by J. A. Curtis
“Yes, after one more day of school,” Mina said.
At this, Kris looked even more shocked. “What? Are you crazy? You’re in no condition to show up at school tomorrow. Plus, you just got in a huge fight—it's all over social media—with the football team no less, and it looks like one kid ended up in the hospital. You’ll be lucky if the cops aren’t there waiting for you tomorrow.”
“But we didn’t start the fight.” Mina wore my large sweatshirt over her legs like a blanket.
Kris shrugged. “That’s not what’s going around on social media.”
A growl escaped my throat. Humans were two-faced liars. This was why they could never be trusted.
Mina had that look on her face, and I knew she wouldn’t let Kris win. “Don’t worry, Kris. I’ve got this figured out. I won’t get caught.”
“And what about Arius?” Kris demanded.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ll be with Mina.” I’d stay with the real Mina, protecting her while she sent her faerie guardian into the school.
“See, it's all worked out,” Mina said.
Kris threw her hands in the air. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She gathered the empty bowls and stormed from the room.
Wolpertinger stood and stretched. “Welp, this brave hero better go out and find his own dinner.”
“Thanks again, Wolpertinger,” Mina said.
Wolpertinger bowed. “My pleasure, my lady.” He flapped out the window and into the night.
Mina helped me enter Chels’s number into the phone and pulled up the texting app. I held Kris’s phone close and plunked out a message on the small keyboard.
After what happened today with Jazrael, I think it’s best if we call off Homecoming.
I set the phone on the bed, but it buzzed almost instantly.
Jazrael? You two are friends, aren’t you?
Yes.
Fine, whatever. I’ll find someone else.
Part of me wanted to write something more, to ask her why she was this way, or what had come over her, but Mina sat next to me, observing our conversation. No, it was better not to aggravate the situation. I set Kris’s phone on the bed.
Mina picked up Nuada’s computer, which leaned against the wall, charging. We’d spent some time last night trying to find any helpful information it might hold, but it was clear several folders contained some sort of encryption.
“I may know someone who can help us access the information on here,” she said.
“Who?” I asked.
“A girl I met at school. Her name is Nellie.”
“Do we want a human seeing the information that’s on there?”
“It’ll be fine.” She bit her lip briefly, then said, “Have you been able to contact the princess again?”
I grabbed the bag with the glass ball and settled back next to her. “No.”
I went into the glass ball every night, but the princess wasn’t ever there. I didn’t understand how it worked or if I was doing something wrong. If she was trapped in there, why was it so difficult to find her?
“How’s getting the emerald to work?” I asked.
Mina sighed, pulling the ring she’d placed on a chain from under her shirt. “It’s not. It's like, the more I try to concentrate on it, the more it resists me. I thought this one would be the easiest because at least I had seen it in use. I haven’t even tried the others.” She eyed the bag where the armband lay with the rest of the stones. “I saw the queen use the pink stone the other night. But for the emerald, all Jazrael did was brush it with her fingers”—she lifted the emerald and her fingers grazed across it. Nothing happened—“and it changed her appearance into a completely different person.”
She let the emerald fall against her chest with another sigh.
“You saw a vision?”
“Yeah.”
She told me all about how she saw the king and queen and their son living in the Otherworld.
“I don’t think we always had our abilities,” she said at the end. “I think they were something we acquired. For a purpose.”
“What purpose?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head sadly.
I was tired of the questions and all the uncertainty. The pieces that never made a complete whole. The half-truths floating around in my brain. If I could only speak with Niamh again, somehow.
I pulled the ball from the bag, settling it in my lap. The blue jagged stone sat suspended in the middle. I pressed my palm against the cool glass, shutting my eyes, and let myself sink down.
I had gotten used to the falling. With my wings tucked against my back, I tipped into a dive and plummeted. A daring rush ran through me, and I waited till the last possible second before spreading my wings. I soared just above the grassy earth, my fingers splitting through the green and yellow blades. It was hard to pull up and land from that angle. I had to flip, pull my legs in, and flap hard. My feet rammed down, and the jarring sent an ache into my knees.
I straightened, the feel of the feathers tucking against my back was like pressing against a soft pillow. I glanced all around. The grassy plain seemed to extend forever in all directions. No Niamh.
“You’re, uh, pretty good at that.”
My eyes raised to Mina, hovering in the air. She wore a soft white blouse covered by a corset with a leathery skirt. Large twilight-colored butterfly wings fluttered behind her. Her hair, braided across her forehead, revealed smooth unblemished skin. No bandages, no injury. Still, the look on her face made it seem as if someone had struck her with a sledgehammer.
I flew to her, worried that the transformation might have taken too much out of her. “Are you all right?”
Her eyelids opened, then shuttered. “I’m... fine.” Her body gave a slight jolt. “I’m fine,” she said with more firmness.
“We should land,” I said.
She didn’t protest as we both dropped to the ground. Her sandaled feet—covered with ties that crisscrossed up to her knees—touched down with a delicateness I wasn’t used to seeing from Mina.
I flapped and circled her once in a low glide, wanting to see her from every angle. She spun in the opposite direction, the flutter of her wings giving her a slight lift. The dark blue at her back bled into deeper and deeper purples, which faded to black at the edges.
I landed in front of her.
“I want wings like yours,” she blurted.
She would. Mina wasn’t the type to flutter softly around.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
She touched her flawless forehead. “I don’t feel anything.” She smirked. “I might stay here all night.”
“This is your first time inside the glass ball. We should limit your stay.”
“Guess I better make the most of it then.”
“Close your eyes.”
Her wings fluttered behind her. “Why?”
“Trust me.”
Her eyes shut. I drew near. She smelled of rain and blackberries.
I bent down, my lips close to her ear. “Imagine the wings you desire.”
Her eyes didn’t open, but her eyebrows raised. “It’s that easy?”
“Concentrate.”
The wings on her back lengthened and sprouted feathers. Intricate designs of browns, grays and blacks adorned her soft feathers in unpredictable patterns. I didn’t move. I could have stayed right there and stared at the patterns etched into her dark wings for hours.
“What are these?” I whispered.
“The wings of a nighthawk. One used to nest near my room.”
Her wings spread, and I noticed a bar of white near the tip.
“Should we fly?” Her neck arched, a challenge in her eyes. “Come find me. If you can.”
She launched up into the mist with an ease that surprised me. Her time with her faerie guardian as a griffin had given her experience with winged flight. Mist curled around her body, but I never lost sight of her. She didn’t know it, but I had the advantage.
I leapt into the air and flew after her, trailing her from below. Occasionally, I glanced up to admire those wings and her lithe form in flight. Her wingspan stretched farther than mine, though the overall width was thinner.
She turned and glided back my direction. I was pretty sure she hadn’t seen me. That daring feeling rushed through me, and I veered upward.
I flipped right before I reached her, and our bodies collided, fast and hard. Mina cried out in shock. My arm latched onto her waist, and my wings folded around her as the momentum threw us up and into a sideways barrel roll.
As we came full circle, I uncurled my arm, throwing her up and away as hard as I could. She rose, laughing, and flipped once. Her wings worked hard as she gathered her bearings.
“You’re crazy!” she shouted, but the huge grin told me she had enjoyed it. “Should we try again?” She shot off into the mist.
I chuckled and rose, savoring the feel of the cool misty air ruffling my feathers. This time I wanted to take her from above.
It took some work to stay far enough away, so she didn’t spot me through the mist as I got into position. I’d have to move fast so she didn’t hear me coming. My wings tucked against my back.
I dove.
Right before we hit, my wings sprang out to soften the impact. The force of my torso hitting her back forced her wings down and her body to tip. Careful to keep my wings up so they didn’t entangle with hers, my arms slid around her, and our bodies molded together. We pitched forward.
As we came around, I realized my plan to separate wouldn’t work, not without endangering Mina. Our momentum stalled. We were too close together to flap without entangling our wings.
Mina shrieked as gravity took over. I threw my weight to the side, pulling us into another sideways roll, and thrust her away from me.
Her wings caught air. I angled down toward the ground, willing the rush of adrenaline in my veins to cool.
She came near, her wings working twice as hard, as if she regretted the idea of having to land. “You can see through the mist.”
I shrugged, but couldn’t hold back the smile that spread across my face.
She dropped suddenly and awkwardly to the ground. She rose to her feet, brushing off her skirt even though no dirt had accumulated on it. Her wings pulled tight against her back. “I—um...”
But she abandoned what she was going to say, most likely because the excuse she was going to use for her poor landing was a lie. A curious gleam came to her eyes. She stepped right up to me, so close there was less than an inch of space between us.
The kaleidoscope of yellows, golds, and browns that made up Mina’s eyes flashed multiple emotions at once. I was falling into sunlight that was both warming and searing at the same time. I never understood how she could make me feel both. But her bright, intelligent eyes weren’t focused on me. They were on the dark wings spanning wide past my sides. One of her hands reached out and brushed across the soft feathers of my inner right wing.
I didn’t have to watch her to sense the movement. The vibration of my feathers signaled the path of her hand drifting across. She pulled back for a moment, then thrust both of her hands forward, one into each wing, her fingers weaving between the feathers until they reached the bare skin hiding underneath. The touch of her fingers caressing the sensitive skin caused an explosion of sensation. My wings stretched and a soft moan burst from my lips.
This wasn’t right. These feelings. Not between a superior and her subordinate.
“Mina.” I meant it to come out as a warning, even a gentle rebuke, but that wasn’t how it sounded. My voice was lower than normal, filled with a strange breathlessness.
Her roving fingers stilled, and her eyes rose to mine. She blinked, as if trying to clear her vision. Maybe she was realizing how inappropriately close she stood or how unacceptably intimate her hands in my feathers was, considering our ranks. Perhaps she’d summon the strength to do what I was failing to do—step away.
Or maybe she wouldn’t.
She bounced up on her toes, her lips making contact with mine. The unexpectedness of the gesture caused me to inhale sharply. I should do what I did with Chels. Push her back. We weren’t little human teenagers enjoying a carefree kiss. We were soldiers. We had duty. We had a mission.
My arm slid around her waist, and I drew her body against mine. A part of me had wanted this from the moment those golden-brown eyes scorched through me the first time we met. And, again, when I first heard her speak, and I knew she wouldn’t be the type to just go along, and I had both admired and hated her for it.
Her lips were soft and yet had a hard steeliness behind them. I pressed into that steeliness, my arm tightening on her waist, locking our bodies together, daring her to rise to the challenge.
She did. She always did. The softness hardened, and she pressed back with a passion that lit a flame in my stomach and spread like wildfire through my veins.
Goddess Danu above, I loved this girl.
15
Answers in the Mist
Mina
“Keep searching for answers, Mina.” —Nana
AN INVOLUNTARY GASP tore from my lips as Arius jerked back. Fire burned in those intense eyes, but a spark of something else also lingered there. What was it? Pain? Regret? I took a small step toward him, my body longing to be pressed back against his. But he turned his shoulder toward me, his wings snapping tight against his back.
Only then did I notice that the world around me had changed.
The grassy plain gone, we now stood in a large courtyard. A well-tended garden with wild, colorful plants unlike any I had ever seen spread out to my right. Directly, to my left loomed a castle made of white polished marble and large wooden branches, like stone and trees had tangled together in the most natural way to create the magnificent edifice.
My neck craned as I stared up at the castle, not comprehending how it had appeared out of nowhere. This was the same structure I had seen during Relinquishment. The impossible marvel, crafted by something besides simple engineering, almost caused me to miss the man leaning against the castle wall with a knife in his hands, flipping it in the air and catching it by the hilt.
Arius stood ramrod straight, watching the man, ready for a fight. My eyes dropped to Arius’s waist. We had no weapons. Not only that, I realized, I couldn’t sense my faerie guardian.
We had no protection.
“Mina,” Arius whispered, “look at his arm.”
My breath caught at the dragon tattooed on the man’s left bicep.
Wait. I’ve seen him before, I thought.
“Dramian,” I replied softly, “From our past lives.”
This Dramian had light-brown hair and sky-blue eyes—so different from the dark hair and piercing green eyes of the dragon-boy I currently knew. But then, faerie looks didn’t remain the same from life to life.
The man continued flipping the knife. He didn’t respond to our whispered conversation. In fact, he hadn’t responded to us at all.
A side door near the man flew open, and a woman I recognized exited. Jazrael charged forward, straight toward Arius.
And passed straight through Arius.
Arius staggered back, his eyes wide. Jazrael hadn’t become translucent. It was Arius's image that flickered—as if he were the ghost.
What was going on? Was I seeing a vision? Was I inside a vision?
“A rare night off for the queen’s protector. Whatever shall we do with such a prize?” Dramian finally spoke.
Jazrael stopped at his voice, halfway toward the castle gardens. Her hands clenched. “Do you ever give up?”
“What can I say? I like to work for what I desire.” His mouth quirked into a half-smile. He sheathed his knife and stepped toward her.
I gripped the ends of my hair and held back a groan. Not this, not in front of Arius. I sneaked a peek over at Arius to find his brows drawn together in concentration as he observed Jazrael’s and Dramian’s interactions.
&
nbsp; Jazrael’s hand gripped the hilt of her sword, a flash of uncertainty crossing her face. Dramian’s smile grew, and he stepped close. “You may have yourself fooled with that no-nonsense warrior act, but I know you feel the charge between us. It’s undeniable every time we are in the same room. I see it in your eyes even now.” His hands brushed over her arms, and she flinched but didn’t pull away. “You desire me.”
I heard Arius’s sharp intake of air and sensed the moment his eyes turned on me. But I avoided his gaze, pretending I was engrossed in the scene playing out before me.
Jazrael’s body hardened, and she jerked back, her eyes flashing in warning. She pulled her sword halfway out of its sheath.
Dramian’s jaw squared. “Then why did you follow me?”
The sword dropped back into its sheath, and Jazrael’s lips pressed into a hard line. She stared off into the trees.
“I won’t tell anyone,” he said in a low voice. “I just can’t keep fighting this urge to be near you. And I think...” He took a breath. “I think you are experiencing the same difficulty.”
She glared at him, her eyes fierce. “We can never, never be together, understand?”
Dramian stiffened, the pain clear on his face. “Perfectly, my lady.” He bowed. “I shall not bother you again.”
He spun around, taking long strides away.
Jazrael blinked. Her shoulders fell, and her frown grew with each step he took. “I swore an oath.”
He paused, ducking his head back toward her. “And how long do you intend to fulfill that oath?”
“Forever.”
He continued walking. “I cannot contend with forever.”
Panic mounted in her eyes. “Stop.”
He didn’t stop.
“Dramian,” she said the name like a plea.
He stopped and turned, a smirk crossing his face. “You’re not playing fair, my lady.”
“Give me time to think?”
Surprise and hope sparked in his eyes. His smile turned genuine. “All the time you need, my lady.”
She loves him. I loved Dramian. But this was the past. The past didn’t have any bearing on the present... did it?