The Unfairfolk (Valenbound Book 1)

by Sara Wolf

  A pang runs through my chest. “Seriously? Revenge porn?”

  “I mean, kind of. It usually happens to girls and it’s super shitty. But this is, like, the fourth girl who’s done it to him.”

  I gape. “Why?”

  She leans in to whisper. “Their Insta followers skyrocket right after they leak the video. One girl got a million followers and got scouted by an acting agency like, overnight. Ciel only sleeps with super gorgeous girls. Everybody knows that. So everybody wants to know who’s next.”

  “What -” I wrinkle my nose. “ - like he’s some calculator for their hotness?”

  “Pretty much.” Chunhua nods seriously. “Anyway, we’ve decided the whole fame-grab isn’t gonna fly, anymore. We’re docking people for it starting like, last month.”

  The heaviness in my chest plummets into my stomach. How fucking dare they? How dare they use him like that? Does he know about it? He has to. He has to. What would that even do to someone? Any affection, any relationship - all of it just to use you as a stepping stone to fame? I feel sick. And tired. On his behalf.

  The kiss he almost gave me, to get the fur he wanted so bad. His perfect lips near mine, radiating heat and mint. Using affection to get what he wants. Is that all he knows? All he’s been around?

  “-ey! Pierce!” Chunhua’s elbowing gets me out of my head. She points at the doorway. “Isn’t that your driver?”

  There, in the massive oak doorway, stands Lionel. He’s wearing his driver uniform - white shirt, black pants, black coat. He smiles at me and tips his hat, and I trot over, pulling him away from the noise of the room.

  “I know you’re old,” I start. “But not old enough to forget how to send a text.”

  “I thought you’d appreciate a surprise burrito,” Lionel laughs, holding up the foil-wrapped tube of cheesy salvation. I beam.

  “Ah. I see you now know the way to my cold, dead heart.” I peel back the foil and chomp it down, and he watches me. “Wow. Lots of nice lettuce in this one,” I muse. “Trying to get me to be healthy, huh?”

  His smile is small, almost grim. And he doesn’t stop staring.

  “Is this you offering yourself as dinner conversation?” I gulp down beans to talk.

  He tries to keep it plastered on, but his smile fades slowly. “I’m sorry, Lilith.”

  “The burrito isn’t that bad, buddy.”

  “You’ll -” His throat bobs, copper hair glinting in the hallway lights. “You’ll forgive me, right?”

  “What -” I swallow down another huge bite. “What are you talking about?”

  Lionel staggers, then, like he’s tired, like he’s drunk, his shoes clicking as he steadies himself on the wall, his hands covering his face.

  “I’m sorry, Lilith. So, so sorry. If I’d known He was after you - if I had known you were the one He chose, I never would’ve brought you here. You have to know that. If I knew, I’d never have brought you here. I swear.”

  “Whoa, hey,” I put the burrito down and reach warily for him - he looks like he’s about to. “Slow down. You’re talking like an alien again.”

  “Again?” He looks up through his fingers, shards of tortured ice-blue through skin.

  “I, uh, heard you -” I admit. “ - talking to Von Arx when I first got here. And then later, when you guys were talking about Julien. The Archrose, ash. Stuff like that. You kept saying shit that sounded like alien-talk so I - ” I breathe in. “You can tell me what’s going on, okay?”

  The ice-blue retreats, his head shaking. “I can’t. I promised Will. I owe him so much. He’s my father, too, Lilith, and I said I’d watch over you. Help you. Keep you safe. But Von Arx - I knew. I knew all along.”

  “Hey, chill. One thing at a time. Knew what?”

  His words are half-muttered, hard to hear through his hands clutching his face. “Silvere isn’t safe. For you least of all.”

  A wave of light-headedness overtakes me. My skull suddenly feels full of feathers, floaty. All wrong. My vision swings back and forth, seasick, and I have to fight it to stay in one place, on Lionel. He’s straightened, hands at his side, standing in the middle of the hall. Totally calm now in the face, but bits of hair frazzling from his curly copper ponytail. I know this feeling. This bone-deep tiredness - sleeping pills. Mom used to take them. And because she was taking them, I tried them, too. Out of curiosity. Worry.

  “What did you -” I swing around to look at the half-finished burrito and then back at him. “You didn’t -”

  I try to blink it away, breathe it away, but it’s stronger than my experiments with the sleeping pills ever were - a heavy cloud of cotton, of wool, puffy and gentle and everywhere, and the more I inhale the more it gets in my lungs, my eyelids, my muscles. Cobwebs of sleep. The burrito on the hall table is leaking gold, gold liquid dripping where my teeth tore into the lettuce, but that’s impossible -

  “I’m sorry, Lilith,” Lionel’s voice is like hearing it from the other side of a canyon. “This is the only way I can make it up to Von Arx. I made a mistake. You have to understand - I didn’t think it would matter. There are so many of you here. Four hundred of you. It could’ve been anyone, least of all you. You were new. Brand new.”

  “What -” I flail for the wobbling desk, for the vase, something to hold onto.

  “I should’ve stopped your blood promise with Alistair. I never should’ve brought you here in the first place. I can’t let her lose a family member. Not again.”

  “Lion - ” I sputter, hard gravity shocking my knees to the ground. I look blearily up to see his eyes watering. Tears. He staggers towards me, a blur of colors, copper and black.

  “Why?” I hear his whisper, close and broken. “Why did it have to be you, Lilith?”

  I can’t answer him. I can’t see anything, the world fading. The giggling and the booing from the room down the hall fades into nothingness, an audience blithely crying encore for my demise.

  Things come, and things go. My mind most of all.

  Glimpses, like a shitty film pieced together with too many pitch-dark intermissions in-between. More than just seeing, though - snapshots of sensation. Arms on my back, carrying, the rest of me hanging. Wet grass seeping into my jeans, then wet pine needles. Forest trees above me, piercing the dark sky. My cheek pressed against the cold ground. Little round white things in a perfect circle. Mushrooms. The fairy ring. Knight Durand, empty and jagged and right next to me, above me with broken spires broken windows.

  My stomach would clench, if it could.

  “You.” A voice - stressed and sharp, but made of iron. I know that voice. I’ve heard it whispering, I’ve heard it shouting, and I’ve heard it crying. Von Arx.

  Glasses gone, I squint - she’s here. I thought she left for urgent business? Her pantsuit is a gentle, pale green but her posture’s hard and unforgiving and cross-armed. Not looking at me, though - I move my eyes with every last scrap of energy to see who she’s talking to.

  A deer.

  No one else here, no else across from her but an eye-searingly white deer. The same one I saw. The same one in my dream.

  Is this…another dream?

  “I know the Nightrose wants her,” Von Arx says. To no one. To the forest. To the…deer? “Call Him. Have Him take her, now.”

  Another voice comes, I don’t know from where. It’s weird, thin, filtered through stardust, through whatever wavy knockout juice is doing laps through my veins. At the same time the weird voice reverbs off the trees, the deer lifts its horned head, furred chest proud.

  “He does not come when called. You know this, Keeper, best of all.”

  “You mock my pain,” Von Arx snarls.

  “We mock nothing but your arrogance in thinking our ways might be bent to your whim.”

  “Your ‘ways’ stole my son from me.”

  The deer tilts its head, its eyes rotating eerily in its skull, slit pupil going vertical and settling back to horizontal again. Again. Like in my dream.

  “Our ways
gave you - and every other human beneficiary - your power. Your status. You exist in this high place on Earth because of us.”

  Von Arx has no comeback for this. Nausea grips my stomach, pinching and sickly. The deer turns it’s back on her. On me.

  “A promise made is a promise kept, until the very end of all death.”

  Von Arx suddenly stabs an accusatory finger at it. “We live a hundred years, and you live thousands. Your promises force our children’s children into pointless sacrifice with no end in sight. Where is the equality in that?”

  At first I think the deer didn’t hear her. Then it inclines its horns - points sharper in the moonlight - and looks over its shoulder.

  Like a human would.

  “These are, perhaps, questions you should have asked before becoming Keeper.”

  I’m half-asleep, still, because Von Arx’s incredible eyes flash an even brighter spring green, like jade with floodlight behind it. I’m dreaming, because the roots of the trees around my head shift, hiss against the pine needles as they pull out from the ground and slither under my body - around it - like great bark-armored snakes. Towards the deer.

  “Bring Him!” Von Arx bellows. “Bring Him here, now! Make Him take this girl, and be done with it!”

  A ring, like the clearest bell, and the deer bucks, back hooves snapping together like it’s trying to throw an invisible rider. The roots freeze under me, around me, glistening all over with something like diamond frost. Frozen in their tracks. The deer snorts, warm breath coming out as a pale cloud in the suddenly-frigid air.

  “He will take His successor when He is ready. No sooner. No later. Be it this girl, or your grandson who shares her blood; He will decide the who, and the when. Not you.”

  Someone pulls the plug, and all the colors - white fur, jade green, black night - get sucked down into my whirlpool of sleep again.

  A wise man once said waking up is the worst part of sleeping. And if you were wondering - yes, that wise man was me. After experiencing vast existential angst in a Walmart at 4 in the afternoon.

  They don’t even know what Walmart is here, do they?

  That’s my first thought as my throbbing head makes all the morning sun in the room pulse like a strobe light. My room. Pretty sure this is my room; the many bottles of half-empty water on the bedside table (RIP, environment), the period-scrubbed underwear hanging from the shower rod, the messy bouquets of flowers I’ve picked on the way back to class and left to dry in the windowsill. I’m in bed, but when did I get here? The last thing I remember is…

  I can’t remember. There’s a blank. Lionel is there, and Chunhua, and the taste of cheese and lettuce. I remember the ranking meeting, the cheering and booing, and then…nothing. A smear of darkness where memory should be. What the fuck was I doing up until now? Phone says it’s Friday morning. Which means I lost all of Thursday night. I start to panic, and then I get a text. Chunhua.

  tell me next time before u leave the ranking meeting!

  Did I leave with anybody? I text her back. I can't remember.

  It takes Chunhua .04 seconds to respond. ur driver came to pick you up

  Lionel. That explains why he’s a copper flash where my memory should be. Why can’t I fuckin’ remember him? Or what we did? Or how I got here?

  Drugs?

  I choke down an inhale. Was I drugged? Is this what being drugged is?

  I frantically google it - memory loss drugs. There’s a few of them. GHB, rohypnol, ketamine. The usual date-rape drugs. And all the symptoms point to headaches when you wake up, dry throat, gaps in memory. I swallow, sandpaper in my windpipe.

  Fuck.

  I’ve been listening in class, for once. Occam’s razor, the professor’s voice echoes. A theory wherein the solution that requires you to make the fewest assumptions is usually the correct one.

  Occam’s razor; Lionel drugged me.

  I get up and move to the sink to wash my face. Don’t panic, Lilith. Think. Why? Why would he drug me? What’s in it for him? Will asked him to protect me, not -

  A flash. It blinks across the back of my eyelids like a freeze-frame - Lionel’s handsome face, aquiline nose, all of it distorted with pain and regret. Tears.

  ‘I’m sorry, Lilith.’

  I don’t get the memory back, but I get the feeling of it, a ghost impressed on a silhouette. He said sorry. He didn’t want to do what he was doing - I remember that much. Good ol’ feelings - always sticking around when you least want them to.

  I’m too calm. I should be freaking, right? This is a definite freak-out situation, right?

  I wash my face, my hands. Dirt. Suddenly, a crystal-clear memory of the smell of wet dirt in my nose. I tear off my pajamas, looking for any sign of grime, but there’s nothing but my own skin. Did someone change me into pjs? Lionel? Did he see me naked? What clothes was I even wearing yesterday?

  One thing at a time, Lilith.

  Did I dream it all up? Was it even real?

  I walk over to my dresser, fishing around in the underwear drawer for the lipbalm case. Real, unreal. The fur inside will decide.

  But…there’s nothing.

  It’s gone.

  I mildly hyperventilate. Maybe I left it in my backpack? Nah, I keep it in the drawer precisely so I don’t fuckin’ lose it like this. I tear apart the dresser - behind it, below it, stuck in the cracks behind the drawer runners? Nothing. Butt-ass naked-ass nothing.

  Did somebody…take it?

  Did Lionel drug me so he could take a piece of deer fur?

  He’s part of the cult. He has to be, right? My fingers hover over my phone, over the string of earlier texts between him and I. Even if I asked, he wouldn’t tell me the truth. Who’d tell the truth to the person they drugged? Who can I even tell about this? Von Arx is AWOL and also she hates me. Mom would think I was crazy if I started blabbing about deer fur and gold cultists and red-eyed stalkers and it’d ruin everything. Can’t tell Ana, or Bianca - I’d be making too much trouble for them. We’re still brand-new friends; the last thing in the world I wanna do is scare them off. Definitely can’t tell Will. He could’ve been the one who ordered Lionel to do it. He could be a cultist.

  Mom could be in trouble.

  No - as far as I can tell, the cult shit has something to do with the grounds of Silvere. Mom’s not here. So she’s safe. For now. Whatever this cult wants, it concerns the school. The students.

  Someone ordered Lionel to drug me against his will - that’s why he was so torn up about it. That’s the feeling I get, anyway. But who has that power over him? Power enough to have him ignore Will’s - his adoptive dad’s - request to protect me?

  Will himself, maybe. Von Arx, maybe. Everything is a maybe, at this point.

  Another text vibrates - Chunhua. I flip over to it.

  btw, Ciel’s asked for u, so ur officially invited to Gen’s exam ;) congrats

  Genevieve’s exam. Fantastic. Because what a girl needs after getting drugged is another dozen chances to get drugged. Part of me wishes my brain didn’t go to that immediately, but the other part of me knows that’s just the reality of being a lady under the patriarchy. Parties just mean you gotta be careful, full stop.

  Being alive means you gotta be careful, full stop.

  I spot a cute little beijinho, unwrapped and dusted white, still sitting on my desk. Ana. I told her she deserved a chance to be herself. To be free. To fuck up, for one whole night.

  Parties aren’t my thing. Everything is definitely not alright.

  But for one night, for Ana, I could pretend they are.

  34

  The Exam (Or, How they like to say getting over yourself is easier with booze)

  “I don’t think this is a good idea!” Ana calls as I politely drag her by the hand through the woods. Skin-on-skin, and I only mildly feel like throwing up. I’m calling it a win.

  “It is a perfectly good idea!” I assert. “There’ll be no security, and I’ll keep a hawk-eye out for anybody filming. You just have
fun, okay?”

  “It’s not that easy.” She dodges a branch I shoved out of my way. I puff my chest out.

  “Well, it should be. And when I rule the world, it will be.”

  “But -”

  “Never fear, Lilith Pierce is here. She’ll show you how American girls used to letting down their parents party, preferably before she gets arrested.” I let go of her hand and whirl in my tracks to face her. “Speaking of arrests - Strickland doesn’t come to these, does he? I’m kind of in the middle of being mad at him.”

  “Why?” Ana asks slowly, picking a leaf out of her hair.

  “Because he was right. About things not turning out like I wanted them to. And I can’t stand people who aren’t me being right. Especially ones who use words like ‘undoubtedly’ and ‘hardly’.” I put on his snooty accent. Just then, my eyes catch a flicker of firelight through the thick trees. “There’s partytown! C’mon!”

  The first thing to greet us is something Ana rolls her eyes at and calls ‘gabber’ - but it just sounds like hardcore rave music to me. And honestly it’s not so bad, if you consider the sound of trash cans beating each other up alright. Which I do. It’s blasting out through someone’s tinny portable speakers, the playlist fluctuating wildly into a trap remix and then back into gabber again. The party’s musical theme might be undecided, but the decor is supremely confident; some intrepid soul braved the heights of the trees and strung white Christmas lights and holographic streamers around the trunks. The bonfire is the only real light source, stretching the shadows of the throbbing crowd long and dark over the pine needles. I can’t believe how many people are actually here - so many you can barely see the forest floor. Half of them are sitting around the fire, the other half milling around a keg someone’s managed to roll through the woods.

  “Okay, confession time,” I whisper to Ana. “I’ve never actually been to a party.”

  “Ever?” She quirks a brow.

  “Ever.” I assert. I don’t tell her that the idea of being there for Mom when she came home at three in the morning to cook her something always just seemed more important to me. Ana’s smile is all coy and self-satisfied.