At this, I did laugh, and after a deep breath, I felt like I might be able to say more than one word at a time without bursting into tears.
“Why won’t my wings turn back like everything else?” I managed, glancing at the lower half of them reaching several feet into the sand. “And what’s wrong with them?”
“They’re just stuck. You started to shift, but…just got caught in the tidal wave.” He chuckled. “You don’t lose your arms to them until you completely shift. It started to happen here,” he added, moving his hand over my bared shoulder.
“Then those bone ridges…” I shook my head, barely able to bring back the image without shuddering.
He nodded. “It’s the bridge of your wing—kind of like a frame, or a rudder. It’s how you move them up there.” Leo looked to the sky, then back to me. “But you can have both…if you know how to stop your shift.” His dark eyes shadowed, and a few seconds later, his wings slowly emerged again, first the bridging bone he’d just mentioned, but this one was separate from his arm. Then, the smaller network of bones branched out until it looked like a matrix of webs.
“Oh my god,” I gasped, watching the velvet black skin appear at each joint, then spread over the expanse of interlaced bones until finally, the armored, black-mirror plates appeared over the jointed area like vented shields. The last pieces to form were the serrated edges, long and elegant like feathers, but sharp as razors on both sides.
“See? You’re normal…for being abnormal.” Leo slowly moved his hand to my face, tracing his thumb over my cheekbone.
He leaned in slowly and pressed his lips to mine, transforming the prickling stabs of heat I’d been feeling into a warmth that flooded my whole body. The campfire smell of him filled my lungs as his other hand moved through my hair, and I couldn’t get close enough to him.
“Really?” Rhea’s voice was a rock through my small window of calm, and instantly, the painful little stabs of heat returned over every square inch of my skin. The ridges also appeared in my arms and shoulders again, and I felt the tide rising around me.
“No…no, no!” I stuttered, trying to press the ridge back into my skin, but it didn’t work. I scrambled to my feet, but the wings were too heavy, and I fell backward into the sand again. I clutched at my shirt as everything started going black just like in the dining hall.
“Halsey! Halsey, take a breath!”
“Move, Leo!” Rhea shouted.
A second later, I felt the cool water on my skin and the sense of relief was so strong that tears burned my eyes again. Rhea was behind me in an instant gripping the back of my hair.
“Hey! Stop!”
“Leo, shut-up and stay back! Halsey, open your mouth!” she yelled, but it wasn’t until she jerked my hair that I really heard her. “Open your mouth, Halsey! You have to drink this!” I did as she said, and she tipped the bottle to my lips. I swallowed giant gulps of the water, choking on the last one. But the burning everywhere was gone and I felt like a hundred pounds had been lifted off my chest and back. “There, you’re fine now. Take shallow breaths,” Rhea added, letting me go. She straightened and rounded on Leo. “And you… Don’t even look at me like that. Did you think you were going to kiss her broken shift all better?”
Leo snapped his wings out, creating a shadow over us all. “Why do you have to be such a bitch, Rhea?”
“This bitch just saved her ass, dickhead. She doesn’t know shit about shit yet and you’re all over her. Just do your job!” She launched the glass bottle of seawater at him. It thudded as he caught it against his chest before she turned to run up the beach. She pulled her shirt off, and in seconds, her brilliant wings exploded to either side of her. They caught the next gust of wind that hit us and carried her halfway to the cliff in the distance before she had to even begin flapping them.
Leo turned his back to me and yelled after her, his wings fully extended as a stream of fire shot several hundred feet down the beach, and a roll of thunder filled the red, darkening sky.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Leo flew me back to my dorm in what seemed like only seconds so I could change out of my tattered shirt. He said it would probably be better if I didn’t show up on the cliff wearing his after all, and I knew this probably had everything to do with Rhea.
He also opted to wait outside so nobody passing by would see him coming out of my dorm room, especially after Alita’s idiotic and untrue declaration in the dining hall that we were sleeping together. And speaking of her, I hoped she wouldn’t be inside when we landed in front of the white-brick dorm house because I did not want to see her face yet.
I fished my key out of my skort pocket—silently thanking the inventor of zippers for it still being there after the frenzy that caused me to somehow even lose my bra—then I occupied my mind with thoughts of putting the key on a chain as I dug out the spandex racerback tank-top I knew I’d packed.
I also took off my stupid skort and put on a pair of leggings that had a zippered pocket on the side. I dropped my key into that and again, thanked the zipper guy. After a little digging in my bag, I found a pair of socks and my boots, but the passing glance I caught of myself in the mirror stopped me in my tracks.
I took a long, hard look at the apocalypse that was the state of my hair—four shades of long, purple bangs blown in every direction. It was even purple where it was nearly shaved around the back and sides, so it was now apparently growing straight out of my head this color. I ran my fingers through the top a few times and straightened it out enough that the zig-zagging layers looked intentional and edgy. But reality seemed to slip a little as I watched my hands move through hair that wasn’t my hair. Or so it seemed.
Maybe this wasn’t me. Maybe I wasn’t here, I thought.
I stared into the mirror for several more seconds seriously considering the possibility that I was actually in a Red-Fever induced coma. Maybe I’d been dreaming everything that had happened since I found out I didn’t get into the Citadel? Maybe I’d just had a psychotic break because of it?
I mean, it would explain why there didn’t seem to be any way off this island. Why was no one talking about that? No one had even said a word about going home for breaks. Did we even have any breaks at this school?
It would also explain why there was no way for me to queue anyone from home. I could only talk to the people here on this island.
“Wake up,” I said with a hundred percent certainty it would work, and I’d find myself in a hospital bed or something. “Wake the hell up right now, Halsey.”
Nothing. Not a single thing happened except my edgy unicorn hair fell into my eyes, and I pushed it back in frustration.
I heaved a long, pained sigh. If this really were a dream, the facts were only facts if I said they were. If I’d blocked out the real world because it was too hard to know I didn’t get into The Citadel, I was here in this fantasy world because I thought I could control it.
All right. Then it was time to start trying.
Leo had put his white shirt back on and was standing with his hands in his pockets, the bottle of seawater under his arm. His black hair was blowing off his shoulders like some kind of brooding vampire from a gothic novel, and the air was starting to feel heavy with the pending rain.
“Wow,” he said, apparently surprised at my outfit change. “I was expecting just another white shirt.”
“The last one didn’t hold up too well,” I said, pushing away the constructed humiliation I’d let myself fall into before. If this were a dream, I reminded myself, I wasn’t going to choose to feel embarrassed in front of him.
“Well, not that I’m advocating for the white shirt over your current selection, but we have a little insurance now at least,” Leo said, holding up the bottle of seawater.
I smiled at him. “Sorry about all that by the way,” I said, walking confidently toward him. “It all happened so fast, and I couldn’t stop it.”
“Halsey…” he laughed. “You don’t have to apologize about any
of that. I’m the one who should apologize to you.”
I darted a glance at him and huffed out a breath in disbelief. “For what? You just helped me.”
Leo shook his head and lowered his eyes. “Rhea was right. You wouldn’t have needed any help like that in the first place if it hadn’t been for me. Alita wouldn’t have had anything to yell about in the dining hall.”
“If anyone is to blame for that, it’s Rhea,” I said, anger sparking in my chest again. “Alita hadn’t thought anything until Rhea started taking jabs at us.”
He raised his chin in the direction of the setting sun and let out a long, slow breath.
“That’s actually true, but even so, it’s still my fault.” He shook his head and studied the ground again. “On the beach back there... I didn’t plan it like that, you know? It wasn’t the right time. You just got here and have enough to adjust to without me complicating it all even more.”
I let the anger fall away. If this were a dream reality, it was tricky, and I needed to be careful not to let myself get caught up in its machinations again. I needed to act, not react.
I looked over at him as we walked. “You know what, out of all the things I wish I could erase from reality today, nothing you did is on that list.” The corner of his mouth turned up, but he still watched the ground as we made our way to the cliff to meet the others. I had an idea. “We can start over if you want,” I said. A curious smile spread over his face as I held out my hand to him. “Hi, I’m Halsey Rhodes. What’s your name?”
He took my hand, laughing a little at first, but then he shook it gently. “Leo Red-Cloud. Really nice to meet you, Halsey.”
“Is that a Native American name?” I asked. He nodded slowly, smiling at my sudden interest. “I read somewhere that in some tribes, mothers named their babies after the first thing they saw when the baby was born. Is that true?”
Leo took a deep, thoughtful breath. “I’ve heard that too, but it’s more common to be given a name after your personality starts showing,” he explained, but then seemed suddenly impatient. “Anyway, we have lots of names—some we earn over time, some we inherit, and some we never say.”
I knew he’d put it that way to sum up his answer, but all it did was make me have more questions. “So, given those three options, did you earn Red-Cloud or inherit it?”
“Both,” he finally said just as we reached the cliff where Rhea, Alec, Bryce, and Alita all turned their eyes to meet us.
“Halsey!” Alita shouted as she ran up to me. A rush of anger pushed through me upon seeing her, but before I could say a thing, she’d thrown her arms around my neck and started gushing apologies for being so epically thoughtless. I closed my eyes and tried to let the instant anger I felt upon seeing her slide over me.
“It’s all right,” I said, maneuvering to step out of her shockingly strong vise grip. After the eighth time repeating it was really OK and I wasn’t mad anymore, she finally let me go.
I looked up at Rhea, who was watching the scene with Alita play out.
“I didn’t get to say thank you for helping me,” I said. “For making me drink the water. I know you flew back and got it.”
She shrugged, but the corner of her mouth twitched upward for just a second. “Half-shift constipation sucks,” she said without a second thought, and the ridiculousness of that phrase made me laugh without warning.
Rhea didn’t laugh at all, and instead, turned to Bryce. “All right, he’s here, so are we ready now or what?” she asked.
Bryce punched a few things into his tablet, which generated a 3-D layout of what looked like the immediate area. I could see the cliff edge, the ocean, and even the surrounding forest on either side of us all meticulously etched in glowing, green lines. All green except for the hazy red bubble a good way down the shoreline.
Bryce turned to Leo. “That’s where the tear is supposed to be, at least, that’s where it was supposed to be an hour ago. If it moved since then, it can’t be by much.”
“The veil, as in…the divider between planes?” I said, trying to play along with what I’d heard this morning. “They were talking about that today in my honing class.”
“In mine too,” Alita said. “I can kind of see Ghob’s point, though. Going from having the run of a place to being servants?” she added.
“Humans have been a disease here ever since,” Bryce added, which was about the last thing I expected to hear.
“You know, you’re still human too, right?” I clipped, taking more than a little offense.
Bryce blew his hair out of his eyes as he studied the 3-D hologram. “And tell you what, if I could choose one or the other, I’d take Gnome immortal any day.”
“You’d actually pick—“ I started, then registered what he’d said. “Did you say immortal? Midori didn’t say anything about being immortal.”
Bryce sighed and scrubbed his hand over the broad planes of his face, finally resigning to look at me. “OK, only the queens are immortal, but we might as well be too. Elementals live for centuries. Humans get one, if they’re lucky. So yeah, getting sick was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“You had Red Fever?” I asked hesitantly.
“We all did,” Rhea said, unbuttoning her shirt. “That was the catalyst. I thought you said you went to your honing today?”
“I did, but—what are you doing?” I asked as she got close to the last few buttons.
She looked at me like I’d just asked her to jump off the cliff. “Did you forget what happened to your shirt when your wings came out? Leo has to scout the tear, and someone has to watch his back to make sure he doesn’t get sucked in or something. We don’t know what will happen that close up.”
Everything was going too fast. There were answers here…and more questions, but I couldn’t slow it all down enough to separate them. I just had to start where I was.
“Why are we trying to find the tear in the veil?” I asked, hoping this would at least give me a starting point. Alec laughed like I’d missed the most obvious answer in the world. I glared at him. “What? Why is that funny?”
He let his laughter dissipate and gave me a conciliatory look like I’d just spilled my ice cream onto the sidewalk.
“Oh, these kids…” he said, shaking his head as he sighed. “To go through it, Halsey.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Then I’m going too,” I said. “I’m going to see what’s on the other side of the veil too.” Rhea laughed so loud it echoed, and I glared at her.
She opened her mouth to no doubt tell me how delusional I was since I had demonstrated exactly zero control over my wings thus far in our relationship, but that was a simple matter of cause and effect I was sure could be remedied. Instead of telling me this, though, she just held up her hands and shook her head at Leo.
“You’re up—this is your fault,” she chuckled, a look of exhaustion on her face.
Leo sighed and put his hands on his hips as he studied the ground again.
“Halsey…” he said, meeting my eyes.
“Is there a time limit before the tear disappears or something?” I asked. “Like in hour from now, it’s gone?”
Leo’s expression shifted to surprise. “No, but—”
“Then take me up right now. Show me what to do.”
“Halsey, it’s not that simple,” Leo answered. “You have an entire class dedicated to nothing but mastering how to fly. You’re not going to learn how to do it in a night.”
Rhea, Alec, and Bryce all started to snicker, and even Alita hid her laughter behind a ridiculous throat clearing episode when I locked eyes with her. Anger rolled in my chest again, and I remembered my theory.
Stop reacting, I thought. Stop reacting, and act.
If this was a dream, then I was going to fly, damnit.
I started running as fast as I could toward the edge of the cliff. Leo called after me, then Alita. After a few more seconds, the rest of their voices clanged together shouting all kinds o
f warnings in inevitabilities if I didn’t stop.
Stop reacting, and act.
I saw the edge of the cliff approaching and the deep purple sky beyond. I saw the whitecap waves rolling and growing until they spilled onto the shore, powerful in their element. Air was my element, wasn’t it? If I was an eagle, then I was meant to fly.
I leapt from the edge and held out my arms, expecting the searing pain of the wings opening, but it didn’t come. My wings didn’t open. My hands were still hands, and I was falling not toward waves, but toward rocks—jagged and layered as if the cliff had teeth.
I was wrong. This wasn’t a dream world I’d created so I could control it. My theory was wrong, and now there was nothing left to test.
I shut my eyes and instinctively tried to brace myself for the impact…like it would have made any difference on the terrain I was heading for.
But I didn’t hit those rocks. I hit something else solid that knocked the wind out of me. I couldn’t breathe, and for a fleeting second I was sure I’d hit the water. It had to be the water because what else could it be?
I forced my eyes open, but couldn’t see anything until a few seconds later when the wind and the pressure relaxed. Leo’s arms were wrapped around my ribs and legs, and I would have given almost anything to rewind the last five minutes so I could make a different choice.
“Have you lost your mind!?” Leo shouted. “Are you trying to get yourself killed!?”
“I thought I could…” I started, but embarrassment crashed into me so hard the physical pain in my side—a tightening, followed by a relentless stabbing sensation— halted my words. “I thought…my wings would work,” I managed, but the pain got so intense I started to feel lightheaded. My head was too heavy suddenly, and I let it fall against his shoulder.
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