anyone saw me with it.
Creeping back downstairs, I was tempted to toss the book into my bag and flee, but what if it still could only be read in the library?
I retook my seat and, after making sure no one watched—there were only a few other students near, their heads buried in books—I laid the book on the table in front of me. After inhaling deeply and puffing out the air, I flipped back the cover.
Bright colors of the Coven banners greeted me on the first few pages. Last time I’d read, I’d learned Minerva’s consort had been accused of bespelling outside the Council’s jurisdiction, the spells directed at the patriarch of the third family, the Dunneh Claydreeia clan.
Why had the Bespeller attacked the third family?
A power grab was the excuse, but what kind of power had they hoped to achieve? The fifth family—Donovan’s—ruled the kingdom. Unless there was some sort of hierarchy beneath the king, it was unclear how the sixth family could take power from the third.
The Council tried to intervene and a magical battle ensued. Many Sídhe in both families died, and the majority of the deaths were in the sixth family, including the consort. Horrified and angry about the loss of her husband and family, Minerva continued the battle. Realizing the feud would go on forever, the Council captured her, stripped her of her power, and banished her. No one knew where she went after that.
But I knew. She’d hidden in the room beneath the Academy. Given birth to Cloven, though she must’ve raised him elsewhere. Cloven had grown, married, and had two sons. Bastian, Cloven’s favorite of the two sons, had produced a child: Tria.
Wait a minute. The third family had accused the sixth.
My family was part of the third.
That made me pause.
With e
veryone bespelled to keep them from discussing what happened, it was hard tell fact from fiction. History was written by the victors, Mom told me that once. But this book was written by a sketar witch. Had she included the truth or was the book written under the direction of the Council?
The Council had believed the patriarch of the third family, and I had no reason to doubt the details written in this book.
What would Minerva say if I asked her?
It was anyone’s guess why all this was such a big secret. Why bother bespelling everyone to keep them from talking about what happened? Lessons could be learned from this. Use your power for good. Never bespell anyone against their will.
The Court Bespeller had cast a spell on Donovan, forcing him to forget me forever. Even beyond the death of the Bespeller, for all I knew. Interesting that the consort got into trouble for doing what the Court Bespeller did under command of the king. Maybe being in charge made the action legal, but I had my doubts.
I flipped through the pages, hoping I’d discover something new, but I found nothing. Just the same old details I’d already learned. Except…When I turned the final page, I found a folded piece of paper. Had the last reader used it as a bookmark?
I lifted it and after looking around again to make sure no one watched, I unfolded it.
Scratchy handwriting, but I could make out the words.
He didn’t do it.
Who didn’t do what?
But he did.
Chapter 17
I bit back my growl.
No need to draw attention.
What did this mean? More useless statements that made no sense.
Dropping the paper onto the book, I buried my face in my good hand. I’d never figure any of this out. Why the fae was I bothering?
Maybe because my curiosity was eating me alive.
“Ah, Fleur.” Will, the librarian, stood at the end of the table, a half-smile on his face. “What do you have there?”
My spine jolted up through my head. Think! Gulping back air, I flipped the book closed and pulled the pile of index cards I’d made up and over the book’s back cover. Hiding it.
Crystal Wing Academy- The Complete Series Page 61